Transcripts For CSPAN3 Oral Histories NASA - James Lovell Interview 20240713

When you were a little kid. You saw a rocket go off and said i want to do that. Is it that simple or that complex . I was interested in rockets in astronomy long before people get spell rocket. I was interested in it way back in high school. I went to try to build some rockets. I wanted to become a rocket engineer, as a matter of fact. Worked at the rocket society. I wanted to become a rocket engineer but essentially they said you have to go to mit or to caltech. I cannot afford either. So i took a secondary goal. I got an rotc appointment to wisconsin. From there i went to the Naval Academy. I got to the flight training. I became a naval air aviator. In 1958, nasa was formed and they were looking for astronauts. I was one of the original 110 people who were selected. Let me go back to the Naval Academy . That is right. This was right after world war ii. I got down to preflight. My mother, when i was at the university of wisconsin, told me to apply to the Naval Academy. 7z3 vi did it, never expectingo get a. I got orders from Bureau Personnel to report to the Naval Academy for the physical to be inducted into the academy. I had a big . Question mark . I was told i might architect into aviation. But there was an old captain there who told me if i wanted to make the navy my career, get up to the academy. From there, how did you givethe airplanes . I spent four years at the academy. My first class term paper i wrote on the development of the liquid fueled rocket. I just donated that to the academy. I was one of the first 50 because i was so much intested in going back into aviation. They selected 50 people to teach the plebes. I was transferred down to pensacola. What kinds of planes to did you fly . Snjs. I was transferred from there to kingsville. Actually corpus christi, then kingsville. My advanced training was in a modern airplane called hellcat. The l6f i got my wings and i was selected to go back into jets training. That was the epitome of everything. Did you enjoy flying jets . Yes. I still do if i can get my hands on one. They sent teams out because in those days we did not fly whole squadrons off of aircraft carriers. I told my skipper i was having trouble flying in the daytime. You want me to go out at night . But it was great experience. I learned a lot. Does anything compared to the first night landing on a carrier . [laughter] in those days we did not have modern techniques. You had to come in low. And there was a guy with paddles and a lighted suit. At what point do you hear about nasa trying to select people to become astronauts and decide you wanted to do it . I spent some Time Training people. Some of my contemporaries had already gone through a thing called test pilot school. I thought that would be an interesting thing to do. So i applied. I went and just as i graduated, nasa was formed. They were talking about putting a man in space. They had secret orders to all of the people in the air force and navy. To all of the people they found qualified. That was one of the criteria that you had to have. I was up for the original mercury selection. How far did you last . It got down to 32 people. I went out to albuquerque. To a big hospital out there. Lobos clinic. We went through our physicals. That was a physical like nothing no one had heard of before. They knew that they had guinea pigs. Not only should we be in good shape, but they knew we would go into an environment that was completely strange. They did things for background and data. When i got there and the next selection was to go on to a second group at Patterson Air force base for some more tests, the doctor called me and told me i was finished. I asked why . What is wrong . They said i had a high bilirubin. I did not even know what that was. It was too much pink pigment in your blood. I was very dejected. So this liver problem, even though it was a minor thing, they said no way . Lovell n gemini 12, buzz aldrin had the same thing i had. There was a unique aspect to that physical. I got back to the squadron and got a set of orders to go back to Patterson Air force base. My spper said these orders are probably not correct. I said i was taking them. I went out there and they were expecting me. The next morning we all went down to breakfast to get ready to start our physical. A guy walked in and said he was sorry he was late. He was gus grissom. I was not supposed to be there. I was packing my bags and going back to the squadron. How disappointed were you . Very disappointed. There was no indication past that original seven that they were can i find more guys . No one knew how far nasa would go. That was something i always wanted to do. How long did it take you from that disappointment to get back in the loop . I got back in the squadron and got transferred down to oceana. Turning aviation week, there was an article about nasa wanting to select more astronauts. Before i knew it, the navy called me down again. They asked me if i wanted to be another selection. They did not know i was kicked out because of a physical. I said sure. I put my name in again. I was selected again to go for the physical. This time at Brooks Air Force base. A much more practical physical. Looking at what is wrong and what is right. I had no problem passing it. That is how i got selected to the second group. Nobody knew what an astronaut was. But the second time he went, they were the biggest heroes of the world. That is true. I can recall vividly. We all gathered back in a hotel room somewhere saying they did not know if they want to get in the program to go into some wacky program when i should be getting up the ladder in naval aviation. Now i look back on it and think it was really something. How did the original seven except the next group . [laughter] very cool at first. And they were were pretty high on the totem pole. They were well known. The nine of us walk in. They warm up after a while. After some negotiations, we all got on the same bandwagon. Did you get one of those corvettes to run around and . After a while. We would by its wholesale a minute after six months we were traded in. I guess i went through three corvettes during my time that i was there. I lived at Ellington Air force base. I had a family and i needed a station wagon. That is what i got. How did your life change when he became an astronaut . Mr. Loll ve i dont think it really changed in a way. We got to be celebrities. But we did not do anything at first. I can recall the very first time i went back to milwaukee to my high school and gave a talk. I just went right to the school and went to. In the back of the room, the mayor of milwaukee was there. He was mad that i did not stop by and pay my respects. All of this protocol and new nothing about. I thought, i have not even been in space and people are asking me what is going on. So there was a little bit of false idolatry at the time. What was happening to you during those mercury days . What was your job . The first thing i did was to go down to Cape Canaveral and watched polly watch wally take off. We got into some of the simulators they had. They were not very good at the time. And we started doing some training. I was just talking today to a brand new astronaut and he says he is still going to camp. He said he was going through astronaut candidate training. I said when i went through it was is all hit and miss. People will come in and teach us a little bit about orbital mechanics. Then we would go to the plants to learn about the systems themselves. That is how we got most of our training. When did you turn into the Gemini Program and what was your initial job there . We started learning all about the spacecraft itself. My first assignment was as backup to gemini forur. I met ed white and i did not know it until we were down at the cape talking. He had been a plebe at west point and i was at the Naval Academy. We were having the breakfast at the cape when he told a story that was me. His job on that flight was a very big deal at that time . Guess it was yes it was. We had a squirt gun it was the initial attempt. He was out for a while. How did you train for a spacewalk . We got in the suits. We ahad this air bearing trainer. Which is only two dimsional. And then you should shoot these two little jets and try to maneuver yourself. Quite honestly, it was not any good. It