Transcripts For CSPAN3 Oral Histories NASA - James Lovell Interview 20240713

There i got into flight training. I became a naval aviator, and low and behold in 1958 nasa was formed and they were looking for astronauts. So i was one of the original 110 people selected to go for interviews. Lets go back to your Naval Academy days, you almost didnt go, is that right . That is right. I had two years at wisconsin. I informs a Naval Aviation program after world war ii. Have been the most important project in this century. I became the first alternate that usually doesnt make it, are and i got orders for the physical to be inducted into the academy if you so desired. And then i said should i go to the academy, they said dont do that, you two years of college, you have Naval Aviation, if you go back you have to start all over again, you might not get back in aviation, but there was an old captain there and he said if you want to make the navy your career, get yourself to the academy, that is what hatppened. I term paper, my first term paper, i wrote on the development of the liquid fuel rocket, and i was one of the first 50 because i was so interested in going back into aviation they selected 50 people to teach at the academy, and that acceseptember i was transfd down to pensacola. What kind of planes did you fly . We flew snjs which was the basic trainer. All of the way up to landing on a carrier with the snjs, and we did formation and night flying and basic training, and then i was transfers from there to kings v kingsville. And i did my training in a hell cat. I got my wings and then i was selected to go back into jet training, and that was the epitome of everything. Did you enjoy flying jets . Yes, i still enjoy flying jets if i can get my hands on one. After training my first assignment was to a quadrant called vc 3 and i found ought it was a night fighter squadrant. I said you know, im having trouble flying in the daytime and you want know go out at night . But it was great training, great experience, and i learned a lot. Anything compare to the first night landing on a carrier . Nothing. Night flying off a carrier separates the men from the boys, the take off into a black void with no horizon, and we didnt have modern techniques like a mirror system, you had to come in low and you had a guy with paddles and a lighted suit. At what point did you hear about nasa trying to select people to be astro naugnauts. Some of my contemporaries had gone through a thing called test pilot school. And i thought that would be a interesting thing to do so i applied for test pilot school. I graduated, nasa was formed, and they were talking about putting a man . Space. And they had put out secret orders to people they thought were qualified. And it just so happened that i had just finished the school. How far did you last in that . I got down to the last 32 people, and i was one of the people through all of the interviews, sent out to to the big name of it, well anyway, a big hospital out there. And loveless clinic. We went through and the physical was like nothing we had ever heard before. What we did to us was unknown to the medical profession. They knew that they had guniea pigs. I went through there, but when i got there the next selection was to go on to a second group at right Patterson Air force base. And the doctor called me and said youre finished and i said why . And he said are you not accepted . And i said what is wrong, and they said you have a high billy reuben. Too much bpigment in your blood and i was very dejected. So it was a relatively minor thing. Buzz aldrin had the same thing, but there was a unique aspect to that physical. I got back to the squadron and i got a set of orders to go back out. He said theyre probably not correct, i went out to wright paterson, and they were sort of expecting me. And they were all getting together, and they said youre number seven. The next morning we all went down to breakfast to get ready to start our physical and a fella walked in and said sorry im late, im gus grissom. So they found out about it and i was going back to the squadron. How disappointed were you. There was no indication they were going to find any more guys. No, no one knew how far nasa would go, youre right, but that is something that i us wanted to do. Lounge dhow long did it take get back in the loop. I was transferred down and i was going through training people and nasa called me down again, they said do you want to be in another round. So i was selected again to go for the physical, this time at Brooks Air Force base. Air force physical, much more practic practical, looking at what is wrong and right, and i had no problems from passing it. No one what an astronaut was and the second time they were the biggest heros in the world. Yeah, after we had our interviews, we all gathered back in a hotel room and we were talking about i wish ron was there, Alan Shepherd was there. One was saying i dont know if i want to get into this program or in the. Going in a whacky program when i should have been up up in ladder in Navy Hierarchy and now looking back on it again it was really something. How did the original seven accept the next group. Very cool at first. These were the days when i guess there was a book contract afternoon that sort of stuff, and they were pretty high on the totem pole. The nine of us walk in, but it warmed up after awhile and after a lot of negotiations we all got on the same band wagon with personal stories. Did you get a corvette to run around in . After awhile yeah, it was not bad. We would buy in wholesale, and we would all drive it, and trade them in, i went through about three corvettes in my whole period. I remember pete and i lived at Ellington Air force base. Our wives were still in california and virginia beach, and he and i would share a boq room and when he got the corvette he had the top in the room. I remember the car i got was just a little Station Wagon. I had a family and i needed a Station Wagon and thats what i got. How did your life change when you became an astronaut . We were a little bit of celebrity, i remember the first time i went back to my high school, and i went right to the school, and in the back of the room after i was giving my talk, the mayor of milwaukee was there and he was sort of mad that i didnt stop by and pay my respects to the mayor before i went all of this protocol that i dont know about yet. I have not even been in space. So there was a little bit of false idol at the time. What was your job in the mercury days . I got down into the Space Program the first thing he did was to move down to Cape Canaveral and watch wally take off. We got in the simulators they had. They were not too good at the time and started doing some training. It amazes me now because i was just talking to a brand new astronaut. And i said astcan. And i said what is that, and he said it is astronaut candidate training. When did you move into the g g Gemini Program and what was your job there . We got there and started learning about the spacecraft itself. So first it was a back up to gemini four. I met hed white aed white, and west point and i was at the Navel Academy and we traded cuff links and then we disappeared and years and years later were at the cape having breakfast, and i said that was me. If is strange ohow our lives crossed and then changed. That was a very big deal at that time. We had an air bearing trainer. We had like a squirt gun. It was the initial attempt at eva work. Ed was not out for awhile and later on we found out we had problems with eva. How did you train for a space walk . How did you train for that first . Well, we, of course, we got in the suits, we had this train near is only two dimensional. You can shoot this little gun, it is like two little jets, and try to maneuver, yourself. It was the best they they could do at the time, and it was not until later on that we laurened want to this. What did you do once it left