Apollo 11 Crew interview 1989

Apollo 11 was filled with uh vivid experiences. Uh one that comes to mind in my case is the uh flying through the moon shadow and seeing the uh sun eclipsed by the moon as we approached it. It was very spectacular site. Well, I think the uh the thing I remember most visually is um the ascent stage of the lunar module, the ascent stage of Eagle uh in front of my window and then in the background seeing the lunar horizon and seeing the Earth pop up above it. So that you had the horizon, the lunar module and the Earth all all in a row. I thought that was uh something that would rarely be seen again and I remember that most vividly. I think for me the the most memorable time uh may not have been one that uh the happening I was most aware of, but I've had occasion to challenge my memory and think back of uh those first few seconds when Neil and I touched down and and uh there was uh there were numerous things that uh we needed to do, but we also needed to announce to the world that we were there and then paused for a moment and things were quiet and we gazed out the window and it was just a magnificent view. And that's the most uh impressive memory that I carry now because I refer back to it so many times. I think perhaps uh the final descent to the lunar surface was uh for me the highlight of the flight. It was very challenging. Uh there were a lot of unknowns. Um and uh it was for a pilot that it it was u a wonderful experience. There u there's so many things that can go wrong on a trip to the moon and back. It's sort of a a long and fragile daisy chain of events. And I can remember being in the uh mobile quarantine facility, the little house trailer aboard the aircraft carrier after we landed in the Pacific and thinking, gee, none of them did. None of those little links broke. And to me, that was the amazing part that everything worked in some as well as it did. I think the most rewarding part of Apollo 11 was having it to be the major event in my life, which changed my life entirely. and uh gave me an opportunity to uh reorder priorities and chart a course off for the future based on a new life of of being a representative of the human race having done a very significant thing and it's enabled me to deal with that in a way where I feel very confident about the future and my participation in uh helping to shape the future of the space program. Well, every launch uh day is a a time of uh excitement, enthusiasm and apprehension, but I think uh in most circumstances uh you always feel that the chances of actually lifting offer are fairly distant remote and uh so you have to temper your enthusiasm with the realization that in fact you may be coming back in and trying to go another day. I u I agree with Neil. It it seemed to me at that time I was uh most interested in just getting that thing off. Above all, I did not want to recycle to have to empty out those gigantic uh fuel tanks and uh and try again a different day. I just desperately wanted to go on the uh on the 16th of July. I think the momentous uh most memorable thing that I can recall about that particular day was the opportunity while my uh my two friends here were being put into the spacecraft to stand alone by myself uh out there and and look at the rocket and the quietness and see the sun come up and the waves rolling in and the evidence of the millions of people watching but but nothing specific and just so quiet and to realize that indeed uh such a contrast was going to take place. All the frantic activity preparing the rocket, but it was so quiet up there for me personally and that in a very few moments we were going to be departing in a in a great roar and off for a momentous uh event. Well, I think the impressions of the moon started much earlier uh on our approach uh thousands of miles. As we got closer and closer, we could see more and more. As we got down into low orbit about the moon, we could see additionally more. We kept getting impressions. Uh then the final descent, you got closer and after landing, of course, then we were very close. We had hours to stand there a mere 15 ft say above the surface and uh look at pretty much uh everything that was available out the front windows. Uh we had a sense of the gravity uh the character of the of the environment there. So uh long before we actually got out on the surface, we already had pretty good appreciation for what the moon was like. I agree with Neil. There there are many different moons to uh to remember. The the one that we see from the Earth, the one that's in route, uh as we're sort of alone between the sun and the and the earth and the moon. Then as we approach the moon, it's a different one. When you're in orbit, you look down on it and it's a rather rough uh lonesome for boating uh location. Uh Neil had a much better view during the power descent of that transition right down to the surface. Uh, I think I was relieved by the ease that we had and being able to maneuver around. Uh, perhaps impressed by the the talcum powder nature of of the fine surface itself. As you'd look at a bootprint, it just was so smooth. Uh, just like you'd put your foot in in talcum powder. Uh, there it was just a many faceted uh, moon. It was a stranger to me uh before the mission, but it I now look back at it as somewhat of a friend, a place that I've