NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with George Mueller, engineer and associate administrator at NASA, part 2 of 3

Dr. Miller, take one. What was it like to watch that set of five golf, we were just discussing that? You know, it was interesting because we did not really understood completely this magnitude of the acoustic driving that was going to be there. And so when it actually lifted off, the whole front of the launch control center moved about several inches, all of the class out there. And it was exciting. Well, of course, at that time that same acoustic wave hit the Walter Cronkite's calf, a little thing over there, and the thing fell in on it. But it was a tremendous amount of energy being released in a very short period of time. And we really had a wonderful launch, though, because even though everybody was scared that

we were going to have all those pains falling in on us, we nevertheless were fleas that everything was running right. And that first launch was a picture book success. Everything was nominal. Great. Talk about Apollo 8, unless you have some of us about Saturn 5, you wanted to mention. Saturn 5 was the second Saturn 5, you know, we had a problem with it. And the problem had to do with, again, acoustic vibration. And this time it was with the feed lines on the J2 engine. And we lost the engines perfectly, but then about halfway through their normal, they're under 80% through their normal run, they stopped. And that then was a problem, because the second stage didn't quite get as far out as it was supposed to.

And then the third stage also had an engine out at the end of its firing time. So we actually were able to do everything we needed to do on that mission in terms of testing the entire vehicle. But we weren't able to, at that instant in time, to be sure that we could go on to the next vehicle without doing some considerable amount of work. But interestingly enough, we had enough telemetry and enough understanding of the vehicle, so that we were able to turn that around within a period of about a month. And having determined what actually was the problem, we were able to correct it. And then we did enough analysis to be sure that we were safe enough to go to the moon. So the third Saturn 5 was the one that became Apollo 8 and went out to the moon. So let's talk about Apollo 8, how bold the decision, Jean-Crantz says it was to him the boldest decision that we made in those years.

How big a decision wasn't to send 8 to the moon? It was a crucial decision. It was a turning point in the program, and particularly because we were still recovering from the fire, effects of the fire psychologically, if not physically. And it was one of those things that was a stroke of genius, if you will, and started with George Lowe and Sam Phillips, when they were trying to figure out how we could get through all of the testing we needed to get to the moon. We were also being driven a small amount, but the fact that we thought the Russians had the capability. Well, we were pretty sure they had the capability of putting a man to capsule around the moon. And we didn't really want to be in the position of being second again on that kind of ambition. So that was another factor in making that decision. But I used it as a means of being sure that we had thought through all of the possible

ways this thing could fail, and ensure that we could, in fact, overcome any failure that we could imagine in carrying it out. And I think that as a result of that, we had a much better understanding of the failure modes and what the corrective actions were, and we were training for it. So I felt confident in sending the Apollo 8 around the moon. In fact, I tried to convince Jim Webb that he ought to let me be on that flight because after all, I was responsible for it. But he decided he wanted to have somebody here who was responsible to take the heat. Okay. Okay. 74, take two. Well, that would have been a second disaster. And probably would have ended the program, in my view. So it was a really crucial decision.

You didn't want to do that lightly. Give me that back again as a complete statement. In other words, if something had happened to 8, if something had happened to 8, it would have been catastrophic as far as the program was concerned, because it would have been very difficult to continue. Of course, it depends on what would have happened, but it would have been very difficult to continue and carry out the program. Did the crew have any hesitancy at all about it? No. In fact, there was some buying first position. There is something challenging about being the first one around the moon. And as I say, I would have been, I tried to get Jim Webb to let me be on that flight. Now was there a moment of tension at all when they went around the far side of the moon for the first time and they lost communication? Leave me. That was a really soul-searching moment. Going around the moon, everything was going perfectly, but you had to fire the engine at the back side of the moon, out of sight of any of our communications.