the ground and he was up there doing it. I was at the cape watching the launch, and i flew back in the control center when he was doing all of his work. Were you ready to fly and ready to go yourself . Yes, and yeah, and then my first flight was not until december of 1965. Frank and i were about the same rank and everything. He was the air force and he got to be commander of it, and it is fine, but it was a two week mission, a medical flight. And two weeks with him anywhere is a challenge. But this flight we trained very hard and we had different types of suits. These were get me down suits. Get outside, you shouldnt open the hatch, but the very first takeoff was almost like it flying us for a while. We got pretty good. Pretty fast, we were able to get the idea of it, i the spacecraft is very tight, i didnt feel too nauseous at all, it was pretty good. The suits were hot, sweaty and bulky. They didnt want us to take off our suits. These were the old days when they were very worried about leaks in spacecraft or Something Like that. We knew the spacecraft wasnt leaking. You had to keep a suit on at all times . Yes. It was a ridiculous regulation at that time. I started to unzip my suit, and my rear end was going out of the suit and were getting out further and further, pretty soon the suit was over here. Pretty soon i slipped the helmet down. Im out of my suit, in my underwear. Frank wants to get out of his suit. The ground for three days argued with him. The poor guy was hot and sweaty, finally they let him get out of his suit. Of course, my young son at that time said dad 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 up there . Guinea pig. Absolutely a guinea pig. The doctors were this is command in space. The reason for the mission was, the maximum time to go to the preparing for apollo. Was two weeks. If we could put people up in the zero gravity, theyll prove out one aspect of the moon flights. We stayed up there, the spacecraft had lots of problems with it. The fuel cells were dying, slowly but surely. And i can remember quite vividly. You know, frank doesnt even like to fly over water, much less spend 77 of his time over water. He was action to come on down and between chris craft and myself, i argued with frank. I said, frank dont worry, the navy can find us regardless of where we come down. Chris also talked to him. We stayed up the full 14 days. There was some talk early on about landing gemini on the ground, was there not . Yes, there was. As a matter of fact, one of my jobs when i first got assigned was the recovery aspect, and we were looking to making a regatta wing. Theyre called paragliders now. Come on down, this thing would inflate and be like a v shape thing, the guy inside the spacecraft could guide it down. It was going to be on the last one. The test results were not too good. And they thought it was very prudent not to put it on there. Why do it for the last flight. Can you give me some idea how you spent 14 days in that cramped quarters with somebody else, without going absolutely mad . Its not easy. You have to remember, you work so long i was there three years with the space flight. I could go up with just about anybody. Frank and i were this close together. You get to know each other quite well. It was something. Matter of fact, frank went, i think, nine days without having to go to the bathroom. Nine days . And he said, jim, this is it. I said, frank, you only have five more days left to go here. What did how was space food in those days . Because i want to get back to space food a little later but how was it then . Strictly freeze dried and these bitesized sandwiches had wax over them because everybody thought they needed wax and 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 was bacon bits, a little square of bacon and squeeze it down. That was very tasty. Then they had you put water into various freeze dried food, much like campers have these days but you couldnt eat it. It was luke, cool water but it kept us alive. It seems very primitive but at that time it was state of the art. Thats right. When i look back at how ultra, ultra conservative they were, for instance, john young got a flap i had taken a sandwich up on a 3 1 2, fourhour flight. It had poison in it, he probably would have lasted for the whole flight. Now, of course, things are totally different. Now i know we theyre afraid of anything flying around. Now we found out if the food is thick enough, you could eat it with a spoon. Gemny 7, when you came back, what did nasa learn from these two experimental guinea pigs . Number one, that man could live very nicely for two weeks, that the cardiovascular system would adapt quite readily, heart slowed down, blood volume dreesd, a normal case in a twoweek type mission. We were able to navigate ourselves across the deck. We didnt have this orthostatic hypertension. The symptoms were there, but we could overcome that. So i think basically was the fact that, hey, space flight is possible longer than the three or four hours they had been doing in the past. Was it as excited as you thought it was going to be . It was very exciting to me. It was tedious work, two weeks. We had a break when stafford came up and rendezvoused with us. They were up 24 hours and went back down again. We were up there the whole time. It was quite rewarding. All these missions now as you look back on them, they all fit together, they all get us to the moon, but at that time, you were trying to do something that had to be done before we get to the moon. That is, figure out whether you could dock in space. Is that right . Thats right. Rendezvous in space. Could we get two spacecraft together, which eventually led itself to dock . And the very first one, of course, was the gemini 6, 7 flight. Gemini 6 was supposed to rendezvous, dock with a vehicle. Something went wrong on takeoff. That delayed their flight. They moved gemini 7 up to fly instead. When we were up there gemini 6 was going to rendezvous. Couldnt dock with gemini 7. They were going to rendezvous. First attempt to takeoff of gemini 6 resulted in a shutdown. Fortunately wally did punch out. He was cool. Second time up there, they d they came up. I guess we were up there 11, 12 days by that time. You could see them coming up. They came up at night. We had a blinking light on. We could see the jets firing as they came up. We were like this, and they were coming up just like this. We all rendezvoused. We stayed together, each took turns flying around each other to see how nicely the spacecraft would control on Something Like that. So, that was the very first big step towards the rendezvous and docking which, of course, were very necessary for the lunar flights, too. You were cat com on 8 . Yes. There was a problem. Tell us about that problem. Gemini 8 had a problem, one of the first big problems. Unbeknownst to us out of radio contact, a stuck thruster had occurred. Neil and dave scott were on that flight. Originally they thought it might be the agina and they were trying to slow the thing down. It was starting to make them roll. They thought we better get rid of it. They had completed a rendezvous and docking and jettisoned the agina. They were very cool about this whole thing. They managed to pull the circuit breaker, get the thruster off the line and using their reentry thrusters, which were normally only used for reentry, they were able to slow the vehicle down and, of course, they had to come back early. What happened in Mission Control . Whats going on around you while all of this is going on up there and nobody is sure of whats going on . Everybody is trying to think of solutions of what the problems are. The problem hit us all of a sudden. When they came back into radio control they said hey, i guess, to use the old phrase, weve got a problem. But i think they managed to jettison the egina and determine their problem. It was sort of an aftermath back at the control center. I dont think there