Falling to Earth

dramatically after our plunge through space, but still raced across the face of the planet.

“Sure are a lot of mountains down there,” I exclaimed, fascinated. “How about that!”

“I think that’s Alaska out there,” Jim added, staring at upside-down peaks. “That would be right, wouldn’t it?”

The ionization built up until we lost the ability to transmit radio signals to Houston. Not that they could help us now. The G-forces increased, and the fiery orange glow outside the spacecraft brightened. I could see the trails of glowing gases swirl as they changed path around our blunt spacecraft and twisted away behind us in corkscrewing patterns.

After almost two weeks of floating freely, the deceleration built until I weighed six times as much as on Earth. Lying in the couch, however, meant the force was on my chest so I didn’t really notice it. Besides, I was too excited. But Jim wasn’t doing so well and felt like he was unable to move and close to blacking out. There was nothing he could do but endure.

Once there was no danger we’d skip out of the atmosphere, I followed a precise course to take us to our targeted splashdown site. Closely monitoring my instruments, I pulsed our thrusters to roll the spacecraft, using the heat shield as a kind of wing to change our lift. The pressure on our chests eased a little. Leveling off our path, we eased our downward plunge and slid through the atmosphere as I maneuvered left and right.

Mission control could hear us on the radio again. “Everybody’s in fine shape,” Dave reported with relief.

“Good to hear you again!” Bob Parker replied.

We slowed to ten thousand feet per second. “One hundred miles to go,” I reported, as condensation rained down from the docking tunnel above us and soaked Dave in the center couch. Soon I was not able to maintain any more horizontal movement; gravity pulled our slowing spacecraft down. We dropped like a rock.

Around twenty-four thousand feet above the ocean, the heat shield cover at the top of the spacecraft whipped away and two small drogue parachutes fired out to reduce our speed. “Good drogue,” I reported, feeling the tug on Endeavour as I saw the reassuring shapes open above us through my window. As we fell into thicker atmosphere, the pressure outside grew, and fresh air began to squirt into the cabin through a special valve.

Once the drogue chutes had done their job, they were released at around ten thousand feet. Three more small parachutes then popped open and pulled out our large red-and-white main parachutes. “And the mains are out—three,” I reported. “The mains are opening.” I felt the spacecraft slow and sway as the chutes smoothly opened.

“CM propellant to dump,” Jim added. The fuel lines of our now-useless thrusters were still full of dangerous chemicals, and flight planners believed it was safer to vent them before we hit the water. The chemicals would burn as soon as they touched each other, and if we ruptured a fuel line on splashdown, we could have a nasty fire or explosion. Venting had worked fine on every prior mission. A large rising red cloud of gas obscured my view of the parachutes as we dumped the propellants overboard.

Helicopters from the USS Okinawa, the assault ship sent to recover us, had us in sight and circled as we fell closer to the ocean. “It appears that one of your main chutes is streaming,” one pilot reported on the radio, alarmed. “I can only see two main chutes, and one appears to be streaming.”

Oh, shit. “Do we have three, Al?” Jim asked me with concern.

“We got two!” I told him. The red cloud had cleared, and I thought I could see widening holes in one of our parachutes, collapsing it into a useless strip of cloth. “We’ve got a streamer on one.”

I can only guess what happened. There was very little wind that day, and when we vented the propellant, the corrosive, toxic cloud rose right up into the chute and ate away the material and shroud lines. We prepared ourselves for a hard landing.

^{The disturbing sight of our parachute failing as we neared splashdown}

We could still land on two chutes; the third was more of a safety margin—a margin we had just lost. As I continued to look at the chutes, to my horror I thought I could see holes developing in a second chute, too. If it failed, we’d be in trouble.

Pilots on the circling helicopters grew excited. “You have a streamed chute. Stand by for a hard impact,” they told us. We already knew. There was nothing they could do to help us now, and we needed to concentrate. I wished they would stop chattering; I needed to focus.

Wham! We hit the ocean hard, gouging deep into water that splashed high over the cabin windows before we bobbed back up to the surface. Dave opened another air vent to the outside and got a face full of sea water, soaking him again. I quickly powered down the spacecraft. The second chute had held out long enough. We were back. We’d made it.

Those circling helicopters were quick. It seemed we’d no sooner splashed down than they had deployed Navy SEAL divers into the water. The SEALs busily attached an inflatable collar around the spacecraft as well as a raft for us to climb into. I saw a diver’s face at the window; he then knocked on the hatch. I wasn’t sure why—was he being polite and wanted us to say “Come in” first?

Soon he had the hatch open and threw in some life preservers which we put on. We gave him a quick thumbs-up to tell him we were okay. The ocean was calm, and a warm breeze came in through the hatchway. After a final check of the cabin, it was time to leave.

Dave and Jim climbed out. I was the last to exit and I took a final look around my home for the last two weeks. Now back on earth, it seemed impossibly tiny. What an amazing adventure I’d had in this little cabin. I’d been focused all day on getting us back to earth. Now that I was here, and safe, I wished I were back in space again, flying solo in the quiet and solitude.

Time to go. Feeling a little shaky, I climbed out of the hatch and into the waiting life raft. It felt warm and sunny out there, and the blue ocean looked beautiful. Our once-immaculate Endeavour was now a charred orange-brown color, with almost all of the reflective insulation burned away, stained darkly around the thruster jets. It would never fly again.

A helicopter hovered over us, and one by one winched us up. I left with some concern, as the diving team could not get Endeavour’s hatch completely closed. I thought of the priceless moon samples in there and hoped a rogue wave would not get them wet—or worse, sink the spacecraft.

“Astronaut Alfred Worden is in the aircraft,” the helicopter team announced. Since I was the last one to be winched up, this announcement was the signal for the flight controllers back in Houston to pass around little American flags and cigars. They wouldn’t begin to celebrate yet, however, not until we had safely landed on the deck of the Okinawa.

As the ship came into view, we scrambled to put on fresh blue flight suits, clean sneakers, and baseball hats. In our agreed explorer style, we had stayed unshaven. For dark-haired guys like Dave and Jim, that was obvious. For a light-haired guy like me, my stubble wasn’t easy to see.

We were freshly dressed by the time our helicopter landed on the deck of the ship. But I felt concerned about my legs. I had been weightless for two weeks, and now I’d have to walk across the deck in front of hundreds of cheering sailors, important dignitaries, and the world’s media. I hoped I wouldn’t fall flat on my ass.

^{The Apollo 15 mission ends as I climb out of our charred spacecraft.}

I had to consciously tell myself how to walk. My legs didn’t work the way they should; I had lost the automatic sense of how to step. I had taken it for granted all my life, but after two weeks I’d forgotten. Jim looked a little shaky, too. I had to concentrate hard—left leg, right leg—as we strode down the red carpet toward the welcoming committee.

General Lucius Clay, commander in chief of Pacific air forces, was one of the dignitaries waiting to welcome us.

“It’s certainly been a wonderful and historic mission,” he said with a smile, “and I can’t help but also compliment you on your superb selection of music. Thank you, Colonel Scott.”

I suppressed a grin. A few days ago, around the moon, Dave had chewed me out for playing the air force