was the best thing they could do at the time. It was not until gemini 12 that we learned what to do. So the mission takes off. What did you do while he was up there and you are on the ground . I was at the cape in the control center while he was doing all of his work. It has been a long time since you have gotten here. Are you ready to fly . Oh yes. I got here in 1962 and i went up in 1964. Tell me about that first flight . It was interesting. Frank and i were of the same rank. He had been air force and he got to be commander of it. It was a twoweek mission a medical flight. Two weeks with him and he places a challenge. [laughter] but this flight, we trained very hard. We had different kinds of suits. The very first takeoff was like it was flying us for a while. Pretty fast, we were able to get the idea of it. The spacesuit was pretty sight tight so i did not feel very nauseous. These were the old days when they were very worried about leaks in spacecraft. They told you you had to keep the suit on it all time, right . Yes, it was a rather ridiculous regulation. At one time i got out of my suit. And frank wanted to get out of his suit. The poor guy was hot and sweaty. They finally let him get out of his suit. My youngest son at the time said his dad had orbited the earth in his underwear. Which is essentially what we did. You said it was a medical, experimental flight. Did you feel like you were an experimental rat there . A guinea pig. The reason for the mission was the maximum time to go to the moon and back was two weeks. So they were seeing if they could put up people into zero gravity for two weeks. So we stayed up there. The spacecraft had a lot of problems. The fuel cells were dying. Frank does not like to even fly over water much less spend 70 of his time over water. He was anxious to come down. I told him do not worry, the navy can find us wherever we come down. There was some talk early on about landing gemini on the ground, was there not . As there was. But one of my jobs was the recovery aspect. We were looking at a kind of paraglider. We would come down and it would inflate. It would be a vshaped. And then the guy inside the aircraft could guide it down. It would be on the last one. The test results were not too good. They thought it was prudent not to even put it on their. There. Can you tell me how you spend 14 days with those cramped quarters and someone else without going mad . It is not easy. You have to remember we had worked so hard. I would have gone up there with anyone. You get to know each other quite well. It was something. Frank went nine days without having to go to the bathroom. [laughter] he said jim, this is it. I said frank, you only have five more days to go. [laughter] how was space food in those days . Strictly freezedried. These little bitesize sandwiches had wax over them. The wax would coat the roof of your mouth and it would taste awful. One of the best things they had on board those days were bacon bits. Little square bacon. That was very tasty. Then you put water into various freezedried foods. But it kept us alive. Looking back on it, all of that seems very primitive. But at that time it was stateoftheart when i look back at how ultraconservative they were. One person got a flack for taking up a sandwich. They were afraid of anything floating around. But now we have found out that if the food is thick enough, you can eat it with a spoon. What did nasa learn from these two experimental guinea pigs . Lovell they learned that the cardiovascular system would adapt quite readily. The heart slow down. Blood volume decreased. It was the fact that spaceflight is possible longer for the three or four hours that they had been doing it in the past. Was it does exciting as you thought it would be . Guest mr. Lovell it was very exciting to me. It was tedious work. We stayed up there for the fulltime. It was quite rewarding. All of these missions now, as you look back at them, they all seem to fit together. They all get us to the moon. But at that time you had to do something before we got to the moon. The first thing we had to learn about the subtle rendezvous in space. Could we get two spacecraft together. That could lead to docking. The first one was the gemini six and seven. They moved to gemini seven up to fly. When we were up there, gemini six is going to rendezvous. The first attempt to take off on gemini six resulted in a shutdown. The second time up there, they did. We were up there 11 or 12 days at that time. We could see them coming up. They came up at night. You could see the jets firing. We all. Rendezvoused. That was the very first big step. You then were capcom on 8 . And there was a problem. Talk about that problem. There was a stuck pressed thruster. They were trying to slow the thing down. It was starting to make them roll. They had already completed a rendezvous and docking. It turned out one of their thrusters was firing. They managed and they were very cool about it. They managed to pull the circuit breaker. Using their reentry thrusters, they were able to slow the vehicle down. They had to come back early. What happened in Mission Control when that was going on and no one is sure . Everyone is trying to think of solutions. The problem hits us all of a sudden. When they came back into radio contact, they said, we have a problem. There was not much we could have done in the control center for a problem like that. This was a serious problem . Of yes. If they did not correct the problem themselves, they wouldve been in deep trouble. Did that make you rethink the safety . In this business, and that problem was over there. Nothing was going to happen to me. Everything is fine. Dont worry about it. Spaceflight is so interesting, dont worry about it. The people who want to become astronauts, at least in those days, we were test pilots. We had that sort of curiosity and adventure spirit. Fewer were able to take that in stride. You are assigned to back up the gemini 10 crew. It was sort of fate. The 9 backups became the prime backups. We became the prime crew for the last gemini flight. That was gemini 12. Was that the last one scheduled . That was the last one. So it gave you an opportunity to fly gemini again . And you are involved with the spacewalking mission on that. Tell us about that. They decided to do some pretty detailed work outside of the spacecraft. It started with gemini nine. They were going to have an astronaut maneuvering unit. They got outside and try to do it. The handholds were not good. His visor fogged over. He had trouble doing things that he could do easily in training. Eventually he came back into the spacecraft and they abandoned that. They attempted work on 10. And also 11. All of us forgot about one of newtons third laws of motion. For every action there is a consequent reaction. And 12 rolled around, they thought about how they could do more work. Somebody said what about water . That would give you an idea of how zero gravity would feel. Nasa rented a swimming pull at a boys school up in baltimore. Buzz and i went up there. We put buzz in a spacesuit. I sat by him and communicated with him. We went through some of the basics. We had a crude mockup in the water. Learning about working in space. The proper handhelds and the toe sics. We had a crew mockup in the water, learning about working many space, learning about the proper handholds and toe holds to make sure everything worked. On 12 buzz completed three space walks, about 5 30, i guess, and everything was fine. Did everything we were supposed to do. No problem. It was a major turning point in the ability to work outside of a spacecraft. It also points out, why dont we try a swimming pool, were there people all along saying, why dont we try this or that . In nasa, there are a lot of people who use their imagination. It came to the forefront of 13, but, i mean, new ideas, that was the whole idea of nasa. New ideas, what can we do differently . There were a lot of mistakes. Blind alleys, perseverance, though, was predominantly in the program at that time. Lets keep on trying. Then comes the Apollo Program and apollo fire. Do you recall where you were when you heard about the fire. Yes, i was in washington, d. C. At the white house. I was up there for the signing of the space treaty which essentially meant that space is available to everybody, there are no boundaries. And that astronauts, if they have