was much that we could have done in the control center for a problem like that. If they kept spinning up faster and faster, they would have blacked out. But this was, you realized after the fact, because you didnt know what was happening then. Once you got around, you realized they had a very serious problem . Oh, yes. If they didnt correct the problem themselves, they would have been in deep trouble. Did that make you rethink anything about how safe or how unsafe this sort of thing is . Now, ron, its surprising. In this business, that problem was over there, you know. Nothing is going to happen to me. Everything is fine. Dont worry about it. Space flight is so interesting. The rewards far overshadow the risk. That was my feeling. That kind of test pilot mentality permeated everybody at nasa, did it . I think so. The people who wanted to become astronauts, at least in those days most of us were test pilots in those days had that sort of curiosity and adventure spirit to them, that we were able to take that in stride. You were next to back up the gemini 10 crew but bassette and sea were killed. What happened after their deaths . We were backup at 10e. 9 backups became the prime backups, stafford and stearnin, i believe. We became the backups to 9 and then what we did was to become the prime crew for the last geminis flight, gemini 12. Did you realize that was the last one . Was it the last one scheduled or no, that was the last one. I wasnt going to go on gemini if i was on 10. It gave you an opportunity to fly gemini again . And a little bit of a command opportunity, which i wanted. And you were involved with the space walking mission on that. Talk about that. Thats very interesting, because after ed whites gemini 4, which doesnt do much to learn about walking in space, they decided to do some pretty detailed work outside the spacecraft, started with really gemini 9. Theyre going to have an amu, astronaut maneuvering unit. Gene sternin was going to do the work on it. They got outside, tried to do the work and the hand holds, toe holds heated up. His visor fogged over. He had trouble doing things, which he could do easily in training. Eventually, he came back into the spacecraft and they abandoned that they again attempted it on 10. Not the amu but now gnu work on 10. 9 and 10 and eventually 11 when dick gordon was outside and he overheated, all of us forgot about one of newtons third law in motion, to every action theres an equal and reaction. Consequently, they touched the spacecraft, it repelled. You dont see that on earth but sure see it up in space zero gravity when you have a big mass like spacecraft. When 12 rolled around, they said lets devote a lot of time on 12 to find out how we can really work outside the spacecraft. It just sonjp water itself learning about working in space, about the proper hand holds and the proper toe holds to make sure that everything would work. Of course, on 12, buzz completed three spacewalks of about 5 1 2 hours and everything was fine. No problem at all. So, there was a major turning point in the ability to work outside the spacecraft. It also points out this sort of thing of someone saying why dont we try a Swimming Pool . Werent there people all along the way saying why dont we try this, why dont we do that . A lot of people at nasa use their imagination. Of course, it came to the forefront at 13. New ideas. That was the whole idea of nasa. New ideas. What could we do differently . Of course, there were mistakes. Perseverance was predominant in the program at the time. Lets keep on trying. Then comes the apolo program and, of course, the apolo fire. Do you recall where you were when you heard about the fire . Oh, yes, yes. Very much so. 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 was available to everybody. There are no boundaries and also that astronauts, if they have to land some place else would be welcomed rather than being 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 walked in and there were messages for us to call nasa back again and they told us what had occurred and we spent the night there. They said dont go outside. Dont make a round. 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 panlts, plus the major, major panel and 20 subpanels. I was with jack slegart. How we could cope with fires, to see what we could have on board or what we could do for it. Very interesting investigation. I was in my past career i was a Safety Officer in a squadron, went through aviation safety school. 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 that this is a very conservative safetyminded bunch of people up to this poind point, how in the world did apollo i happen . When you look back on it, the fire in apollo i, we should have had plenty of warning ahead of time. We flew mercury. We flew gemini, all those spacecraft were tested on the ground by pumping in pure oxygen so that they could breathe, because we flew at low pressures. Well, on the ground, because spacecraft leak, always pressurize it about a pound per square inch higher than the ambient pressure. On the ground theyre at 16 pounds per square inch, where outside about 50. Pure oxygen. Now for all the gemini flights, mercury flights, no problems. But apollo, probably maybe due to the rush they were trying to do, the i was a disaster. They pumped it up. We should have realized you didnt have to put pure oxygen in that spacecraft. You should have put in a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen because anything will burn at pure oxygen as found out in the apollo i fire. Was there any case that could be made for the fact that the contractors quit listening to the astronauts and said we dont need your input anymore . In somevunn respects, what i remember in that particular aspect, one of the reviews we had out of north america at that time was the hatch. Theyre telling us how this hatch was built in two sections, an outer section and an inner section. The inner section was there because of the spacecraft pressure would always keep the thing sealed. 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 a lunar module to go into the hatch side you had to take off two hatches to do it. So we mentioned that. We said, you know, to have a single piece hatch here, something we could normally use and close. We had it in gemini. It is not impossible to build one of those things. We had one built, tested in gemini. Why not do it in apollo . No one listened until the fire started and i think there was a time constraint there and they were looking at gee they wanted to modify the spacecraft again. S that tha also meant a longer time before anybody is going to fly again. A longer time before youre going to fly again or anyone is going to fly again. Are you worried that somebody is going to say lets forget the whole thing . Yeah. If you are recall the fire happened in 1967. We had a commitment from president kennedy that we would land a man on the moon and bring him back safely which the end of the decade. When the fire occurred in 1967, everybody was down in the dumps saying holy cow. So i have to admire the engineers, technicians, 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 really could use. By the time apollo 8 came along, you were back one mike collins. Were you convinced then that the capsule was okay, safe . Yeah i was. I mean, you have to go by faith. You have to believe in what the people are going to hand you, you know. Al shepherds old joke was how does it feel to sit on top of someone built by the lowest bidder . The lowest bidder was pretty expensive. 