My name is john charles. I will be your moderator. I retired from nasa a year and a half ago. I have been living at my childhood families, playing here with the artifacts. It gives me the opportunity to sit on the stage with heroes of the apollo era. People who did the work i only dreamed of doing. We have with those two individuals who worked during the Lunar Service service exploration activities. That was the work done on the moon. Its the reason for the apollo moon missions. Not just to have a big rocket or their landing. The objective was to get to the moon and to the moon and do something useful. Arthur schmidt, who goes by larry, who was involved in the operations activities. Laterally on the missions, helping navigate the lunar rover. When dell mandel. He is an icon of lunar science as far as the early days. He came out here in 1963 and it was here for the lunar landings. Mendell has been responsible for understanding the lunar landings and rewriting the test books about what the history of the moon is all about. I would like each of them to describe their experiences during the program, with emphasis on apollo 11. Any other interesting stories you may have. Then we will have questions and answers during the bottom half of the hour. Mr. Schmidt, please tell me about your experience on apollo and what your recollections were. What your recollections are. Mr. Schmidt thank you. Ask a question every time you like. He said i was a hero. I dont view it as such. I just had a job during a policy. 17. It was so much fun i still like to talk about, every chance i get to talk about my job that i had back then, i do that. Thats why i am here today. I was the navigator for the rover. You have seen it, i am sure. Have a dipolenot or dipolar magnetic field. We had a gyro on the rover. We had to set up the rover. We used the sun. And the in the east shadow points west in the morning. Theas easy to figure out sun angle. We used that to align the gyro. Rover, then, the astronauts on the rover gave us coordinates in the bearing. I was on the ground. I use those coordinates to figure out coordinates and cartesian coordinates, where i could plot it out on a map. Thats how i kept track of the rover while it was on the moon. That is how we set up the rover to go on the moon. If you have been to Mission Control, if you havent on the tour, you need to do that. Its an interesting tour. Its very realistic. I was not in the main room. I was in the back room. I was in the science support room. Had an overhead projector. When you go on the store and you look at the displays they have. They are very realistic. The one on the immediate left, for apollo 11, they had an animation of the guy coming down the steps of the rover. During apollo 16 and 17, that would have been my map. It would have been displayed therefore the front room. The rest of the world that wanted to look in and see what the astronauts were doing on the moon. Abouti am thinking Mission Control in the tour, there are couple of things they dont tell you when you go on that is interesting. Hadis, the dress code we was formal. I had a new suit and a vast and i shined my shoes before he went to work everyday. By the time things got going in there, flight controllers shed their coats and their ties, and they were in their shirt sleeves, so thats usually what you see on tv. We considered it business. We wanted to be very professional, so the dress code was very formal. Another thing was, everybody smoked back then. Almost everybody smoked. The rooms were full of smoke. They would smoke cigars or cigarettes. If you did not smoke, you would come to work, and theyre always offering you a cigarette. Au would consider it hazardous environment today, i suppose. That was a lot different. It was a lot of fun. There were two shifts we work. 212 hour shift on duty. The whole shift was 14 hours. There was an hour before you went on console that you briefed the team, or you got briefed by the team that was leaving. An hour after you left the console, to brief the team coming on. You were at Mission Control for 14 hours. Teamunterpart on the other was a lady named anarcho. Anna. She did not want to go home. She was up all night, and she would be doing the planning for the next day, for the mission we would execute. She was excited. I said, you have to go home and get some rest. She said, no. I have to see what is going on. It was that interesting. It was really hard to go home. I can hardly describe it. It was fun. I really enjoyed doing it. Any questions . Mendellts let dr. Talk about it for a second. I assume i turned by mike on. That when youd hit a switch, it goes from red to green. I did not tell them i was colorblind. Larry came to work at the Spacecraft Center in 1962, which is the very beginning. I was a year later, fresh out of college. Organizationin an called the lunar Surface Technology branch. It was part of a larger organization, whose job it was, to write down, in a formal document, all of the characteristics of the moon, the space environment, radiation, meteoroids, so on, so the engineers could design the spacecraft and lander and operations, and such things correctly. In those days, there was not much known about the moon. So part of our job was to try to or to let experiments contracts to aerospace companies, it which is what we did to vary study various aspects and understand what that environment was like. In the late 60s, that group got transformed into a Phd Level Research group of the kind you would find at a university department, primarily people who were experts at studying samples, because, big deal, was to bring back samples from the moon, which would tell us things that geologists and geochemists could determine about where the moon came from, what its characteristics are, what its relationship is to the earth, what sort of process might occurred. I was in the middle of Science Research group. It was very exciting for me, because as a person interested in science and interested in new discoveries, it was extraordinarily exciting. Stage, is