to land someplace else, will be welcomed rather than be treated as prisoners or Something Like that. We had just finished that thing at the white house and the four of us were going back to the hotel. When we talked in, there were messages for us to call nasa back and they told us what had occurred. We spent the night there. They said, dont go outside, dont just lose yourself. So we did. And the next day we went home. You were assigned to a panel to study what went wrong. What was your study job . Yes, there were some 20 panels, plus the major panel, and then there were 20 something panels. I was with jack swigert and ron evans. We looked at how we could cope with in flight emergencies, fires, to see what we need to have onboard and what we could do. Very interesting investigation. In my past career i was a Safety Officer an went through Aviation Safety School so some of the stuff i had learned back then, i applied at that time. I suppose the question that i need to ask in light of the fact this is a conservative safety minded group of people at this point, how in the world did apollo one happen . Well, i think, you know, when you look back on it, the fire in apollo one, we should have had plenty of warning ahead of time. We flew mercury. We flew gemini, all of those spacecraft were tested on the ground by puppet in pure oxygen so that they could breathe, you know, after the prebreathing because we flew at low pressures. On the ground, because spacecraft leaks, you always pressurizeit about a pound per square inch higher than the ambient pressure. Outside about 15. Pure oxygen. Now, for all the gemini flights, the mercury flights, no problems. But apollo, probably maybe due to the rush they were trying to do, the block one was a disaster anyway. And they pumped it up. We should have realized that you didnt have to put pure oxygen in that spacecraft. You should have put in a mixture anyway of oxygen and nitrogen because anything will burn in pure oxygen as we found out in the apollo one fire. Was there also any indication to be made for the fact that the contractors quit listening to the astronauts and said, we dont need your input anymore . In some respects, what i remember, one of the reviews that we had out at north america at that time, was the hatch. They were telling us how this hatch was built. It was in two sections. There was an outer section and an inner section and the inner section was there because of the spacecraft pressure would always keep the thing sealed against the sun. But if you ever had to get out of the thing, on the ground, it was a disaster. Even in space, if you had to do an emergency return from the lunar module to go into the hatch side, you had to take off two hatches to do it. And so, we mentioned that. We sd, you ought to have a single piece hatch here, something we could normally use and close. We had it in gemini. I mean, you know, its not impossible to build one of those things. We had one built and at the timed in gemini, but no one wanted to do it in apollo and no one listened until the fire started and there was time constraint. They were looking argumentsgee, they want to modify again. It was going to be a long time before anybody will fly again. Were you worried that maybe somebody is going the say lets forget the whole thing . Yeah, if you recall, the fire took place in 1967. We had a commitment made by president kennedy that we would land a man on the moon and bring him back home safely before the end of the decade, and when the fire occurred in january of 1967, and we didnt know really what we were going to do, everybody was really down in the dumps saying, holy cow. So i have to admire the engineers, the technicians and the scientists and everybody here who found out the problem, and the contractor people who finally realized, hey, lets get a new type of spacecraft. Lets build something that people can really use. Thats what happened. By the time apollo eight came along you were backup to mike collins. Were you convinced then that the capsule was okay . Yeah, i was. You have to go by faith. You have to believe in what the people are going to hand you, you know. Alan shepherds old joke was, how does it feel to sit on top of something made by the lowest bidder . But you have to believe that whole thing. I did. I was mikes backup and spent a lot of my time up in boston working on the Guidance System. Where were you when you found out he had a bad back and couldnt go and you were going to go . I dont really recall where i was. I think i had come back here and finally they said, i was his backup so that was the thing and mike had this bone spur and i think he held off as long as he could but i think his leg was getting numb. So finally, they replaced me and i went. You know, faith has sort of strange things. Because i never expected it to be on apollo eight but i have to tell you, that was the high point of my space career. If you hadnt been that backup you might have been on 11 . Yes, i was assigned to 11. I was assigned to 11. But still, i preferred eight to my position on 11. Yeah. Eight turns out to be a significant flight, once it takes off, but when youre assigned to it its still not what it turned out to be, was it . No, still earth orbital. We were going to do 4,000 miles so we could test the lunar and command module and come back at a high rate of speed to test the heat shield the three of us were out at north america testing our spacecraft. And frank got a call to go back to houston. So bill and i still stayed out there. We were working out there and frank came back again, back to downey and said, things have changed. And we said, what . He said if everything goes all right in apollo seven, apollo eight will go to the moon. I was elated. This was great. I had already spent two weeks many space with botherrman, i didnt want to spend another week going around the earth again. This is fantastic. When it was my turn to sit in the back seat i drew the apollo eight insignia, the thing with territory and moon. That happened because of cold war considerations, did it not . Oh, yeah. Well, two things occurred. The lunar module wasnt ready and the lunar module was supposed to go up there and be tested out. And also, as you probably know and its well known now we had intelligence information that the russians were going to put people around the moon. They were really attempting to land people on the moon. But lets stop there and well pick it up. Okay. This is tape two. About the same time we were, we were building a huge the russians were interested in Lunar Landing as much as we were. They built ten of them flew for, none of them were really successful. But they were very persistent people. They thought using a different type of booster called the proton and a vehicle called zon they could fly people, just circumnavigate the moon, just go around. Not land or even orbit it. They were very close to actually doing that. They had sent a couple of spacecraft up, went around the moon. One was not successful, one partially successful, next cosmonauts, i knew them, wanted to go. They hesitated back and forth. Should we send another man or not . When they did that this side of the atlantic, bold leadership at this time, they said the lunar module is not ready, huntsville thinks the booster can be okay so they said lets send apollo eight to the moon. And so thats how it came to pass. And then after we got to the moon, of course, russians said we never planned it in the first place. As a rocket man, and you reminded me that you were at the beginning as a rocket man did you think we can do that . Did you think we can do that . Oh, yes. The beginning as a rocket man did you think we can do that . Oh, yes. Looking at the saturn 5 and what it could do, this was not only the first flight to the moon but the first time we used the saturn 5 booster. The me about the flight. Tell me about how tell me about the flight. Tell me how you felt as you approached the moon and knew you were going to go my first sensation was not too far from the earth because when we turned around we could see the earth start to shrink. The highest anybody had ever been was either, i think it was gemini 11, up about 800 miles or Something Like that and back down. All of a sudden, we were going down. It reminds me of looking, driving, a car looking out the back window, going inside a tunnel and seeing the tunnel entrance shrink