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 come back here. And finally they said you know, i was his backup. And mike had this bone spur. I think he held off as long as he could, but i think his leg was getti inting numb. Fate has extraordinary things. I never expected to be on apollo 8 but that was the highlight 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 prefer 8 to my position on 11. Yeah. 8 turns out to be a significant flight once it takes off. When youre assigned to it, its still not what it turned out to be, was it . No. Still earth or bittal. Were going to go 4,000 miles so we can test the lunar module, command module and come back at a high rate of speed. It wasnt i recall this very vividly. Tleet of us were out at downey north america testing our spacecraft and frank got a call to go back to houston. So bill and i still stayed out there. Were working out there. Frank came back again, back to downey and said things have changed. And we said, what . If everything goes all right with apollo 7, apollo 8 will go to the moon. I was elated. Man, this was great. I spent two weeks in space in gemini with frank borman. I said this is fantastic. On the way back to the t38 when it was my turn to sit in the backseat, frank or bill were flying, i drew the apollo 8 insignia. That happened because of considerations. The lunar module wasnt ready. It was supposed to go up there and be tested out. And also, as you probably know, and is 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 pick up. Yeah. This is tape two. James a. Lovell jr. We were discussing apollo 8 and the politics behind apollo 8. Russians are going to try to land on the moon and trump everything america has done. The russians, believe it or not, were interested in Lunar Landings about the same time we were and had tried all sorts of things to get there, and were building a huge rocket. Built ten of them. Flew four. None was really successful. Some of them they flew even after we landed. But they were very persistent people and thought using a different type of a booster called a proton and a vehicle called zan, they could fly people, just circumnavigate the moon, not land or even orbit. They were very close to actually doing that. They sent a couple of spacecraft up, went around the moon, one was partially successful. The next one, the two cosmonauts i know them, wanted to go. Hierarchy, should we send another unmanned or should we not . When they did that this side of the atlantic, bold leadership at this time. Modules not ready. Command Service Module apollo 7 will be okay. Huntsville thinks the booster could be okay. They said lets send apollo 8 to the moon. Thats how it came to pass. And then after we got to the moon, of course, the russians said we never planned it in the first place. As a rocket man, and you remind me that you were, as a rocket man, did you think we can do that . Oh, yes. Uhhuh. Looking at the saturn 5 and what it can do, not just the first flight to the moon but first time we used the saturn 5 booster. Tell me about the flight. Tell me how you felt as you approached that moon and knew you were going to go around it. Well, my first sensation, of course, was not too far from the earth, because when we turned around, we could actually see the earth start to shrink. The highest anybody had been, i think, was apollo or gemini 11, up about 800 miles, Something Like that, and back down again. All of a sudden were just going down and it was it reminds me of looking driving or in 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. And you had to pinch yourself, hey, were really going to the moon. This is it. I was the navigator. It turned out that the navigation equipment was perfect. I mean, you couldnt ask for a better piece of navigation equipment. Were you just riding or did you have a lot of work to do . We highway lot of with work to do. First test of an actual lunar flight. The vehicle had been tested before. I did a lot of the navigation was something new for going out there. But and we had a tv program when we got to the moon. But then coming into the moon itself, the last day we didnt see it as it got bigger. Going out there, its not it doesnt grow gradually like this. It stays sort of small for a while. All of a sudden it gets bigger like this thats what it appears like anyway. We didnt see it as it got bigger but the ground called and up Mission Control said at such and such a time, right down to the second, you lose communication with us, because the moons gravity will swing you down to the other side. Right down to the second there was static in our ears. Of course, we lit the engine to slow down and we got into lunar orbit. This is where we started to look at the moon 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 picture they made into a stamp in 1969 . You might get a different view from borman or from anders, but you think im going to say that i took it. But for 25 years, i said that only to keep the things going to keep us young and happy. Keep a little controversy in the game. Actually, i think anders took the picture. But you have to remember, i was the director. I told him where to take t i told him how to compose the picture. He just happened to have the telephoto lens. Price of being a director. I know. Tell me what your 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 . Yes, except in gemini when we didnt have communication, but were 240,000 miles away. 240,000 miles away from this place thats telling you what to do. Nobody is talking to you. Nobody 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 ancient old craters go by, 60 miles above the surface. We didnt have any kind of feeling, at least myself, of, you know, fear or are we going to get back or not . Just to be there was such an exciting moment that, you know, would have done it all the time. I felt very, very honored and lucky to be there. That particular christmas, 1968, was the end of a tumultuous year. Really a tumultuous time in American History, and there was an effect on the history and the world because of your flight. Did you anticipate that . We didnt know what the effect of the flight would be, whether it would be successful or not. But youre absolutely right. With riots, assassinations and a war going on, i was part of a thing that finally gave an uplift to the American People about doing something positive, which was really thats why i say apollo 8 was the high point of my career. People at nasa will say it was the highlight of nasas career but the landing was what they were shooting for. But that led to doing all the things that you said you could do. I lean that way. I was honored to be with lindbergh, watching the launch from the cape. And i said to general lindbergh, isnt this really appropo . These people are going to go up there and land on the moon. Lindbergh said to me, well, yes, to a certain extent but apollo 8 was the real charger to this whole program. Did you howe did you choose that christmas message that you all delivered . Good story. The christmas message 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 can we say . And we couldnt think of anything. Then there was a fellow that i think borman knew. He was with the u. S. Information agency, i think had gone with some of the astronauts around on their trips. Frank asked him, can you come up with something appropriate . Well, he couldnt, but he knew another person, a newspaper man. I forget his name, that he said ill think it over and try to see what i could do. He was working almost all night to think of appropriate words. His wife came down and said why dont you have them read something from the bible . Well, you know, the new testament. No, she says, the old testament. Read it from the because, you know, this will 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. They said the first ten versus of genesis, which is the foundation of many of the worlds religions. Thats how it got started. Youre sitting there looking, as youre reading it, god created the heavens and earth without form and void and darkness was on them. It must have been almost mystical to your feeling. It was. And at the same time, we had this rudimentary tv camera, black and white, watching the craters go by, slowly slipping into daylight. I remember. It was a marvelous time for america and the world, but