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 2 of 3

the Yes, Okay, there was almost no science involved in Apollo in the early days and all that there was was by the physicists who were thinking of the properties of

interstellar space and the global properties of the moon but geology was just not thought of at all until Gene Schumacher came along and managed to lobby NASA headquarters into accepting geology. The climate there was well it was pretty much anti-science. Schumacher once used the words Brainerd Holmes who was the chief of office man space part of the time. Gene said what Holmes was essentially was saying was buzz off get out of my way. I mean we're not going to the moon for science pick up rocks or any such foolishness we're going because the president said we should go and come back safely and that's really all NASA cared about but Schumacher spent a year in NASA headquarters in the critical time of late 62 early 63 and twisted the right arms. Orrin Nix was one of the favorably inclined people in

NASA headquarters Homer Newell and these are the two people I believe we can say that worked through the NASA system to get science into the program because of Gene Schumacher's lobbying. Now when were you when Tony made his speech and making that famous announcement? I was not aware of the announcement at the time I was in Germany or Austria on a geologic field trip with the University of Munich. I looked it up I had no idea where I was on the 20th of May 1961 and I looked it up in my diary and I was while I was in Salzburg. I don't remember when I heard the news I had I simply don't know. I have no room when I eventually found out that we were going to the moon naturally I was all elated because I was always interested in the moon I was a geologist by training but I was always interested in astronomy and the moon and the

planets solar system. So when it dawned on me that we were going to go I wanted to get into it as fast as I could and at the end of somewhere in the middle of 1962 I was told that this guy some fellow who was giving interviews over at Caltech for an astrogeology program and I went over and I simply was Gene Schumacher and I simply said you got to take me in words that affect because it's so natural. Gene never tell you what his reaction was when he found out we were gone? Gene's reaction was I don't remember his reaction his mentioning the Kennedy his reaction to Kennedy's announcement but when he heard Sputnik had gone his reaction was but I'm not ready yet because he had always wanted to go to the moon that was his that was his driving emotion through the entire program starting in 1948 he wanted to go to the moon himself and everything else that was done as a result of his lobbying was done because of that

fanatic desire and when he couldn't go himself because he had a Addison's disease came down with that in 1963 he got the astronauts trained in geology but again it was the continuation of this driving ambition to go to the moon and do geology wonderful let's talk about training those astronauts how do they do what was it like to train them how do they train the astronauts were marvelous students first of all the first training program was by Gene himself he took nine of them I believe it was into media creator and around Flagstaff and wore them out and kept them up all night looking through the telescope and so forth and they they loved it at least that's the report that they did and it's led into then the later programs where a number of us went on Houston to begin the training they were wonderful students sharp as could be smart of course very energetic and eager we thought that they could become

instant PhDs in geology turns out that they're human and they didn't remember everything and some of them didn't like the the training at all but they all did well and when they got to the moon they were magnificent all of them I want to ask you through a few specific names what was Buzz Aldrin like as a geology student he was oh you say his name oh yeah all right well let's not go into that Roger Chaffee Roger Chaffee was seemed to be very interested in the scientific aspects of the exploration program and it was a great loss we all felt it when he died in that Apollo one far I was told that he was learning all the names of all the lunar craters in his spare time now Neil Armstrong we remember Neil as that for his great pilot that first landing and what a

nail-biter it was you know but I've heard that Neil did fantastic geology a bit shocked everybody yeah Neil was always Neil Armstrong was always one of the good students on the trips but he didn't he's not one to brag or to show off and so we were not aware how really well he was doing I think you have to say oh well he certainly was highly regarded and when he got to the moon finally did a magnificent job I think this you don't need to put this on there when he was on the moon when he came back there was a there was a debriefing yeah now when I was starting there was a debriefing again there was a debriefing in I believe August of 1969 after they were in still in quarantine and a number of us

went down and looked through the window at them and they answered all the questions and then it became quite clear that Armstrong had they all all three the Apollo 11 crew had done wonderful it made out wonderful observations but Armstrong just seemed to have the whole thing locked up very sophisticated observations and a good ability to tell us about them jumping ahead preparing for Apollo 14 very little time to train Al Shepherd from what I've read didn't really take to the science but he was a professional one to do good yeah there's a story your book that he took one of his trainers aside and said help me bone on help me do it quick yeah that was Gordon Swan did you ask him about that perhaps yeah well yeah Noah Shepherd was one of the ones who did not conceal his dislike for the geologic training some of them didn't like it but

