Transcripts For CSPAN Apollo Lunar Missions 20150104

And checkout, of which i was the capcom, we just sort of moved over to apollo 11 for that same phase. And the only additional thing was going to be the landing. Apollo 10 went through the descent, didnt land. Came back up, aborted. Then rendezvoused. Well, were gonna do the whole thing. And so ive got to give Mission Control credit during this descent. And all of the troubles and problems that they had on apollo 11 on the descent. Mission control actually saved the day on just about every mission. Those 1201, 1202 warnings that could have aborted . Not really. We thought so. I thought so. This was abort. Oh no, computers frozen up or something, so it was a computer overload alarm that i didnt recognize. But the gnn guys did. And they said were going, that alarm. The apollo computer had a set compute cycle. And it cued up the jobs. And if it had too much to do in that milliseconds or whatever it was, it just dropped off the last jobs, told you it was overloaded, and it flipped back to the beginning. And so it started down the cue again. And so thats what was happening with these computer launches. But first, we had communications. Data dropped out, all these problems, when we started down. So we had to reorient the spacecraft a couple times to get an antenna that was really good. So then the computer alarms came and then at pitchover which was 7,000 feet about 7,000 feet above the lunar surface, the vehicle pitches down, and the crew can see the landing spot for the very first time. And neil apparently looked out the window and said, this doesnt look right. And it didnt look right. With ewere targeting him we were targeting him into a boulder field. They didnt get any pictures of that but neil said its impossible to land. So he leveled off. About 400 feet, if i remember, above the lunar surface and flew horizonly over this boulder field, pitched up to stop his forward velocity. Then from about 400 feet, basically started almost a vertical descent. And, of course, this was using fuel in and all that uses a lot of gas. And so we were getting we had a fuel abort a fuel percentage abort, if you will. So the first call was 60 seconds. So the propulsion guy said flight 60 seconds. I said, eagle, youve got 60 seconds. And meaning he had to land in the next 60 seconds. And then the propulsion guy said, flight 30 second. And i said, eagle, youve got 30 seconds. Now guys, remember, hes the only guy communicating from earth to the moon at this point. So neil and buzz are listening to this. 30 seconds. Yeah. And i had been sort of talking them down, if you will. And as a little aside to that, before all the tension arose im talking. And im giving up dates to the crew and everything like that. And dick, who was our boss, was right next to us, right next to me in Mission Control. And he hit me on the right shoulder, if i remember, the right elbow and says, charlie shut up and let em land. Ha ha that didnt get out to the public. But thats what happened. So anyway, im just giving them these calls. And so things are really tense. I had never felt some tension in Mission Control. And id been there, apollo 10 11. I was there 13 and 17. And we had never felt any tension like that. And it got dead silent, as i recall. I started a stop watch. And 13 seconds later, buzz aldron said, contact, engine stopped. And it was sort of a pause. And we knew they were on the ground. And the data said, okay. It looked okay. And about this time, neil comes up and says, Houston Tranquility base here. The eagle has landed. And i replied roger, twang. And i corrected myself. I was so excited, i couldnt even pronounce tranquility. And so it came out twang at first. Then i ended up saying twangquility. And i said, we copy on the ground. Youve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. Were breathing again. And that was the truth, at least i was holding my breast. My my breath. Are we gonna make it . Now, neil had to write stuff. If id have gotten to eagle abort, 20 feet off the moon, he wasnt going to abort. I guarantee you. He was going to land that vehicle on apollo 11. Now, if hed have been 1,000 feet in the air, thats a different story. But they were really really close when we got to the 30second call. And right after that, buzz was saying picking up dust shadow. All of that stuff. So we knew they were close. When i called 30 seconds, it looked like we were going to land. So depending on what data you look at, we probably landed with 17 seconds before the abort call. Now, that doesnt mean they were out of gas. It just means abort. Throttle 100 . Abort stage. That fires up the engine, and then back in orbit. Well, of course you dont want to do that 20 feet off the ground. So hes going to land. Well, of course you guys who are space aficionados, you hear charlies voice on those tapes. It will be there forever. You just heard it from the horses mouth. And i also had buzz up here on mothers day a couple years ago, describing the descent. And the exact same thing. We werened sting were standing and i was trying to give neil this body language, like land the damn things. At the same time, hes at the controls and i dont want to make him nervous. So it was tense. But charlie took america and the world through that. It was a great honor. Right after that, we went off duty. And for the step onto the moon, one giant leap for mankind one small i was home watching it on t. V. Like most of you guys. Yeah. When i was a young kid. Now im going to go forward. Im not going to cover too much of apollo 16 here, because charlie has got the most amazing movie to show you guy, and hes going to narrate it without any sound. So hes going to play it and narrate it, so youre going to hear it from the horses mouth. But i know that you guys do everything pretty much scripted to what nasa gives you, by the minute. But you went off and you did something that wasnt scripted. And you almost paid for it. Oh, yeah. That was at the end of our stay on the moon. Wed been there 71 hours or so. No. Not quite that long at that point, because we had to get back inside. Anyway we were closing up. And apollo 15 had done an experiment hammerfeather, and they both hit the ground at the same time. Allen sheppard hit a golf ball. Everybody had this little skit or whatever they wanted to call it. So 1972 was an olympic year. The olympics were going