Earthrise (7 page)

Landing a man on the Moon was no easy task. It was the result of decades of space exploration and preparation, and it was a careful and patient process with many valuable lessons learned along the way—even the painful ones.

After
Sputnik 1
was launched in 1957, the United States launched
Explorer 1
in 1958, which was our first man-made satellite. Great advances in space were made in America as well as in Russia during this time.

In the United States, NASA’s Project Mercury (the first US human spaceflight program, which ran from 1961 to 1963) proved that one man could orbit the Earth and return safely. Project Gemini (the second US human spaceflight program, which ran from 1965 to 1966) was designed to perfect important rendezvous and docking procedures that would be required for going to the Moon. Project Mercury and Project Gemini helped pave the way for a Moon landing and preceded the Apollo program, which landed men on the Moon from 1969 to 1972.

In 1961, the first humans to travel in space were Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, followed by American astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom.

America’s many astronauts, scientists, engineers, and physicians worked tirelessly to figure out how to fly humans in space, and how to do it in the best and safest way possible. In total there were 12 manned Apollo lunar missions: 1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Some of the missions were designed to orbit the Earth, some were designed to orbit the Moon, and some were designed to land men on the Moon. The Apollo lunar missions 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 landed men on the Moon, and the 12 astronauts who walked on the Moon were:

• Apollo 11
  

  Launch: July 16, 1969-Landing: July 24, 1969
  

  Neil Alden Armstrong (Commander)
  

  Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. (Lunar Module Pilot)
  

• Apollo 12
  

  Launch: November 14, 1969-Landing: November 24, 1969
  

  Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. (Commander)
  

  Alan LaVern Bean (Lunar Module Pilot)
  

• Apollo 14
  

  Launch: January 31, 1971-Landing: February 9, 1971
  

  Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (Commander)
  

  Edgar Dean Mitchell, Sc.D (Lunar Module Pilot)
  

• Apollo 15
  

  Launch: July 26, 1971-Landing: August 7, 1971
  

  David Randolph Scott (Commander)
  

  James Benson Irwin (Lunar Module Pilot)
  

• Apollo 16
  

  Launch: April 16, 1972-Landing: April 27, 1972
  

  John Watts Young (Commander)
  

  Charles “Charlie” Moss Duke Jr. (Lunar Module Pilot)
  

• Apollo 17
  

  Launch: December 7, 1972-Landing: December 19, 1972
  

  Eugene “Gene” Andrew Cernan (Commander)
  

  Harrison Hagan “Jack” Schmitt (Lunar Module Pilot)
  

I was with NASA for six years from 1966 to 1972, and I had six major astronaut assignments:

Project #1: Design a Moon Lander

Many of the spacecraft parts and systems for the Apollo program were constructed across the country and around the world, and it was very common to work in different cities other than Houston. My first big project at NASA was at the Grumman Aircraft facility in Bethpage, Long Island, where I helped design and test a state-of-the-art Moon vehicle called a Lunar Module (LM) that was appropriately named
Spider.
Every week I’d fly to Grumman in Long Island with fellow astronaut Fred Haise to work on this unusual spacecraft. I remember the first time Fred and I took a gander at the
Spider.
All we could say was, “Wow—how in the world is that thing supposed to fly us down to the Moon?”

But this bug-like spacecraft worked quite well. It was designed to carry two astronauts away from their main spacecraft, the Command Module, and then fly them to the surface of the Moon. It would then launch and fly the astronauts back up to the Command Module after their lunar work was done so the crew could return to Earth. It would also act as a miniature home where the astronauts would eat, sleep, and prepare for excursions on the surface of the Moon.

With its spindly legs, boxy parts, and shiny metallic covering, the LM looked like an elaborate invention cartoonist Rube Goldberg might have drawn. It was about 23 feet tall and its long legs could fold inward so it could be stored in the Saturn V launch vehicle.

The LM was strictly designed for function so it could land us on the Moon and get us off the Moon with minimum weight. The odd, unglamorous look of the LM wasn’t important; it didn’t need to be streamlined and aerodynamic because it was going to fly in the Moon’s airless, reduced gravity. And since it wasn’t going to return to Earth, it only needed to be strong enough to withstand the lunar landing.

The work Fred and I were doing was critical. We needed to make sure that this spacecraft was going to function efficiently and be completely safe on the Moon. We tested it over and over again from the astronaut’s point of view so that it was sensible to use and practical to fly. Fred and I checked and rechecked the cabin area for the location of instruments and gauges so that everything was easy to reach. We also had to conduct many tests of the vehicle in an altitude chamber that had zero air pressure.

After the Spider, eight more Lunar Modules were built:
Snoopy, Eagle, Intrepid, Aquarius, Antares, Falcon, Orion,
and
Challenger.

Training, Training, and More Training

“In order to equip each astronaut with an understanding of space-related problems and the knowledge he will need to solve them, a continuing program of astronaut training activities is conducted.” —Deke Slayton, NASA director of flight crew operations, 1968

It took a great deal of study and preparation to fly 240,000 miles to the Moon and then 240,000 back home again. For each mission the Apollo teams rehearsed for many months.