as you go further into the tunnel. It was quite a sensation to think about. You had to pinch yourself, hey, were really going to the moon. This is it. I was the navigator and it turned out that the navigation equipment was perfect. Just, you couldt ask for a better piece of navigation equipment. Were you guys just riding or did you have a lot of work to do . We had a lot of work to do. This was the first test of an actual lunar flight. The vehicle had been tested before but we were all looking at it. The navigation was something new going out there. But we had a tv program, when we got to the moon. But then, coming into the moon itself, our last day our blunt end was towards the moon. We didnt see it as it got bigger. Going out there, it doesnt grow gradually like this. It stays small for a while and then all of a sudden it gets bigger like this. Thats what it appears like anyway. Blunt end was towards the moon. They called us, youll lose communication because the moons gravity will swing you around to the far side. Right to the second there was static in the ear phones. No communication. And then, of course, we lit the engine to slow down and we got into lunar orbit, and this is where we started looking at the moon, you know, and all those nice things we said. By the way, ill put everything to rest right now. Coming around, when we saw the earth coming up, who took that famous earth rise picture that made it into a stamp in 1969 . Now, you might be getting a different view bother borman, if you think im going to say for took it, for 25 years i said that only to keepkeeplittle controversy in the game, i think anders took the picture. But you have to remember, i was the director. I told him where to take it, i told him how to compose the picture. He just happened to have the telephoto lens. Everybody wants to be a director. [laughter] tell me what you thought two things. One is, youre no longer connected to the earth. You cant yell help. They cant tell you what to do. Youre on your own. First time youve ever been up there when thats happened, right . Well, yes, except gemini when we didnt have communication. 240,000 miles away. No one is talking to you, no one can hear you. Youre just looking at it. What do you think . We were so curious, so excited about being at the moon, that we were like three school kids looking into a Candy Store Window watching those craters go by. We were only 60 miles above the surface. Didnt have any kind of feeling, at least myself, of, you know, fear or, you know, are we going to get back or not. It was just to be there was such an exciting moment. You know, i felt very, very honored and lucky to be christmas, 1968, lucky to be there. Did you anticipate that . That particular we didnt know if the flight would be successful or not but youre absolutely right. With riots, assassinations, a war going on, i was part of something that finally gave people an uplift about doing something positive, thats why i say, apollo eight was the high point of my space career. There are people in nasa that will say it was the high point of nasas career. The landing was what they were aiming for. Shooting for. But that proved that you could do all the things that everybody said you could do . Yeah, i sort of lean that way. On apollo 11, i was honored to be with lindbergh watching the launch from the cape, you know, and i said to general lindbergh, i said isnt this apropos . This is the most auspicious moment. These people are going to go up there and land on the moon and he said, well, yes, to a certain degree but apollo eight was the real charger of this whole program. How did you choose that christmas message that yall delivered . Good story. The christmas message, when we determined, first of all, that we would get and burn into the lunar orbit on christmas eve, we thought, boy, something has to be appropriate to say. We ought to Say Something . What can we say . And we couldnt think of anything. Then there was a fellow, i think borman borman knew, he was with the u. S. Information agency, had gone with some of the astronauts around on their trips. Frank asked him, could he come up with something appropriate . Well, he couldnt. But he knew another person, i think it was a newspaperman, i forget his name, that, he said, okay, ill think it over and try to see what i can do. He was working almost all night trying to think out appropriate words and his wife cameown and said, why dont you have them read something from the bible. Well, thats, you know, the new testament. No, she says, the old testament, because, you know, this would be very appropriate. Most of the people in the world will be listening in and most of the people in the world are not christian, so thats how it came to pass. The firs10 verses of genesis was just really the foundation of many of the worlds religions so thats how it got started. Youre sitting there looking at youre reading, god created the heavens and the earth, without form and void and darkness, and it must have been almost mystical to your feeling. It was. At the same time, we had this rudimentary tv camera pointing out the window watching the craters go by and slowly slipping into daylight. Ah. I remember it. It was a marvelous time for america and the world but particularly marvelous christmas time after what had been a terrible year. Let me go to apollo 11. Youre the backup on 11. I was the backup commander on 11. My philosophy is, never miss a chance. I mean, if i had a chance to be the first person to land on the moon i was going to take it. It was the natural Competition Among all of us, but backup is something i thought, well, heres an opportunity. I was a backup on apollo eight and got to fly apollo eight. So i went to 11. I think frank thought i was crazy. But i thought thats what im going to be doing. So i went through the whole thng with him. When everybody realized Neil Armstrong got i think everybody, you know, was reside to the fact that neil was going to go. Of course, being a civilian, maybe that was a good choice. We were either air force or navy. There was no military implication to this landing, so neil actually went, someone had to go. Did that figure into it, do you think . I dont think so, because all the flights before 11 were chancy. If eight proved out to be we needed more training or was a disaster, then nine came or nine had something wrong with the lunar module, you know, or everything went fine, you know, if 10 had a full lunar module they could have landed. Okay. Lets go to 13. Yeah. That has reached almost mythic proportions, because of the book, the movie, and all about that. I want to try to separate a little myth from reality here or maybe add to the myth. I dont know which well do. Do whichever you want to do. Well make it reality. I was assigned to polo 14 in the time period, he had a syndrome in his ear, losing his balance, finally he went to california, at the suggestion of tom stafford who knew about a doctor out there who could cure this or operate. So al said, hey, you know, i want to go fly again. Ill try anything so he went out there and by gosh, he got ungrounded. So he came back. Now, you have to realize that al shepard was the ultimate politician. Very well respected, first flight he did, so he talked nasa into giving m talked them into giving him the very next flight which was apollo 13 and after he started working 13 and i was getting my crew together for 14, i think that the nasa hierarchy had second thoughts. They said, look, al has been grounded for, what, eight or nine years and youre going to give him the very next flight and he only made a 15 suborbital flight into space. Lets get serious about this thing. So deke said, okay, ill slip him one. So one day when i was training for 14 deke came in and said, jim, how would you like to take 13 and well give shepard 14 . I was delighted. I said, yes. I mean, you know, i was backup on 11. And im all set to go. I mean, you know, i need the training, i need to know, the experiments and things like that. But im ready. So thats how it came to pass. Can you put to bed or add to the story that one hears that you guys would kill your grandmother to get a flight and there was a great deal of heavy competition between all of you for those jobs . I can put to bed the fact that it was aggressive but it wasnt that aggressive. The people that really controlled it was deke slaton. He was the person