to be in munich in august, so we were going to have the moon olympics. We were going to do the high jump and the broad jump, i think it was. Were running behind and Mission Control is pressing us. So its in the movie here. We start the bounce. And john says, yeah, we were gonna do the olympics but we dont have anytime. And i said, yeah, we are and i start to bounce. And when i do, i straightened up. Now, the backpack weighed as much as i did, so over i go, backwards. And im like four feet off the moon when i start over backwards. That backpack is carbon fiber, with all the plumbing, all of thing regulators, all of the oxygen all the cooling water. And if it breaks, youre dead. And so that thought came through my mind. Im in trouble and as i started scrambling, i fortunately rolled over to the right side and broke my fall but bounced onto my back. And my heart was pounding. And john came up and looking down at me. He said, are you okay, charlie . Or that wasnt very smart charlie, or Something Like that. And he helped me up. And im beginning to calm down a little bit because everything seems okay. You can hear the pumps running you know, and the pressure looked okay. But my heart was just going. And about that time, i looked up and the t. V. Camera was looking right at me and theyd seen this stupid stunt in Mission Control. You knew you were in trouble, boy dorothy was back then, they didnt have much t. V. , you know, realtime for the moon walks. So they would allow our family to come into Mission Control and sit in what they called the v. I. P. Room. And she sees this thing on t. V. And it was quite frightening, i guess, to her and to Mission Control. They really got upset. And they said, thats it. No more moon olympics. And so that was the end. But i still hold the record for how high was it . Imr about four feet, i think. Too the high, ill tell you that [applause] and so another aside i have a twin brother an identical twin brother. I think it was the second eva weaver. My brother was there. Hes a physician. So the Flight Surgeon hes invited into Mission Control to watch us on the moon. So were up there on this big t. V. Screen in Mission Control. And my brother walks into Mission Control. I found out later. And it was a showstopper, you know [laughter] wait a minute whats this . He looked at me. And everybody knew me in Mission Control. Maybe we faked those moon missions, huh . No. We really did it. But anyway, we had a couple of funny things like that. Growing up with a twin brother, especially as an adult, id go back to our hometown, like 8,000 people in lancaster, South Carolina, and id walk down the street and his patients thought i was dr. Duke. So theyd stop me, dr. Duke, how are you . Ive got this little problem. Wait a minute youve got to wrong one when you guys were growing up, before you married your lovely wife dorothy, did you guys ever switch dates where you would pretend like you were your brother and no, we never tried that. What are some of the things you guys did do . Well, we lived out in the country. And my dad bought us an old doublebarrel shotgun. And we used to walk through the woods unt hunting rob hunting rabbits. My brother had a heart condition from birth. It was never repairable. Openheart surgery wasnt realizable back when we were kids, so he never got it repaired. So the only sport he could do was golf so we played a lot of golf together. And he would ski snow ski, in the mountains of north carolina. He couldnt make colorado, that mountain height, the altitude. But lower mountains, he could do. So anyway, we had a good time. We touched a little on this. I ask all the astronauts and adventurers. But fear. It seems to me that the most afraid you were on this mission was when you almost fell on your backpack. But a, was it . And b, how do you deal with fear . Because you Fighter Pilots, you cant let it cloud your judgment. The only time i had fear on apollo was in that instance. We were welltrained as richard knows and the other ones, cunningham can tell you. We spent thousands of hours in a simulator. I probably crashed a thousand times on the moon, in the simulator. [laughter] but i knew how to fly that machine, at the end. And i knew how to handle emergencies. So we mostly had a positive attitude. Were gonna handle it. Well, you did but didnt one of your crew mates have a less positive attitude . Well, mattingly, he was a what if guy in the command module. What if this happens, what if that happens . But it was a great blend for our crew. It balanced us out, you know. I was more of a guy, ah, press on well get it done, you know. And he was more conservative, but a good balance for our crew. And i think every crew had to work like that. And it was fear is not a bad emotion, if you handle it right. Fear gets your adrenaline pumping. And if you panic in fear, youre dead. But if you dont panic but respond with training, when that emotion hits, its going to help you, actually. And so thats what happened when i fell over. I knew i had to roll right. And that adrenaline got moving and you did what you had to do. Yeah. All these guys today have described the view from space. But you have the particular Vantage Point of having been on the moon. Tell us what its like looking out when youre on the surface of the moon. Well, its a different viewpoint. To me, it was you looked up. And it was a big contrast between this beautiful desert of the moon. Probably one of the most awesomely beautiful places ive ever seen. The thought kept occurring to you, nobodys ever been here before. But you see this rolling terrain, which craters and rocks, blocks and rocks everywhere. And its a sharp contrast between the gray of the lunar surface and the blackness of space. And there is so much reflected life on the lunar surface that you look up, and you cant see any stars. None are visible. And while youre on the moon, in apollo anyway, it was always daylight. So from sunrise to sunset, two weeks on the moon, we were there 72 hours, so it was always daylight. It was like Early Morning on a moon day. So the sun was getting higher and higher, and you could tell your shadow is coming in as you stayed. But this brilliant reflection of the lunar the sunlight from the lunar surface basically in effect blots out all of the stars. We were in the center of the moon a little east, about 15 east and 9 south. So we were the farthest