Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20140828

Those are nasa engineers over there and this was the world that was normal to them and that the wives tried very hard to keep normal and grounded. You kind of alluded to how much the wives seem to change after the Apollo Program and i was wondering if you could share some of the astronauts of the wives thoughts on what was it like when that ended and did they feel like it should continue and almost is there almost is there a sense of ptsd among the families . Yeah, i think everyone is pretty sad when nixon ended the Apollo Program and these wives kyc today and i think in history they will continue to be seen. Ive told this to them as sort of our pioneer space women. They were the pioneers. Their husbands were doing something we had never done before. You know, just the surreal moments of going out in your backyard as jane conrad remember to me when her husband was up there on apollo 12 Walking Around the moon and a house that just cleared out. She had all the wives over for a party. It was about 5 30 in the morning and she wandered out by the pool. She looked at the moon and just sort of stared at it. I think we can all feel this when we look at the moon and think wow we went up there as a country, as human beings. She said wow. She looked at them and then suddenly remembered when she was a little girl how she used to look for the man in the moon. Then she said this is trippy. My husband is the man in the moon, you know . She said for this one moment she had almost this mystical feeling of clarity. After all this was the late 60s. People were into that spiritual stuff. She said it basically vanished in a moment and there she was going inside to do the dishes. So moments like that but to get back to the fallout after the Apollo Program, i think probably the most prominent example is looking at buzz aldrin and his wife joan. Buzz like many of the guys had a very hard time coming back from the moon after the flight the families of the crewmembers and their their wives would go in these taboos around the world tours especially after apollo 11. They went all over the world presenting moon rocks and lucite cases. The queen of england ephedra, heads of state and while they were on the steward joan shared her diary with me that she kept. She starts seeing buzz spiraling out of control. He has been outspoken about his alcoholism and depression that he dealt with after coming back from the moon and that was something john felt acutely changed her life. She and those ended up getting divorced. They have three kids. She has this one entry in her diary where she says you know, shes trying to tell buzz i think our lives will eventually return to normal and buzz just look at her and he said joan, i have been to the moon. Nothing is ever going to be the same. I think that was true for many of the families. Lily when we were in the book tent yesterday we saw the new book youre talking about and you mentioned how you flipped a page in a magazine in the story came to life. If you have a moment at the end will you talk about the red leather diary and the incident that caused you to almost flip the page and find a a book theyre . Sure, i will. I will say that for a moment. I havent read the book but i look forward to reading it. My question, dont know the ages of the woman you are referring to but that my question is in your research with them to the idea ever come up for the conversation of the commercialization with space travel and would any of them end up touting the galactica, would they do that themselves . We should send these astrowives into space. A great idea. It has many of them what they thought about going into space because back in the 60s, i spent a lot of time with my life magazine of course then you have these articles about you know we are going to be putting up the hilton out there in a couple of the astronauts have the crackpot scheme that they would open a chain of a w wrote their stance on the moon when we eventually colonize. Some of the wives will sound like a former tough morning. A woman named below Cunningham Said i would have gone up there in a heartbeat. Trudy cooper who was an early pilot who ended up flying in a power puff derby would have been up there in a minute but some of the wives are like are you kidding . I want to stay down here with my feet on the ground or you know 0g for me and of course they all hoped we would continue to explore space and push the envelope as their husbands used to say. I will just mention very briefly the red leather diary. My first book because i think it reflects on why i want to tell this kind of story. I grew up in chicago and moved to new york to go to bernard which is the Womens College of columbia university. It was really in new york. Im a city girl and my husband is from georgia so we absolutely love savannah. It was in new york with that density of people and i think Walking Around and looking at these Old Buildings and all these windows that led up that i realized sort of naively i guess a young woman, just the incredible amount of Untold Stories and how everybody has a story and somehow i just wanted to be able to reveal some of those distant stars i guess. Very serendipitously i have to say i feel quite lucky. One of our dogs is named lucky but strange things happen to me. Or maybe i see the world in a different way and so i notice things that seem almost fairytale like like they are meant to be. I came out of my first Apartment Building in new york shortly after he graduated and was working at a news clerk at the New York Times which i would say is like the Devil Wears Prada but without the product. Lots of bowties and the oldschool newsman who would give me bits of advice. I really wanted to be a novelist