So we didn't know whether or not it had fired or whether it was successful or fired too much because it was out of sight. It was at worrisome time. And of course, if they hadn't fired the engine, they would have just simply used the gravitation or feel of the moon to bring them back to Earth. We set up the trajectory in that fashion. So I wasn't worried about them staying there, but I was worried about what happens when you fire that engine after this day or so in ARP. That was interesting. How did you feel when they came around and you heard it from them? Great. And that famous speech of Frank Bournemont is one that I cherish, but they were a great crew. OK. Now, let's move along to a Apollo 10. Apollo 10 got down to 50,000 feet off the lunar surface.

I've talked to Tom Stafford about that and I said, Tom, did you just want to go all the way down? He said, of course. Was there any thought that a 10 could make a landing that maybe this close, why not go ahead and do this? We really had planned the possibility of that happening, but we weren't able to complete the lunar module to the point where it was safe to land it. So that was the real hang-up and why he didn't land. On the other end, there was also the argument that the astronauts used that they wanted to build up their understanding of what the real circumstances were in carrying out this maneuver, and so they wanted to do some training, if you will, before they tried the actual landing. Good. Cup for a second, John? Great. You have a question here about that. Well, you know, Apollo 10 was a precursor to the lunar landing, and if it was going to carry out all of the maneuvers except actually touching down, initially we had set out to

be able to land with Apollo 10 just to have time before the end of the decade to have at least two shots at it, if there were a problem. But as in the event, the land wasn't able to land, so that finished that argument. But there was some question in the minds of both the astronauts and the flight controllers as to whether it would be wise to try to land on the moon on the Apollo 10 without having gone through the training exercise of going through that entire sequence of events in short of landing. And you know, it's one of these things like the all-up testing where the conventional wisdom says you do it step by step, and my wisdom says you ought to try to secure as far as you can every time. You made an interesting comment between the roles about trying to do five years' work

worth of time in one year. Tell me that back again. What was always the pressure? Well, what I was saying is that we're trying to condense five years worth of work, or six years worth of work in one half-hour interview, and that just isn't possible because there are so many things that happened during the course of the program, all of which were interesting at the time and challenges at the time. Now on Apollo 11, do you, the crew selection for Apollo 11, I always understood that that was just business as usual. There were no special considerations for who was going to fly. Whether Neil Armstrong was a civilian versus military, did you guys have to debate that at all? Well, we of course looked into the background of the astronauts. There was a decision made as to who was going to fly on that mission, as if there were on each of the missions, and they were carefully evaluated. I think that there wasn't any question, but what Neil was the right person in anybody's

mind to fly, and that's also true of Buzz Aldrin because of his work in the program. So I don't think there's any question about that. We might, but any one of these crews could have carried out the lunar mission, beginning with Tom and his crew. What about the landing, that first landing, it didn't go perfectly, it didn't end up exactly where we wanted to be, how did you feel about that, what was your reaction to that? Sorry, I'll take one, Dr. Miller. Well, the landing itself of Apollo 11 was one of those rarely excruciating events because everything was going perfectly. And then just as they were ready to touch down, Neil came back on and said, look, that's too rough.

We've got to go further on. And then a few seconds later, the 12-1 alarm came on, and the question was, what do we do now? Can we go forward? And we were fortunate to have some people who really understood the computational system. And they were able to decide that even though the shift registers were being overloaded by really a mistake, which was to leave on an altimeter while which was supposed to be off at the time, nevertheless the computer would overload, shut down, and then it would come back on again to self-booting. And so they had enough information to know that it was perfectly safe to go on further. And I guess the scariest thing about that, though, is that he was running out of fuel and so he was wondering whether he's going to be able to get far enough forward and down to land before he crashed.

What did you say after this happened? What was your reaction? Thank goodness. It was a very wonderful time, though. At the time we had a meeting of the STAC Committee and the Science and Technology Advisory Committee at the center, and that was an interesting thing because they were ecstatic. Well, I understood you were upset. You had said to Bill Tindel to perfect a more accurate way of picking a landing site. Well, as it turns out in retrospect, it was rather a problem with the fact that the inertial guidance system was affected by gravitational anomalies, which led to landing long over beyond the place where they were supposed to land. Mass guns. Yeah.