and then he put in suggestions up to chris kraft or bob gillruth at the time. Unless there was some real reason why not, not to make a change, i think that stood. If you look at the rotation, pretty much we were in a rotational mode. I was originally on apollo 11. Mike was on eight, and then, you know, i was backup on eight, then going to 11. It was just a rotation period with new people feeding in. Deke really held the whole ball of wax as far as selection goes, i think. But there was competition. People were disappointed that they couldnt get on. So many people thought that they should and other people, you know, had too many maybe. So the commander is bumped from 13 and you take over . Yes. And another member of the crew at the last minute is bumped, and somebody else comes in. Well, yes. Just four days before we were to take off on apollo 13, the doctors discovered, what charlie duke came down with the measles, he was the backup lunar apollo. He came down with the measles. He had been working with us and all of a sudden the doctors said, oh, gosh, these guys have been exposed to the measles and they will come down with the measles about the time they are orbiting the moon. It will be a disaster. They looked at our blood work, and they found out, hayes and i had measles when we were kids and our kid had the measles, but he never had the measles, a bachelor. So they bumped ken and put jack onboard, who was his backup. Very fortunately, the movie shows you a little bit different. Let me give you the reality. Jack happened to have written the malfunction procedures for the command module. So he knew the command module pretty good. It is true, he had not trained for the last month and a half because normally the backup crew at that stage are the gophers. They get the hotel rooms for the guests, they do this, they do that. After we we trained for about two days with jack mainly to say because when we were by ourselves, when he was by himself and we were coming up to rendezvous and all of that, we knew how eacother would act and everything because training was for a long period of time, even the flexes on kens voice coming up, how he was doing things but jack proved to be a very, very competent pilot. Didnt it worry you when mattingly was scrubbed and jack goes in . Oh, yeah. It had to scare you to death . Yeah, because when mattingly was scrubbed and jack hadnt been part of the team, we thought, you know, because we had worked so closely together as a team, but we had already slipped the flight once from march to april. And the two days he worked with jack, he appeared perfectly comfortable with the vehicle. And so i said go. Because they came to me privately and said, are you happy . Are you satisfied . I said sure. Did you just want to go or were you happy and satisfied . Oh, i was happy and satisfied that we were going to go. Normally on the first two flights to the moon, they tell the crew privately, look it, if anything goes wrong, dont worry about it, come back, well give you the very they didnt say anything on apollo 13. Obviously youre not superstitious . No, im not superstitious now and i wasnt then, although the coincidence 13 apollo 13. Takes off and explodes on the 13th. Yes. An interesting sideline. Apollo 13 was the last spacecraft to my knowledge that ever had the number 13. If you look at the history of all the follow up spacecraft, all the shuttles and orbiters, they were like 41g, 53l or Something Like that. There is no 13. Nasa will claim that they are absolutely not superstitious but i debt you to my last dollar they will never name another spacecraft 13. The launch was perfect. Everything went well. Saturn 5 worked fine until the second stage. Whats happening here . The Center Engine of our second stage of our vehicle shut down two minutes early. Probably due to a high vibration which we have a safety feature to shut it off. For a while we thought, boy, is there a crisis . Is there a problem with this thing . Do we have enough fuel, do we have enough power to get into earth orbit and kick ourlvesse around . Very fortunately the folks in huntsville overbuilt the vehicle and we did. We had enough fuel. It took us about an extra minute and a half to get into earth orbit, but we still had enough fuel on the third stage to go all the way to the moon. But the crisis is over, no problem. Yeah, we thought that was the crisis because almost every flight, even today probably, has something to happen. Something doesnt work. Instrument fails. Something goes wrong, and we thought, i told the guy, thats our crisis, look, we got rid of it, were on our way. So youre out how long before the accident happens . Were out two days before the accident happens, about 30 hours after we took off we got on to a different course because the course we were on originally was called a free return course to allow us to get back to earth, about 30 hours we change course to land at this place, we were going to land at a place where the sunlight would be in the proper position to see the shadows. And then two days out, on this hybrid course, the explosion occurs. Youre just getting ready to go to sleep, am i right . Yep. We were just finishing a tv program. That was the last thing that evening. I think it was either 9 00 or 10 00 back here in houston. And im comi bacng down through the tunnel, and suddenly there is a bang and the spacecraft rocks back and for the and flights come on, jets fire, and i looked at hayes to see if he knew what caused it, he had no idea. I looked at jack, he didnt know what happened. Things started happening. What happened . We eventually lost two few cells. Couldnt get them back. Then we saw our oxygen being depleted, one tank was completely gone, other tank started to go down. Then i looked out the window and we saw gas escaping from the rear of the spacecraft. You didnt see that now, according to the record, for 14 minutes before you saw the gas coming out . Oh, yeah, yeah. Let me go back. Okay. I just blew you up, i dont have time to see the gas yet. You just blew up, you dont know whats going on. Have no idea. You said houston weve got a problem. Yeah. Okay. And what did houston say . Well, first of all, it was jack that said, houston weve got a problem. And houston said, say again, please . Houston, weve got a problem. We have a main b bus that was a case of the electrical system. About that time, hayes yelled down, he said, you know, during training we had a problem with one of those fuel cells, this might be our big problem, its an electrical problem. So we looked at the fuel cells, we were looking to see, and pretty soon, they got back online and all of a sudden they died again. And then, one time, the oxygen tank gauge went full high, then it went full down. And we didnt know, is that an instrument problem . Because obviously we couldnt lose all the oxygen. This went back and forth. And another thing we tried to do, we didnt know if something hit us. The first thing we really did was, tried to put the hatchback between the lunar module and the command module because we noticed the command module was okay but if the lunar module got a hit we would slowly lose all the oxygen inside the spacecraft, i said, jack, close the hatch. Jack went up there to try to close the hatch he couldnt do it. So i went up there and tried to close it, i couldnt do it. I said, lets forget it, you know, if the lunar module was hit we would be dead by now anyway and that started whole sequence of events. Then we started going looking at the instruments and things slowly deteriorated. We looked at the gauges and we looked out the window. You looked out the window and you see something and then you know, did you know what that was that you were seeing . Didnt take much intelligence on my part to realize the gas escaping out of the rear ebbed of the needle on my second and last tank were one and the same and very shortly we would be out of oxygen. At this point, what did you do . Well, we were trying to figure out how much time we had. Did we have enough time . Is this a gauge problem . Were talking to the ground and by that time, i think we were losing the third fuel cell, and, you know, the oxygen fed the fuel cell. If we lost oxygen we were going to lose the fuse cell. About that time we were thinking about, hey, lunar module, maybe we ought to try to use it somehow. Get back in there at least to protect ourselves because it has oxygen inside. Had you ever thought of it as a lifeboat . I never did. Ther had been work done in some of the previous simulations of using it, but basically, using it as an Emergency Vehicle around the moon, in case something happened to the command module. Say the engine, you know, fired too much, didnt fire enough and we were in some strange orbit about the moon to use the modules engine to straighten things out but we never thought about trying to use the lunar module for a four day mission to get back to the earth because the lunar module was only built to last 45 hours. Only built to support two people. And here we are 200,000 miles from earth and 90 hours from earth. 