to adjust to Earth than it was to adjust to space, something mentally to do with coming home. In space, I was very aware of learning new ways of moving. Returning to Earth, everything felt familiar, so I relaxed and didn’t think about it. I would subconsciously push on a table to float away or try and leave an object hanging in midair. I had to teach myself how to live in Earth’s gravity again.
Of the three of us, Jim was in the worst shape. He was still unsteady on his feet and felt off balance when he lay down to sleep. I’d always thought of him as the weight-lifting, exercise-conscious guy, so I was surprised to see him so worn out.
Then, in the debriefing period, I was finally told what had happened to him during the flight. I felt confused, more than anything else. Why hadn’t they told us during the mission? There were ways we could have talked about private medical matters with the ground without the whole world listening in. I never got a good answer.
Dave was also having trouble sleeping because of an ache in his shoulder, something which our flight surgeons dismissed. But Dee O’Hara arranged for some private treatment and he improved. I had trouble sleeping for a different reason. I couldn’t get all the damn people out of my apartment.
Unlike the crews of earlier moon missions, we did not enter any medical quarantine, because the doctors had decided there was no risk of any possible moon germs returning with us. I would almost have welcomed the quarantine, because we could have debriefed without any distractions.
As it was, I would go to work, debrief all day, and there was always something going on when I got home at night. Many of the people in my apartment complex would drop by for a drink and a talk. They just wanted to be around somebody who had returned from the moon. I’ve always been a social guy and enjoyed their company, but eventually I had to kick them out every evening.
Then I would sit in my living room, turn all the lights out, and still not feel sleepy. I was overtired. I would finally get around five hours’ sleep, drag myself out of bed, and shuffle back to the debriefings day after day.
With three worn-out astronauts, the debriefings soon became dull. At first, I felt proud to talk about what we’d done. Under Dave’s excellent command, we’d really done our jobs, and felt delighted with the way things had turned out. The mission had been what Apollo was truly all about.
But after a few days of constant talking, I grew wearier. The room was windowless and the sessions were long. Ironically, the mission was tough to discuss since it had gone according to plan—there was little new to say. Much of the debriefing was record keeping, so planners could match the scientific data and photos with specific locations and times in the flight plan. Each mission controller asked endless questions about his own area of responsibility.
I only really enjoyed my conversations with Farouk, who was like a kid in a candy store when I shared what I had learned. But even he was being pulled in two directions: he had to brief the crew of the next mission, Apollo 16. I told him everything I could to help prepare them.
I would also have loved to talk more with the scientists responsible for all the SIM bay experiments. But first they needed to work on the raw data before finding time to talk to me. They also needed to concentrate on Apollo 16.
Even though I talked about the flight every day at work, the mission began to take on an air of unreality. It was as if I had gone to my father’s theater as a child and become totally immersed in a movie, forgetting there was another world out there. Now the movie was over, and I was out on the street as cars and people went by, back in the real world again. The moon flight was an episode in my life that felt totally out of context; I didn’t know how to place it in my mind.
I would sit in my living room at night, wide awake. It was quiet and peaceful, but my brain still went a mile a minute. So I grabbed some old coffee-stained legal pads and began to write down my vivid impressions of our flight. Unlike the technical debriefing, I relived the flight in emotions and remembered images. The words flowed freely and easily, and after letting them sit to one side for a while, I realized I had written something that might best be described as poetry.
I didn’t do anything with those papers for years. But when I mentioned them to some friends in a Houston poetry group, they grew excited about the first poems written by someone who had traveled to the moon. They said I should publish them. I left the poems in a drawer for a few more years, but eventually I did publish them, in a volume called
The poems are about as good as you might expect from a pilot. I hope I did a better job than a poet would if asked to fly a jet with no training. And on those long nights when I couldn’t sleep, the writing helped me. It was my own personal, emotional debriefing.
I went to the office every day and life seemed to return to normal. The debriefings only lasted a few weeks. Then it was time for NASA to send us on our next mission. This assignment would last for the rest of the year, and this time it was all about public relations. NASA needed to keep the tax dollars flowing. Sending us around the country, then around the world, allowed them to celebrate and show off their successes.
Our first stop, in early September, was Washington, D.C. Vice President Agnew decorated each of us with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award that NASA could bestow upon us. He was extremely friendly and made us feel very special. The next day, we headed to the Capitol building. From the podium where so many historic speeches had been given, we addressed a joint meeting of Congress, an unusual honor for an Apollo crew, given only to Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 before us. This experience certainly felt a little different from office work.
We were escorted into the chamber by a group of politicians including Congressman Chuck Chamberlain, who had helped me attend West Point all those years before, and Congressman Gerald Ford, also from Michigan. I’d cross paths with Ford again before too long, under very different circumstances.
Carl Albert, the Speaker of the House, introduced us in some of the most glowing words I could recall. “It is our great honor today to welcome to this chamber the recently returned heroes of Apollo 15’s epic journey into space,” he began. “I feel privileged to introduce to you three Americans who are such a credit to their country and who represent the highest qualities of human aspiration and courage.”
Oh shit, I thought to myself, how the hell do I give a speech to match that introduction?
I had a little time to think about it while Dave made his remarks. They were excellent, inspiring, and a tough act to follow. But then Dave mentioned “my trusted colleague, Colonel Al Worden.” It was my turn.
“First off, let me say I am overwhelmed by the reception. It is fantastic. I am proud to be an American. I am proud to be part of the Apollo 15 flight.”
So far, so good. Time for me to share a message of what I experienced in space, beginning with our launch.
“Our view out of the window was of an area surrounding Cape Kennedy and some of the ocean. After the launch the first thing we noticed, particularly when we got into Earth orbit, was that we had a further view—we were further away from the Earth, and our view was expanding. We did not see any area around Cape Kennedy. What we saw were continents and oceans, a great deal of the horizon. After we left Earth orbit, and for the remainder of our flight, our view was one of the Earth. Our horizons were not limited to the area around us during the flight. We saw the Earth as a single planet. There is a oneness about the Earth that we do not see from the ground. We do not see any boundaries from that particular vantage point. We do not see any differences in race, or religion, or political beliefs.
“The thought struck me that there was an analogy between the Earth and between
“One thing is quite evident—particularly during the flight—our destinies were bound together by what we did in the flight. We relied on each other; we worked with each other. The same thing must be true on Earth. We must work together. We must rely on each other. We must work together as a team for Earth.
“We had the very crude beginnings of some tools to help us accomplish this goal on our flight. We carried many scientific instruments—a very crude beginning, admittedly—to do the kinds of work that have to be done to clean up spacecraft Earth. We carried scientific instruments that measured remotely. We carried some cameras
