In october. This is almost 50 minutes. Thank you for coming out so early. We have a big program today. And we are very honored to have with us well, to start, and i think this is great chronologically, apollo seven astronaut walt cunningham. We will get into some questions, but will was on the apollo seven flight, which was really make or break for the apollo like program. They sent some unmanned ones up and they had the terrible fire on apollo 1. These guys made it happen. We had many legends on, but this is one of the greatest. Lets hear it for walt cunningham. [applause] that is a pretty good welcome. I keep hearing im going to call him glenn cunningham, the old quarterback. Im terrible with names. This is a great story. I want you to explain it. Evidently, number 13 and 14 had a lot to do with your career. Talk about it. Well, actually, like a lot of people, you learn things later that you did not know whether it was critical. But it must have been about 10 years ago, i get an email from a friend of mine, paul haney, head of Public Affairs when nasa selected me in 1963. How many here were alive in 1963 . A few of you. 1 [laughter] but i met all haney. He was the only person i knew with nasa. After i left nasa, i wrote a book called the allamerican boys. A lot of people have that book. And paul was a friend of mine. I gave paul a copy of that book. About 10 years ago, before paul died, i get an email from paul. He says just one sentence. I read the book. It is really good. I sent an email back. Paul, i gave you that book in 1977. And you are just reading it . He said i went to the index and check with you said about me. [laughter] very typical. You have one more sentence. He said, you know you are number 14, dont you . You are like, what does that mean . That is right. In our group, we were the third group of astronauts. They had 7, 9, and 14. Im only one of the group of 30 that knew where he stood on the selection process. No one ever made it public or anything at all like that. So i got on the phone and called and asked them. He told me. The day that they were announcing this, i press conference, a week before that, dean slaten, who was in charge of the astronaut, arranged a meeting with the head of the space center. So paul haney was going to be there. Paul was on the phone when he started this meeting. So he did not get there when they started. When he finally got off the call , this is the story is telling me. She went down there and went in. Deke had just finished naming and giving a brief background of the people selected. The head of engineering i have your name problem too. I cant remember his name. But he was the guy that designed the spacecraft. Best technical guy we had their. As paul walked in, dkee says you cant do that. That is 13. Meaning they chose 13 astronaut. I could not believe that the technical guy was superstitious about 13. And deke says, i want this guy. So if i have to take another one. I am the only one to this day that knows he was number 14. Had that not happen, who knows . At that not happened, i would not be here today. Fate is the hundred. Hunter. Lets go back to some serious. Apollo 1, the fire. Where were you . That is just like the challenger for us. Challenger is probably much more memorable. Challenger and columbia. Both terrible disasters. But back in that timeframe and that was in 1967. In 1966, don eisley and i were assigned to the crew of what would be apollo 2. And we were living with contractors. I spent to 70 270 days out at rockwell. There were some things wrong that had to be fixed. So many engineering things. Not to mention the operational challenges. Try to get changes in for operational uses that they did not want to put in because of one thing. It was not the cost. It was the schedule. Kennedy had set, i want a man on the moon this decade. 10 years, you try to do something today in 10 years. But to get there, they wanted to keep moving along. So they started making improvements. When they made a block 2 spacecraft, they canceled the second block 1 spacecraft. Thousand one we were on that was the one we were on. He became backup crew for about three months on apollo 1. That number got changed. More fate. That is exactly right. We were getting ready for liftoff. It was scheduled in february of 1967. We knew there were things wrong with the spacecraft. The reliving with. I can just tell you with it that our guys, i guess you can call it an ego that they had today. But we were all quite or violence for a dozen years. Most of them test pilots. We had confidence in ourselves. The we needed to find a way to handle the. We knew that the spacecraft was not great. But we were going to fly it anyway. The afternoon of apollo 1 fire, we had done that same test the night before, but it was close in so the hatch was open, using external power. We were all going to fly back together in a p38 back to houston. Late afternoon about 5 30 wally and don and i said we are going to go home. So we left. They have been in the spacecraft all day long. When we landed at Ellington Air force base, the head of our Flight Operations walked out to meet us. We knew something was wrong. The fire had happened while we were in the air and heading back. So it was really a hell of a deal on it. Nothing they could do. The whole crew was dead in 19 seconds. I worked on the Fire Investigation for a while. About three weeks later deke took us aside and said were going to be on the first crew. But they remembered it and we ended up being apollo 7. It was the first manned flight. You guys are steely and never have any emotion. Mostly. But emotionally, how did it hit you, when you heard that . Did you expect something crazy, running the programs of quickly . How do they hit you . We were shocked it had happened. It was the first time that any astronaut had been killed in a spacecraft. What people do not realize is what was going on back in those days. Our group of 14 in about three years, i think we lost four of them. Airplane exits. We lost roger chaffey. So we kind of understood that. And i do not recall anybody being terribly discouraged by the fire. We really wanted to get the first flight. We were very pleased. And wally was already kind of looking forward to leaving nasa eventually. So his attitude kind of