NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Dr. Gordon Swann, geologist with the US Geological Survey (USGS) and Principal Investigator of Lunar Geology for Apollo, part 4 of 4

Backroom, how did it come to be? The backroom, the concept I think was originally developed by Gene Schumacher as a place where a bunch of scientists, in this case particularly geoscientists, geophysicists would sit and try and assimilate the data as it was coming from the moon. In fact, Gene had visioned it as a thing where somebody, I think, he hoped him, would talk directly with the astronauts back and forth. This was never allowed, we always had to go to a capsule communicator. A lot of people, including a few of the astronauts, took this to mean Gene wanted to sit there and tell them everything to do. Well, that's really not what he wanted and that's not what developed. Developed into a backroom was the idea that we could sit and assimilate data and sometimes give them suggestions or answer questions. But as far as telling them what to do, we never tried to tell them what to do.

It was a suggestion. We couldn't make them do anything. They didn't want it. They're a quarter of a million miles away and they're pretty independent bunch of guys. They also had some pretty independent people really running the mission in the control center and it wasn't people in the backroom or doing it. So everything that we did or thought, or one sent up there, went through a kind of a laundering process through, eventually through the flight director to the capsule communicator and then on up to the astronauts. Sometimes it's turned into a little bit of a game of gossip or we would want to ask a question and by the time it went through all these filters, the question we asked was not what was that. To the astronauts, but that's the way it was. There certainly was never a place where a bunch of scientists sat down on earth and told them what to do. On the Apollo's 16 and 17, by then we had worked into three teams, one was the EVA team. One set and worked during the EVA's, one was the planning team that worked up some

ideas, suggestions for the next EVA and the third is what was called the tiger team that sat down and wrote a quick and dirty report of what happened on the last EVA that could be circulated around through the mission control center. I was on the planning team for the second two or the last two missions. One of the questions we were asked to answer was, should we suggest they had such a short time, a shorty crater with the orange soil, should we ask them to go back? Incidentally, these suggestions were always read up to the crew and the crew either approved or disapproved them. So it was just suggestions. We went through the tape several times, videotapes and watched the sampling and listened to the descriptions and decided there wasn't really much they could add to going back to shorty crater and it would have very adversely impacted the no pun intended on that impact. But very seriously impacted the third EVA and what we planned to have them do and what

they wanted to do. So our decision as a planning team was to recommend that they not go back, the EVA team concurred with that and sent it up to the astronauts who concurred with that. So that was the kind of thing that we were. I've been given the impression that you guys were really subservient to mission control back there. But you were saying just now that it has a lot more give and take. Was it really, you guys just kind of like hoping to get something done back there? Oh no. There was a fair amount of give and take and we had good cooperation with the CAPCOM, capsule communicators and with the flight directors. We said the flight director several of them got pre-instead in the geology, capsule communicators went on most of the field trips so that they would understand what we were trying to do in those areas. Okay, good. Let me ask you this. The CAPCOM comes to you on the G mission stop. What CAPCOM's important swan take two? With the back room, especially the later parts of the training would go emphasize more and

more of the mission aspects and they're the actual back room team and the capsule communicators got pretty directly involved with the training. In fact, in some areas we would set up a tent so that the play like it was a back room and the capsule communicator would be in that tent. The guy that was actually going to be the capsule communicator talking to the two astronauts out in the field through radios and we would try and put together their story and just in fact to kind of simulate or play like the real thing. The CAPCOM's and the flight directors got pretty highly involved with the geology and they were quite interested in it and quite supportive of it. In fact, in the J-machines, the capsule communicators for the EVAs were all three scientists astronauts. Joe Allen, who was a physicist from Yale, was on 15th, Tony England was 16, MIT geophysicist and 17 was Bob Parker who was an astronomer from Caltech so these guys were basically scientists

anyway. Great. Okay, I'm going to ask you a big question. One-twelve. I think Apollo contributed very significantly to our knowledge of the moon. It confirmed some of the ideas that we had that rejected some of the theories we had. It's probably posed more questions than it actually answered and that's good science. Anytime you can get more and more questions because you know more and more about the subject that's good. But we learned that the moon was a pretty ancient object. It's probably about 4.6 billion years old. People that study meteorites had come to a number like that, that kind of number for the solar system. The rocks on the moon are pretty well from the moon are pretty well confirmed that. We learned that the Maria, that Galileo thought were seas, are primarily composed of lunar basalts, like similar to the basalts here on Earth.

The Highlands, a lighter colored material, have a lot of unorthocytid and an orthocity gabrow in them. One of the main things we did learn that the moon is a differentiated body. It has gone through stages of melting. There's one theory that possibly the whole moon was molten at one time. Were there anything about Earth from the moon? We probably have a lot better insight to what the Earth looked like three and four billion years ago. The Earth is such a dynamic object with erosion and deposition and volcanism and all these things going on, plates floating around in the lunar crust, or the terrestrial crust. Most of the evidence of what the moon Earth looked like three, four billion years ago had been destroyed by polystyles. It's been eroded away, covered up and changed. The moon offers kind of a snapshot of way back in the early stages of solar history.

We can probably now safely assume that the Earth was, early on, was highly bombarded by meteorites. It's just that the evidence has been erased by erosion and deposition, plate tectonic, so those kinds of things. I think we've got a much better idea of what the Earth looked like back when it was being formed. Should we go back? Is there a reason to return to the moon? Sure. There are a lot of questions that weren't answered. The moon is a very complex, geologic body. It's got a very complex history. We know that now from what we learned from Apollo and from other unmanned missions. We haven't, by any means, answered all the questions on the moon. Look at that. I guess millions of man-hours that have been spent doing geology on Earth and we lack a lot of understanding everything about the Earth, where we've got tens of hours on the

moon, so we certainly don't understand everything about it. I think there are other good reasons for going to the moon. I'm not an astronomer, but what a wonderful platform for telescopes. That would be a very stable thing. It doesn't shake or rattle or anything. It moves pretty slowly. It has zero atmosphere and that's the big thing you could put up from tremendous telescopes. What about helium? Helium-3, the jack so excited about it. I don't know a lot about helium-3. I know there isn't much of it on Earth, and there's quite a bit of it on the moon, and it has some potential for nuclear reactor, nuclear energy, and that's about it. You don't have to talk about that. I think it's take three. Did Apollo end too soon? Did we lose science because of Apollo? I mean sooner. Are you disappointed about that? Yes, I'm disappointed that the Apollo program didn't continue and develop on the end of what NASA had originally planned, or you would get longer stay-time, eventually, establish

a laboratory, have big mobile laboratories. As I said, I think there's a lot of questions that need to be answered about the moon to have a fuller understanding of how our solar system developed. I'm disappointed that it was cut off when it was. I really hope that we go back someday. I think people will go back to the moon. I hope we see you at that.