NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with James W. Head III, Professor of Geological Sciences at Brown University, and Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, part 2 of 3

That was the one, that was the one, what's going to happen if you flip over and you see this crater? Oh, no one knew what it would be, it was funny when it pressed us, I mean, oh, it's other side. Oh, that was good. That's the only time I was quick on it. That was a quick one. But the view from here down the rail was absolutely spectacular. That was amazing. I believe that the view from here, as you said, we saw the blocks going down and the trail that the block makes as it bumps down, we have pictures of that in the Egyptian desert from Egypt to be identical to it with the blocks making the same kind of spot as they go down there. It was incredible. With mass wasting, with blocks going down by their own gravitational force. It's also amazing when they came along here, you know, everybody thought there'd be a

heck of a lot more blocks than it was. And yet they did find a lot of really interesting things, particularly the Genesis rock. That was so amazing to be able to think about this as the possible deep crustal block that was ejected, came out and then- Which turned out to be? Yeah, turned out to be. It was so great when Dave came across and saw that feldspar twin kind of flashing in his face. That was absolutely spectacular. And it certainly turned out to be the block at least we thought it might be. And I think the secondary craters that turned out to be a plus two, I mean, it looks like there may have been a pretty good date that came out of there for Aerostilus or Autolikus. Because of the mixture that the stuff that came from it came from it. Yeah. Turned out to be a really good sight all around, given all the objectives to be we didn't get to the show. Yes, but I think probably it wouldn't have been a volcanic complex anyway, but it would have been great to look down on the pluton because of all the boulders there. And it wasn't such a defined dome, like the muddy hills or something, so it was a kind of a different step at the top. So imagine you're planning something now, God.

Now, what if they actually had landed in the site we discussed because of that structure right there? Would they have been able to do as much as they did? Let's assume that they landed right there. Where would you have them go? I think a really important thing would be to look at the internal structures. Surely we know up here that they were able to see the stratigraphy and the real, but here, question would be is there a lot of dark metal? Could you see layers of it, what is the thickness and so on, and also anything related to the vent? That's really the vent. That would have been the way the gas is first came, where the change here, where the stuff was collecting and the came out. That would have been a pretty spectacular issue. And this is not unlike the forth complex, is it? Yes, it's probably just a covered piece of rock, but it would have been great to look at that too. But this is also created like that, not complex, so it would have been easy to get to whatever it's been needed. But do you think that chunk of rock here would have been similar to this here in the beginning? We probably would have gone to this like this, but depending on which side you land, one

of the sites was here too. The first one, yeah. But I would worry about that. So much of this is covered. I don't think we would have gotten that really good stuff. We got the genesis rock up here. I agree. Because that is the real material, which would be different from that. That may be one step further down. It looks a lot more like the top here, maybe it's just folded down. But the thing for 11 over there, that kind of greenish map, right here in the middle. That is 14. Yeah, 11, see or somewhere. Where is it here? Here it is, right there. Yeah. It's all different scales, this one. Yeah, yeah. But thank God they finally got into it. It's fine. I had to do it right at the time. Yeah, I mean, when the first Neil Armstrong first started calling out to Glocks and so on. And you could just get that tension about one of the least tense guys and the whole thing. But you could just sense that change in his voice. He knew if he let it be and then I landed the middle of the biggest blockies.

And all the geologists would be happy, but he wouldn't have a way home. Not at all. Oh my God, that was really scary. But this is spectacular too. Yeah, even going over to West Crater. And that's, I think, one of the best things that was ever done on a mission. Yeah, he's run over to this crater and getting that picture with the blocks in the middle to figure out the thickness of the soil, which we caught regulates. So it's a fabulous thing. Yeah. That was really one of a great points. Given everything they did in terms of the first landing and all the other stuff, they did a spectacular job on that. The question about that. Yeah. And 12 was great too. Yeah, I mean, just just being able to actually see that the surveyor spacecraft and land near it just really proved that we could actually then as well. Remember actually get into some very difficult landing sites later on. Yeah. But not necessarily the field work of, of, of, of. Anil Armstrong and is where he did not expect at least a 12 guys knew exactly what they're going to be and what to expect. This one they did not really know what to expect and what is going to be there and how would they behave and he landed not where he's supposed to land.