changed on that. He started getting more serious onthejob. I just felt very fortunate. I do not remember ever really being frightened about flying. You fly airplanes and people get killed all the time. You usually find some reason to blame the pilot. Because then it would not have happened to you. Talk about fear. Do you have any . [laughter] i think i have a little fear from time to time. But in those days, i was too stupid to be afraid. [laughter] there is an attitude thing. I am not a psychologist, i read about a lot of that stuff. I think there is a difference in mentality about how people feel about these things. Recognizing it, being aware of it intellectually, is an important step. I think a lot of people are afraid of things because they do not have the faintest idea what is going to go on. So they are afraid of it. And those that learn about things, they may be afraid of it because of what they know. And then there is some kind of a mental quirk that a lot of my friends and people out there today are aware of. Brian, i know that he was aware of the things that could go wrong. And you have to have the kind of selfconfidence that enables you to handle that. That selfconfidence comes from the way you have lived. You faced a lot of lesser things along the way. And you have been able to overcome them. I am afraid we have a society that has been moving away from that. We do not even let our kids had chances to take risks or anything like that. So they are not going to be able to handle the kind of fears going on in life. I feel very fortunate i grew up the way i did. I do not remember ever being afraid. The right stuff. This program partially is about putting the program, the man program into the context of the cold war. I do not know if you guys know but apollo 7 was the first manned flight. They had sent some of unmanned, and they work perfectly. But it is a different deal with real guys out there. So your mission was pivotal. Put that in context of the cold war. First up, all the other manned launches were not perfect. We had a problem. The press told us they were perfect. But we had good engineers. Astronauts got the glory because we were at the tip of the spear. But there were 400,000 people that worked on that program. Government and civilian employees. Those people, they had the guts. For example, today we do not think about it, but our management, the management at Johnson Space center and throughout nasa i was mostly familiar with jsc management had the nerve to make decisions and go over the results of it. Today, it is all too frequently that we reduce those risks to zero. We were fortunate to have people of all fields in those days who owned the program. Many of them were much more emotional about the program then i think i was at the time. I was just doing my job. Part of it was the urgency, right . Because of the cold war, everyone believed we had to get the moon first. I do not know. But getting back to your question about the russians, we started off the russians, from the beginning, it is a little different now. Things have changed a lot. But the russians were very focused on the Public Relations aspect of it. They wanted for example, when they knew we were planning a second flight for and white to go out and have an eda and test a maneuvering device, they did everything they could to get someone to do it. They did it with a spacecraft that was not built for. That was really risky. They knew they were taking risks and willing to do that just to be out in front. So he would be the first to walk in space. And he didnt really walk. I know of alexi. He is like the buzz aldrin of the russian program. We get it. [laughter] i think it was 12 minutes. The whole effort was aimed at how to get him back in. The little port that they had their, it was a terrible event. But they beat us by more than a month. So they focus on those kinds of things. It is very dangerous, risky things. On the upside, they have been very fortunate. They have had very few accidents. They have had terrible accidents they had survived. I have been impressed by the. But in those days, by the time we had the gemini spacecraft, and keep in mind you are getting my personal opinion. Not official statements on these things. The Gemini Program that was a more capable spacecraft then i see today in the russian launches. It could maneuver. Do more things. That was back 40 years ago. 50 years ago. In the meantime, the russians have converted more to what i consider more of an engineering aspect. Exploration in the future. It is a lot cheaper for them and has been over the years. We were engaged in a real fight. It was like a fight to the finish to get there. The first time we met any of the russians, it might have been after ed white and i cant remember his name. I think is the first time we met any of the cosmonauts. Over the years, they have become very good friends. We have organizations that work together. Association of space explorers. They get along very well. Theyre living together at the International Space station. As a matter of fact, they have outmaneuvered us administratively and cost was. Garlic beginners right now we are like beginners. After your flight, we said we are going to send these guys around the moon because we were worried the russians would do that or us . There was great concern about the russians beating us to the moon. We were not exposed to a lot of military intelligence they might have had. Government intelligence. So it was kind of what we knew and felt and heard. But there were people that knew what the russians were doing to push for it. They must have had some pictures. The russians were developing the m1 rocket. 