NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Ralph Baldwin, planetary scientist, part 3 of 3

July 20, 1969. Where were you? And what were you thinking about? July 20, I was on an airplane going from Orlando, Florida to Grand Rapids. My elder son, Dana, had gone to Florida to see the takeoff of Apollo 11. And we were with a large number of people, including the vice president of the United States, in the area of the VIP building. I didn't say that right, of the VAB building, vehicle assembly building. And we were about three miles from the rocket as it stood on its gantry, by its gantry. And when it started

off, three miles was plenty close enough. It's a strange noise, but oh, it took hold of you and just shook you. Dana and I went forward of the group. We had stayed in Orlando and they gave us a box breakfast. And we ate it out by the fence in front of the stands where we stayed along with others as the rocket took off. Everybody was out having fun and a picnic attitude. And as the time for the takeoff, 9, 12 a.m. came closer and closer. The sounds got less and less. Until the last 30 seconds of the countdown, it was absolutely quiet. And as the rocket lifted, nobody yelled and cheered. But almost everybody in that

crowd whispered, come on, go, you can make it. It was the nearest experience to a true religious experience that I have ever had. It was fantastic. We heard about the landing when we were on the airplane on the way back. In the post Apollo period, I've lectured three times in Houston, been down there several times. I've been to Washington with some of the people who were doing the scheduling of where the Apollo's were going to land.

But there's one thing even before that that I'm very proud of. I was with a group of scientists who were invited to Washington after the third orbiter had succeeded. They had planned five orbiters. They expected three other would work. The first three did. So they called on the scientists, what would you like to have done with the fourth orbiter? Well, the minute he said that, I raised my hand. He said, I want to put in a polar orbit. Being in a polar orbit, the moon will rotate underneath it and you will get pictures of the entire surface over a period of time. Sorry, we have enough energy. We can't do that. Said, you go back and tell them we have to do it.

Well, they must have taken me seriously because shortly thereafter, maybe two weeks, they came back and said, yes, we can do it. And Apollo 4 was put in a polar orbit around the moon. And it gathered more information than any of the other Apollo's, I said Apollo, orbiter 4. Gathered more information than any of the other orbiters or all of them put together. The pictures brought back by orbiter 4 were the dominant factor in later work before people actually landed in the Apollo program, landed on the moon. Were you consulted during the Apollo program? Only to the extent that I lectured at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory three times

and was involved in the orbiter program directly. Indirectly, I led the way in competing with Tommy Gold's hypothesis of the deep dust. It just wasn't so. And I think they finally accepted my recommendations that they go ahead and ignore the dust. And other people made the same statement. I know Yuri did. But that about limits the amount of contact I had directly with NASA. Mark, impact is now generally accepted. Many years later, 50 years after you've originally

published a book about it. How does that make you feel? It's the most gratifying feeling. I think every scientist is delighted when he's proven right. And I've been most fortunate to have drawn some correct conclusions about the moon. But I do want to make one observation. I was nowhere near the first person to suggest that the creators of the moon were of impact origin. That goes back to around 1830, as far as I know, to a German with a name of great hasn't. And he might probably be classified with Vendanaquin as that type of a person,

because he found a ruined city on the moon once and announced it. But other people have suggested that the lunar creators are of impact origin without trying to prove it, without trying to get the facts. And most of them, have later pulled the idea back, backed off from it. Let's go to one, because we did forget that GK Gilbert. You didn't learn about Gilbert until after you became interested in the moon. No, Gilbert was the retiring president of the Philosophical Society of Washington. And in his presidential address as retiring president, he gave the material that was later published under the title, the moon's face.

Well, unfortunately, that was in 1892. Unfortunately, that publication is not one that is normally checked read by astronomers and geologists. If it had been, it is entirely possible that our knowledge of the moon might have made a quantum jump forward 50 years earlier. But then again, maybe not. Things seem to be offered time and time again, be rejected. And then suddenly something happens, and they are accepted if they're correct. Nothing might have happened if Gilbert had published it in one of the more generally accessible

publications. I don't know what would happen, but I wish it had happened. But at the same time, I'm happy that it didn't happen because it gave me an opportunity. You said at one point, yeah, you had the field to yourself for a long, long time. Looking back, you still feel that way? Yes. Most people, as I think I've said earlier today, thought I was wasting my time because it wasn't anything that they were interested in. But it seemed important to me. And I've made various predictions. For example, in the face of the moon on page 155, you'll find a suggestion that perhaps some of these extinctions of life on the earth were produced by impact. Well, I also predicted that Mercury and Mars would be found to be

cratered planets. I didn't include Venus because I never thought we'd look through the clouds. But the editors wanted to take that little chapter 12 out, and I asked them not to. It's proven to be right. Great. Let's leave it there. We're just out of film. Good timing. You