240,000 miles from earth. Yeah. And did you, i know what your answer is but i have to ask it anyway, do you think at any time that you were going to be a perpetual monument to the space program, three of you floating around out there forever . The thought crossed our mind that we were in deep trouble. But we never dwelled on it. We never gave up and said whats going to happen if we dont get back . Where are we going to be . My thoughts were this. If everything failed, and we still had life support in the lunar module and couldnt get back to earth, the heat shield was damage or we just went past the effort because the orbit we were on would take us past the earth, i said that well send back information, well keep on operating, as long as we can, and then thats the end of the deal. So that was what i had planned to do, in my mind, should, you know, should something happen. People often ask [inaudible] tell me about that. You didnt have anything to kill yourself with . Well, all we had to do was open up the cabin vent. We could have gone just like that, so why bother carrying poison pills, you know. Did the three of you at any time have any conversation about the fact that we bought the farm . We never did. We never admitted to ourselves, hey, were not going to make it. Only one time, when fred looked at after the lunar module and found out we had about 45 hours worth of power and we were 90 hours from home, i think he said Something Like, i dont think were going to make it the way we are right now. I said, fred, i agree with you. What were doing now isnt going to hack it. How did the ground sound to you at that time . Well, first of all they started up, we set down shut down everything we could after the explosion. This is when we saw the oxygen. They said, yeah, weve got a lot of guys working on it down here. Well help you out. Thanks a lot but thats when they started getting that teamWork Together. Let me check off some things here that i would think about. Oxygen, first of all, you had enough oxygen, did you not . We didnt have any in the main tanks so the command module, we did have in the lunar module oxygen plus we had oxygen in the backpacks which, we were not going to use, so we could tap into that. So you we can breathe. We can breathe. Okay. Electricity. Power use batteries on the lunar module. Good for 45 hours. That was the normal use of the oxygen of the electricity. Water . Water was important, too. Not just to drink but we had to cool all of our Electronic Systems so water was very critical. More so than the oxygen. Of course, later on we turned on all the Electrical Equipment anyway. But you almost dehydrated through this, did you not . Yeah, because, because of an edict i put out about reducing the water intake to make sure we had plenty of water for our systems. I probably went overboard on that, and we probably could have used a little bit more water. Food. Didnt think about it. Absolutely did not think about food. You had four days, youve got to think about something. I know, we went up there, we grabbed something, whatever it was, whose ever it was, we ate it. The hot dogs, you know, the movie was correct. The hot dogs were frozen. I did get jack up there to get all the water out of the command module. Either i put it in orange juice bags or Something Like that before it froze. And to have enough water down there for that, so thats what he did. How uncomfortable was it . Cold and clammy. It was very sort of clammy, very cold. Temperature kept dropping all the way down because we normally would keep the temperature normal by balancing the heat load from the electrical systems. And people often ask, and i thought about it, too, should we put on our spacesuits and then i thought against that because they had been very bulky, with three of us, lunar module is only built for two people. And also, that it would be clammy, its rubberized and if we started to perspire inside and its cold outside, that wouldnt be too good anyway. Hayes put on a lunar boost. Poor jack didnt have any and then we had a leak in the water system a little bit and we got a little bit of water in there. The inside of the place there is moisture all over everything. The last place you want to see moisture collect. Thats right. Especially in the command module, which was really dark and clammy. Nothing in there, not even body heat because most of us spent our time in the lunar module. It was bad. The gerry rigged box for lithium hydroxide. Everybody talks about that, tell me the truth about that. Well, the truth is, what you saw in the movie is pretty much the truth. What happened was, in the lunar module, which we didnt think about at the time, but some of the people in cruise systems did, that the round canisters were developed to support two people for two days. And they were round and they were lithium hydroxide, to remove the Carbon Dioxide, they were becoming saturated and the partial pressure of Carbon Dioxide was rising, something we didnt really notice at first. But the ground started to notice it and they started to try to figure out what they could do. In the dead command module, they used, in their environmental system, square canisters. Had plenty of them. But you cant put a square canister in a round hole of the lunar module system. Big engineering goof, why we had a square there, round over there, well never know, so what the crew systems came up with, with you hows to gerry rig a square canister to work in the lunar module, we did it with tape, plastic, keyboard and an old sock. And by gosh, it worked. They called you up and said, take piece of tape about as long as your arm . First of all they said take a piece of duct tape about three feet, well, maybe as long as your arm so thats what we did. And for what . Yeah. And jack and i started to build this thing, and, just according to the instructions, the instructions were very explicit. A great job. And if you look at the one that the crew systems had made to show the people in the control center and you look at the one thats hanging on the lunar module wall, they are identical. All this time, you have, all of you must have serious sleep deprivation problems. I mean, you guys have just got to be dog tired . Yeah. Actual sleep was very, very limited. Maybe i had one hour in 40. We tried to stay up in the command module. A funny phenomenon, though. If you go into the dead command module and no one else is around and you stay quiet your body heat heats up the air next to you because in zero gravity there is no convection so hot air doesnt rise so it doesnt bring cold air. Your body, its like a little blanket. But, you know, it worked to a little degree. We found out, though, that sleep is something that you can get a few winks of and be relaxed again. For instance, even on duty, i put my fingers like this and i closed my eyes and maybe i would fall asleep for a minute or two and wake up and i would be okay again. Catching a little naps at a time. Did you allow everybody to sleep at once or did you try to sleep . No, someone stayed on duty. Somebody had to stay awake . We kept somebody awake and usually it was fred by himself and jack and i would try to get some sleep. You get to a point where things are as under control as they are going to get for a while but youve got to figure out something to see so you know when to fire your thusters, and there is a telescope and youre supposed to find a star with it, is that right . There are two things about the telescope. When we were going to come around and make a second burn, a speed up burn to come home, were worried that i made a mistake, including myself was worried, of transferring the angle data from the command modules Guidance System, properly, into the lunar module system. Now, we had to have that Guidance System of the lunar module to get the proper altitude to make the proper speed pup burn. So the ground then determined a method of trying to see if that data was any good. By, because we could not see any stars. All the debris was around the spacecraft Fausto Carmona following us so there was no way to see stars to do the normal navigation but the sun is a star, so we put into the computer and the Guidance System to point the telescope at the sun, which is a star. If it did, then we knew that the information was correct on the computer. So thats what we did. We put it in there. We let the spacecraft jog arch and point the telescope and if you hear our conversations, its a little bit like my fair lady, you know. Oh, shes got it. I think shes got it. Yeah, yeah. Shes got it. Got it. Yep. There it is, the sun. So that was the first thing. We passed that, so we knew the Guidance Systems was okay for that long burn. So we made that long burn and everything was fine and right after that we shut everything down. Because we had to save electrical power. We were flying by the seats of our pants now. Was this a fast burn youre talking about . 