which im actually going to return to for my next project which is going to be fiction. I came out of a building and there were something to do to resist which was a dumpster. Not an ordinary dumpster because it was filled i could see with about 50 old steamer trunks. These are the old kinds that were brought on the titanic. Vintage labels from paris and monaco and the french line. Listen i am not a dumpster diver by trade but i do love vintage clothing and a good story. What do i do . At 10 00 in the morning. I literally climb on top of this dumpster and you are all looking at me very oddly. I start going to these things and their old flapper dresses on the vintage collection of handbags and among the sort of urban treasure rack was a red leather diary kept by a woman from 1929 to 1934 at the height of the depression. A long true fairytale short i ended up tracking down the diarys owner at 90 with the help of a private investigator and befriending her. She had wanted to be a writer. She hosted a literary salon. She was a renaissance woman who had love affairs with men and women as a young woman. Her story had spoken to me so much that i ended up telling the story of how this chronicle made its way back to her and was sort of given as a gift to the rest of the world. I think telling that forgotten womans story was very intriguing to me. Little things i remember from professors saying to me at school the good stories often little margins are footnotes that decide the page. Its not the typical heroic motto but its the other side of the coin. I think certainly it was that tradition and that desire and hunger to tell redemptive women stories. Telling an untold story but there is also an emotional catharsis for the subject when their story which has been sort of under the radar is finally revealed to the world. I know from speaking to the wives that not only did this book taken back in time but i think that they feel very gratified that people care about their story and i dont think many of them call themselves heroes. They were so in support of their husbands and were saying that as is arrogant and inappropriate. I certainly see them as heroines myself. I think they have the right stuff. So im going to end there and thank you so much. [applause] host hi i Michael Neufeld and i am at carrier at the space museum and im here to talk to jay barbree about his book shepard by referee on the space program. Its very nice to talk to you. Guest thank you very much. Host why did you decide to write this book . Guest neil and i talked about it for about 20 years because we had been Close Friends for half a century. I did a book with Alan Shepherd called moonshot. It was on the New York Times bestsellers list and he did the introduction of that. So we had talked because he wanted to come he want a biography. He wanted a story of his life a flight. He felt that anything he did any of the other astronauts could do especially jim lovell or tom stafford. He was one of them to get equal credit. He never thought of himself as being anything special but he wanted the story of the flight told than we were going to do it and when he passed away we have already worked one chapter out and i decided to go ahead because you know and do the flight. Suddenly it made sense. I looked around and all the people from apollo practically all all of them are gone. We have to realize that over half the people on the planet where you can hear when he walked on the moon. Anyone less than 45 years old because the 45th anniversary is coming up this next week. So anyway they were saying to me the other astronauts jay if you dont do it whos going to do it . So we need neil story. Jim lovell calls it a great book and the answer to neils legacy. We did our level best to try to get this done. We have had a heavy library sale advance sale so thats great. We were trying to get neil story in the libraries for history and hopefully we have taken a shot at it and hopefully we have done good. Host there was one earlier biography the first man. Guest as the official, thats his official biography. Hes signed to do that and this is not a biography. Its her recreation of his story on direct observation and research generally referred to as a repertoire. That is what it is. I hate biographies. Host you have already done to better cause i biography somewhere between biography and autobiography. The other was the shepherd book. Guest that was the moonshot i was talking about. Host in terms of how you started this book was that because you had a friendship with Neil Armstrong going back a long time and when did you meet him . Guest i met him in 1962 when he came in with the gemini 9 the second groups of astronauts. There were a couple of personal things in 1964. He lost a young girl, karen and she died of a brain tumor at the age of two. It was really difficult for neil. I lost a young son and one morning he came into the Howard Johnson on cocoa beach. This was 1964 and i was talking with wally sharad. My wife was in the hospital and he looked and he said who shot your dog . I told them i said well i told him about it. He and i got to talking about it. Most people didnt know he even had a daughter let alone that he had lost her. That was while he was flying the x15 out of edwards which is now named after Neil Armstrong. Its been Neil Armstrong research center. So anyway we just got to a point that we were trusted friends is what i like to say. The ap people say you were neils best friend and i say i wasnt neils best friend. I dont know who the heck neils best friend was. We were trusted friends and we work together. When the challenger blew up he was called to be the vice chairman to actually do the investigation. I broke the story two days later on the tom brokaw show and the first person