So he took it on his own to go out this way and, and look at that crater and take a picture of it to get this. Certainly made a huge, huge difference. You don't suppose that he did the geological training. Not at all. I'm sure he would have done a lot better if he was not great. We could see that now. I'm sure we could not have said this to anybody then. It's amazing how many blocks they were able to pick up in the samples too. Yep. That's really spectacular. Remember the days when they said there's going to be only one grip sample. Yeah. You get down. Yep. Yeah, it's a sample. You go. It's a little tense when Neil Armstrong was coming in for that landing. Oh yeah. Talk to me. Talk to me. Absolutely. I mean, you know, when he was descending towards the surface. I mean, you could hear the tension in his voice and, and you could feel it in our bodies. I mean, it was like really incredible because this was it. I mean, it was a question of whether they would survive what you would do if you got down there. And then of course, whether we'd ever go back again, really. And we knew that they were not landing where they're supposed to land.

And that, with that, became a disaster because we worked on this for so long. And the engineers had worked on the exact landing point for so long. And we wanted this landing specifically to be very successful and safe. And here they are, not landing where they're supposed to be. And we have no idea where they would finally land. And it was really terrifying to find out that perhaps here we're going to see something that might end the program. And the other thing was we had no idea when they were on the lunar surface where they were. We had no idea because they had to land, you know, fly away to some other place. And so we had to help given the TV images and things like that. But at the same time, you know, nobody really knew where they were on the moon. So it was like afterwards that we figured it out finally. Yep. Good. Nice. Very nice. I think very fast because they run out of money and they're really kind of slowly.

So we can really see that. Is this in the Ophiolite? Yeah. Actually, there is water in the oven. We have not drilled in the Ophiolite yet. We have it. So just did that yet because of the Ophiolites are hard. Yeah. So the drill bit will have to be a little more solid. But definitely there is a hell of a lot of water in the Ophiolite and within the fractions. And the Ophiolites are very important. Yeah. The Ophiolite surface is totally in importance. Yeah. So it has to be in the fraction. Yeah. Totally in importance. So it has to be like granite. So it has to be within the fraction. So you guys are warming up. You're trying to get ready to go to the moon. Take me back. What did you know about the moon? Well, one of the things that was so questionable, a big issue was whether the moon was hot or cold. You know, it did it a creep in a coal manner and no volcanism, no nothing. Or was it in fact something that had internal energy which produced lava flows and things like that? First, we also wanted to know whether the moon is made of green cheese or not.

This was an official statement by most scientists at the time. And the fact that, whether all of these craters on the moon, we see these round things all over the surface, were these made by volcanic eruptions, like the volcanoes on Earth, or were they made by impact or of meteorites that makes these round things. And that was a huge debate before we went to the moon. It was really amazing because most of the people who were astronomers thought that they were actually volcanoes. And the most of the geologists thought they were impacts, which you'd think would be the other way around. But there's some law there that was, and it was really a hot controversy. So to speak, it was just unbelievable. And people fought to the death about whether these circular features were impact or volcanic and couldn't be a little of each. No, no, no, it had to be almost all one or almost all the other. And it was a kind of an important question because whether the whole surface of the moon was made by volcanism, or the vast majority of the surface like the Earth was made this way, that molten rock came from beneath the surface and actually spread on the surface to make it, or was it formed by a different process?

And that was really one of the most significant geological questions that we didn't know. Is the moon going to be like the Earth, or is it not? Can we look at pictures of the moon and interpret them? The way we interpret pictures of the Earth, or should we not? And a key issue was the question of just, you know, what does the moon look like in the sense of relative to the Earth? Because it's so foreign. No atmosphere, you know, you didn't see anything that was related to running water or anything like that. It was just these craters and this, what it looked like, a dusty surface maybe. And nobody knew whether you could actually apply the same principles. And there weren't very many geologists who had an interest in this. So there was very, very unknown. Very unknown. Okay, Jeff, great. I think you can move on to pictures. Using the phrase, what do you want the astronauts to look for? One of the things that we want the astronauts to look for actually from orbit around the moon first was what are the significant features that they could actually pick out, that we were not able to pick out from looking at pictures.