visited. Uh well, the thing about the u the moon that I thought was peculiar was that it seemed to depend on the uh the angle of the sun. And um when the sun was almost overhead and it was noon down below, the uh the moon appeared to be a warm and a friendly place. Uh on the other hand, near dawn or dusk, it became uh very uh foreboding looking. The craters cast very long shadows and the place looked uh distinctly unfriendly. So I I was intrigued by the the contrast based purely on the what angle the sun happened to be coming from. Well, I enjoyed being in the command module by myself. It was a a happy little home. Uh all the machinery was working properly. Uh and uh my my concerns were not within the command module, but simply that something might go wrong with the uh lamb with the lunar module and these two guys might get stuck on the surface of the moon. That was my my main concern. Well, of course, all three of us had u flown in orbit before and seen uh seen the wonders of Earth as seen from space. This was a new experience for us in seeing it from a fairly long distance away. Does probably have a a change in in character uh as you become far farther away. I think you most notice that though at the time you leave Earth uh when you're departing at at a great rate. It's it's very clear that this is an unusual experience. Well, the u the earth as it appears from the moon uh is a very uh small and fragile object. Uh and when you think about it, that's not a inaccurate description. Uh certainly a lot of the uh things that we do down here uh can affect the uh the balance in a very uh fragile way. the uh the u greenhouse effect we're noticing today. For example, uh the changes uh between a healthy atmosphere and an unhealthy atmosphere are very subtle, very very fragile. And uh you sort of get that feeling when you look at the uh at the earth from a great distance. When we're on the surface of the moon, uh even though the the earth was only a slight slight 24° off the vertical, uh there was no uh traction on my part to divert my attention from from where we were and what we were doing to look up at it. Uh except for the one time when we tried to take a a moving picture or a stirring picture, a memorable picture and uh it it certainly in retrospect looked awfully small. Uh personally uh there was a time when uh when an ironic thought sort of filtered through my mind that here Neil and I were so far away from uh home much further than people had ever been. And yet at that same time there were more thoughts, concerns back so far away on what it is that we were doing at that very moment. And I thought that was very unique in the history of mankind. of course we did go back a number of times after our departure. uh and uh for a combination of reasons uh that program was terminated in favor of other new initiatives. Uh do think there's an increasing momentum to uh to go back to the moon. There studies of the moon are indicating more and more new reasons why uh does make sense to go back. But uh I'm not in a position to say right now when we might make that next trip. I'm I'd prefer to see us go to Mars rather than go back to the moon unless we need the moon as a stepping stone to Mars. It could be that in studying Mars you will discover that the best way to do it is by way of a of a base on the moon. And if that turns out to be the case, uh well and good. But uh I I see the moon really not as an end in itself but really a stepping stone to uh to deeper space to Mars and to the planets beyond. I look back on on those days now uh of uh landing on the moon and I try and put myself in the position of the historians maybe even off into the future that look back and and see that it was an international uh challenge and response that prompted the president to chart a course for this nation to go there. And uh but getting to some specifics, I'm I'm a guest that uh just uh almost exactly uh 6 years to the day after we left the Earth to go to the moon and land, we launched a mission that in essence gave the Soviets the ability to say that they're equal to us technically. And then we proceeded in the next six years not to even fly one human in space. And I think it's going to be inconceivable when future historians look back and see that uh what what a tremendous capability was put together by one nation and then it was uh sort of set aside and and laid to rest. I hope that we don't do that in the future. I feel that as humans expand outward that they should be in a in a gradual uh continuous self- sustaining way and I suspect that it will involve visiting the moon simultaneously or in in melding together with our uh our growing visits of humans to Mars. I I would expect to see them happening at about the same time and we'd use the moon where necessary to prove out things. Uh I agree with Mike that the nation needs a strong uh goal, strong objective and Mars is a much clearer one to uh use as our compelling drawing force into the future. Well, there can be some very attractive cases made for going to Mars. Some of the various uh approaches to doing that in both manned and unmanned uh machines uh seem to be very persuasive to me. I'm not surprised. Uh I would have preferred that we would have already had a permanent presence in in space. Uh however, it takes 10 years or so to accomplish any big project these