to comment when i got off the air was neil. He said what do you know that you didnt tell brokaw . I said i told brokaw everything. We worked together on that in all through in a couple of times wanted to get started on the book and never did. There was nothing special about it until that morning. The two children. Right. Then it grew. I, i would like to give the viewer just a little background. He started when . I started for nbc news 1958. Ahead been covering the launch is that since april of 58. Also, i was a veteran when alan shepard flew. 1961. I didnt set out to do it, but i wound up covering every flight by american astronauts. There have been 166 of them. Was fortunate enough if the look on the inside, the cover of the book youll see a picture of me on the air when kneele made the step of the month. You can see him across Mission Control stepping off on the surface of the moon. I knew some things. You know, he told me some things. Even though he is passed on, will not break that confidence. We had a working agreement. Being a reporter generally if i say to you, the discussion is not off the record. But with kneele you had that there to protect. So before i would use anything and will say, pillhead. Yet we never had a situation where he fully chose to me. I was lucky that i got a lot of reports from kneele behind the scenes. And he was investigating the challenger accident as vice chairman he and i talked a couple of times a week. Captain up today on what i had and all of that choice. Did you know, we work together. He came, forays into the way nbc decided to give me. [indiscernible] they said to me you cant invite anybody because the wheels are coming down from nbc in new york. Finally they called me and said, you can invite three astronauts. Okay. I invited kneele and john glenn. And they were in the book of pictures of him. It went through general training together. That is where their started even though there were from the same state. So alan shepard was dead. I could not invite alan shepard. I invited commercial spirit of three of them came. I was very lucky. Kneele did go anywhere. But he came down. He and john had earlier that year ask me to come up to cleveland and keynote what they called the 500 club. They had all 19 after runs from ohio. I did the keynote. We just had a great time. Theres a picture in the beginning, the introduction to the book. My wife and myself and kneele sitting at the table laughing. John glenn was up to extend up, the. Anyway, that was sort of the way things went. But i never did anything on the air without saying, hey, i want to do this. And that was the relationship you established early on, released after the 1964 encounter. Before that time he just was kind of anonymous to most people. Of course he was terribly shy maybe its too strong, but he was certainly very reserved and private. He was a very private person. He would think everything out. If you ask him a question he would think it through before he would answer to make sure he did not give you an answer that wasnt true that he would have to change later. He was called the quickest pilot that ever lived and the slowest person ever to answer you. So you probably know the mercury astronauts very well at the time of the fed chairman 99. Yes. Of those guys in those days and the press corps, the astronauts. There were no others. Was there any pump in the road in the transition, interbreeding nine new guys into already a wellestablished group . Several. We got a great chapter in there. It involves kneele and tom, the innkeeper down there. These guys are sort of standoffish. The after air way into the club. So, you know what you guys need to do. You need to throw a dinner for the. Naked black tie. Show the respect and all of this. He said, put it together. Well, anyway, the first words that came out of his mouth were, who is going to pay for this . Is said, well, the hotel will pay for it. Tom went to the Naval Academy of scholarship. I even though he went in the air force and became a threestar general, he retired as a threestar general afterwards. But his mother had to borrow. His father was dead and his mother had to borrow the money to buy the bus ticket to send him to the full scholarship to annapolis. He was very tight with money. And as one of the jokes, he said the last time the stafford picked up a check she was hitchhiking. They get together and cut to the chase on it. They brought in guys in taxes, the best of wines. When they sat down for dinner, you know, they brought it out. It was supposed to be fried feel with of ron potatoes. What it was, it was fried cardboard. The silence had been sitting in the son of the. They all had a big laugh. This culture,. Oh, but thats the pilots. They always did that. Practical jokes. And the turtle club. I will not surrender that . I was reading about someone the other day. You had to answer. If he didnt yet to by everybody drink. No matter if the priest was standing there not. So why was he chosen as one of the nine . Were the qualities he had . Well, he was a Fighter Pilot in the carrying war. He came back. The god end of this program that they had to my training program. I forget the name he had done the scholarship. Hear what they were to do, part of the rotc, naval rotc program. It was special program. Its in the book. Anyway, he had gotten in and was supposed to spend two years at perdue. Then he was to go for training and and come back. Well, after he had been there about three years the navy needed pilots says. The pluck them out. So he actually went over. A Fighter Pilot on the s6. He had not gotten his bars yet. He had his wings. One of the few that flew as a midshipman. Come so on september 3rd 1951, born august 5th. And so he was whatever, that much over his 21st birthday. And