down in latitude anyway of any of the landing sites. We were up in the mountains of the moon, if you will. From where apollo 11 landed to where we landed was probably 8,000 feet difference in elevation. And so we were up there. And it was so landing my point was landing in the middle of the moon, i didnt see the earth from the moon, because i look up, and im looking at the top of my helmet. Its a big fishbowl in an apollo helmet. So the earth was right overhead, just about right overhead. So you dont see it, as you stabbed on the moon. But in orbit, of course, you have this beautiful earth rise. And it comes very verying very, very quickly. And as sunrise does also. On earth i only got to see one sunrise. We only orbited one and a half times, but you see the sunrise and you start to see the glow out there of the sun light rays being reflected through the upper atmosphere. On the moon, theres no atmosphere, so bang youve got earthrise. I mean sunrise. And the earth is the same way. All of a sudden, this orb begins to float up from behind the lunar surface. And when we were there, it was when we landed, it was a half moon in the sky to you. And when i looked up, i saw a half earth. And my recollection is the polar ice caps and clouds, hardly ever got a blue of the ocean. Occasionally during that day before we landed. But let me switch back to departing earth. We left over australia. And in the film, youll see a picture that i took. Its a still picture, but they made it look like a video. But its you can see almost the whole circle of the earth. And the Arctic Circle, the ice caps down across canada, the United States, mexico and central america. That was the land we saw. And the land was all brown. You could see the Rocky Mountains, the coast of california the southwest United States. Yucatan. And those kind of landmarks. But no evidence of civilization. And you could see as we were about 20,000 miles away, of course the whole circle of the earth was visible. And there is this jewel just suspended in the blackness of space. And theres so much reflected light from the sun into the spacecraft you look out, and even though youre looking away from the sun, you dont see the stars. So on the way to the moon, there is no night. Its always the sun is always shining. And so you keep track by the clock, the ground elapsed time, as you lift off. The clock starts. So it counts up one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours five hours. And your flight plan is based on that clock. So to get to sleep you put up some opaque curtains and turned the lights out. In apollo, we all slept together, because thats just the way the flight plan worked. I slept underneath the seat, my couch. John young was up in the tunnel, leading to the lunar module. And mattingly, he mostly had the head set on, and he was listening to Mission Control, if they had to wake him up due to some problem. And he slept basically in his seat. And so i dont know about richard, but it took me a while to get used to zero gravity sleeping. I was waiting for my head to nod off and it just doesnt happen. So fortunately, underneath the seats, there was a the seat strut and the floor. It created a little angle. And i stuck my head underneath there to get some pressure on my head, then i finally drifted off to sleep. Once we got on the moon, our original flight plan told us to be to power down, put on our backpacks and go out and explore right after we landed. Unfortunately, we were six hours late landing so we didnt get a chance to they changed the flight plan, because they computed well, six hours late landing, three hours to get ready, seven, eight hours out on the moon. Back in. Theyre going to be up 35, 36 hours or whatever it was. So they said, thats too dangerous. Youll be too foggy or whatever. Did you agree with that decision . We did at the time. You say, no, im going to sleep . You could actually sleep on the moon before you went out there . Well, hard to do. But i put up my hammock and john puts up his hammock. And we take off our suits. And we lay down, in my eyes, like this. Im ready to get outside. And i hear john snoring a little bit. And hes off to sleep. And i cant get to sleep. And so i decided i was going to take a sleeping pill. So that first night, i took a sleeping pill and that got me four hours sleep that night. What kind of pill was that . Ambien, going like that, was invented back in. It was a nohangover pill and not so strong that it knocked you out, that if you had an emergency, you could respond. Last night we were talking about decisions and who has the most votes. And you had an interesting analogy. You and don had a number of votes. But your commander, john young had a few more votes than you did. So if somebody wanted to do something, well, talk about that hierarchy. Talk about what mattingly wanted to do on the way back. On the way back from the moon we called him ken then. Tk now. He had been in the command module. He wanted to fill his helmet with water to see what a helmet full of water would behave like. [laughter] at zero g. Well, i mean he said its not going to get away, but we started discussing this. And i he wanted to do it. So it was one vote for. I was sort of iffy, so i abstained. And john cast his 40,000 votes and said were not doing that. So the point is hes got 40,000. You and mattingly had one vote each. He had to make the decision, yes. On the moon, youre only on the sunny side. What is the temperature fluctuation between surprisingly, it was all thermal engineering. We never took a thermometer to the moon, not once. Not once did we measure the actual temperature of the surface. It was all the computer, computer equations driven. They knew the radiation history of the sun anyway. When we landed probably the archl temperature of the average temperature of the surface was about 85 degrees fahrenheit. When we left, it was probably 230 fahrenheit. So the higher the sun gets near the equator, the hotter the surface gets. And the plastic, if i remember and our helmets, we had a temperature limit of 250 fahrenheit. So we had to be back inside before we got to that average temperature. The only time i remember feeling any heat was i did i had a strap on my backpack that was cutting into my suit that was pinching the insulation. And i could feel the radiation heat from the sun at that point. Otherwise, you couldnt feel the