concealed they're just like and Shepherd didn't conceal his dislike you know is making faces when he's looking in the outcrops and this kind of thing but near the time of the flight he took Gordon Swan aside Gordon Swan was the team leader of the Apollo field investigation team and said tell me what to do tell me how what's what what the issues are and what you want and in in my book I readers of my book have I think missed the point in there I I knocked Shepherd at the beginning but then when it was all over after the missions over and you read the transcripts you see you really knew what he was doing and did a very nice job and could have done a better job if they just hadn't gotten lost at Cone Crater because Shepherd knew what was really wanted which was a lot of samples from the objective Cone Crater so Shepherd came through I think Shepherd did come through great okay site selection how do they pick where to land and how much input the site is the geologist have the first

missions turn out to be the first two were picked on the basis of the roughness of the site the geologist at a very simple-minded study of the Equatorial Bell which is where NASA wanted to have to land in the early flights and we picked the dark spots on the Mario because you can if you look at a full moon photograph you see that the light spots are all rough the craters or crater rays or slopes or something that is not desirable for standpoint of landing so it was assumed well if the light spots are rough then the dark spots are smooth so we we just drew ellipses around the dark spots and then NASA picked the ones that they wanted and the Apollo 11 site was simply the eastern most one of those dark spots that we we drew an ellipse around now each of those had to be photographed by lunar orbiter at very high resolution one meter resolution to see blocks you know they're roughness elements you couldn't see from the telescope

and the Apollo 11 site tranquility base was always one of the good ones the the second one Apollo 12 was not accepted after the lunar orbiter analysis it was considered too rough however there was a surveyor three sitting there and NASA wanted to show it could make a point landing and that's why that one was entered in and it turned out to be perfectly okay for landing also almost anything on the equatorial belt would have been all right for the first two landings later the science entered in very much starting with Apollo 13 this framerah formation which was the objective this huge inbrian basin which covers so much of the near side a site was picked to get a sample of that framerah formation and that was entirely a geologic input because that was the base based on all our work that we had done in the sixties of learning that's great okay just we're going to change up to film okay great okay take me through the

sites 15 16 17 the results of the 14 mission Apollo 14 landed on the same side as 13 would have landed and Al Shepherd and Edmential picked up a certain collection of rocks but it was not considered at the time to be adequate to really pin down the nature of the inbrian ejectus so wanted to get another sample of that and the Apollo 15 side is at the base of the room of the inbrian basin the Epinion Mountains but also there was the synuous real Rima Hadley there which always attracted people's eyes I call these things special features the special features were always items of great interest anyone looking at the moon and they in retrospect they attract a too much attention because they're just not that important but that's why 15 went there they got the mario material of palace putridness and they got to the real which looked inside

Dave Scott wanted to drive inside they decided maybe that wasn't such a good idea and they got good samples from the Epinion Front now the 16 site was entirely different it was thought that we wanted to get away from the inbrian impact and sample the pure highlands but in a special area of the highlands and here's where the old volcanic idea lived on for another year there were features in the south east highlands that look volcanic there were little hills with little furrows in the top you could match the same thing you got to near somewhere near Flagstaff and you could see these hills made of cinder cones with these furrows on the top and so here was a whole cluster of them in the middle of the highlands and so the impacted idea was temporarily abandoned by some of us who should have known better and we bought the volcanic notion and that is why the public 16 landed where it did now as soon as the astronauts got

out of the lamb they were very well trained John Young and Charlie Duke excellent geologists as we're all the astronauts really especially the J mission guys and Dave Scott Jim Irwin these two and then Gene Cernan Jack Schmidt on 1117 as soon as John Young and Charlie Duke got out of that lamb and they saw these breaches lying around they said in no-volcanics here and that's the way it stuck there are no-volcanics there that mission was the big turning point in the interpretation of the moon because if that place which was so volcanic wasn't volcanic that meant most of the moon was created by impacts of one side of the other and as Ken Mattingley said at the time well the geologists have to go back to the drawing board or wherever geologists go and we did and over the next years after the mission was over okay 16 why was that a turning point well when the most likely when the spot in the when the spot in the lunar uplands that was most likely to be volcanic

