Has ever embarked. Neil saturday april 11th, 1970. Liftoff for apollo 13. Neil third trip to surface of the moon. Looks good. Neil commissions commander to be fifth man to walk on. Yes, Alan Shepherd had been grounded for 9 years and he was up for flight again, and so because of his space program, okay, you get apollo 13. And then, you know, wiser heads management said, wait a second, shepherd doesnt have that much screening so far. Maybe we need to give him more training. I had made apollo 8 and i had previous training and i thought 13 would be fine. All the other engines are go. Fourth flight into space, record. Module is coming from about 5,000 miles down to earth. Spacecraft and has 4b traveling in a speed about 22,900 feet per second at this time. Neil in addition to apollo 8, mans First Mission around the moon was two Gemini Missions and turned down the command module when Neil Armstrong and buzz aldrin walked on the moon. One small step for man. To be honest about it i just didn
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 o
The First Mission where in apollo now, where we had been flight directors on gemini, we were coming back together again. So you had probably the three most experienced people at the counsel, and it was a question of who was going to get to do what. Lonnie had been to the moon a couple times. Charlesworth had launched saturns. I had the lunar module experience. You had no driver that said this person ought to be doing this phase of the mission. I was division chief at that time and kraft had been really on top of us to nail down who is going to do what until finally after the apollo 9 mission we all managed to get together, and charlesworth as lead had to make the calls. I called him and said cliff, we got to make a decision on which flight director is going to cover which phase of the mission. This is probably the most anticlimactic meeting ive ever had in my life. He looked me straight in the face, and he said, well, im going to launch it, and im going to do the eva. So that only leav
Explosion on board. The interview is from the Oral History Program at the Johnson Space center. This is the Johnson Space Center Original history project, may 25th, 1999, at the Johnson Space center. When you were a little kid, you saw a rocket go off and you said i want to do that . Is it that simple or that complex . You know, i was interested in rockets and astronomy long before the glenns and the shepherds of the world could spell rocket. I was interested in it way back in high school. I went to try and build some rockets. I wanted to be a rocket engineer, as a matter of fact. I wrote to the American Rocket Society at that time which is now the aaia or Something Like that, and i said i want to be a rocket engineer, and they wrote back and said you need to go to i. T. Or cal tech, and i couldnt afford either so i got an rotc appointment to wisconsin and then from there i went to the Navel Academy and then i got the flight training. I became a naval aviator, and low and behold in 195
11, and what a thing to go back over, thats a big project. The theres many things that stand out, a 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 charlesworth was the lead flight director and one of the responsibilities of the lead flight director is to identify which flight director is going to cover which phase of the mission. The and moving in there, this was the First Mission where in apollo now, where lonnie, charlesworth and myself, who had been flight deck or thes on gemini, were actually coming back together again. So, you had probably the three most experienced people at the console and it was a question f of, who is going to get to do what . The and lonnie had been to the moon a couple times. Charleswor