4 30. Stayed on for 4 30. The rocket pushes us faster and faster on the way home. Then the ground had been tracking us by this time and they thought, and we got back on that return course on an earlier burn, but they looked at it and tracked us and interpreted they found out we were going to miss the earth. We were no longer on the free return course. Well, what can we do . Everything was shut down, we dont have that Guidance System anymore. We dont have anything. And thats when they said, they gave us the procedures about using the earth and i said, i know those procedures because we had them developed in apollo eight. And when i was doing the navigation stuff we developed those procedures but we took them out of our flight manuals after apollo eat because we never thought they would be used, i remember the ground said, yeah, we thought you would remember those procedures. So maybe it was very appropriate that i was on apollo eight and we used the earth, and the earth as the guiding post and we burned to get back at the proper angle to get back home again. Youre coming down. You know youve made it. But youre not quite sure whether anything is going to work. You know the parachute is going to come out, do you know if anything is going to work . Those two things you mentioned are very important. The heat shield and the parachutes because when we jettisoned the Service Module and it floated by we saw this big gaping hole, the panel blown out. That worried us, that our heat shield was damaged because it was right next to the heat shield. And there was nothing we could do about that. I mean, we were coming in, we were aiming for the earth, we were going to come into the earth, that was the end of the deal. If we were going to burn up, we were going to burn up and we knew all the way flew, ground crew didnt know, last crisis were those parachutes because the pyrotechnics that put out those shoots which we normally keep warm with electrical power, were cold soaked for four days so we didnt know if they would fire and if they didnt fire, even though we got through the atmosphere, we still would hit the water at a pretty fast rate of speed. But they fired . They fired. We came down. At that point, you know your home free . I knew i was home free. Eventually home free with the spacecraft bobbed up and i saw water on the windows and the thing didnt sink sink. Up to that point, im looking for the most frightening point of this whole thing, when it exploded, when you realized that you had a problem, or when you were coming down wondering if that chute was going to deploy . The most frightening moment of the whole thing was when the explosion occurred and then after, a little period of time and saw the oxygen escaping and we didnt have solutions to get home. Because we knew we were in deep, deep trouble. And, you know, i always compare this like a solitaire, a game of solitaire. You turn up a card and thats a crisis. If you can put it someplace the mission keeps going, game keeps going, if you pull up a card and there is no place to put it the game is over that. Never occurred to us. What kind of impact did that adventure, and i use that word advisedly, have on you personally . I dont worry about crisis any longer. Seriously, i look at them, i say to myself, whenever i have a problem with Something Like that or im troubled with something, or somebody is sick or Something Like that, i say, i could have been gone back in 1970. Im still here, im still breathing. So i dont worry about crisis. What caused you to write the perilous voyage of apollo 13 . After we got back, the three of us, we looked at each other and dusted ourselves off, were still alive, and we said, you know, the flight has got a lot of adventure to it even before the explosion, things happened that were entirely different than other flights. We ought to put this down on paper. We ought to write something about it so we all vowed that we would write something on paper. Of course, the best, you know, the best intentions, jack eventually went into politics, i got into the telephone industry. Jack died in 1983. And i retired in 1991. And i still had my office and my secretary. The day after i retired i went back there and said what should we do . We dont have to worry about telephones any longer. She said, why dont you write that book youve been talking about for the last 14 years. Good idea, but im not an author, i had written a lot of articles and fortunately about that time a young man who was a writer for Discover Magazine wrote and said i would like to do a story on it. This is tape three, james. A lovell jr. Your second said why dont you write that book youve been talking about for 14 years. I said, not a bad idea. I said, so i started, you know, to try to figure out write the book. Im not a professional author and about that time, out of the blue, very fortunately, a young man wrote me a letter and said ive never written a book before but im a writer for Discover Magazine. I think apollo 13 would make an interesting story. His name was jeff klugger, i liked the way he wrote and we coauthored book. How long before hollywood launched the book . Its kind of interesting. We wrote one chapter and then we put an outline on either side of the chapter and this was a proposal for a book publisher so our agent sent it around to see who would want to back us up. We finally found one. And so i was very happy. This was something to keep me off the golf course, post retirement, and we had not yet written another chapter, we were doing research, we were calling up, you know, people down here at nasa, our old friends, could you help us out, could you give us a hand and i was sitting at my desk, this is about two months after we started, and i got a call from our agent, and he said, are you sitting down . I said, yes, and i thought maybe the book publisher was going to back out of this whole project, he said we just sold your book to the movies. I said we havent written it yet. He said, isnt that illegal . He said no, its done all the time. What they actually sold was an option to do the story, to imaginary entertainment, ron howards company, and what turned the option, of course, into a finished product was the lead actor tom hanks. He was a closet astronaut. The guy is a space enthusiast. When he heard through his agent that ron howard had an option to do a story on apollo 13, which he knew about, and i didnt even realize that he lobbied for the job. And when universal heard that ron howard had tom hanks who had just gotten the oscar for the movie philadelphia i think it was at that time they decided to do the movie and thats how it got started. What did your wife say when you told her who was going to play you . Couldnt belief it. Actually, when i had an interview with ron howard after he bought the option and this is before hanks or anybody was onboard we went out there for about five hours to talk over the story about apollo 13, at the end when i was about ready to leave, he said, who would you like to play your part . And i dont know much about actors or actresses but i had seen the movie dances with wolves about six or eight months before and i said Kevin Costner and hanks never