was found out to be not volcanic then the geologists had to go back to the drawing boards and Ken Mattingley's phrase and find ways of creating all these peculiar landforms these special features by means of impact processes of one sort of the other and so the next few years after the Apollo 16 mission we did that and found in my opinion that secondary impact from the big basin ejecta created most of these peculiar things so it was the turning point because the moon all the volcanic ideas went away in my opinion at the time of Apollo 16 all those things that had been talked about for since since after Gilbert and up until Baldwin those intervening years where and all the even even as late as the 60s so many people thought the features of the moon were

volcanic and that just couldn't be entertained anymore after Apollo 16 17 was a little different it was the cleanup mission as the last mission and I was the site was picked the same time as a 16 site so the two were considered together to fulfill all the objectives of Apollo it got it supposedly was going to get the oldest material accessible to Apollo which was in these massive of the Taros Littro Valley the Taros Mountains and it would also get the youngest which was the dark manaling material at the at the site so the two ends of the geologic a stratigraphy the young didn't work out because the dark manaling material at the side does not that old and not that young it's very old as old as any of the Mario we learned that then another back to the drawing board the maceiffs were and still are thought to be from the serenotatos basin which is a pre-imbrane basin in other words what we were after the old

stuff however there's there's still doubt that actually was serenotatos it could be him and there's a recent paper of saying so so that's that issues up for grabs but it was a good site take me back to 12 the second site and tie this into gene Schumacher okay was the selection of 12's site two the geologists was at a disappointment and how did you react to what it did I somebody don't know how gene reacted no gene all right gene left the program just out of his general dissatisfaction with NASA not emphasizing science enough at the time of the Apollo 12 mission hours shortly afterwards he saw that they weren't going to really use the potential of Apollo and just got dissolution also he was wanted to be the chairman of the geology department of Caltech and he really he lost interest in the moon at that time too he founded

the entire subject of lunar geology but nevertheless walked away from it I think you have to say he always knew what was going on but he didn't it wasn't actively participating in it after at that time he never did much more with the moon as he is out of fair statement I know he'd never really did he went off to study the asteroids and comets that might have created the craters so that in that sense it was a tie to the moon of course he did that because he had misestimated the age of the maria because of certain concepts of how many of these things were floating around space making craters that's why he went into the study of the impacting objects and also craters themselves and the ground especially Australia were unfortunately god I can't believe he's dead well anyway those were his interests and they were of course

tied to the moon but not directly now that we know that there isn't much volcanism on the lunar uplands and that these special features are meaningless we should go to the features that are meaningful and that's the big impact features the alternative to the Apollo 17 side as it was picked at Taros Littro was Cassendi which is down in the southwest part of the moon and that was almost selected as the site and this would have gotten us away from Mari Embrium and it's then the Embrium Basin impact and we then would start to date the old basins I at least if the mission had gone as it should have we would have and this is what we need to do now because it's not known how old the

basins that were not sampled are so we should go to one of the old ones the best thing to do would be to go to the far side and get the big South Pole Akin basin which is the largest old and the oldest large basin on the moon anywhere on the moon that's known to sample that and then you'd find out whether there were objects floating around the solar system all the way since the creation of the solar system up until the time the first basins were dated on the moon and that's not known it's a tremendous gap in our knowledge so that would be the thing to do now so no question your mind you gotta go back and should we have men there the question of whether you send men I don't think we'd ever get the crew down on the South Pole Akin Basin that would have to be done on man there might be places on the near side that you could find old basins exposed that are not covered by younger ejecta that a man mission could indeed select the proper samples you need impact melt this is another thing so many rocks that

look volcanic on the moon even in the early sample analysis after we got back from those early missions and looked in the laboratory they were thought to be volcanic they old hot moon was still alive even in the samples turned out to be impact melts and that's what you need on all these sites because an impact melt resets the geochronology system so that you can date these things and a man can find those better than a machine can one last question taking back to that eleven debriefing and that that sense of my god I'm strong you know so busy training to fly this mission yet he gets really excellent you were there what was that the really sharp astronauts like Armstrong had a way of picking up the important things in all subjects no matter what they were doing and how busy they were he seemed to be a very relaxed fellow but obviously he had his brain working on everything all the time and this meant many of the others too

most of the others that's okay that's okay I think we're going to re-light to get you over it now yeah we can take a little break while we do that down in case