days. Uh, and I understand that now we're uh perhaps we'll have freedom up in in the middle of the '90s. And I hope that's true. Well, I would advise them not to take my advice. Um it's a rapidly changing uh world. Uh science and technology evolve at a rapid pace. U the things that my experience would dictate are three decades old and are probably not applicable today. But uh I do uh I am encouraged by the fact that there are so many people asking those questions which uh seems to assure me that our uh future has a great deal of uh promise. Well, I think a Martian astronaut would probably be better off studying uh the voyages of Vosco de Gama or Lewis and Clark rather than he would uh listening to uh to three people who'd spent only only 8 days out on the on the road. Uh round trip for a Mars mission is going to be in the vicinity of 2 and 1/2 years. And that's uh close in duration to to those of the early explorers. I think Mike's right. Uh uh a trip to Mars is going to be a very long and involved and and a major segment of a person's life and and there's going to be a lot of times to be thinking about it, discussing it uh in route beforehand and and and afterward. Uh I I I don't know as our advice would be that pertinent to to anyone at that time. People who come here to this museum and uh and look at our spacecraft Colombia are most often struck by its small size. Uh which from their perspective is understandable. Uh from our point of view, uh the command module was uh a wonderful improvement over our previous spacecraft which were really cramped and so uh we enjoyed the the luxury of a big volume machine. Yeah, I thought we had amazingly good accommodations. Uh we had hot and cold water. The food was even edible. Uh, all in all, it was uh it was a it was a nicely uh packaged uh uh small enclosure and uh we could comfortably have stayed there far in excess of 8 days. I think it was a treat. It was certainly a a major step upward. It was a marvel of technology and uh had the company of two uh enjoyable people to to keep us uh occupied. uh things occasionally would get to to drag a little bit and I think in a very long duration mission inside the command service module but thanks to the experiences that we'd had previously in flight we saw to it that there were adequate windows and and quite a few of them to look out I think that's a very key thing in the future to provide good uh outside visibility for Here we go. In our simulations, we're accustomed to having a large number of these kinds of difficulties. and we had in fact simulated uh landing with very small amounts of fuel left. So, uh I didn't feel that this was an oppressive uh situation. Not that we weren't concerned about it. Uh we certainly were because they were serious matters, but uh they were felt to be within our ability to make proper judgments on on turn it over to Buzz. some simulations had indicated uh in missions beforehand that uh that the ground controllers needed to know a little bit more about some alarms. So that uh the senior director had directed that uh a number of people do some research on it. So it was not uh perhaps as totally as much a surprise to them maybe as it was to us. Uh I'd not been involved in uh in a particular simulation where some computer alarms like that had come up. Uh I think the major concern that we had was we we felt we needed a confirmation as soon as possible from the ground and the uh computer alarms did uh interrupt uh what both of us were doing was which was a systematic surveying for myself of the inside of the uh cockpit and Neil was concentrating his attention on outside and as soon as a computer alarm would go off and it would display something he'd have to stop looking outside uh where he should be looking to to see what was happening and then we'd have to get a response from the ground as to uh what the nature of that was, clear the display and then be able to proceed on. So, it became a bit of an interruption. Uh I I think the the followon crews certainly benefited tremendously by our coming uh marginally close in fuel and I'm sure they had a much greater incentive to land with a with a more significant margin. Well, actually, I didn't worry about it until after landing because uh I guess in my own view, we didn't have that good a chance of completing a successful landing. Uh but it was I did think about it between the the time of landing and the and the time when we actually exited the spacecraft. Buzz and I did that. Well, I think it certainly was. Uh there there was a lot of discussion before we went just how uh certainly we represented all of mankind. The the plaque that we left on the surface of the moon uh indicated that uh here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon. We came in peace for all mankind. But I think uh all of us were uh with varying degrees of uh some service to our country uh that that had been a major investment in our life. Uh were uh most aware that this was a national response to perhaps an international challenge of our uh capabilities and in engineering and technical uh prowess uh by the Soviets. in it. We certainly were in in retrospect responding in a sense and charting a course which uh was a national response and because of the major events that uh took place as a result of the teamwork that we had between the government