Highways Into Space: A first-hand account of the beginnings of the human space program (31 page)

Shortly after that, Dr. Berry, the flight surgeon, quietly talked with Gene and me and reported that he had observed premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) on one of the crewmembers and abnormal cardiac indications on the other while they were on the lunar surface.

Wow. That would have been helpful to know hours earlier. We could have made any number of choices to slow down the tempo or postpone events. And then my mind turned to why they didn’t tell us earlier. Clearly, that should have happened because the events under discussion had occurred at least one shift ago. Gene and I just looked at each other. If we were tired and frustrated, how must the crew feel? Some of this caution about reporting crew health issues was due to the emphasis on medical privacy. In this case, privacy should take a back seat to safety. Maybe this helps to explain the last couple hours of difficulty with the usually perfect synchronization between the crew and MCC.

Apollo XV went on to return to Earth, but, as a last reminder of the business we were in, one of the three main chutes failed to fully deploy during the ocean landing and that is one of the reasons we had three parachutes.

I really don’t remember when I knew that Apollo XV was my last flight as an MCC operator. The whole ASTP scenario was moving in that direction but the timing was uncertain. I was named to run the ASTP joint mission in June 1971. My reassignment papers to the Apollo Program Office were dated February 1972. Apollo XVI and XVII were yet to fly and I would not be “on console.” The passing of an era, especially this one, was very emotional for me. With a lot of other people, we had climbed the biggest mountain we could imagine. I did not want to let it go. But actually, I did not have to. It will always be with me.

When the time for the flight ops of Apollo XVI rolled around, there was something missing. I did not go over to MCC, plug in my headset and engage in the usual flight chatter. But it wasn’t quite as sharp a loss as I expected. When I left, I did feel reconciled. And there was not a list of things left undone. And we had a slate of great new guys – Chuck Lewis, Don Puddy, Neil Hutchinson and Phil Shaffer. They were all waiting to get a shot at the best job they would ever have. Life goes on. I was in a new role, a new place already.

Apollo XVI was on its way to the Descartes highlands of the moon on April 16, 1972. John Young was the commander, Charlie Duke was the LMP and TK Mattingly (recovered from the Apollo XIII measles that never were) was the CMP. After the LM separated from the CSM, Mattingly found that the SPS appeared to be compromised (oscillations in the secondary “yaw-gimbal” actuator which steers the engine). After checking everything Mattingly re-rendezvoused with the LM to station keep there and WAIT. WAIT to see if some test or analysis could validate the redundant system for controlling the SPS burns. WAIT – for the MCC and its ground team to find a solution. WAIT – for six hours with the landing site so close. Finally, capcom Jim Irwin was able to report, “the mission is back on. We’re going for the landing at Descartes.” After that long delay – and no doubt much reflection on how it would feel to abort the landing – the crew did land. Their released joy was the mood on the moon for all of their EVAs and it was a pleasure to watch. This J mission came home with over two hundred pounds of lunar samples.

More old friends suited up for the finale that was Apollo XVII, Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt and Ron Evans. Just to mention these names brings back so many times together, the work times, like learning Gemini together, dodging the alligator jaws of Gemini 9, the moon geology lessons from Jack Schmitt, and the laughs we had together training for Apollo X. XVII was the first night launch, appropriate for the last Apollo, because it turned night into day once it lifted off. It was a flawless, fitting last flight of Apollo.

Apollo XVII Night Launch

On the moon, the first EVA featured the deployment of equipment, the American flag, the scientific station called ALSEP, the cosmic ray exposure, and the local taxi called the LRV. The second and third EVAs were off to sample, explore and document the geology at Taurus Littrow. During EVA 2, Jack Schmitt observed, “There is some orange soil.” Schmitt was in a geologist’s heaven. EVA 3 was more Cernan’s time with stops for samples and the explosive packages for the seismic experiments. And the retrieval of a drill bit which had gotten stuck in a hole. The TV camera took us along on these forays and even tracked the LM lift off and the ascent from the moon, courtesy of Ed Fendell in MCC. And so our journeys to our nearest neighbor came to an end and decades later, we still wonder who will be the next moon travelers and when will they return.

NASA had a number of steps to take in closing the Apollo Lunar program. In NASA Headquarters, Rocco Petrone left the Headquarters Apollo Program Office and Captain Chet Lee stepped into that role. The organization names can be a little confusing because they are so similar. The Headquarters program office oversaw efforts at MSC, MSFC and KSC. They also orchestrated the interaction with other government levels and agencies, such as the U.S. Congress, who are involved in the success of the projects. In that sense, ASPO at MSC was one of the three field centers performing in the Apollo and now Skylab and ASTP projects. Petrone went on to Marshall as the new Center Director. Chet Lee and I had worked briefly together when Chet was involved with the mission directors. Captain Lee came to NASA from the Navy where he worked with Admiral Rickover in the Polaris Program. Owen Morris moved from the Program Manager of ASPO to the newly formed Space Shuttle Program office.