they went on our run. When they went down for the second pass he released his last ball. He was flying the wing of major john carpenter. The division lead. And as kneele came a about 500 feet off the ground here was this anti aircraft cable jeff kopp was. He had to fight to keep it going the use tram. Over a 350 not. About 20 feet off the ground and came back. He managed to now sit back up. He can land on the carrier because he could not slow it down enough without rolling. He stayed with the men arrested back to a marine base in korea. He ejected just as it went out over the cn came down and landed. They got it back. But when the navy put out the story, the Navy Public Affairs put out that the in the cable, a guide wire is what they put out to a powerful. And it took about 3 feet of his wingtips. He kept trying to get that changed. He did work to lord added because he didnt talk that much to begin with. He did the stars and stripes. And so he just said, i brought this up. About 3 feet. Six to 8 feet. He says, yall. It was an antiaircraft table. So that my we were talking and a few other things happen. So anyway, he told me, i would like to have that. This book would been talking about, that would be obviously the opening chapter. Were talking about your life a flight. Were not talking about your whole life. Your life of flight. So that would be the perfect opening chapter. I sat down and wrote it, printed up a mini melt it. Dejected. Well, thats our opening chapter. I can never quite bring into the computer. He couldnt do it. Taken bring himself to the point. He finally looked at me and said , we got the landing. You go ahead and do it. Do it on their own. Youre a pilot. The pilot, i couldnt even carry your lunch box. Then when he passed on. We decided to talk to him for a while. I have to bring this up. I hear that the family was upset with the initial advertising of the book, it was the authorized pyrography. Oh, no. No. No. What happened was, youre familiar. Since this is a rough out addition of the book reading go out and pick out of the mistakes well, i wrote nothing for. You have people who just ride the most grandiose things they can think of. There rhoda was neals best friend. It was an alternate starter blair roofie. Adelle remember exactly. But it was all wrong. And jump, then immediately remove season wheatley. She is neils attorney. She was attorney for the trust and his estate. Shes also his widows attorney. I explained all of that. They are a wonderful family, but they lack their private people. And one of the reasons why i dont do autobiographies is because any person who has any experience, they said never dual biography. The family will drive you absolutely nuts. It will pick over every line. Dont do it. Well, dont do me wrong, no one in neals family, what i did as a courtesy. I simply send carol the first three that they could look at. It was never a biography from the beginning. Its a repertoires. Anyway, i offered her, you may have any part of the book you wish. He would like to join me in anything like that. I said the same thing to rick and mark. Of course they said no. I dont know if there really thought out of a chance i had have getting a substantial publisher like and and everything here. But it doesnt matter. Have been sending them everything. A thing mark called of and said he resented. I said, we talked about this for 20 years. We can change that. I go back. 1992 cover your father wrote for moonshot, the introduction, and was played by Michael Reagan have it turn a publishing. He was part of that. He was going to be on the whole book, but at the time he was going through the divorce. I think that he just didnt want to do with that time. And looked at him and said the lease to the interjection. Well met with Michael Reagan in atlanta. So he didnt plead we talked about this of the book. If you look, the stories we did together and everything culver cushioned 20 years the spin of the fence. It is still People Living the witnesses of this. Mastax of female that i still have and our conversations between the allies. Theres no question fatter. Certainly that is not the jacket flap copy now. Twenty years is something. Its interesting the you dont think of it as a biography its pretty biographical to me. And noticed this choice to only do one career story and pretty much move on his great uncle dustoff head to one. I could care less. What we wanted to do was to the flight. He was so extraordinary. This should be done. As you know, its very creation of an event placed on the direct observation, which was never all of. Another example, of course, chairman capotes first blood. He went out there. In cold blood. Right. He went out there. He was not there to witness it, but he went out there and interviewed the people in got to know that two killers and was with them throughout the process so that was his. That and i just love harper lees to kill a mockingbird. Truman capote. Right. Top of france. And another example is Tennessee Williams streetcar named desire. Down in new orleans. Its a technique. You just recreating something. You are comfortable basically writing dialogue, conversations. As an historian i am a little more cautious about writing a conversation without a very sound source. Youre seeing it more of a recreation. Well, i am recreating it. Plus the fact was there. What i did on dialogue to my tried to get everything absolutely correct. What i did was, there is, as you know, a transcript of every word spoken by him. You can see that. Let me put a little caveat in here. There are also back channels when they talk to a flight directors that doesnt go on this. Now, he also told me this direct, the stuff that i have in there. And ive done it quoted as closely as i can get it. I have guys. He told