i am this because, during apollo 17, i did sit on the third floor of Mission Control at a console, whose buttons had been disabled. I was a scientist. Me was thatcern for i would not screw up anything. , could talk to a contractor about the experiment that i was involved with. I could talk to a nasa employee somewhere, and i could listen on a loop to the Flight Operations director and things were happening. The experiment i was involved with on apollo 17 was in orbit. It was not on the surface. It was an infrared detector that would mask thermal properties of the moon. I have been working on a topic since 1963. Eventually the results from that experiment became my doctoral thesis at rice university. Wanting tod about work for a long time at Mission Control. I did not really have that much of a choice. Anybody who is familiar with the science experience that go on today, you can look into the papers and see a long list of names of graduate students and professors and research scientists, all of whom were part of a science team. There were two people on my team. There was my thesis advisor, and me. He was an infrared galactic astronomer who did not care much about the moon. He had taken on this experiment because he was an expert in technology, and he did it so i would have some reason to exist. We had to divide up the 24 hour 8 00and he got the a. M. 8 00 p. M. , get the 8 00 p. M. , it 00 p. M. 8 00 a. M. Shift. A. M. Shift. 8 00 you might think i got the short end of the stick. But the thing was, Mission Control was on houston time. So when i was on, the astronauts were asleep. Ron evans was asleep in the command module and the others were on the surface. When astronauts sleep, they turn on the experiments in the command module, and let them run. They are not interfering with anything. When i was there, there was data coming in. I got to see the exciting things we were hoping to find and measure on the moon. When my thesis advisor was there, they were constantly turning things on and off. People were interrupting him and he got very perturbed because he thought his experiment should be more important. I guess i have one more story. Wasnt deeply, i involved with the operations that larry and his colleagues were. One of the things they would pocket were little cards, about the size of a business card, which would give the times for special events. Launch was delayed for two hours, because of a technical issue. When they finally took off, they changed the trajectory sliced lately, so that after three or four hours, they were back on the timeline that was in the operations,plan for with times where everything was going to happen. It was confusing because there realtime, and imaginary time, that agreed with all of the operations, so it is in the middle of the night on my console, and it is disabled, and then, on the left side, button starts flashing. I tried toound, and decide what to do. In my room, there was nothing but little groups of scientists. All the operations people were downstairs. I pushed the button. The boys ask, is this the Johnson Space center . I said, yes it is. After a minute or two, i began to realize i was talking to an air force officer who was under Cheyenne Mountain in colorado, where they have all of the radars and Nuclear Warheads and everything else. This air force officer wanted to know, what was the time of reentry of the apollo 17 command module . The reason being, it might look like a Ballistic Missile coming in from the soviet union. They did not want to make a mistake. I am the worst person to ask this. I reach in my pocket of my shirt and i pull out my card and i was sure the times on that card were correct because of these trajectory manipulations. , said, i think it is coming in i forget what the time was, 10 00 a. M. , or something. All she says is that zulu . I said, is that what . Meantime. Reenwich as an astronomer background, i understand what greenwich meantime is. I said, no, i think this is Central Standard time. He said, ok. Thank you very much. He hung up, then i started to worry. I got on the loop, and for the few people i could talk to, i said, i think i should tell you about something. The time i gave him was correct. The Flight Operations officer, who i could normally not talk to, but could listen to me, congratulated me on saving the space program. [applause] [laughter] thats my one war story. I would like to say, that is a scientist, we were really interested in, and excited about the astronauts were doing and why they were there. Larry did not tell you this, but in a science support room, there was a group of geologists, who had been intimately involved in the planning of the apollo 17 mission, trying to understand and answer certain important questions about the moon, which they thought the landing site would tell them. Those were the people that i and when the astronauts had completed their operations, the results from the experiments, everything, came they wereear, and examined and distributed to other Scientific Research groups. What was i going to say . I wanted to say one more thing. They were astronauts. They usually had an engineering background. Sometimes mathematics, like buzz aldrin. These astronauts went through thousands of hours of geological training, to help them understand how to talk to the scientists and understand what they were seeing on the surface of the moon. Of themankly, some loved it and some of them hated credit ofwant to give the very best people on the surface of the moon, from the scientific perspective were jack schmidt, a professional geologist on apology apollo 17. He is still active today, talking about leader research. The second one i want to mention is john young, who is more famous for being the super astronaut Space Shuttle pilot, apollo pilot, a legend on the astronaut corps. He was a really good student of geology. The scientists who sent them to the apollo 16 site told him to look for a certain kind of rock there. That is what they wanted. He got there and said those kinds of rocks are not here. There