My job was now to manage the remaining Apollo spacecraft in its “up and down” missions to Skylab, including a last CSM 119 as a Skylab rescue vehicle. There were also two J mission configured CSMs: 115 and 115A. The office also managed the ASTP efforts, both within NASA and at the contractor facilities and as primary interface with the Soviet implementing team. For many years, the name ASPO embodied the core of Apollo and was led, in my time, by some of our very best executives, Low, McDivitt and Morris. Chet and I were both honored to inherit the mantle of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. Chet Lee was well respected by the people of all levels of MSC and the other Centers. Our relationship evolved, over the next dozen years, as we both moved through different but related assignments.

Around the time of my appointment as program manager of ASPO, Sid Jones came to be my deputy. Sid was the perfect fit for the job. He was an encyclopedia of experience with North American Rockwell, the CSMs and all the trappings that it takes to manage that activity and its contract. For years, Sid was deputy to Aaron Cohen who was the CSM project manager for most of the later Apollo years, probably since the Apollo fire. Earlier, Sid served as a project engineer. A project engineer would be assigned to each command service module, as it was making its progress through its lifecycle. The mode of operation was to spend every day with a few colleagues, some support, whichever engineering division was getting attention and focus that group on understanding and resolving whatever issues the prime contractor was working. It was an intimate relationship with the people and with the hardware. And it went on constantly at the office or at home, whenever there was a vehicle problem at the contractor plant or at the launch site. Sid would have the appropriate experts in our office and Rockwell standing by on the phone sometimes before I even heard about the problem.

Sid was versed in all aspects of that work, including overseeing the process into flight preparations phase at the launch site and eventually the flight readiness review (FRR). This support to the vehicle continued through the time that it was inflight. The mission evaluation room (MER) was organized and staffed to rapidly respond to any problem during flight. The same routine of coordination, consultation and the right people combined to deliver solutions to problems, now in space rather than on the ground.

Soyuz is in Sight

Skylab traveled a tortuous path to reach the launch pad. Most space visionaries had long seen a form of orbiting Space Station as the logical step in the development of space. President Kennedy put space development on a different path and leap-frogged the step by step sequence. On the other hand, maybe “tortuous” would have been the descriptor in any case. It was buffeted by the forces that are usually unleashed in human endeavors – different priorities, different backgrounds, limited time to synch up the decision making team, turf protection, surprises and external changes.

To be clear, I did not have any role in the development of the Skylab concept. I have pieced this narrative together from post-facto verbal discussions and perusing some written records of the history. Even some later events escaped my attention because I was a primary participant in ASTP. Starting in 1973, I was also the program manager for the Apollo CSMs that were to be used for Skylab. This task was specifically focused on the up/down transport of the crews to and from Skylab, including the rescue CSM and not on the specifics of the Skylab operation itself.

The path to our first Space Station started early. The NASA Langley Center in Hampton, Virginia, began Space Station studies in 1959 that resulted in a symposium in the summer of 1962. It posed the question of the primary purpose of such a facility. Is it a science laboratory, or a node in a larger outward human expansion into space? Or can it be both? (For now, in the 2010s, the International Space Station is clearly on the path to be a science laboratory.)

By 1965, President Johnson approved the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, sponsored by the Air Force, representing the DOD. The name laboratory implied its purpose. The up/down transportation was to be a version of the Gemini spacecraft, referred to as a “blue” Gemini. This was the second campaign by the DOD to create a role in the manned space theater. The first was at the start of the space race when President Eisenhower decided on a civilian agency to lead the US response to Sputnik and created NASA. However, that debate continued in different forms during the early ‘60s. In short order, the manned moon program, articulated by President Kennedy, cemented that role for NASA.

By the mid-1960s, NASA HQ formed a program office for the Apollo Applications office with the idea of using Apollo or Apollo derived hardware as the core of the next step past the lunar exploration phase of Apollo. George Mueller, now head of the Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF) in NASA HQ, packaged the best results of the last six years of study, including the use of Apollo systems. He began to sell the idea of Apollo Applications after Apollo as the next step in Manned Space Flight. When Mueller went to Congress with the story, they were unenthusiastic; within NASA the Administrator, Jim Webb, had his priorities strictly on the Apollo lunar program and the manned space centers wanted something beyond Apollo to sustain the team. One out of three, and a somewhat self-serving one at that, did not discourage Dr. Mueller.

One of the other constituencies was the NASA Space Science organization and their network of external scientists. The man versus unmanned debates occasionally heated up and sometimes went quiescent. But, manned space flight was the elephant in the room and the science elements usually felt squeezed by the disproportionate percentage of the budget going to manned programs (as they saw it). And then there were times when OMSF went looking for science experiments to build a science-oriented activity. And there were science ideas, but nothing close to hardware. One area that had advanced was the Solar Sciences. They had the makings of what became a major science laboratory, built around a telescope and other instruments to study the sun. This became the primary objective of Skylab along with life sciences and remote earth sensing.