temperature of the surface through your boots or anything like that. I didnt remember. We had one experiment not the solar wind collector but it was a similar experiment. It was propped up and mounted about perpendicular to the suns rays. And when i picked that metal frame up with my glove, i could feel the heat in my gloves from that experiment. But other than that, what you really worried about was your body heat. You had to get rid of the body heat. And working in a space suit, we had a limit if our heart beat got to 140, i believe it was, they made you rest until your heart beat came back down again. But at 140, youre working pretty good. Youre generating a lot of heat. So the liquidcooled garment had to work. And it picked up this body heat and took it to a sub limitator and took the hit with it. I dont want to go too much into the movie but how many pounds of rocks did you guys bring up . And then im going to can you a followup im going to ask you a followup questions. We brought back like 213 pounds. It varies, depending on which text you read. 98 kilos or Something Like that maybe a little less. But we brought back a bunch. The earth weight was about 20 pounds. Just between us, have you got any of those rocks . I dont have any moon rocks, no. We had to turn them all back in. I didnt try to swipe any. Coming back, we had these little pebbles floating around the spacecraft and i picked that one up stuck it in my pocket, you know. A few hours later another one would float by, and i would put it in my pocket. So when i got home i had this jar full of moonrocks, little fragments about like that. I showed this elm to the kids. And they i showed them to the kids, they said, dad weve got moon rocks. I said, well, look at them now because im taking them back tomorrow when we get back, so i turned them in. Oh, man but nasa finally it was not quite 40 years but they finally said were gonna give you a moonrock. However, you cant keep it. [laughter] youve got to give it to a museum or a nonprofit or whatever. Well, id chosen to give mine to my prep school, Admiral Academy in st. Petersburg, florida. By the way, that is the only school in the United States that has two moon walkers graduate from it. Who is the other one . Allen sheppard. Back then, they had a north campus where he went, 1941. And im class of 195 3. But we both graduated from that academy. Well, thats a pretty cool school if you want to be an astronaut and walk on the moon. I know you and your wife dorothy are christian ministers. You traveled around the world. I think you have three and a half million delta frequent flyers miles or some ridiculous amount. Seven round trips to the moon on Delta Airlines and they wont even give me a ticket. Charlie is a good guy too. He flies economy. He doesnt need first class, all that stuff. But talk about what you do what you and your wife do, as you travel around the world and you do ministry. Well, it was a late coming, our faith. We were ive always believed in god, that out there somewhere was god. But it wasnt real in my life. It was just sort of a sunday ritual. Dorothy, the same way. And the moon flight was not a spiritual experience. I didnt feel any closer to government than what i thought i need to god than what i thought i needed. So it was not a philosophical experience. It was a great adventure that id love to do again, but ill never have a chance to go again because while we did apollo in eight years and two months from announcement, today you cant even write your proposal in eight years and two months, much less do it. So anyway, due to some problems in our marriage, dorothy was in depression suicidal. And all of these things. And some people came to our church and started sharing their faith about the reality of the power of god to change a life. And so she gave her heart to jesus. And i watched her change. A couple of years later, i went through that same experience. And it so transformed our marriage and our life. We started getting these invitations to come share our faith, all over the world. So the only time that we havent the only place we havent visited is ant tire antarctica. I dont know if katie is still here or not. Yes, there she is. I want to go pick up some of those meteorites. So anyway, its transformed our life the last 35 years or so. Weve been Walking Around the world with a pallet. Weve been leaders of nations to dirt floors in africa. Its been a very rewarding opportunity to share the peace of god with people all over the world. One thing i want to say is, katie, i skied to the south pole once. I did the last degree. The thing they kept telling us was, if you see anything dark on the snow, its a meteorite. So three days in, im all excited. I said, look ive got to unclip and go over. So i went over to this dark spot. And the guide is laughing and i dont know why hes laughing because i just found a meteorite. I bent down and its a little piece of frozen poop, from the chinese ek expedition, that was supposed to be keeping these things in their bags and they werent. So i never found a meteorite. But i had a great time looking for one. Charlie, are you still chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship foundation . No. I did my two years. Talk about it, though. Well, its a great group. It started, this Astronaut Scholarship foundation was started by the original seven astronauts, who now only one is left alive, john glenn. Hes our honorary and anyway, they all gave up 1,000 each. They gave out this money to reward college kids. Its grown and grown and grown. And richard, youre on the board. Richard is on the board. Im now on the board. I was a chairman for two years. And what we do is raise money to give to well, right now were at 28 universities. Weve got five potential expansions. And we give so it will be 33 10,000 scholarships to each university every year. And jeff hoffman, who is an m. I. T. Professor, he collects all of the applicants that are screened by the university. And they send us two. And our Committee Celebration one of the two our committee selects one of the two for each university. Very rewarding to see how this has affected these kids. And the competition for these scholarships. One way we raise money is auctions, like youre going to do in a little bit. Another way, we auction off space artifacts. People donate things. We also auction our time. Go scuba diving with charlie