me this periods during the conversations, they talked about him being the commander of apollo 11. So i have those. I have transcripts of them. He is giving to me. He and i talked about it. He told me now, for example they saw when they were going out on apollo 11, they looked back. This saw flashing light. It appeared like it was following them. Was a flashing light that would flash, go away, and come back, go wind come back. His son neil thought it was something manmade. He didnt think it was aliens. And then they got a little carried away with it. When it comes back into the point neil called him pretty says, but you got anything . We got stuff for one another. I said yes. Well, that was a very sensitive spy satellite, a national asset. It was still in orbit. It would go over if the sun was exactly right. You would get that. So i knew exactly what it was, and i told him. And we told them. Lets get off of it. Certainly conspiracy theorists around the astronauts of which there are way too many already. But to get back to the flight story, after a career the next big thing is the 15. Maybe you can just tell the viewers a little bit about that experience. Well, when kneele got out and came back and finish his engineering degree and everything at perdue, when he got out he wanted to go to the na dca which was the predecessor to nasa. And because that was a civilian agency that was doing exploration and flight, he wanted to be a Research Test pilot. And you want to be at edwards. So he applied. Very likely, his record, his drive. They did not have an opening. They had an opening at the Lewis Research center in cleveland. And so they cant the also replying goal of there. He went up there. All he had was an old dual p51. 347. I forget what the navy called it. As soon as that happened he goes out to edwards. A gets in as a civilian. He threw everything out there, did everything they told him to do, his copilot. He did after to the first. And it became an outstanding in his ex 15 flights. For people who dont know, that was a rocket. Does it take you to the edge of space. The highest think he ever went was 37 nautical miles. That was lovely call the file. Of the top of the atmosphere. He came back. When he came back over basie was supposed to be in a position and come down and land. So he went in his thinking is almost dead the rose bowl. Quite get there. He came back and landed. Taking bets on whether or not its going to make it back again that was right after care is death. Says he had absolute control. And then when he because for example, the chief flight director of nasa, the program in germany, he was with him out there as the research before nasa. All of those guns together. The new deal. They all felt that kneele was a step above the air force of the navy guys. I think he was. He would never tell you he thought he was. So theyve really wanted him. There were disappointed. Hes thinking, he had every reason to believe that he would be chief press pilot of a kristine. But then when he saw shepherd go up and of course when gary and went before that and realize, of going to go. Is going to be on top of rocket. When it came around to filling out the job 99 he did. He was glad to see it. I think eisenhower actually specified. Given an opportunity to apply. I dont know if they were saying you couldnt be. They did so much behind the scenes. In the head so much speculation. It was so hard to cut through that. People came up and said is likely to be the first in space. John f. Kennedy. This is the type of stuff you get. And neil, you know, he was a despot. Was one of the reasons why he steered away. It did not hate the president. He preferred not to talk to him. Anyway, so much of that going on. He was building quite a reputation for a self. In situations where he and the other guy he was flying with brought the beach 29 backed out of a test flight. And they wanted him, they really wanted fan he left the program and went in to nasa. It was the first to walk in space. That was really a very strong group. I have heard other restaurants said it bought the mine was the strongest protest pilots. Even stronger than the mercury. Oh, yeah. There were Better Qualified the fact that they were in position for apollo. So anyway, neil was considered the top of when he flew his turn on the geminate, he not only flew the first docking in space, the first emergency return from space. The way he handled that, out of contact Mission Control. And its one of the reasons why he and i talk so often. What we should be doing today in space is we should be flying out in increments. We have not been out of earth orbit in 43 years. Avalon of stuff going on today, commercial space and all of that which is great in itself, but this is like twa and Eastern Airlines and all coming in. There arent doing anything different than weve not been doing. But youve got to get out and explore and do it in increments. The biggest problem weve got to go beyond hours is to deal with the radiation. Once were out of the protection of the my gallegus for for radiation we have to learn how to deal with it. If we do go ahead and go and send a crew out there with the radiation, there would be babbling its when they get there. You simply cant do it. You have to come up with something that protection, do it in increments. The steward in threes. Tucket any further away than three seconds from communication with she can get out. Now, when you learn how to live in space, you get out, when you can live out there, when you know what its doing and you can fly absolutely safe, go the next. This is what we point out and the book. That should be it. Meanwhile, everyone is talking about it. And everything like this. Thats fine. Theyre doing commercial. If they can to satellites, lets find. If we