NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Donald Wilhelms, Geologist with the US Geological Survey who helped make a geologic mapping of the Moon and trained Apollo astronauts, part 3 of 3

I'm going to get out of the shadow, alright you can go guys, okay done, what happened with the map, the red area and the police 16? This map was prepared by Jack McCall in myself and right in the thick of the Apollo program after the 15 mission and before the 16 mission. Do it again and keep your eyes on rush, start from the beginning and go. One second I have a mic shadow there and you're right on the edge with mic shadow right here. This map was prepared right in the middle of the Apollo program after the 15 mission and before the 16 didn't incorporate much of the

15 results but this red spot is very significant and these days we thought that much of the lunar terror was volcanic and the red and geologic maps traditionally indicates volcanic rocks and so we colored it red and they landed there and it wasn't volcanic, it was an impact brecha as is all the rest of the lunar terror we now know and the way we know it is by this mission and when the astronauts got out and they didn't see any volcanic rocks and only impact breaches we had to rethink the entire concept that much of the moon could be made of volcanic rock and it was to me the watershed of lunar science because after that all these other oddball things that make up the lunar terror and we have a whole series of units over here that were devised to pull out those we thought might be volcanic as well as impact all of those disappeared and

they're all impact and we learned a lot from that by being wrong in the first place do you remember anything was there any point where they said anything when they were on their first excursion out of Atlanta what they said as soon as they were on the service in John Young and Charlie Duke are both very good observers well-trained in geology and very eager to do the geologic work they got out they didn't see any I think the phrase was something like ain't no volcanic rocks here it's all breccia I call it the B word back in back in the breed of the support rooms the geologists said whoops and some of them I will not name actually were so chagrinned by being wrong that they left left the left the involvement in the program wow I never let me ask you one other question speaking of leaving the program and it

doesn't involve the map I just it's one other thing I want to know about Jean when Jean left was there a sense of disappointment or dissolution and perhaps even betrayal in the geologic community I mean he had pioneered this field no it was his choice and he was he wasn't going to shirk his work from then on he was deeply involved in other very important things too and we recognize that he just had to go on to something else NASA was chagrinned and disappointed and angry because his the code that was picked up by the reporters was very unfavorable to NASA and they didn't like that start one second settle down everybody what's that shout all right all right okay when did when did you really it was just about the time the first results came in on the ages of the lunar maria that Yuri finally realized he

had been wrong that the geologists were right that there were volcanic rocks on the moon and they did come out a long time after the moon formed and so he you're right away became more friendly with geologists because he was very flexible unlike so many others but I will say this about Yuri since the volcanic interpretation of the uplands went away with a policy X-team Yuri was essentially right about half of the moon great thank you very