NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Thomas P. Stafford, NASA astronaut, Air Force Officer, and Commander of Apollo 10, part 3 of 3

Well, we're going facing down in a way backwards, you're going to blow off the decent stage, and then fire the assent stage to bring the Apple Loom, which is the highest part of our lunar orbit down, to start the rendezvous to go back and rendezvous with John Young. And it came up to about a minute before we were to do this. We were going into nighttime, looking down on the moons going by us, you know, coming back down to around 45,000 to 50,000 feet, and a thruster started to fire, boom, boom. And I looked, I could see the yaw rate needle was off to the left, but I could tell that our eight ball, we weren't yawing. And furthermore, I could look and see a way that the moon and surface is going by that we weren't yawing.

And from that, I said, I couldn't, I couldn't see what had happened, and I saw a light come on, and I started, we were all buttoned up and troubleshooting, and I never, and my hand went to the abort guidance switch, so we were on the primary guidance switch in which minute was born another way, so boom, the whole thing started to spin end over end like this. We forgot we're on a hot mic. And so just, you know, I could see, we had a three gimbal platform, two, and it started to go towards the red cherry, that's where you'd lock up the gimbals, so I just went to the hard stops, you know, to fly around that and just blew off the decent stage, so I'd have more torque inertia ratio, all the thrusters for attitude control were on the top stage on the Ascent stage, the lunar module weighed 10,000 pounds, now the total vehicle weighed about 30,000, so you see, I could, but I needed to get the attitude control real fast, so I just blew it off, and Gene was a little shaken, everybody? Well, he would have forgotten that, you know, we're on a hot mic, and so he was looking

out to win in the air, I was looking, so that's when Apollo 10 became X-rated. Just a personal question. Any regrets about not having made a lunar landing yourself after all of the dues you paid? Yeah, I would have loved to go back for one of those lunar missions, and all that, on the other hand, you know, by staying there, it was head of the astronaut group, and by taking over the astronaut group from a place now, Shepard, he gave me a lot of management experience, a little visibility, and I think it helped set me up to get my first star to make bigger air general in the Air Force, and then I got the Apollo Soyuz, which was a great mission to. What did you learn about the Russians when you finally got to work with them? After all these years of feeling like we're in this competition to get to the moon, and I'm sure you can take the moon. Oh, sure. There was a big competition to get to the moon. Well, once you got to know them, in that era, I remember this was in 1972 through 75. You found out that they were professional test pilots, just like we were, very dedicated

to the country, and most of the time were big believers in communism. Then when we get them off one to one, maybe they weren't such heavy believers in communism, but belonging to the party had a lot of perks. I got to know that the quality of their hardware, the metal part, was very good, but electronics they were lacking way behind. But it was adequate for what they needed, because design that Soyuz was designed for Earth, orbit where the Apollo was designed to go to the moon and back, and then lose systems and all that and keep coming in a mission. So it was great to get to know them and be the commander of the Apollo, and that one. We had lifelong friends, and I still think Leonov gave us off like a couple of brothers to me. Do you think Apollo ended too soon, or do you think it was right? Oh, I think it was right.

Apollo 13 really frightened NASA leadership, because I'd say, what would happen if it would lose somebody out there? Then after 13, we had the 14, 15, 16, and 17, we got a lot of data back. We did a whole lot of science, which is great. And so there's still a risk, believe me, it's a lot more risk when you go beyond Earth orbit, because you're on the way out there. Nobody can come and get you, let's face it, and Earth orbit, nobody can come and get you either, unless you're at a space station, we have something docked just to get out. But it's a high-risk mission. So I think, well, we might have gone another one or two, but it was time to move on to a different era in technology, and we're all in favor of the shuttle. The only great disappointment in the shuttle is the cost of operations. Now, you reminded me of something that I wanted to ask you earlier on. Back in your Gemini days, when all of a sudden, the concept of scientists and geologists was coming on board, how did you receive that idea initially when scientists are going to fly?

We didn't have that many seats to go. And so we were selected, and we knew the National Academy of Science was pushing that, and I think there was somewhat some resentment at the time. However, some of the scientists that came on board were very good people. Now, you got some of them who came on board with super egos and thought that they should have the next flight coming down the road and all this, and they left the program, just when they're all in a lot of friction, but some of them were very excellent people, like Owen Garriott, Joe Kerwin, and Jack Schmidt, tremendous people. Talked to me about the synthesis group. What was the genesis of that? How did you get involved in that? What was it going to accomplish? Well, I was a member of the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, which is a panel under the National Research Council in R.C., which is the operational arm of the National Academy of Science, the Academy of Engineering.