duke or 16 grand baby. Yeah. Or go skydive with gibson or play golf with al warden. So its all of these people that donate their time. And these people pay to come spend a day or two days, or whatever it is, oneonone with an astronaut. Its been very effective. And so ive enjoyed being on the board. But the chairmanship was a little bit more active than i thought it would be. So im glad i only volunteered for two years. Im happy to be on the board. But its a big job. Hell, im on the board here, five years and im ready to get off of just the board. What were going to do is im going to ask charlie one more question. Then hes going to narrate this fabulous movie. Were going to come back and open it up for the audience. The theme of today, put the man the history of manned spaceflight into the context of the cold war. A lot of people we all thought this is exploration. This is whatever. But it wasnt so at truistic altruistic right . This was do or die back in the 60s. We were getting the socks blown off of us. Sputnik, we were second, taking rear seat on all of those original accomplishments. So president kennedy asked nasa, what can we do to beat the russians . And theres a 14page paper that was written about the way we could beat is go to the moon. Out of that and other discussions came the apollo program. The announcement of course, the decisions probably took a lot longer than that, but the announcement was just two weeks after allen sheppards flight. I was a young lieutenant over in germany. And when i heard this announcement, i was like, that ha were gonna do it. Never in a million years, did you think you were going to be walking on the moon . Never. Nor did i think i was going on the an astronaut. Too young too inexperienced. But they kept needing more guys. So we were the fifth group of astronauts. 19 of us selected. With two chances to go to the moon, slim and none. But, you know, we had eight fatalities back then. John glenn retired. Scot carpenter retired. Gordon cooper was thinking about it. So anyway, with the fatalities and the groundings medically and other reasons, we just sort of bubbled up into the mix. And three of our group were moon walkers. So it turned out that i was very fortunate. Who were the other two . Ed mitchell and jim irwin. And fred hayes would have been had they gotten had they landed, but apollo 13 blew up. But it was Serious Business back then. Yeah. A lot of young people dont get it. The decision to go to the moon, i think, was more driven by politics and were gonna win this race rather than the science of it. It morphed into one of the greatest scientific efforts of mankind. We left a lot of experiments on the moon that ran for several years. And we learned an awful lot about the origins of the moon the interior of the moon, the cosmic radiation, all of these kind of things. And so it turned out to be a great benefit not only to our economy but to basic science. And as arthur clark said, Science Fiction writer, a thousand years from now probably the only thing this generation is going to be noted for is landing on the moon. And lady gaga. Im sorry. Lady gagging, is the way i call it. Okay. Were going to play charlies movie. Hes going to narrate it. Then were going to come back and do more questions. Is that all right . Thats fine. Im going to move over so im out of the way. Youre going to narrate. Yeah. I think we need to get. Can someone bring the screen down . Okay. Okay. This is 14 minutes of apollo 16, from liftoff to splashdown. Can can we turn on charlies mic . Testing testing. The little thing on it. I think its on. There we go. Okay. This is fascinating. Wait until you hear it. Before we start, let me just say that all of the Nine Missions to the moon, and we all flew the Apollo Saturn five, the biggest rocket to ever successfully launch, and if youve never seen one, they are huge. It was 363 feet tall, 33 feet in diameter, and weighed 6. 5 Million Pounds fully fueled. And the engine, f1 engines there were five of them at the base of this thing. They were pushing with about 7. 5 Million Pounds of thrust. And so with that, lets start this film. And so it will start at liftoff. And well go through quite a bit of the liftoff. And like richard said, he couldnt hear it. We couldnt hear it either. What we did have was this great vibration. And it took eight seconds for the engines to build up the thrust. And so ignition started minus eight seconds. At zero, they let go. It was bolted to the those holddown arms, there were four of them. So it was very, very slow acceleration at first. And we had about two tons of ice on the side of the vehicle. And by the time we cleared the tower, all that ice was shaken off. And we were shaken like shaking like crazy on the inside. The first stages, from here down, it lasted in our case two minutes 41 seconds. And at the end of that first stage shutdown, we had burned up four Million Pounds of fuel. So well over half the weight of the vehicle was gone in the first stage. And the vibration never changed intensity. It never changed frequency. It shook like crazy. The windows are covered over at this point, so you cant see outside, except for the hatch window, and it was behind me, so i couldnt look back and see out. So we were just flying. I didnt have any flight instruments. And i was a little concerned about the vibration. But john was very calm. Were go houston. Mission control says youre go apollo 16. And so we went. And this was a longrange camera from around Kennedy Space center. And on board, this is actually not a manned flight. This is an unmanned flight. But i want to show you the separation as the first stage falls off. You can imagine the explosive charge that it took to separate 33feet diameter piece of aluminum from the rest of the rocket. So from the earth, theres the train wreck. We went from zero four and a half gs to zero at that point. And that big flash went by the spacecraft window, and you could see it. Heres the first stage. Puffy clouds. Florida is back over here. And the second stage is ignited. This is a picture i took. I think it was 16,000 to 20,000 miles away, coast of california here. Baja california. The Rocky Mountains here. The southwestern United States mexico. This is the yucatan. Florida is back over here. And this is cuba right here. And you can see the Arctic Circle over there. The space station has, what 10,000 cubic