NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Carolyn Shoemaker, Astronomer, part 1 of 3

back. I still use that word commitment. So let's leave the science out for a while and bring it in later. And that's why it took so long to get Jack Schmidt up there, finally on Apollo 17. Good. Another roll. Gene really got interested in the moon and possibly lunar exploration when he was about the

time he was graduating from college. He had been at Caltech and he had seen some of the big rocket development taking place and he thought someday those rockets are going to be used. But he didn't really think seriously about it until probably during his first job and that was with the USGS in Colorado. He told me that one morning he was driving along the road in his Jeep and he was on his way to breakfast and it suddenly occurred to him just thinking generally about things that someday man was going to go to the moon

and he wanted to be at the head of the line because he couldn't envision a rocket going without a man going so that they could actually learn some science. And that had to be a geologist. Why the moon? Why was he so interested in the moon? One day when Gene was driving along a canyon road to breakfast at a little mining town nearby, he suddenly thought to himself, someday there are going to be rockets that will take man to the moon and he wanted to be at the head of the line. He figured that there is no reason for a rocket to go to the moon without a man on it and a man should be a scientist. A geologist was the most logical thing to his way of thinking and from that day on he set his sights to be the first man on the moon if possible. In the 1950s when Gene first

was thinking about going to the moon, he didn't talk about it too much to his associates. At that time going to the moon was not really respectable. It wasn't a respectable science. You just didn't think about it. No one was doing it and no one would anticipate what was going to come in the years that followed. People think he was a little crazy. There was a time when Gene thought that he would like to become a professor. He was interviewed at Berkeley one year and went out and gave some talks. Afterwards he received a word that they had enjoyed listening to him, talking to him, but they thought he might possibly influence the students with this crazy idea

of going to the moon. That was the essence of the letter and we just laughed and thought that's kind of strange but Berkeley never really did get into the space business as many other institutions did. Gene's reaction to Sputnik was that it was just too soon. He wasn't ready. He had been working on nuclear craters at the Nevada test site. He was working on meteor crater or Arizona and he didn't feel that he had quite trained himself enough and therefore if Sputnik went up and it was up there then he knew that the United States would get into the business of putting something up in space and eventually going to the moon. Now I know Gene came down with Addison's disease at a certain point and that kind of influenced or affected him in terms of his knowledge

about going to the moon. Can you talk to me about that at all? Yes. There was a nine months period when we went to Washington. Actually he was on leave from the survey and was with NASA during that period and this was just after an astrogeologic studies group had been formed in Menlo Park and he was working toward the idea of getting a branch started sooner or later which was one reason he went with NASA. He went there to help with the manned program, how to get man into the space business in a participatory way of going to the moon and so it was a very busy year for him and at the same time it was a very difficult year. I think almost from the time we arrived in Washington in September he gradually started to go downhill and we didn't know what was wrong. He would

go to a doctor and there would be various symptoms and it would sound like one thing and then a few months later it would sound like something else and there was no diagnosis for what was happening to him. He would come home from work and the couch was the nearest thing to the door and he would go from the front door to the couch and stretch out and had no energy left and so that was very difficult. It meant that he was working very hard and at the same time he was just drained of energy. He was losing weight after a while he began to look like a refugee from concentration camp. I always said because he lost probably about 40 pounds. In the actually in the spring probably about June we said let's go on a river trip because river trips and white water rafting had always been our vacation for a number of years and it was the thing that rejuvenated him and when he was a scientist

a geologist was the most logical thing to his way of thinking and from that day on he set his sights to be the first man on the moon if possible. That's a great story. Now let me ask you who are his influences? More importantly first of all why did he think the moon was important? What could the moon tell a geologist here on earth? The moon could tell a geologist on earth a lot about what our solar system was like in a more primitive fashion. The moon was this rather untouched body and yet very touched by geologic processes. You didn't see a lot of active tectonic effect on the moon at that time but you could see craters and he knew that that sounded very interesting. He didn't know how much those craters were made by impact or whether they were made by volcanic

activity entirely. No one knew much about the moon in those days but it was an unsolved body and to him I think the excitement in part was just the fact that no one had been there. No one had really found out much about anything but the earth. Now who were his influences? Like for instance Ralph Baldwin. What theory did Jean kind of follow at the time when all we could do was look at the moon, not actually visit it or even send up a rocket to get a sample? I know that Jean read Ralph Baldwin's work. He didn't meet him for several years and he also read a lot about GK Gilbert's work and I think Gilbert was perhaps the biggest influence. He had a great admiration for Gilbert. In fact we had a large picture of Gilbert around for a number of years known as Grandpa Gilbert in our family but Gilbert was interested in meteor crater. Gilbert

thought that there were impact craters on the moon and that was a big influence. Ralph Baldwin's work was definitely an influence but I don't know in what respect that led him, what direction that led him. In the 1950s when Jean started to talk to other people about going to the moon, this idea that the rockets being built a man ought to go, that man ought to be a geologist, how was he received by his geologic buddies, his colleagues? Three. In the 1950s when Jean first was thinking about, go a call to admit that he was working very hard and at the same time he was just drained of energy. He was losing weight after while he began to look like a refugee from concentration camp. I always said because he lost probably about 40 pounds during those nine months. And then later in the actually

in the spring, probably about June, we said let's go on a river trip because river trips and white water rafting had always been our vacation for a number of years and it was the thing that rejuvenated him. And when he came off of that trip, he was just barely moving and as soon as he got back to Washington, he went to a doctor and the doctor looked at the palms of his hands which had turned brown. Usually you ten elsewhere but he was a deeper tan and the palms of his hands were brown. And the doctor looked at that and he said, I've seen two cases like this. They had Addison's disease and they both died. And that was just an appalling thing. All of his friends, me included, got out our encyclopedias and read up on Addison's disease and it sounded like there was no hope.

Let me start the second layer of the change film.