Because there was nothing that we really learned about the moon before the missions except from pictures. And most of the pictures were taken by some of the missions, the unmanned missions, but the vast majority were taken from the Earth. And we wanted to see whether the astronauts can look at the moon and provide us with more things that we could actually see in these pictures. It was very important. How can a trained person actually look and add to our knowledge of the moon? And another thing we wanted the astronauts to look for was actually the kinds of rocks were on the surface. And how they were related to different processes. For example, did you see evidence for specific rocks that you could pick up and look at and then relate them to a volcano? Roll that. We got to change up. Me too. No, you're good. We got you clean now. We wanted the astronauts. The surface. When the astronauts got on the surface, we really wanted them to look for some specific things. We wanted them to look for rocks and the kinds of rocks that existed on the surface and also how it related to the local geology. You could just pick up a rock. It might as well be a meteorite.

But we really wanted to know whether they were related to lava flows or to impact craters or so on. So the astronauts were trained to look for these variety of kinds of rocks and then link them in their surface observations when they got out on the surface and walked around to the geological features that were there. How about once they got on the ground? Once the astronauts get on the ground, you really wanted them to kind of look for the different classes of things. Because one of the things that we wanted to learn from the rocks is what is the complete variety of the moon rocks and the different ages. And that would come only from if somebody knows how to classify all of the things that in front of him and then pick up representative samples from each class. So we would know that we have the whole spectrum of different rocks and soils. Different colors sometimes. The soils were in different colors. So if you see a soil that has just a tiny bit of a tint in the different color, pick up that soil because it may be different. It may be a different age. It may have formed a different way or it may have a different composition.

Just one more. One of the things, for example, when we asked the astronauts to look around on the surface specifically, there were things like, for example, on Apollo 15. What is the origin of the material? How deep did it come from? And we thought that it might have been excavated from great depth by the Emberian basin and there might be these, an orthocyte plagi-clase crystals, which they could find them, would be an indication of the depth. And that's exactly what Dave Scott did when he looked across the surface so the glinting crystal and said, I think we found what we came for. And in fact, it was. This is what was then known as Genesis Rock because it was the deep crystal material that we actually had asked them to look for and they found it. And you can visualize the excitement in the back room when he said, I got it. And I think that's what we found what we came out for and here it is and the excitement of the fact that these are geologists that really did it and all of the training worked out and everything paid off and they are here with the piece of rock that we really want. Now, everybody's always very polite about the geologists and the astronauts and we have gotten a little bit of jag, you know, from people like Surnin and so forth and say, well, in the early days of the geologists showed up and you know, they were nice guys but our basic attitude was, who needs them?

That's right. No, they said that. We knew that. Describe for me if you would. It was really very interesting because some of the astronauts wouldn't touch as geologists with a 10-foot pole. Actually, some of them hated the classrooms in geology because in the first classes they did learn about the rocks, their names and the chemical composition and looked at thin sections of rocks. These things that Jim and I would study in the classrooms, but that's not for the pilot. So some of the early training was not the right way because it was not mission specific. It was not really designed for a pilot that is going to land in a foreign place and then do something on his own to prove that he can add something to it. That Ken Mattingley, Apollo 13 and 16, Command Module Pilot, told me once that when I realized that somebody came to me and told me that there is somebody, a geologist going to come and train you by his name is Farook and Baz, I thought it was a joke.