a particularly marvelous christmastime 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 being backup is something i thought, well, theres an opportunity. I was the backup on apollo 8 and got to fly apollo 8. I went to 11. I think frank thought i was crazy. Thats what im going to be doin doing. What was the feeling when everybody realized Neil Armstrong got the everybody was resigned to the fact that neil was going to go. Being a civilian, maybe that was a good choice. We were either air force or navy, and there was no military implication to this landing. And so neil actually went. So, 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 8 needed more training or was a disaster and then 9 came or 9 had something wrong with the lunar module or if everything went fine if, 10 had a full lunar module, they could have landed. Lets go to 13. Yeah, 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. Well do whatever you want to do. Well make it reality. That was not supposed to be your flight, right . No. I was assigned to apollo 14 because in the time period of the earlier flights, al shepherd, who had been grounded with a minears syndrome or Something Like that in his ear, losing his balance. He went to california at the suggestion of tom stafford, who knew about a doctor out there who could cure this or could operate. So, al said hey, you know, i want to go fly again. Ill try anything. He went out there. By gosh he got ungrounded. He came back. Now you have to realize that al shepherd was the ultimate politician. Very well respected, first flight he did. He talked nasa into giving him the very next flight, which is apollo 13. 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 ground for, what, eight or nine years, and youre going to give him the very next flight and he only made a 15minute suborbittal flight . Lets get serious about this thing. Deke said okay, ill slip him one. Deke came in and said jim, how would you like to take 13 and well give shepherd 14 . I was delighted. I said hey, yes. I mean, you know, i was on 8, backup on 11, and ill all set to go. I need the training, need to know these 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 who controlled it was deke. Then he put his suggestions up to chris craft or bob gilruth at the time unless there was some real reason why not to make a change. And if you look at the rotation, pretty much we were in a rotational mode. You know, i was originally on apollo 11. And mike was on 8 and then he just i was back up on 8, going to 11. Just a rotation rrotationary pe new people feeding in. So deke really held the whole ball of wax as far as selection goes, but there was competition. People were disappointed that they couldnt get on. Some people thought that they should, and other people, you know, had too many maybe. 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 charlie duke came down with the measles. He was the backup lunar module pilot. He came down with the measles. And so, you know, he had been working with us all the time. All of a sudden the doctors said all these guys have been exposed to the measles and theyre all going to come down to them about the time theyre over the moon. It will be disastrous. They went in to look at our blood work before we knew anything about this and found out that the indications were that hays and i had measles when we were kids and our kids had the measles and so we were immune to the disease. Ken matley was a bachelor, never been married, never had any kids and certainly never had the measles. They bumped ken and put jack on board, who was his backup. Very fortunately, the movie shows you a little bit different. Let me give you the reality here. Jack happened to have written the malfunction procedures for the command module. He knew the command module pretty good. It is true, he had not trained for the last month and a half. Normally the backup crew at that stage are the gophers. They get the hotel rooms for the guests, do this, do that. But after we trained for about two days with jack. We were by ourselves he was by himself, we were coming up to rendezvous and all of that, we knew how each other would act and everything because training with somebody for a long period of time, 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. Had to scare you to death. Oh, yeah. When mattingly was scrubbed and jack hadnt really been part of the team we thought, you know because we worked so close together as a team. But we had already slipped the flight once from march to april. And two days working with jack, he appeared perfectly comfortable with the vehicle. So i said go. Because they came to me privately and said are you happy . Are you satisfied . Do you want to go . I said sure. Did you just want to go or were you happy and satisfied . I was happy and satisfied we were going to go. Normally on the first two flights to the moon, they tell the crew privately, if anything goes wrong, dont worry about it. Come back. Well give you the very next flight. That was apollo 11. Apollo 12, dont worry about it. Dont take a chance. Apollo 13, they didnt say anything. Obviously youre not superstitious . No, im not superstitious now and i wasnt then. Although the coincidences hour of the 13, apollo 13. And explode ons ts on the 13 if you look at the history of all the followon spacecraft, all the orbitters, theyre 41g, 53l, there is no 13. Nasa will claim they are absolutely not superstitious, but ill bet you my last dollar theyll never name another spacecraft as long aszm this ple stays alive, 13. The launch went perfect. Worked fine until the second stage. Whats happening here . Center engine of our second stage of our vehicle shut down two minutes early, probably due to a high vibration, 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, power to get into earth orbit to kick ourselves around to go all the way to the moon . Very fortunately the folks in huntsville overbuilt the vehicle. We had enough fuel. Took us an extra minute and a half to get into earth or bit but still had enough fuel on the third stage to go to the moon. The crisis is over, no problem . Yeah. We thought that was the crisis. Almost every flight, even today probably, has something . Something happens. Instrument fails, something goes wrong. And we thought hey i told the guys, thats our crisis and 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 but 30 hours after we took off we got on to a different course. The course we were on originally was called a free return course to allow us to get back to the earth, but about 30 hours, we changed course to land at this place we were going to land where the sunlight would be the proper place to see the shadows. Two days out on this hybrid course the explosion occur. You were just getting ready to go to sleep. Yep, just finished the tv program. I think it was 9 00 or 10 00 here in houston. Im coming back down through the tunnel and theres a hiss, bang, the spacecraft rocks back and forth, the lights come on and just fire. Looked at hayes to see if he knew what caused it. He had no idea. Looked at jack sweigart. He had no idea. Then things started to happen. What started to happen . Something went wrong with the electrical system, lost two fuel cells. Couldnt get them back. Then our oxygen was being depleted. One tank was completely gone, the other was starting to go down. Looking out the window, we saw gas escaping from the rear of the spacecraft. You didnt see that, according to the record, for 14 minutes before you saw the fwas coming out . Yeah, yeah. Okay. Let me go back. I just blew you up. Didnt have time to see the gas. You just blew up. You dont know whats going on . No idea. You said houston weve got a problem. Yeah. What did houston say . First of all, jack said houston, weve got a problem. And houston said say again please . I said houston we have a problem. That was a case of an electrical system. About that time, hayes yelled down and said during training we had a problem with one of those fuel cells. This might be our big problem. Its an electrical problem. And so we looked at the fuel cells. We were looking to see. Pretty soon back online and then they died again. And then at one time, the oxygen tank gauge went full high, then it went full down. And we didnt know, is that an instrument problem . 