the academia and and industry. Uh I certainly felt that the American flag is what belonged there. It's characteristic of previous explorations to uh to plant a symbol uh upon arriving at a new shore. And it indeed was uh a philosophical moment of achievement. It was also a technical challenge as we found that the flag didn't exactly uh uh perform as we uh put it together and uh it didn't stick in the ground exactly the way we thought it would. There was no breeze to wave it. So we had to maybe artificially create a little breeze. So it was a great mixture with a I think a sense of pride and uh and it will be a remembering event photographing uh individuals alongside the flag. Of course, it so happened that uh environmental awareness u increased uh during the same period in history that uh space travel evolved and there have been various uh efforts to correlate those uh those two uh events. Uh certainly the views from space have uh have given all of humanity an increased uh appreciation and awareness of uh this planet. The earth does appear fragile from space. Uh part of it is is simply it's so small. It's about the size of your thumbnail if you hold your your arm out at full length. And uh it of course is uh absolutely spherical. uh atmosphere is not apparent. It uh it shines. It bounces the sunlight very well. So you have this very small, very shiny spherical object and somehow it just appears to me at least extremely fragile. That would be the uh the one most uh fundamental quality that it projects is one of fragility. I don't know why, but it but it does. I think it's nice to uh imagine that Voyagers uh going out to land on on another object would reflect back during the mission on on how fragile the Earth was. Uh I have to be honest with you, I was particularly concerned about what we were doing. It was a narrow corridor of that fragile body uh in the atmosphere that we we had to aim for and that would enable us to get back. I think after the fact, reflecting back, certainly uh technology and the advanced advanced nature of society in using resources has caused us to become more sensitive, more concerned about our environment because we're using things, materials, resources that tend to damage that. But I think the advancement of technology as evidenced by the space program holds with it also the keys to better monitoring of the rate of dangerous uh approach to to any condition that is endangering our environment. And I think also uh it may be that space provides the means of alternate energy sources or at least uh projecting energy from space back to the earth. If indeed the production energy right now through fossil fuels or through uh some other means including uh nuclear generation uh wants us to to to move away more from from earth and the production energy. So I think the advancing technology as evidenced by the space program is evidence of our cause of concern about the atmosphere but it also is our approach to the answers and the solutions of our environmental problems. uh to me the important thing is that we learned that human beings can operate successfully on the surface of another planet. Uh we don't have to stay here on Earth. we have a choice of where we want to go and stay either here on earth or on the moon or beyond the moon on a place like Mars. I think that was the uh to me the fundamental lesson of Apollo. We can uh can operate successfully in places other than the surface of the earth. I it going to the moon certainly was a first expedition uh departing the earth and viewing back on the earth and and in its very simplistic initial uh challenges that it gave us. It gave us uh ways of looking at at other planets in the universe and and gave us a better perspective as to how to look back on our own planet and and to make judgments as to its origin and perhaps some of the dangers that it might face in the future and how to go about uh analyzing that. Certainly the the moon had many contrasts. It's not a live tectonic uh body. It's a it's a very dead object. uh created by combinations of volcanism and and meteorite impact. Uh rather than answering many questions, I think it raised many more questions, but certainly our level of understanding was immeasurably increased. And it's not for us necessarily to to give the best appraisal of that. I'm I'm very reluctant to advise young people as to what to study. U the the requirements for space travel keep keep changing. U they might want a test pilot one day, a physicist the next, a medical doctor the following Tuesday. I I think what is important is that children uh do well in whatever field they uh they choose. I think excellence uh is is the key to it and I think uh excellence in is a lot more important than excellence in a particular field. Excellence in whatever field they they feel suits them best. Space uh and its uh frontier certainly are new and and challenging. Uh and because they're new and challenging, they're also uncertain. And I think anyone aspiring that as a career field has to be equipped with a lot of patience and the ability to cope with things not turning out exactly the way they may perceive that they would ahead of time. [Music] is gorgeous. [Music] [Music] [Music] Please. Come on. It's the producer to the shuttle. That's how the shuttle's body. 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