feet of volume . We had 300 cubic feet of volume, strugincluding all the instrumentation and storage. So mattingly this is what we liveed in for three days. Of course, more dramatic, zero gravity, from space station and the sky lab and the space shuttle. But just to show you, we couldnt get any thats a flashlight. We were trying to get steady and not move. But you cant do it in space. You notice everything floated. Our food was mostly dehydrated. But the space shuttle, this is actually pinky nelson. You saw liquid earlier. This is a grape juice that takes the shape of a sphere in space. In it goes. Now they have a flying banana. [laughter] spin that banana up and you get some stabilization. We didnt have any bananas. It took apollo 72 hours to arrive at the moon. That was because of the fuel budget we had. You could get there a lot quicker, but if youre going so fast, we didnt have enough fuel to slow down, get in orbit and get back out of orbit. So they shot us out way out in front, allowed gravity to slow us down. Then we started to accelerate. This is the hatch beneath the lunar beneath the instrument panel. You open that hatch, get out backwards on your hands and knees, crawl out to the porch down the ladder onto the foot pad. From the foot pad to the door was about 15 feet. The lunar module weighed about 39,000 pounds at this point. And during the descent, i think we used about 17,000 pounds of fuel. Command module, you see the windows. Heres the earth, the picture that i can recall. The spacecraft out here, we were six hours late landing. Ill explain that later. But here we are 7,000 feet up. We recognize these two craters lone star, gator 500 meters in diameter. We started picking out a landing site. Im talking john down. Hes flying it. By 500 feet, were fully manual control. About 20 feet off the ground, we leveled off, started blowing the moon dust out. These electrical probes, when they hit the moon, turn on this little blue light. It says contact. You shut the engine off and you dropped in the last three, four feet. And the dust cleared instantly. Since theres no atmosphere up there to swirl the dust around. Looking out to the northwest this was the white area was a place called south crater. It was about eight miles away, too far for us to go in the rover, because of the rover broke down, if it broke down, you had to walk back. We figured five miles was our limit. We had film magazines on cameras, no digital cameras. This magazine had dust on it. So im blowing the dust off through my visor. [laughter] yeah. And once i realize that, i said, what an idiot you are [laughter] yeah. I didnt tell anybody about that. But i felt like i was really a dummy. We put the t. V. Camera up on the car. And the camera was mounted on the car. And all we had to do was turn it on. And it was controlled by an engineer from Mission Control. So he could zoom in and out, pan around elevate. Here i am, the flag. And john comes out for a big salute. And we weigh about 60 pounds up there. His balance was outstanding. I if id have tried that, i would have fallen over backwards. This is my most embarrassing moment. Of the whole flight. Im walking out. Ive got this bar bell. And on the right end that you see closest to the camera, theres 10 million worth of moon experiments right here. And i bounce around and they fall off. Oh god i ruined the whole deal, you know oh maybe they didnt see it, you know. [laughter] but the camera was pointed right at me. And i had to fess up. Well fortunately at this gravity, nothing was damaged. So we were successfully deployed. All but one of our experiments. And that was the heat flow. Notice the dust on the moon. Very very fine powder, gray in color mostly, which is actually pulverized rock. Theres no organic material on the moon. But since theres no atmosphere, you kick the dust up and it just flies out and lands. Im drilling a hole into the moon here. I had three drill holes each 10 feet deep. Two of them were for this heat flow experiment, which john just caused a failure because he unplugged the electrical power to the experiment. So we lost that. Im taking this picture. This is called a grand prix. This was about three minutes long. And its the only film that shows the rover under way. This is normally what you see. You can see it, real bown si across the bouncy across the moon. This is a pentrometer. It went all the way in. Ive got to get up. And you get if you fall on your stomach youre okay. So i push up. And that starts it. You rock up and do another one. And thats pretty close. [laughter] and one more. Im up. Yahoo yeah. We fell down a few times. Notice the dust. The suits are getting gray from the bottom up. By the time we got in, after the last eva, the suits were totally gray. We usually collected samples together, because it was more efficient and we could document the samples that we had to do. John is on the left here. Im the guy on the right. Thats a rake. We collect samples with a rake, a shovel. Here i am trying to do it by myself with a shovel. [laughter] not very successfully, as you can see. I dropped it. But im determined so im gonna pick up that rock. Why . Today i cannot tell you. But that rock was going to go in the pag. Andbag. So i flip it up and grab it, but i dropped the bag i was putting it in. We had a few little miscues as you can tell. One of the bigger rocks on the moon but not nearly the biggest. This was about ten feet tall. Im jogging back towards the lunar module. This is looking to the southeast. These mountains back over here we call the smoky mountains. The farthest we got away was the north crater, which is outside the view here, about four and a half miles. Okay. Heres my famous moon jump. Thats john right here. And here i am, and hes talking, and so he goes. Then i go. And you can see over backwards. And let me tell you, folks, that was scary. So Mission Control doesnt know what happened. I fall behind the seats. It takes john a little while to get me up. And by now my heart is just pounding. And things seem to be okay, like i said earlier. And so when i appear, Mission Control was relieved. I guess dorothy would say that. But they really were very vocal no more of that get in i left a picture of my family on the moon. This is our oldest son. Charles just turned seven, and tom was just about to turn five. Now, this is not us. This is apollo 17. But the guy running