is another kind of rock. They said shut up, and pick up the rocks we want. Astronauts collected the sample and when all the way back home. John young argued in the back about as to what they saw on site. When they got home, the geologists were wrong and john young was right. The other one was Dave Scott Apollo 15. He was a tremendous student of geology, is still around today and did some Amazing Things around the site. Operation, which was tonned, was also designed return specific scientific results that helped us to learn what we now know about the moon. Was a tremendous breakthrough in our knowledge. John thank you. Let me follow up with some questions. Negligent to i am remind everybody in the audience that as soon as we are finished, ive been asked to ask you to move quickly to the exit, so the next crowd can come in for the next presentation. Thank you in advance for that. I want to get you to you, mr. Schmidt. Could you talk a little bit about how the lunar rover, why it needed to have direction finding equipment . Astronauts seee it anywhere they were. There were no force or buildings impeding their view. When you talk about the peculiarities of navigating on the lunar surface . Mr. Schmidt sure. But first, i would like to tell a story. In the ssr, the science room, his colleagues were around the table. They were older gentleman at the time. They were the top geologists from major universities around the country. With are older guys beards. They typically smoked a pipe, glasses, usually very settled and quiet. And sat around a table there were two kinds of geologists, the guys in craters, ejected from the craters, as i understand it. Im not a geologist. Professorsgeology that were interested in volcanoes. They were looking for younger volcanoes than the ones that made the moon. They were looking for evidence of young volcanoes. Success not had much with volcanoes and apollo 15 and 16. So we planned the stops and where we were supposed to directly rover and to get samples of the lunar surface. They were looking for young volcanoes stuff. These guys are around the table and they are to us. , and itme a moment reminds me of being at an astros game, when the astros are behind and you get to the last inning, and all of a sudden, you hit the homerun with the bases loaded in the crowd goes dessert. Berserk. Thats what it was like. Heres an schmidt, he got to a crater, and he picked up a rock and said, i found an orange rock. Sign ofught that was a a young volcano. These guys went they levitated. [laughter] rock hmidt an orange level, one of the astronauts earlier, was in a reverie. Easy, it wase it like a food fight in a high school cafeteria. They were so excited. I will never forget that moment. Anyway, the moon does not have a dipolar magnetic field, secant cant use a compass. So there was a little gyro driven compass, so they could spin it up, and it would hold, it would hold the needle steady as the rover turned. For any given time, we can calculate using the same mathematics that deal with celestial navigation on boats, the sun angle. After the astronauts got out of the rover,d sat on they would park it and there was a gauge, and they would take the time and calculate the sun angle. The rover also had a little computer that counted the revolutions of the wheels. Had it set, you could count the revolutions of the wheels going north or south or east and west and it could. Alculate the range [sound drop] dr. Mendell it could calculate range. Mr. Schmidt it could calculate range. Thats how they would return. They would read out range and bearing, and on the ground, i could calculate latitude and longitude on the map. They could see where these geologist were. Astronauts needed directions to go to the creator, i could tell him much direction to go to. The extra vehicular activities outside of the module, there were three of them on each mission. They got more complex on each mission. A loop. O 17, they did the idea was to take the astronauts first, take the astronauts the furthest away from the lunar module that they wanted to go to get samples, so that is the use the consumables and their portable lifesupport system on the back of the spacesuit, they would get closer to the lam. Lim. The idea was, that if it broke down, they had to walk back. We had to make sure that if something went wrong with the rover, they could get off of the rover and walked back before they ran out of oxygen. Ok. John thats a good bit of background. I think ive used it in my life to plan excursions, to start as far away as possible and then work your way back. I wanted to ask one more question. The geologists were capable of many things, such as and preventing thermonuclear war, how did they find time to rewrite the books about lunar history . What can you say about the revisions to lunar history between the time between the time of apollo in the time analyzed the samples . Dr. Mendell how long do you want me to talk . [laughter] dr. Mendell five minutes, he says. Missions, apollo there were debates among very famous and intelligent and educated people, about exactly what the moon was and one Nobel Prize Winner believed that the moon was just a collection of things that were part of the early solar system, and that when we landed on the moon and picked up the things, we would pick up pieces that were formed at the time of the formation of the sun and learn of the processes that went on during the early solar system. People with geological backgrounds, and one of the more famous ones was jean shoemaker, believed that the features on the surface of the moon, they look like lava flows. Flows, then lava that implied something about the heating history of the moon, the want the moon at one time had been hot. Andpieces had melted differentiated like the earth, where there is a crust and a mantle and decor, and so, the ,oon would have layers to it and the lovers from the amount love array, would be from wouldva and the lava have a crust. They were geologists who believed the circular features on the moon were