Did you feel that after 11, because I know you left shortly after 11? 12. 12. You have to after 12. Did you feel that after 11, did you feel it was winding down somehow? Did you feel that even the other missions were planned that there was some air going out of the program? Well, what happened after 11 or after 12 is that yes, the program was winding down, but we had put in place a plan for a follow-on program, which was the Shuttle and Skylab, and it seemed to me that that Shuttle program was going to be for a longer-term program and someone ought to be dedicated to doing it, carrying it through. And I wasn't in a position to stay on during the next 10 years, and so I elected to leave and same thing, Dale Myers came in and took over, and he had a follow-on 13. Now, I had a follow-on 12, and the lightning struck it, and a follow-on 13, the valve broke,

that one didn't burn up. Why didn't you decide to get out? Well, I'd been there now six years, and it turns out in Washington that there's a, well, you have a limited lifetime in a job because of the pressures that build up over time. And I really had needed to go back into industry to earn enough money to keep my family going, and so there were personal pressures on it. But also, I think it's a mistake to stay in Washington too long because you begin to become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Now, let's talk about the landing site selection, because I know you had something to do with that. And the lunar scientists and so forth, was there, describe the environment about selecting these landing sites? Was there debate?

Well, one of the first things you had to do was to figure out whether there was a place you could land, because Tommy Gold would have made all of these statements about hundreds of feet of lunar dust that you were going to be submerged in. And so that was one of the concerns, and fortunately, we managed to get some surveyors to land and answer that question before we got there. And then, of course, we had the lunar arbiters to map the surface, and there wasn't any real controversy about it. It was more a question of what could we, where could we get the most scientific return with the least danger to the astronauts? Was there debate about that? The geologist ever figured that you were pushing hard enough and going to interesting places? There was some discussion of that from time to time, and generally, we tried to accommodate all of their desires. What about that? How did you feel that the environment was between science and the engineering community?

Was it a comfortable relationship? Well, the scientists weren't comfortable. The engineers were quite comfortable. What do you know? It really was a result of the Science and Technology Committee that we really developed the lunar excursion, the lunar rover. And that was a significant engineering achievement, but was also a significant scientific boon. And we did a lot of development of instruments unique to the moon to try to determine both the origin of the moon and to learn more about what we could do in a way of building colonies and things there. So we did a lot of planning in the scientific arena. I must say that as a result of that, they do now have a consensus opinion as to how the moon got formed.

Well, let me ask you about that. Should we move to the present in the future? Should we be going back to the moon? Should we be thinking about that? Of course. When we left NASA, we had in place a plan that would have, first of all, established the set of transportation modes that would take you from the Earth's surface to the Earth's orbit, from Earth's orbit to lunar orbit, from lunar orbit to the lunar surface. Then following the development of that systems transportation system, we had a plan to extend the orbit to orbit transfer from Earth's orbit to the Mars orbit and create a colony on Mars. All of this was in a plan in 68-69. Well, what happened? Why don't we go back? Matter of vision and political considerations. Someday we will.

We've been gradually working our way along that plan ever since, but far more slowly than I would have imagined. The plan itself would have had us with a lunar colony by the end of this century and the Mars colony by about 2020. What are you doing now? Where am I right now? Well, that was you're in our executive offices here in Los Angeles, and I'm running a little program called, well, for the Kisler Aerospace Corporation, developing a fully reusable launch vehicle. What we're building is a light truck for putting into orbit the commercial communication satellites, and it's an exciting project that's a carry-on from the space shuttle, and in fact it's the first really fully reusable vehicle, and that should make a tremendous difference in our ability to go into space and to operate in space.