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. First thing we really did was try to put the hatchback between the lunar module and the command module because we noticed that the command module was okay, but the lunar module had a hit, slowly losing oxygen inside the spacecraft. I said jack, close the hatch. He went up there and tried to close the hatch. He couldnt do it. I went up there to try to close it. I couldnt do it. I said hey, lets forget it. Secure it to if the lunar module was hit, we would be dead by now anyway. That started the whole sequence of events. Look at the instruments and things slowly deteriorated, looked at the gauges and, of course, then we looked out the window. You look out the window, 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 that the gas escaping at the rear on my second and last tank were one in 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. Do 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 the oxygen fed the third fuel cell anyway. If were going to lose the oxygen were going to lose the third fuel cell. At that time were thinking about the lunar module. Maybe we ought to try to use it somehow, get back in there to protect ourselves because it has oxygen inside. Have you ever thought of it as a lifeboat . I never did. There 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 fired too much, didnt fire enough and we were in some strange orbit about the moon, using the modules decent engine, but they never thought about trying to use the module for a fourday mission to get back to the earth because the lunar module was only built the 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. Did you i know what your answer is, but i have to ask it anyway. Did you think at any time that you were going to be a perpetual monument to the Space Program, tleet of you floating around there forever . The thought crossed our mind that we were in deep trouble but we never dwelled on it. We never, you know, sort of 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, but we couldnt get back to earth, you know, the heat she would was damaged or just went past the earth. The orbit we were on would take us past the earth. I said we will 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 me about the poison pill. Thats ridiculous. Tell me about that. Did y you didnt have anything to kill yourself with . All we had to do was open the cabin vent. We could have gone just like that. So why bother carrying poison pills, you know . Did the tree of you, at any time, have any conversation about the fact that we bought the farm . We never did. We never admitted to ourselves that, hey, were not going to make it. Well, 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 . First of all, they started up. We sent down everything we could when we had the explosion. They said and this is after 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 team Work Together. Let me check on some things here that i would think about. Oxygen, first of all. You werent worried . You had enough oxygen, did you . We had in the lunar module oxygen and in the backpacks, which were not going to use in service so we could tap into that. So we can breathe . We can breathe. Okay. Electricity . Power, use batteries in the lunar module, good for 45 hours. That was the normal use of the oxygen or 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 off all the Electrical Equipment anyway. You almost dehydrated through this whole thing when you got back, did you not . Yeah, because of reduce of 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. You have to think about food. We went up there, grabbed something. Whatever it was, whoevers it was, we ate it. Hot dogs. 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, so you have enough water down there for that. Thats what he did. How uncomfortable was it . Cold and clammy. It was very sort of clammy, very cold. Temperatures kept dropping all the way down because we normally would keep the temperature normal or by balancing the heat load from the electrical systems. And people often asked, and i thought about it, too, should we put on our spacesuits . And i thought against that because it would have been very bulky with three of us. The lunar module was only built for two people. Not room enough . And its going to be clammy, rubberized. If we start to perspire inside and its cold outside, that wouldnt be too good anyway. We did put on lunar boosts. Poor jack didnt have any. Then we had a leak in the water system a little bit and got a little bit of water in there. The inside of the place is theres moisture all over everything, the last place you want to see moisture collect . Thats right, especially in the command module, which was really dark, clammy, nothing in there. Not even body heat. Most of us had spent our time in the lunar module. It was bad. The jerryrigged box for the lithium hydroxide, everybody talks about that, tell me the truth about that. The truth is what you saw in the movie was pretty much the truth. In the lunar module, which we didnt think about at the time, but some of the people at the crew systems did, that the round canisters were devised, developed to support two people for two days and that they were round and lithium hydroxide to remove the Carbon Dioxide. They were becoming saturated and partial pressure of Carbon Dioxide was rising, something we didnt notice at first. Ground started to notice it and started to figure out what they could do. Now in the dead command module, they use in their Environmental System square canisters, had plenty of them, but you cant put a square canister in the round hole of the lunar module system. Big engineering goof, why we had square there, had round over there. Well never know. The crew systems came up with is how to jerry rig a square canister. We did it with tape, plastic and an old sock and by gosh it worked. They called up and said take a piece of tape as long as your arm . Take a piece of duct tape three feet, maybe as long as your arm. Thats what we did. You were saying for what . Yeah. n i started to build this thing, according to the instructions. The instructions were very explicit. It was 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, theyre identical. All this time, all of you must have serious sleep deprivation problems. You guys have to be just dog tired. Yeah. Actual sleep was very, very limited. Maybe i had one hour if you want to count it. You try to sleep up in the command module. Funny phenomenon, though. If you go in the dead command module and no one else is around, you stay very quiet, your body heat heats up the air next to you, because zero gravity theres no convection, so hot air doesnt rise. It doesnt bring in cold air. Your body is like a little blanket. But, you know, it worked to a degree. We found out, though, that sleep is something you could get a few winks of and being relaxed again. For instance, even on duty i would put my fingers like this, close my eyes and maybe i would fall asleep for a minute or two and then be okay again. Its catching little naps at a time. Did you allow everybody to sleep at once or did you try to sleep no, we had someone stay on duty. Someone had to stay awake all the time . We kept someone awake. It was usually fred by himself and jack and i trying to get some sleep. We get to a point where things are as under control as theyre going to get for a while but you have to figure out something to see so you know when to fire your thrusters, and theres a telescope, ato, and youre supposed to find a star with it, is that right . Well, theres two things about the telescope. When we are trying to come around and were going to make a second burn, a speedup burn to come home, we were worried that i made a mistake 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 lunar module to get the proper attitude to make the proper speedup burn. So the ground that determined a method of trying to see if that data was any good, because we could not see any stars. All the debris was around the spacecraft. It was following us. Theres no way of seeing 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. So, thats what we did. We put it in there. We let the spacecraft jog around and point the telescope. And if youll hear our conversations, its a little bit like my fair lady. Shes got t i think shes got it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Shes got it. Yep. There it is, the sun. That was the first thing. We pass that. We knew the guidance was okay for that long burn. So we made that long burn. Everything was fine. Right after that, we shut everything down because we had to save electrical power. Were flying by the seat of our pants now. Is this the fast burn youre talking about here . 