And he really thought it was a joke. Why in the air would I get another geologist by the name of Farook and Baz? It was enough. I think there was a big change, a big change in the attitude of the astronauts after the earliest missions because all of a sudden they were going to have to be on the surface for a total maybe of 21 hours. And frankly speaking, if you don't know some geo-lingo, you're going to not look too smart on the surface. So I'm sure there was just some motivation from the point of view that, gee, we really got it, they were all highly motivated to do the job and when it became clear that the job was geology, then attitudes changed a lot. And they really put their heart into it. And that really came what James just said came right after Apollo 12. Because with Apollo 11, it was the disaster of landing some other place. And therefore the main objective of Apollo 12 was to pinpoint land.

Beyond that, if you pinpoint land, you wouldn't do as more than Apollo 12. So you've got to do something different. So you have to land at the pinpoint, but then you do something else. And that something else became to contribute to the science. And I think we saw very definitely that the later Apollo crews not only learned the geology, they were all excellent at it, but also they got into the spirit of exploration. 15, Dave Scott, took a piece of Captain Cook's ship to the moon with a named spacecraft after similar types of things. And it was a voyage of exploration, a voyage of science. And they were really hardcore behind that. It's very, very fascinating. And the spirit of competition, the spirit of competition of pilots since the pilots are very competitive people and the astronauts are not within the astronauts of the pilot's pilots. And since they are competing and very highly competitive themselves, then the spirit of competition certainly helped a great deal. Jeff.

I think we'll go back a bit to. Well, there was a lot of debate about the age of the moon and the age of the units on the moon. Most people thought that the moon was likely to be about four and a half billion years old, similar to what meteorite ages told us about the Earth and the solar system. But nobody really knew because we'd only had the Earth rocks, which are pretty young and reprocessed and also the meteorites, which gave us some clue about this. So there were big issues about the actual age of the moon. And then what was the age of the rock units on the moon? They varied. I mean, because we didn't know the number of craters per unit time. And actually the debate was whether they were even impact craters. So wildly varying estimates of the age of the units on the surface of the moon. And then as far as the lunar, the lunar material composition is concerned, there were certain things that we did not know. However, we had geological interpretations made. And because we knew if we see basalt, it means that there was volcanism on the surface of the moon and volcanism after it was formed. And if we find abrasia, this means yes, that is a rock that was formed by the impact of a meteorite that crushed the rock, fused some and cooled up again.

And if we find a nice crystalline piece of an orthosite, we'll say yes, that this has come from the old crust of the moon. So it will give us an age of the first crust of the moon. Mark, what we have learned. When the rocks first came back, it was really amazing because the rocks near Armstrong picked up turned out to be basalts and the ages of those weren't a few thousand or hundreds of thousands of years. But with 3.7 billion years old, it was like unbelievable. These are really all rocks. And we knew from stratigraphic relationships that these are some of the younger rocks. They were younger than the older crust and other aspects of impact cratering. So this was amazing. So this is really old. Certainly by Earth standards older than virtually all rocks we'd found on the Earth at that time. And similarly with the pressures that were collected, we find that rocks had been molten because of the impact itself, the pressure of the impact.

And then crystallize the gain and that gives you the time when the impact occurred. And when you find a rock that has crystals in it and the crystals are from an old continental kind of rock like the Earth, then it gives you the age of the old continent when it was formed. All and all all of this puts together a picture that the rocks of the moon are similar to the rocks of the Earth, although they have different chemistry. And the relationship between the Earth and the moon is very close. They are not from different parents. They were born from the same mother kind of. What about a north side in the significance of 15 expires? Start me from the beginning. The thing about Apollo 15. Okay, so one of the key aspects of Apollo 15 was landing at the edge of the Embry and Basin, almost 1200 kilometers in diameter for the ring of the mountains. And it was thought that this was a giant impact, which had excavated material from deep inside the moon and the crust and distributed it on the surface.

When Dave Scott found the Genesis rock and knew that he had found what he had come for, it was a piece of an north side with very large crystals that he could actually see glinting in the distance. And this showed that in fact these crystals had grown very slowly and thus had to be at great depth, tens of kilometers depth, and represent the earliest history of the lunar crust. And these were the anorthocytes, the rocks making up the primeval really crust of the moon. Fantastic finding. You You

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