Slayton, Kraft, and even President Nixon. By the time the evening was over the words “I don’t understand that, Sy” were forever embedded in memory.
There were no more missions in 1970. After we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat on Apollo 13, the rest of the year was a time of change, hard work, and frustration as further cuts were ordered in the flight schedule. Winners, however, persevere. We had a job to do and we sure as hell were going to do it. We had four more lunar missions; we had to get the crews to the Moon, attain our objectives, and get those crews back.
20. SHEPARD’S RETURN
The downtime needed for redesign of the service module gave us an opportunity to take a breath and look around. The world was a mess and so was our country. White adults were attacking black children being bused to school. Black Panthers were shooting it out with police in our cities. Four students were killed by the National Guard on the campus at Kent State University. Egypt and Israel were at war, airliners were being bombed or hijacked, and civil wars were erupting around the world.
I was frustrated by the lack of national leadership, the absence of individuals capable of rallying the many voices, putting the pieces back together. I had my own doubts about the war in Vietnam and the course set by the President and political leaders, but I refused to dump the blame for the way the war was going on the military.
The space program was also suffering. The lunar program was coming to an end. With the cancellations of the last Apollo missions—18, 19, and 20—I felt betrayed. It was as if Congress was ripping our heart out, gutting the program we had fought so hard to build. Leadership is fragile. It is more a matter of mind and heart than resources, and it seemed that we no longer had the heart for those things that demanded discipline, commitment, and risk.
The future of our space program after Apollo was a small Earth-orbiting space station dubbed Skylab. Its mission included astronomy, life sciences, Earth studies, and a grab bag of other experiments. The Skylab space station would use the leftover hardware from the canceled Apollo missions.
During the period after the Apollo 13 mission, a small team of controllers continued to follow the redesign of the oxygen system, while others were reassigned to the developing Skylab program. John Llewellyn was one of the controllers reassigned. I believed his trajectory skills could be put to good use in the Skylab Earth studies. John initially was not happy with the reassignment, but I was convinced that he would eventually come around.
With two programs, the computing services (not to mention our budget) were tight, and all computer runs were prioritized based on need and schedule. One afternoon I got a call from a computer operator asking if I had authorized some runs by Llewellyn. My response was short. “Not that I know of, but it is possible they are for his Earth resources project.” The operator said, “Gene, you better look at these. They are for a lunar trajectory that lands on the back side of the Moon.”
“There aren’t any sites on the back side,” I said, “and I don’t know what in the hell John is doing. Send the computer run requests up to the office.”
In short order, John was standing at attention in front of my desk. He was never one who stammered or tried to mince words. He came right at you, and you better be ready for every emotion except regret. John never apologized. He believed that offense was the best defense. I found it hard to keep a straight face as my judo partner proceeded to explain why he was studying landings on the back side of the Moon. As he talked he paced the room, gesturing wildly in patriotic fervor. “We think the program is pretty well fucked up. This cancellation of the rest of the Apollo missions is a bunch of shit, and we’re trying to do something about it.”
John both challenged me and piqued my curiosity. We stood nose-to-nose. “John, just who the hell is ‘we’?”
He ignored my question and continued, “Gene, can’t you see what the hell is going on? The pogues”—John’s favorite word for bureaucrats—“ are taking over and pretty damned soon there won’t be anything left of the space program. I know you had to put someone in this crappy job you gave me, but you better be aware that I am A RETRO first, and the section chief for Earth resources second!” John then stormed out. My office echoed from his shouting, and I still did not know what had set him off and what he was thinking.
An hour later, I received a visit from our geologist-astronaut, Jack Schmitt. He knocked on the door, politely walking into the office. “I understand you just had a talk with Llewellyn,” he said. Now I was really confused, but I was starting to suspect that I had uncovered something that Schmitt probably had started. My suspicion was confirmed when he said, “I’ve got a small study group going on alternate lunar missions. We meet after work in my apartment. I provide the refreshments.”
Jack Schmitt was the astronaut most like a member of the flight control team. He was a geologist, and the son of a geologist, who had explored Indian reservations in his native New Mexico as a boy. Jack had assembled some of the early composite lunar photographs while he was working in Flagstaff, Arizona. Accepted as a scientist-astronaut in 1965, he finished second in his class of fifty in Air Force flight school. At NASA, Jack helped develop the scoops, shovels, and other tools that were used to dig samples from the lunar crust.
Jack was unique, an intellectual with degrees from the California Institute of Technology and Harvard but with the soul of an adventurer. He was at every flight control party, celebrating each victory, big or small. A favorite of the controllers, he was one of the few astronauts who really put a few away at our parties—the others nursed their drinks. He was loud, effervescent, brash, not quite my image of the typical scientist. Schmitt seemed to have no limit to his interests, no end to his enthusiasms. He was an instigator who dropped a few well-chosen words in receptive ears and then let events roll on to what he knew would be a stormy, noisy, and wild conclusion. Currently without a mission assignment, Jack wanted to make sure that he got to the Moon, and the more missions on the schedule, the better his chances.
I went to Jack’s next study session and was not surprised at finding Llewellyn and a handful of my flight controllers and flight designers. As I watched them work, I had the impression they were a bunch of Boy Scouts setting up tents and starting campfires. It was the same impression I had had of a similar bunch when I joined the Space Task Group. It was crowded in the apartment and the cross-talk was lively. One moment they were busily sketching out mission options, and then debating the pros and cons of missions to the back side of the Moon for the final Apollo flights. The team believed that if we could pull off something spectacular, something that had never been done before, we might recapture the interest of the American public and get the canceled missions back in the program. After all, the space hardware was already bought and paid for, and the team did not want to let the Saturn boosters and capsules end up as displays in museums.
The risks involved in a back-side landing might well create compelling drama. The risks would again put the lunar program on the front pages of the newspapers, and for a few days we would capture the public’s interest. During a back-side landing, Mission Control could not give the crew any help. The crew would be on their own in a virtually uncharted world and, like the early explorers, living by courage and ingenuity alone.
We would not even know whether they landed or crashed until the CSM relayed the status a half hour later. These would be explorers like Byrd, Scott, Peary, and Cook. Schmitt’s team continued its work; Llewellyn got his computer time, and when I had a chance, I joined the discussions. I wondered if meetings like this had happened before the master mariner Christopher Columbus decided to find the Indies by sailing west.
The plan never had a chance, never got to the attention of NASA management, but Llewellyn, Schmitt, and their team members believed it was better to go down fighting than to meekly accept defeat. Schmitt wasn’t going to let the Apollo program come to an end without making sure that a real geologist set foot on the Moon. Mission Control, and the small group that worked in his apartment, cheered Schmitt the day he got his assignment to Apollo 17, the mission that would close the era of lunar exploration.
Mission Control was a world bounded by math and physics, a world of statistics and probabilities. We were