I imagine this will transform the whole of the space activities in the future. Will it ever take us towards the moon? Is that part of your plan? Your grand plan? This is the first step to the first step in the transportation system. You need to have staging as you go to the moon or to Mars, and so you need to get into orbit cheaply and with enough material so that you can make that next step to go to the moon. Yeah, this is the first step. How far along are you with Kisler? How long are you successful? I do see the future. Whoops. Just OK. Class. It breaks all the time. Oh. It feels so bad down, I guess. With respect to where we are on the development of the vehicle, we're about two-thirds of the way through. We should have our first flight sometime around the middle of next year. Terrific.

Well, good luck. We need all the luck in the world, just as we did in Apollo. Great. OK. Back in sticks. OK. Why go back to the moon? We need to go back to the moon for the future of mankind. I'll put it that way. But particularly because there are things there that will be useful here on Earth. If you think about hydrogen 3, for example, there's huge supplies of that there, which could, if we have fusion reactor going, provide all of the energy we need here on Earth with a perfectly safe source of energy. We're going back there to carry out scientific experiments really to understand the science of what it takes to live on the moon. And then the far side of the moon is probably the best place in the universe or our solar system for observing things elsewhere in the universe.

I don't think we'll ever contact another civilization from the Earth because we create too much noise here. If we go to the far side of the moon, we're shielded for Earth's noise and we can begin to penetrate space. Great. Terrific. Invoice over. Invoice over. You're using Russian rocket technology with that. Russian rockets. Russian rockets with what you're doing. Well, what we've discovered was that the Russians had developed a rather extra-ardinerily good, Locke's Kerosene engine, which they had developed for their lunar program. And they were using it in their first stage and second stage of their excursion to the moon. And it's just ironic that 30 years later, we have managed to buy the Russian engines that were used for, were set to go to the moon, but in fact they have been stored because they gave up the program.

And so we were benefitted from the lunar program. But I'm going to get that on camera. We need to get that on camera. That's a great story. Just a little bit. Yeah. Was it something you reviewed by you? Was it something that was reviewed first? No. It was not. Well, I shouldn't say that. I'm sure that Bob Goldberg and George Lowe reviewed it. Okay. Here we go. I'm going to talk about the story. You can hear it running right there. It's here. It's kind of going out. It serves two purposes. One, it's film and two. It's a cash register. So every time one of those 400-foot rolls goes by, it's a chain, ding, ding. Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm very sensitive to that sound. I never miss it. There are books. There are books. No, 400 books. Yeah, just a couple more, though. I just want to ask you about the trajectory issue. Jackson Beard said he ran interference with the trajectory engineers to enable landing to take place. I think that was too narrow. Yeah.

Too narrow and coming down too steep over the mountains. Over the Hadley Hill. I'm saying, on the trajectory, we got it worked out that when we launched, I said I was totally satisfied that what we were doing, we had landmark track to place. We had this coordinates. We knew it was getting into a pinpoint area, but now we've got experience behind us. We can do it. The scientists would love to go to a place like that day one, but you've got to get experience on operating. You've got to get landmark tracking is where you use the guidance system of the command service module. You take points on it as you're going over and you know exactly what that coordinate is. And by doing that, you'd think it's much more confidence. Okay. Good. And the case of the working in space, we've had three, four EVAs before we finally were able to do something that we had pre-programmed to do before the flight. And that was when Buzz Aldrin actually went out and played with the ticker toy set that

we had for him to see whether you could. Because operating in space turned out to be far more difficult than we had expected. And the spacesuits that we had, all the work find on the ground when you get out there with the pressure. Let me get you again. That's great. Yes. Come and ask you that question. Have you said that to me again, aside the scientific community, thought it was going to be a disaster? That's great. You need to tell me that again, nice and clean. Okay. Um, what mag we up on, uh, four, seventy-three? It's like you used a film in a hurry. It does use a film in a hurry, doesn't it? And, uh, everything was going according to the countdown. We, you know, in order to understand it, you have to go back to Gemini because there used to be a whole series of, uh, of watch countdowns, which is never quite finished.

And so it's got to change, say, change film one time. Okay?