volcanoes. Time, in the 50s in particular, anything circular and the earth was called a volcano. If they studied the rock surrounded and they did not seem to fit the idea of a volcano, they were called crypto volcanoes. Meaning, they were around, so they must be a volcano, but we dont know what kind of volcano this was. Moonf the debates on the was whether these holes on the was, which we call craters, they weres if explosions from hot magma underneath. Nightl remember the before the apollo 11 launch over two guys on our educational tv channel, debating whether these volcanoes were impact features. These are very simple, fundamental, Big Questions. Samplest lunar immediately answered some of these. They had been lava flows. The moon had been a hot object. The features on the moon were impact craters and not volcanoes. That jeany in 1962 shoemakers thesis on the behringer crater in arizona proved this was not a volcanic feature. It had been formed by something coming in and hitting the earth. One of the big revelations over time was that if the moon was near the earth and had seen all these things hit it, they must have hit the earth two. People began looking at the earth were impact craters and finding them, once they understood how to look for them. You may or may not know about the story of the demise of the dinosaurs. That is attributed to a very severalteroid impact, hundred million years ago. That whole idea, which is now scientific canon, would have been impossible to imagine before we went to the moon and apollo. There are a lot of other things we can talk about. The Big Questions that seem so simple today, but were were really in debate at the time of the apollo launch. John i would like to open it up to questions. Shout out your short question when i point to you and i will repeated repeat it. They are releasing samples from the moon. What do you think todays testing will reveal . To dr. Mandel about this samples nasa has archived for the last 50 years from the landing, that are now being released for scientific analysis using 21st century techniques. What expectations does the lunar geology community have for insights from these untouched samples echo samples . Dr. Mendell i should have some homework. Thats important. What people do not realize is that when the big dollars were spent on the Apollo Program, some of those dollars, were spent in universities, creating new research facilities, that could analyze geological samples and taint tiny qualities. Quantities. Your picture of a geologist is a person dressed in jeans and a pickup truck, going out somewhere with a hammer, brings the rocks back to his laboratory. Thats pretty much it. Also drinks a lot of beer. Thats a geologist. They are used to having samples kilograms. Weigh rocks. In the Apollo Program, a lunar sample, when a piece was allocated to a scientist, the quantity of material was measured in milligrams. Like pills in your medicine cabinet. Tiny amounts. Somehow, the instruments had to look at these very tiny samples, and reach broad conclusions about what the moon was like. That was one of the big breakthroughs in Sample Analysis at that time. The samples taking care of the samples has been a an evolving process. Right now, every lunar sample that has been brought back, they have numbers, that number means something associated with the mission. That rock has been subdivided into tiny pieces. Every tiny piece has a subset number after that. There are huge dossiers of paperwork of where every piece has been, who it was sent to, if itappened, returns, has been returned. Process is audited every couple years. Its a painful process. All of the paperwork is kept like that. There are samples that have never been touched. Theyre called pristine samples for various reasons. Are two ofar, there drilled intot were the surface of the moon, then extracted as a stack of material. They have been kept in the tubes, without ever being opened. They have an xray. Xrayed. The material itself has not been examined. Some of the other cores were examined. Andd people who sat there, i know people who took the tube, cut it in half, related. It with half, covered epoxy to preserve it. Took the other half, and with tweezers, picked out tiny pieces every couple of centimeters or two or three meters,. Tedious work to understand the layering under the surface of the moon. Years, there have been some breakthroughs in the analysis of the lunar sample, which imply there was more water involved in the formation of the moon and was thought in the early days. Examinede things being are someamples opened, of the stories of the origin of the material in this course, with new insights of what we have recently earned, even in the last 23 decades of studying ideas aboutd new the origin of the ideas and where they came from. Beingpes of examinations done on these new samples are rather different and more sophisticated and ask different kinds of questions we would have 1970. 1997 john another question. [inaudible] john the question is how adMission Control, on the map, they have the lunar module at the center of the map, but the lunar module may not have landed at the target site, it may have been down range, in the case of apollo 11. Did not work on apollo 11. I was on 16 and 17. I understand 11 was a little off. Apollo 16 and 17, they were very close. With the map, the the locationector, of the orbiter in the module were kept within view on the map. It wouldve been on the righthand side in the corner, where i was looking at it. Been tracking the rover as it went around. We did not try to keep the rover centered in the middle. Does that answer your question . [inaudible question] john the question is, what is your hope and what is your wish list for experiments and investigations on the surface in the Artemis Program . Dr. Mendell artemis. Five minutes left for the session. Dr. Mendell i want to know exactly what artemis is. It is the name that has been used for several things. I know there is a new nasa concept they call artemis. Im not clear in what it is. Landing