let me forget that i said that but hanks did a great job. Were you frightened about what hollywood might do to your story . Yes, i was to a degree because i had heard these stories of famous authors who dont like the way their books are portrayed on the screen. And, of course, when you buy, after i read the contract, when you sell the book to the movies, youve sold it, they can put it on mars, you know, and do anything they want. But i have to be quite honest, i could not have picked a better Production Team with ron howard, a better group of actors, and also, the woman who played my wife than the group they had gathered together to do that movie. It was perfect. And it was a winwin situation for everybody. Nasa certainly, i think, liked it. We used the zerog airplane to get the sequences, the first time it had ever been done. The public enjoyed it, i think. Im happy. Jeff kluger is happy the way the book was portrayed. It was quite a deal. There have been all kinds of books about the astronauts, and about the various space flights. Has nasa and have you gentlemen been treated fairly by the popular press . I think so. There is always critics. And especially the movie, when the movie came out, the space enthusiasts here, you know, all the space guys here said, there are 125 mistakes in that movie. But, you know, weve been nicely handled by the press with the book. Should say, in the we frame. Not that i did this or i did that. It was not a biography or auto biography. We talk about lovell, hayes, gene, all the people because we wanted to write it in that way. Why did you decide to leave nasa . A good question. While i was doing some work towards, after my apollo 13 flight, i was originally on some of the work on the initial shuttle. And then i went over and became gi director of science applications and during that time nasa sent me to the advanced in the program at harvard and there i probably learned about business that can be dangerous but i came to a crossroads. The navy had been calling me, what do you want to do . Come back in the navy, well try to get you the proper assignment. I could have stayed here at nasa. But probably retire from the navy and become a gs or i could retire permanently and go into private enterprise. And when i look at going back into the navy i said, well, you know, i was a captain for six or seven years and i said, if im up for selectioner for admiral and there are several people to fill that bill and i was a selection officer, who would i pick . I would pick lovell who spent 11 years at nasa or this fellow who spent, you know, two tours in vietnam, and they went to war college and all these really positions, i said i would bic that guy over there, not lovell and i made the decision i should go into private practice. You were in the towing business, boat business for a while. Right here in houston, texas, in bay i tried my hand at that for four years. Very lucrative business. Enjoyed it, but there was no future for me there. Telephone business. I got into the telephone business at the right time, at the right place. By the husband of ed whites widow, who she married five years later, just when at t, the bell system was getting ready to deregulate, divestiture was coming up, we were selling telephone systems, our company went from 8 million to 40 million and then we were bought and i went up to sentel. Now you work with mission home. What is mission home . About several years ago, the National Space society and the u. S. Space foundation got together with the alliance of Aerospace Companies trying to educate the public on the real benefits of the space program, the show them what has been accomplished thats helping them out today and what could be done in the future. And harvesting opportunities for mother earth is home, and that was the whole idea. To do, at that time, to do seminars around the country. I wrote an op ed piece which is still going on in various newspapers, and to try to get people interested. And they got other astronauts, retired guys, basically to do it. Its changed its name a little bit. Now i think its called Space Alliance and they are still trying to accomplish that goal. Are you disappointed that, here weve gone, what, 30 years since we walked on the moon, and we havent gone any further than weve gone in the space yes, to some degree, i am. The disappointment comes from the fact, i guess this being a democracy, weve got all sorts of controversy and we weigh things, and compromises are always the name of the game. But we waffled in the late 1980 and early 1990s on the spacestation. I dont know how many designs of the space station we had. Either it was too big, too complicated, too expensive, and we didnt realize at the time, maybe a consortium of countries working together, in that respect i think the presented aministration eventually did, finally realized that. Although some of our partners are lacking quite a bit like russia. But i think were finally on the right track but we did waffle. We wasted an awful lot of money. We wasted an awful lot of time and effort of not really knowing what we wanted to do. How we wanted to proceed with nasa. You know, after youve been to paris, what else is there . After youve been to the moon, what else is there . Thats a great triumph, everybody still relates back to that, but thats 30 years ago. Weve got to do something today, and were doing a lot of things today. But, you know, you get repetition, you get 90 something shuttles now. And one accident. Everybody says, hum. Were trying to tell people what we really do up there. But, you know, we went to the moon the first time because of the cold war. Apollo eight speeded up because the russians were coming. There really was a space race absolutely. That may be an old saying. There isnt a race anymore. There is nothing to propel us to go if we dont really think about it, you know. Well, youre absolutely right so far as competition goes, there is not that incentive to try to beat somebody else. And that was the whole deal. The russians themselves were interested in beating us, not so much with military missiles but going to the moon. That was their goal just as much as our goal but now we have cooperation. Now its a little bit more subtle. Now if we can Work Together and work as a team to accomplish things and get our mind off of other things, i think there is, there is a hope for us, but if that will ever come to pass, its long past the time, their mirror, should have been done a long time ago. They could do a lot more on the interNational Space station than they could ever do on the mirror. Well have to wait until it gets built. Will our grandchildren go to mars . Perhaps our grandchildren. I think, there will be the attempts, the work. I think the mars mission is within the next 20 to 25 years. Now, that seems, strange for me to say, when you look back on going to the moon in 1969, 20 years, that was 1949. No one if someone asked me in 1949, are we going to land on the moon, i would have said youre absolutely crazy. Its interesting that you say, think about it and say probably. The old way of saying it would have been you bet. You bet. But now there is not a certain you bet about it anymore. I have to be pragmatic about the whole thing. There are other commitments we have to do. Mars will be, again, a consortium of countries. It will not just be the united states. These countries have to get together to Work Together. It would be major project. And there are some doubt whether we could ever do it. I know i talked to bill anders who got his masters in Nuclear Engineering and he said you dont understand the radiation, once we get out there for long periods of time, you know, it will do you in before you get there. If hes right then maybe a martian trip is not feasible. What was your finest moment at nasa . I think the finest moment at nasa was the time we landed on apollo eight and came back, and had the press conference, and it suddenly dawned on us, suddenly realized what we had done. At the time youre doing something you dont realize what youre doing. Its work. Youre doing this, youre doing that. Its only when the things are accomplished that you come back and say, gee, we did that. This really was the case. We were there. We saw the moon, the far side of the that was the high point of my career. I could agree with a lot of people from nasa it was a high point for nasas career to