the camera finally got it right on apollo 17. So up we go. Up they go. And our flight, wed have been out of the frame. He didnt. Theres a second and a half delay. You punch the button and by the time the signal gets to the moon a second and a half later. So he had to be right on. He finally got it right on apollo 17. And we saw much of the ascent until we got out of view. We rendezvoused, 60 miles up. Took about an hour. This is all thats left. We eventually jettison the lunar model. This is actually a picture of the journey home. By the time we got home you didnt see but a little thin sliver of the earth. Reentry, the last time i saw, i noticed the commuter, we were accelerating through 30,800 feet per second, which translates to over 26,000 miles an hour. And apollo came back in. We had lift. We didnt have wings. But like the shuttle. But we had to offset the center of gravity, so it generated lift like. 25 lift over drag. So you could fly the command module on auto pilot and manually, to land where you wanted to land in the pacific. So we had seven and a half gs deceleration on reentry. What did you guys have . Three and a half. Three and a half on reentry. Apollo was 7. 5 maximum. 23,000 feet, the drove chutes came out to stabilize, make sure you were right side up. And at 10,000 feet, the main chutes came out. We had three in apollo. You could make a successful landing with two, which apollo 15 actually did. It was the only failure of the parachutes in all of apollo. 6. 5 Million Pounds. We come back with about six tons of us and 200 pounds of moonrock. We called it splash down. But it was really flash. We hit it was really thrash. We hit really hard for some reason. Im looking out the window. Im listening to mattingly. My head is up. I said, when he gets to 100 feet, im going to put my head back. When he called 100 feet we hit the water. And i had a whiplash. I mean, i saw stars and i will to push in the Circuit Breaker on my right knee to you can turning the turn the lights back up if you could. Then he could jet jettison the parachutes. By the time i got that Circuit Breaker in we were upside down. Apollo would float right side up or upside down. It was stable in both situations. But upside down, the hatch was under water, so you couldnt get out. So we had some inflatable balloons and a little air compressor, and we blew these balloons up. Took about 15 minutes. And it flipped us back over. By then, they had ended quarantine, so we didnt have any quarantine after the mission. So they put a floatation collar around around the vehicle, and we got out and back on the air. And the first thing we did was say thanks a lot for picking us up, you know great to be back. What an adventure. Then we all went to take a shower. Lets hear it for charlie [applause] every time i hear that, i get goose bumps. I dont know about you guys. But ive not a question. When you watch that, when you narrate that, can you believe you did that . Oh, yeah. [laughter] its never been a dream. I mean its not like some vision i had back, you know, 42 years ago. Its always been believable. You know, i look at the moon, and i can still have the romantic part that dorothy and i have. But also ive been there and i can pick up, you know, generally my landing site. There it is in that white area, the left cheek of the man in the moon, if you can see the man in the moon so. You did a space walk on the way back. Talk about the space walk a little. Well, that was spectacular. Mattingly, while we were on the moon he had a whole suite of experiments to do that were stowed and operated back in the Service Module. And there were two big mapping a mapping camera and some other camera back there. But this film canister weighed 80 pounds, down here on earth. And he had to retrieve that. We did our eva on the way back, on the ninth day. Were all suited up. He gets out. We open the hatch. He gets out first. And it goes to the back of the Service Module where the stuff is. And i float out and i hook my feet in the sides of the hatch. And im his lifeline, if you will. Im making sure he doesnt get tangled up in the engines and stuff like that. But im just mesmerized with this beauty. And i look over here, 180,000 miles away is the earth. Its just it was in a normas gigantic humongous moon. It was huge appear. You could see all the front face. This orb hung up there. I was outside maybe an hour or so. I get back inside to set the stage, on the second day, he had lost his wedding ring in our spacecraft. Its in here somewhere because we have an open the door. We could not find it. We go land on the moon. We get back. Six days later, he is still looking. On the ninth day i am in the lower equipment they. He is on a biological experiment with his back to me, just highlighted by the suns rays. All of a sudden, i get this glint of gold. I see his wedding ring floating out the hatch. [laughter] it was zero pressure, but the spacecraft out gas test. Out gassed us. It was moving the wedding ring out the door. I grab for it, but i missed it. It took three minutes. It floated out and hit him on the back of the head. A round ring and around helmet whats the probability that youre going to get a 180 degree bounce. Thats all we got. That ring started back towards the hatch. There was very little velocity. Threefour minutes, maybe more it floated back into the hatch. It was right in front of my face and i grab that thing. I had it on my Little Finger when he got back inside. I said, i found it for you. Is a great story. [applause] that is a great story. Lets open it up for some questions. Raise your hands high few have a question. After apollo 11 nearly running out of fuel did you take more fuel and later flights . We had a bigger lunar module. We had more fuel, because its heavier, not because we needed more fuel to land. They were designed to stay for no more than 30 hours. We were designed for three days. It was a little bit longer. We had more feel because we were heavier and it was but it takes longer to land. Absentascent fuel was the same. I remember calling john and saying we have 4 . We had about 3 , maybe 4 , when we landed. With a heavier lunar module, i think the descent took a little longer. Any other questions . Can you talk a little bit about the lunar rover . How did that diploid from the lander . A little bit about that experience . The lunar rover was an ingenious design. The