And I had served on that for several years, and it was one of the few people who had both space and aeronautical background. And it was on the 20th anniversary of the first lunar landing when George Bush in 1989, President Bush had a reception at the Air and Space Museum in the barbecue in the South alone at the White House, and he said, but in the presentation at the Air Space Museum that we ought to set our sights after we finish the Space Station, as far as its deployment and get it going, that after the turn of the century, we'll look again at Retrain of the Moon this time to say, and then, further, out of the following decade, go to explore Mars. I was sitting right there in front of the audience, and I thought, great, Mr. President, great, to ask them, how are we going to pay for this? Now this was in July of 1989. But then that fall, October, November, the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union started to fall apart. And then I said, well, gee, the amount that the DOD budget is coming down is far more than whatever need to go back to the moon and on the Mars.

So they asked NASA to do a 90-day study, which they did. But then the Vice President, who had been reactivated as head of the Space Council, like it used to be under Lynda Johnson under Kennedy, and then later, the same way, I continued on until finally got reorganized out in a management change by the White House in the early 70s. But so they reactivated to Space Council, and they looked at it and said it was not innovative and it was too bureaucratic, you know, and had some good data in it, but how to approach the problem. So that's when the Vice President said he wanted something faster, better, safer, and cheaper. And then he wanted to tell the NASA to go out and get ideas around, things move kind of slow. So that's when I got called, but I put together a group that we look at from academia, from the federally funded research and development elected Department of Defense, NASA, Department of Energy, and industrial base, all the aerospace companies, other companies, and then ideas just from people in the streets around the world, or probably not around the world

in the United States. And so I volunteered, that I would do that when I was asked to, and I would volunteer half my time, you know, with the provides, I would not have any conflicts of interest from the boards I served on. So I had a group, a wonderful group of people, and it was just like, it was so enthusiastic like the early days of Apollo, over in Crystal City near the Pentagon and National Airport. And George Havie was my deputy, and also had General Sam Armstrong as kind of a second deputy for architectures. And we've had 40 people full time, about 150 people part time, and we worked 11 months on that. And then at the end we outlined the technology priorities that were required, and in four different types of architectures that could be used to go back to the moon and on the Mars. And as we did that in June of 1990, the Vice President, I had a joint, down he won, brought me the joint. Let's cut that.

That's right. So at the end of 11 months then, we presented the report to the public, the Vice President, and I had a joint press conference in the White House, a newsroom, an outlined America to Thresh Hold, which was results of this study. Well, what's the reason to go back to the moon? Do you see a reason to go back? Oh, there's a lot of reasons to go back to the moon. First, the moon's only about three days away on most trajectories. When you go to Mars, it's going to be out there, a minimum of 180 to 270 days out, and probably an equal amount of time are longer to come back. And you can do all the testing in a lunar environment. And then when you determine you can do a lot of great science, and looking at long baseline optical interferometer telescopes to look for planets around stars. We could also look for way out, bringing back helium-3 from the moon to be used in fusion back here, which is maybe a clean fusion. It gives us a lot of technical development, so it could pay for itself.

Well, you know, Mars has 38 percent gravity of the Earth. The moon has 16 percent. So if you had designed a vehicle for a rover for Mars, a lander that had designed to perform in 38 percent of the Earth's gravity, you'd have a big margin at 16 percent. So it makes a wonderful test bed. And if we'd go then, say, after the turn of the century sometime, it'd be over 30 or 40 years since we last left Earth orbit, which was Apollo 17. Finally, what did Apollo mean to you? Apollo was the highlight, I guess, of all my career, starting from scratch, really scratch because... Let me get this last answer on one last and that'll be it. You will be done with you. You've done a great job. Yeah. Apollo, what did it mean to you? Well, Apollo to me was really the highlight of my whole working career. And so I went on the greatest challenges experience that a person could ever have.

And when I joined the program, it was basically the Mercury program was going on. And Wally Sharaw was just in the process of launching and doing few Earth orbits. And from there, going from that simple control room we had down at the Cape to build the Johnson Space Center, to build up Ponceville, build up the Cape, put all the hardware together in a short period of time to make probably mankind's biggest program in such a momentous leap ever in a history of mankind in such a short period of time. You look back and you see the pyramids built, you see Stonehenge, and that took a long time. But we did this whole thing in eight years and a couple of months from the time President Kennedy said, let's go to the moon. We did it. And to be involved with such great people working under so much pressure, achieving such great benefits that was unbelievable. Great.

Terrific. Cut.