4 1 2 minutes, rocket engine pushing us faster and faster all the way home. Then the ground had been tracking us by this time. And they thought, and we got back on that course on an earlier burn, but they looked at it and tracked us, and it turbulated our course all the way back to the earth and found out we were going to miss the earth. We were no longer on the free return course. Well, what could we do . Everything is shut down. We dont have that Guidance System anymore. We dont have anything. And thats when they said, you know, they gave us the procedures about using the earth. I said i know those procedures because we had them developed in apollo 8. We developed those procedures but took them out of our flight manuals after apollo 8 because we never thought they would be used. The ground said we thought you would remember those procedures. Maybe it was very appropriate i was on apollo 8. We used the earth as a guiding post and we burned to get back to 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 has to come out, heat shield has to work. Do you know if anything is going to work . The heat shield and parachutes are very important. When we jettisoned in the Service Module and it floated on by, we saw this big gaping hole, this panel blown out. That worried us that our heat shield was damaged. It was next to our heat shield. There was nothing we could do about that. We were aiming for the earth, we were going to come into the earth. That was the deal. If we were going to burn up, we were going to burn up. We knew all the way through. The ground didnt know for the longest time what happened. The last crisis was the parachutes, because we normally keep them warm with electrical power were cold soaked for four days. We didnt know if they would fire. Even though we got through the atmosphere, we would still hit the water at a pretty fast rate of speed. But they fired. They fired. We came down. At that point, do you know youre home free . I knew i was home free, eventually home free completely with the spacecraft bobbed up and saw water on the windows and the thing didnt 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 whether that chute is going to deploy . The most frightening moment was when the explosion occurred and aththen after a period of t saw the oxygen escaping and we didnt have solutions to get home because we knew we were in deep, deep trouble. I always compare this to a game of solitaire. You turn up the card and thats the crisis. If you could put it in some place, the mission keeps going, the game keeps going. If you pull up a card and you have nowhere to put it, the game is over. That never occurred to us. What kind of impact did that adventure i use that word advisedly, have on you personally . I never worry about crisis any longer. Seriously. I look at them. I say to myself, whenever i have a problem or trouble or somebody is sick, 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, dusted ourselves off and, hey, were still alive. We said, you know, this flight has got a lot of adventure to it, even before the explosion things happened that were entirely different on this flight. We ought to put this down on paper, write something about it. We all vowed we would write something on paper. Of course, the best intentions. Jack eventually went into politics. Fred went into the aerospace industry. I got into the telephone industry. Jack died in 83. I retired in 91. And i still had my office and my secretary, and the day after i retired i should we do . Dont have to worry about telephone any longer. She said why dont you write that book youve been telling me about for the last 14 years. I said good idea, im not an author. I wrote a lot of articles. Fortunately at that time a young man who was a writer for Discover Magazine said he would like to do a story on it. Tape three. Your secretary said why dont you write that book youve been talking about 14 years. I said not a bad idea. I started to try to figure out how to write the book. Im not a professional author. About that time, though, out of the blue, very fortunately a young man wrote me a letter and said i never wrote a book before but im a writer for Discover Magazine and i think apollo 13 would be an interesting story, can you help me. I said i would like to do the same so we cowrote the book. How long before hollywood discovered that book kind of interesting. We wrote one chapter and then we put an outline on either side of that chapter. This is a proposal for a book publisher. So our agent sent it around to find out who wanted to backes up. We found one. I was very happy. This was something to keep me off the golf courses postretirement and we had not yet written another chapter. We were doing research. Calling up people down here at nasa, our old friend, can you help us out, give us a hand. 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. 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. Isnt that illegal . He said no, its done all the time. What they sold was an option to do the story, to imaginary entertainment. 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 he lobbied for the job. When universal heard that howard had tom hanks who just got the oscar for the movie philadelphia, they decided to do the movie. Thats how it got started. What did your wife say when you said guess who plays me in the movie couldnt believe it. Actually when i had an interview with ron howard after he bought the opening and this is before hanks was on board, we went out there for about five hours to talk over the story about apollo 13. At the end ron said who would you like to play your part . 