want to build on that, we have to go are and explore. We have to go beyond what we already know, go beyond the space station, we have to do that. Thats what kneele wanted us to do on a program. We could do it. I want to return to that at the end if we have time. I did one year to just tell the viewers a bit. People, if they know anything then no apollo 11. Tell them about the story. Well, you know jim and i was the bridge between mercury and apollo and it was the first spacecraft you could change robert with. With the mercury all they did was put it in orbit. Once it was in orbit it had control jets. They could position their attitude but they couldnt do anything else. With germany they could fire a larger burst of rockets and change the orbital path. Therefore they could talk with one another. Things that had to have to go to the moon. They tried a couple of things. It didnt work. They lost a couple of the target rockets. So when he flew he flew geminate they get up. He practiced this. He had to work. He worked every way he cared to be able to catch this target and dock with it. Nobody had done that. This is a big thing. They have problems doing it. It came off like clockwork. And we on go to bed. It night. Everybodys feeling wonderful. Well, they go of context of missing control. Over china all of a sudden the spacecraft starts spinning. The first day he thinks, well, thats his gyro. One choice. So then they started fighting this. They immediately suspected it was the regina and fall. And so anyway, getting greater and greater. Got to the point where there were almost 400 revolutions a minute and all ready to pass out. Plant to make the decision to get off of that when there were going to pass out. And they did. He made it. Order to get enough rocket power to get off of that he had to fire the a section of his return rocket. To return sections. Then the body. So he fired the eight banks, got it under control and un document. As soon as the hon gotten everything they thought well , thats it. They start spending again. Then he realized it was joined by eight. They kept turning off. They got down, found the culprit. Some mistakes in my mind. So anyway kidded under control. Bleated so that next opporunity. The next engine and the is way out in the middle of the pacific. For under miles off of okinawa. Had to come and over china. So you got to a tracking station. Mission control. A couple of times. There were set up. Everything is ready. We did hear from them until the Recovery Plan was over the floating to my aid in the water. So dene didnt know what happened . Nobody knew. And the first thing we got, one of the tracking planes, close enough. Picked up a signal. He said everything was well. Happy with that. A little trouble. Right. Was certainly a dramatic mission. Was the First American Space Mission to be terminated and cut short because of an emergency and flight. And the decision was made simply by the astronauts on board. They didnt really have that much contact with machine control. They were immediately criticized by second guesses. When they saw that the vanillas is having show. As soon as they found out to have an actual start wasser they said, we wouldve done the same thing he did. He did exactly what we wouldve done. We would never done anything any different. They were oppressed. And then when he got in line and started this letter landing training vehicle, land on the moon, love of the bill what the flight because it was so tough diabetes is of a want to learn how the land on the moon 200 feet above the surface. The lunar gravity is one sixth of what it was on earth. They had a big turbofan rocket engine then this would take them off of the years. When they get ready to simulate the landing they would use just enough of this big turbofan rocket engine that would take care of five or six of the gravity and leave them 1 6 which is what they would have on the moon and reid but you still have the wind factor. They could not get away from that. They would fly it down under 16 gravity. In the was the first in line to fly. He was doing most of the flying. And one day he was out there. Forget which numbered is. He was out there flying. The land was a little too tough that date. They went ahead and get it anyway. He lost all control, and everything. If so i it was like a hundred feet and three seconds off the ground. When nail that down. It had never been held down. I went back. The garrison or actually there, at the transcript of what was said to my everything. I got it. Its in the dark. Never before had that been found. I talked to the guy that was actually in charge of it. Some people and speculated that it was a splitsecond off the ground he was almost three seconds off. Japans real close, or when it rolled over and he had no control he knew he had to reject. He ejected and came down and saved everything, some of the flight and the whole 9 yards. His ability to react under circumstances like taft was another feather in his cab to be the first to land on the moon. In fact, the release didnt want him to practice anymore. Kneele insisted that they should. And when he landed the eagle on the men he had 61 flights in that trainer. And he told me, it was easier when the eagle on the moon than it was landing his trainer. And so anyway kamal of that practice and research as he put in it really paid off for him because when they were coming down it turned of the original target was a crater the size of a football field. And so he had to actually fly over the surface of about a hundred feet or so off, running out of gas trying to find this with place to sit down. So when they fired this is cut down below 50 feet. And in his own mind he had calculated that as long as he had he go below 50 feet if he ran out of gas that was all right