and return and so one . So on . Okay. Th this is the oped part. In chaos internally, about what the next steps will be, particularly with respect to the moon. You may be seeing articles about a highranking official being demoted in the last few weeks. To do witht has different perspectives on exactly what we will be doing on the moon. I am part of the crowd that is excited about getting back to the moon and trying to learn as much as we can about it. When i began talking about the moon in the future, 35 years ago, one of the important objectives was scientific discovery and doing scientific experiments in the sense that apollo did. Essentially, its basic research. Trying to learn about the origin of the solar system. Is what is called fundamental, or basic research. Its not directed toward building a better something or other. In the recent decades, 1015 years, the emphasis in talking about going to the moon has shifted from trying to do scientific exploration on a lot of different sites to creating a facility and trying to create a base or outpost of some kind. In order to support that outpost, making use of the resources that exist on the moon instead of importing everything from the earth, which is extraordinarily expensive. In other words, living off the land. Operations of their has risen in importance. I suspect, and i have argued this, that the focus on exploration in the upcoming Artemis Program will be more aimed early on at resource utilization and learning how to bootstrap ourselves into a permanent presence, as opposed to the more basic Research Questions that were made 50 years ago. Lets do one more question. In the middle. Question] john the question is, concerning he did a lot of calculations of the log back times of the astronauts on the rover, to get back to the lunar module before the life support rainout, the question was, do astronauts disagree so they they so further or were concerned about oxygen . Mr. Schmidt they did. They wanted more time. They thought they had plenty of margin. They usually did. For apollo 17, we extended the margin. We give them 30 minutes of margin when we first started planning 16. By the time we got through with 17, it was down 20 or 15 minutes. They wanted to stay more. They were having a good time. We had very strict flight rules about walk back times and margins. You didnt want them to run out of consumables before they got back into the module and could and be in pressurize a safe environment. John somebody in the back, is there a question . [ question mine has less to do with science. When you are twentysomethings, did you realize the importance of it and that you would be speaking about 50 years later . Was there a moment when youre excited like the volcano guys were . The question relates to the fact that you are fresh out of college when apollo was happening. What was your sense of the future, that you might still be talking about it and still be excited about it 30 years later. You imagine still being involved and engaged in for that audience 50 years later and in front of an audience 50 years later . Mr. Schmidt i cannot begin to foresee what was in store. I enjoyed what i studied in college, and i enjoyed my first reentrylculating trajectories for gemini spacecraft. I was at the desk with a slide rule and a calculator and some equations. It was interesting, but not exciting. In my 40 years of working for nasa, i had many assignments that were very exciting. Out on helicopters and airplanes and go out on a ship in the middle of the atlantic for secondary recovery of some of the gemini missions. A lot of interesting work. Sciencethinking about as a career and something to study in high school or college, i can tell you, it was well worth it. It was a lot of fun. School, lot of work in and the secret, and my opinion, to science, mathematics, is just do your homework. Its another language you have to learn. You cant get behind in science. It doesnt take any special abilities. You dont have to be supersmart. I am certainly not. You do have to do your homework. You have to be interested. I would recommend a career in engineering or science to anyone. In my experience, it was a lot of fun for four years. John any reflections you wish 20yearold you would tell you 50 years later . Dr. Mendell when i was young, youre in the moment. As a person interested in science and in answering the questions about the moon, there were constant discoveries being made. It was an exciting time. Assumed it was going to go on. The question was, what was next next . Pretty quickly, it became clear there werent going to be anymore missions. It was difficult to accept that and figure out how to continue our findings in an environment where they would not be any import low apollo. We werent the early ones who thought that. There were people all around the world who could not understand why we stopped. Ist people did not realize that the Apollo Program was a political decision and not one based on some longterm understanding of the history of the world or the universe. That political decision came to an end. Since then, we have had a lot more political decisions and you know the story. Thought,h that final join me in thanking them. [applause] and now you are watching American History tv. Every weekend beginning saturday did 8 00 a. M. Eastern, we bring you 48 hours of unique programming exploring our nations past. American history tv is only on cspan3. That looks beautiful. It has a stark beauty all itself, much like the high desert of the united states. It is different, but it is very pretty out here. From the early 1960s until about 1980, filmmaker Robert Newman produced a number of justicearies on social for the United Church board of homeland ministries which was , associated with the United Church of christ. Next, open arms, it includes audio recordings of americans for and against immigration, and scenes of the u. S. Mexico border, immigrants in new york city, and a cuban refugee camp. [piano being played]
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