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. Hanks never let me forget i said that. But he did a great job. Were you frightened about what hollywood would do to your story . Yes, i was, to a degree because i heard these stories of famous authors who dont like the way their books are portrayed on the screen. And, of course, after i read the contract, when you sell a book to the movies you sold it. They can put it on mars 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 actress that played my wife that they gathered together to play my wife. It was a winwithin situation for everybody. Nasa, certainly, i think liked it. We used zero g airplane to get the sequence. First time it had ever been done. The public enjoyed it, i think. Im happy. Jeff includikluger is happy. Theres been all kinds of books about the astronauts and various space flights. Has nasa and have you gentlemen been treated fairly by the popular press . I think so. Theres always critics. And especially the movie, when the movie came out, the space enthusiasts here all the space guys said theres 125 mistakes in that movie. But, you know, weve been nicely handled by the press with the book. I wrote it or we wrote it i should say in the wee frame. Not i did this, i did that. It was not a biography or automobile. We talk about gene kranz and all the people because we wanted to right it that way. Why did you decide to leave nasa . A good question. I was doing some work towards the, after my apollo 13 flight i was originally on some of the, the work on the initial shuttle. And then i went over and became a Deputy Director of science and. Application director and during that period of time nasa sent me to advance Management Program at harvard and there i probably learned just about business to be dangerous. Then i came to a crossroads. What do you want to do . Come back to the navy. Well try to give you the proper assignment. I could have stayed here at nasa. Probably retired from the navy and become a gs or retire permanently and go into private enterprise. When i looked back going back into the navy, i was a captain for six or seven years. I said if im up for selection forced forced admiral and who would i pick. Would i pick this fell fellow spent two terms in vietnam and Naval War College and all these really, you know, positions to go up to be an admiral, i would pick that guy over there not lovell. You were in the towing business, boat business. Right here in houston, texas. Bay houston towing. I tried my hand at that for four years. Very lucrative business. Enjoyed it. No future for me there. Telephone business. I got in the telephone business at the right time, at the right place. By the husband of ed whites widow who she married five years later. And it was just when at t, the bell system was getting ready to deregulate. We were selling telephone systems. Our Little Company went from 8 million to 40 million and then another corporation bought us and then i went up to sentel. Now you work with mission home. What is mission home . About several years ago National Space society of 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. To show them what has been accomplished that is helping them out today and what could to be done in the future. And harvesting opportunities from mother earth is home and that was the whole idea. To do, at that time, to do seminars around the country. I wrote an oped 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 still trying to accomplish that goal. Yo are you disappointed here weve gone 30 years since we walked on the moon and weve not gone any further than weve gone with the Space Program. Yes. To some degree i am. The disappointment comes with this being a democracy we have all sorts of controversy and weigh things and compromise is always the name of the game. We waffled in the late 80s and early 90s on the space station. I dont know how many designs of the space station we had. Either it was too big, too complicated, too expensive. We didnt realize at the time and maybe a consortium of countries working together. In that respect the present administration eventually did realized that. Although some of our partners are lacking quite a bit like russia. But i think were finally on the right track. We did waffle. We wasted an awful lot of money and time and effort of not really knowing what we wanted to do. How we wanted to proceed with nasa. You know its like that old saying once you get to paris what else is there. After we get to the moon what else was there . That was a great triumph. Everybody relates back to that. That was 30 years ago. We got to do something today. We are doing a lot of things today. You get repetition. 90 some shuttles now. And one accident everybody says hohum. Were trying to tell people what we do up there. He we went to the moon the first time because of the cold war. Apoll low apolapollo 8 speeded up becau the russians were coming. There is no race any more. Theres nothing to propel us to go if we dont really think about it, you know. Youre absolutely right as far as competition goes. Theres not that incentive to beat somebody else. That was the whole deal. You know, the russians themselves were interested in beating us, not so much in military missiles, but going to the moon. That was their goal just as much as it was our goal. Now we have keeping. Now its more subtle. Now we can all Work Together and work as a team to accomplish things and get our mind off of other things, i think there is, theres a hope for us. But whether that will ever come to passing real life. The russians are still very much interested in their mirror, their stairs, very much past its time. They can do more on the interNational Space station and we have to wait until it gets built. Will our grandchildren see people go to mars . Perhaps grandchildren. I think there will be attempts. I think the mars mission within the next 20 to 25 years. Now that seems strange for notice say when you look back at going to the moon in 69. 20 years. That was 49. If somebody asked me in 1949 are we going to land on the moon in 1969 i would say youre absolutely crazy. Might be speed up. Its interesting you say, think about it say probably. Old way of saying it would have been you bet. You bet. Now theres not a certain you bet any more about it. 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 gettogether to Work Together. It will be a major project. And there are some doubt whether we can ever do it. 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 a long period of time will do you in before we get there. If hes right maybe mars is not doable. What was your finest moment at nasa . I think the finest moment at nasa was at the time we landed apollo 8, came back and had the press conference. It suddenly dawned on us, realized what we had done. At the time you are doing something you dont realize what youre doing. Its work, youre doing this, doing that. Only when things are accomplished you come back and say gee, did we do that . This really was the case. We were there. We saw the moon. We saw the far side of the moon which no one had ever seen before live. We had pictures of it that was it. That was the high point of my career. I agree with a lot of people at nasa that was the high point of nasas career too. Youre watching a special edition of American History tv airing now during the week while members of congress are working in their districts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Former Bush Administration officials Megan Osullivan and pete fever recount their roles of president bushs decision to increase troop levels in iraq. This is the first of three programs on the surge that will air tuesday night at 8 00 eastern. The center for president ial history at Southern Methodist university in dallas hosted the event. American history tv now, and also watch over the weekend on cspan 3. Cspan has around the clock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. And its all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors and state officials, track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps. Watch on demand any time unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. Now on American History tv gene kranz who served as a flight director during gemini and apollo programs including apollo 11 which was the first time humans landed on the moon. This is part of an or all History Program at johnsons space center. Apollo 11, Lunar Landing flight director, werent you. You were in charge of that. Lets go over apollo 11. A big project. Theres many things that stand out. The person says where were you when i had sure had an awful lot of great breaks in my life. I mean, whether they be in college. Whether they be in flying airplanes. But one of the ones that i remember that is related to apollo 11 in a very direct fashion was the day that i got the assignment to do the landing phase. Cliff charles worth was the lead flight director. One of the responsibilities of the lead flight director is to identify which flight director is going to cover which phase of the mission. And moving in there, this wa