10 Million Pounds of thrust. They were going to go to the moon. They were doing everything they could to do that. Apollo 8 was originally not going to the moon. And the russians were shooting to go around the moon. They do not have any landings set for it. But before apollo 7, probably a month or so before apollo 7 flew , they started talking, the Administration People at nasa, about apollo 8 going around the moon. That was a brandnew thing. We had five giant steps to go to the moon. You are going to test the spacecraft in earth orbit. That is what we did. Then we have to test the lunar module. Didnt follow instructions. [laughter] houston, we have a problem. And then, we test the lunar module in earth orbit. Then fly close to or around the moon. Vendor the simulation and the landing. Well, administrators did this. They said, oh we could take instead of finding a high orbit we could send it around the moon. They considered everything. It was based on the success of apollo 7. They decided if seven was successful, they would have eight oh around the moon. It turns out that apollo 7 is the longest, most ambitious most successful engineering test flight of any new machine ever. The reason it was so loaded was because we had lost 21 months after the apollo 1 fire. A year and a half, maybe a little less. To go to the moon. And we had to do it supposedly by the end of the decade. Youre trying to make up for all that. When we went up for an 11 day mission, none of us thought we were going to go 11 days. You could not do that on the first mission. So we were surprised, a little irritated towards the end. I want a shower. Get me back. So that was critical. Because it was successful, apollo 8 went around the moon. That is what everybody thinks. Well, we have to find out from you. All the astronauts talk about it. Tell us in your own words, when you first got that view from space. What was it like . I do not have a lot of useful things to say about that. You are an astronaut, and you are tough. It makes me think i was totally insensitive to those kinds of things. Because we knew that, after one orbit, and we had never been around the world for. I knew a guy that went around the world 163 times before i went to europe. [laughter] so, we knew we were going to have to separate. And come back and simulate a docking with the s4b stage. The laughing we wanted to do was screw up anything. On the second time around, we had separated. Wally was flying. I was taking pictures from the right side. I was taking pictures of the s4 b. I was just snapping these pictures. All across the southern united states, in this picture. Later, only later, did i realize it was taken over where we live. It was taken over the space center down there. To this day, that is my favorite picture that i took in orbit. At the time, i was not even looking at it. I was looking at the s4b. Thats how we were focused on doing things. First time i started getting a thrill after that, we separated and went into different orbits. To see how that would work out. Most of the time, people do not realize how difficult it is to see anything on the ground. Did i mention this . No, keep going. Because you look at the International Space station digital film, fabulous pictures. In those days, we drifted. And you drifted because you did not want to use your fuel and your thrusters. Because then you really would have come home early. We were just drifting. You think about it, we had five windows. About 150 degrees. They cover about 150 degrees. The biggest was in the hash. Round window, 10 inches in diameter. Two panes. Best glass you could get separated by a tiny gap. So in the window broke, you can still keep rusher in the spacecraft. Unless a window was pointing at the ground and you are drifting, and you see a tiny little bit out there. It is pointing out the ground and you have a camera and are not involved in some other thing, you might be able to take a picture. If youre looking at the ground keep in mind that, every 45 minutes, youre going into darkness. Than 45 minutes daylight. The camera people did not want you to take pictures within five minutes of sunrise or sunset because, in those days, we had kodachrome film. You could not take photos like you do today. We had a limited amount of film on board. So it had to be pointed down. If you pointed down, 55 of the earths Services Covered by clouds all the time. The part that is in the clear that is usually the desert. Saudi arabia. Never saw a cloud over saudi arabia. [laughter] you can take a picture and never even see a city down there in the desert. There was a lot of things like this. He did not want to take it more than 30 degrees off the vertical. It was hard to get teachers. Pictures. We are going to ask some questions of the iss astronauts. One of your questions is, do we think that we should have a Fighter Pilot training or trading like that for todays astronauts . Most of you guys were Fighter Pilots, right . If you were not a Fighter Pilot, you did not apply. There is a lot of changes that has gone on in the space program. Today, you do not have to be a pilot. One of the reasons you do not have to be a pilot is because in the Space Shuttle, the greatest flying machine ever built and operated by man may be a minority opinion but i feel strongly about that you always had a couple of pilots. And they did a fantastic job in my opinion. Because of what went on 40 and 50 years ago, we were able to build hardware and a program where you could carry passengers up. You did not have to be a pilot. Now, even with the new capsules coming up, going to be able to take people that are pilots. That in the days when they did not know what it was going to take, nasa decided to get the people that have the best chance of succeeding. The russians had taken a different attitude. Their people in the spacecraft did virtually nothing. They were strapped in. They operated the spacecraft. It has always been operated remotely. Even today, it operates remotely. It is not a satisfying thing for an aviator. We did not do that. They made their best guess of what they thought was. And they took from the pilot field, all military. Our group was the first group where you do not have to have been a test pilot. Half of our group was test pilots. You had to have Fighter Pilot experiences. I have always felt that the advantage that gave us, every one of those people, myself included we had spent at least 10 or 12 years, sometimes more than that, flying fighter aircraft. You develop the kind of selfconfidence it takes. You think you are the best whether you are the best or not. You have to have that kind of an attitude out there. Plus we have flown with these people in all kinds of things. Mine was at the end of the korean war. Anybody here remember the korean war . What that does is give you the sense that you can depend on the other guy in the other airplane. I