storage area for the lunar rover was live by five feet on the outside as you face the hatch in the latter. It was on the right side. The rover is 10 feet long. How do you get a 10 foot vehicle and a five foot square . What they did was they engineered it so the chassis was in three pieces. Right beyond the instrument panel, which was our foot well it was hinged. It was hinged they folded them in like landing gear on a narrow plane. They fold that over the instrument panel. The rear wills came in and they folded up over the seats, which were collapsed. We had four wheels touching. They bolted it to the outside of the spacecraft with the wheels towards the spacecraft. When we pulled off the mylar, we were looking at the bottom of the lunar rover. John, when he got out, he was first out, he pulled the pan that released the upper pens that held the rover there. Now it was only 10 to the bottom. Now it was only penned to the bottom. We had a set of police and we started pulling this thing which was really a jackscrew. We were moving a rod out that push the lunar module out like this. When it got out to 45 degrees, a cable got torn. It pulled all the pins in the things got folded. It worked. Now it looks like a car. We lowered it down. We understand unpinned it. We turned it around. John got in, powered up, and drove off. I must be junky. How fast were you guys going . Its hard to say. The odometer had a maximum reading of 17 kilometers per hour. We were all scaled high coming down off of stone mountain. Apollo 17 did the same thing. We said that we have the record. We agreed to share the record. You guys are so competitive. Im interested in your childhood and your interest in Space Exploration growing up. When i was a kid, it was long before the space program. Growing up in this little town in South Carolina after world war ii i did not go out in the backyard and tell my mother i was going to walk on the moon. My mother wouldve sent me to the Psychiatric Hospital back in those days. I can remember in high school watching some of the first contrails i had ever seen. The jet age was just starting back then. I would look up and say, that would be nice to make a contrail. I started thinking about the military. My dad had been in the navy during world war ii, so i decided i wanted to serve my country in the military. I chose the naval academy. I was in Flight School in 1957 when sputnik went up. It was october 4. My birthday is october 3. It was a big deal. I can remember that. A few years later, im in germany with the first group of astronauts. Little did i realize that once i got acted to m. I. T. For graduate degree i fell in love with airplanes at the naval academy. I became a Fighter Pilot in the air force. They sent me back to m. I. T. M. I. T. Have the contract to build the Navigation System in the instrumentation lab. I did my masters thesis on that system. I got to meet a number of the astronauts who were coming up to monitor the development of the system. They were so pumped up, so enthusiastic, so excited. I decided that maybe i could do that. They told me to go to test pilot school. I got selected after i volunteered. It was a year out there. Then we left for houston. I got selected. It was a stepping stone. I never only after m. I. T. Can i say i really wanted to be a national not. Up until that time, it was maybe out there. Other questions . Moon walker . I have one more. We have a guy right here. High, charles. Just a question on your take on the potential benefits that humankind can get out of exploring the moon . Where do we stand with our progress . Are we still in the analysis phase . To good questions. I think a lot of the benefit and space is twofold from the moon flights. Apollo was the basic science that we generated through six different experiment packages. We left of the orbital experiments that we did. The other was the technological benefits that were done to make apollo possible and the space program. I had just gotten back from the hundredth anniversary of the department of the m. I. T. They said apollo generated 88 times the return on our investment. That is a good deal. And investment an investment manager would like this kind of stats. There are a few technologies that will have to be developed to take us to mars, where we can not only explore mars but stay and have a reliable system that works. I would like to see is go back to the moon. I think there are some things we could do on the moon scientifically. Jack schmidt on apollo 17 is dying to get back and start mining helium three, a fusion will feel that leaves no radioactive decay, as i understand it. There is a lot of it up there. There is not so much down here. There are other things that can be generated. I think the moon would be a great place for to have a scientific base, like in antarctica. We can live and do the same on the moon. That would reap a lot of benefits if we could do that. To be honest, right now i dont see a real Strong Program to get out of earths orbit. There is a we mentioned about the russians going to fly circumlunar. The only spacecraft that we developed that i know of is the orion. The first light is supposed to be unmanned, coming up later this year. There is a new rocket that is 110 tons capable. Some people like it, some people dont. Finally, the commercial side of it is paying big dividends. To me, and im glad to see its happening, its whats it is what nasa has always done. Normally we would give them a design and say you build this thing. How much that going to cost us . They got a lot of skin in the game. Those guys that spacex and the others. To make it possible, its going to be government monday that will make it possible. It is an economic model. They get that from both them, spacex and boeing have signed contracts to supply the space station over the next two years. Its picking up again. I think we are getting some interests. If theres successful with their vehicles, it will be real need. I will have to wrap it. First of all, we will clap at the end for charlie and everybody. I want to thank everybody who has come out today to this great event for the ham radio contest frank bauer, presenters, what cunningham, brian binney, gregg olson, billing goals, charlie duke bill ingalls, charlie duke. I want to thank the cochairs. It would not have happened without that. Im sure this a lot of other people i could thank