As astronauts in training, we practiced indoors, outdoors, on land, underwater, in the air, and, of course, in the many different devices that simulated the spacecraft we would eventually fly one day. We were launched, dropped, spun, and dunked in a variety of unique conditions. We did all of this ahead of time so we could experience the many sensations, noises, and vibrations of space flight as well figure out how it would feel to work in the weightlessness of space and the reduced gravity of the Moon.

Figuring out how to be prepared and survive in different environments was something I learned when I was a Boy Scout growing up in New Mexico. It’s interesting to note that of the 12 men who walked on the Moon, 11 were Boy Scouts. And now I was learning all sorts of new survival skills in preparation for my journey to the Moon. The astronauts had to be fully prepared for so many different tasks—being able to operate different kinds of spacecraft, being able to live and work in the spacecraft, landing on the Moon, working on the Moon, and then flying home. We also needed to know how to calmly handle any kind of problem or crisis we might encounter in space. None of this was taken lightly. It was serious stuff.

Exploring the Moon on Earth

A big part of our training was to figure out what it was going to be like to walk and work on the Moon once we got there. And the best way to learn about this unusual lunar environment was to travel to places around the world that were barren like the Moon and that also had craters.

NASA arranged for us to have geology field trips (GFTs) all over the planet, and I was amazed to learn about the many unusual “moon-like” worlds right here on Earth. From Texas to Iceland, we traveled to enormous craters, barren deserts, canyons, caverns, and areas with volcanic eruptions.

On our many GFTs we collected, measured, inspected, documented, and photographed all sorts of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. We were learning a lot about many different kinds of rocks so we could be the “eyes and ears” of geologists when we were on the Moon collecting Moon rocks.

One of my most memorable trips was to the volcanically active and very remote region of central Askja, Iceland, in July 1967. Known for its volcanic craters called calderas, this region had a very rocky terrain with black volcanic sand, as well as a large lake and hot springs. It was a misty, surreal place unlike anything I’d ever seen in my travels. And because we were there during the summer it seemed like the sun never set.

Another one of our major field trips was to the enormous Nördlinger Ries Crater in Bavaria, Germany, in August 1970. This large round depression on Earth was created by the impact of a gigantic meteorite millions of years ago. At Nördlinger Ries we were able to study rock formations that would be similar to those on the Moon also created by meteorite impacts.

We also explored other sites such as the Grand Canyon and the Meteor Crater in Arizona; the Big Bend region of west Texas; Bend, Oregon; Katmai, Alaska; Valles Caldera and Zuni Salt Lake, New Mexico; Pinacates, Mexico; the Big Island of Hawaii; Craters of the Moon in Idaho, and even areas of the Nevada Test Site.

We worked for many months in the field and essentially earned the equivalent of a master’s degree in geology in field training. This was a whole new area of study in my life, and I thought it was incredibly intriguing and helpful.

The Vomit Comet and the Torture Chamber

In addition to managing to work and survive in extraterrestrial places, we needed to be able to travel in our high-powered, rocket-based spacecraft. Our bodies needed to be able to withstand unusual G-forces, as with the liftoff of our rocket, or with zero gravity (zero G), which is the reduced gravity of being in space.

To experience the weightlessness of zero G, we either flew in high-speed aircraft or we went underwater. And to experience more than one G (increased gravity), as with liftoff, we’d spin incredibly fast in a centrifuge.

During what’s called parabolic training, the astronauts had the opportunity to feel short periods of weightlessness. We were able to do this in what we liked to refer to as the Vomit Comet because some of the guys would feel nauseous and toss their cookies, so to speak. We’d climb aboard a KC-135 aircraft that would shoot us up high in a steep trajectory and then descend rapidly in a free fall so we’d have about 20 to 60 seconds of zero G weightlessness, allowing us to float around the padded cabin. We practiced different maneuvers in the Vomit Comet wearing our space suits, and sometimes we’d take along lunar equipment, like the modularized equipment transporter (MET), to see how lugging this cart would feel in reduced gravity.

We also traveled to the naval base in Warminster, Pennsylvania, for training in the Johnsville centrifuge. We’d reluctantly climb in a steel orb called the Gondola, which was about 10 feet in diameter and suspended at the end of a long metal arm. Once we were buckled in, the device would spin us around and around at a G-force that would simulate rocket liftoff and reentry into the atmosphere. Nobody liked getting into this bizarre device that some of us nicknamed the “wheel,” the “torture chamber,” or the “gruesome merry-go-round.” But it gave us valuable information about how our bodies responded to movement, spinning, and the feeling of a heavy weight pressing against the body as happens during liftoff.

Zero G Under the Sea

Of course, one of the best places an astronaut can feel the weightlessness of zero gravity is underwater, so we were trained as scuba divers at the US Naval School for Underwater Swimmers in Key West, Florida. This training gave us an opportunity to learn how to navigate an aquatic environment; we learned basic principles like how to breathe in a strange environment that has no air, and how to become accustomed to new and unusual environments like the Moon. This training also prepared us for the time our space capsule would reenter Earth’s atmosphere and splash down in the ocean.

Braised Boas for Lunch?

It wasn’t a sure thing that our Command Module would be able to plummet from space and soar perfectly through Earth’s searing atmosphere to splash down at a specific location in the ocean. That was the plan, but in the event our capsule didn’t hit its watery target, or that it needed to return to Earth quickly, we needed to be prepared to survive in a variety of remote, hostile environments like the jungle or the desert. So, another important aspect of our work was survival training.