NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Glynn Lunney, NASA engineer and flight director during the Gemini and Apollo programs, part 3 of 4

Do you think that the behavior on the like cutting him and eyes, the cutting him, particularly? Do you think that they did themselves in? Well, as I said, I think there was an unfortunate set of circumstances that resulted in the kind of interchanges that we had. I don't know whether Wally intended to fly anymore or not, but certainly the other two fellows did, and there was a residual bad taste, I guess I could call it, out of the flight, and they never did get another assignment. And it's sad, but I think that's the way it is. I tried to explain that to someone one time, and I didn't do a very good job as to how that could happen. But at the time, we were driven by this whole thing to make it successful, and felt all these pressures starting with the Soviet Union competition.

And what was vitally important, critically important to us, first order important, was the ability to team to get the job done. And if any kind of thing happened or any kind of behavior intruded on that team thing of getting this mission done, that is the whole mission we had in front of us, it tended to not get much very sympathy and tended to be dealt with that way and gotten out of the way. And it's unfortunate, you know, and that happens in life, and things don't work out sometimes exactly the way people would have them work out, or even the way they intend it for them to be, and I just felt bad about it afterwards for everybody's sake. When did lunar scientists first come to the picture? Well, let me tell you about that. Lunar scientists had been involved in the planning for Apollo, but in my job as one of these

fellows in the control center, I didn't have any interaction with them. And the first time I ran into a bunch of them, Chris Kraft, took me to a meeting over here in this mansion over here called the Lunar Science Institute at the time. And I walked into this room, it was after Apollo 11, I mean, and we were really feeling bullish, you know, well, we'd done this thing. And we walked into this room, and there were all these guys that I had never seen before in my life criticizing what we had done on Apollo 11 on the surface, criticizing it. And you know, and I looked at them, and I was thinking, who the hell are these people? Where were they? What all the shooting was going on? And what are they doing in here, say, now, you know, after I get over that, and for time later, I came to realize that they were trying to get the most of the scientific missions that they, most of the science that they possibly could out of a given mission. Apollo 11 did some science, but basically it was to land and to get back, and we did

a little bit of science, and I think the little bit of science is what caused the criticism of the scientists. But I remember my reaction thinking, who the hell are these people? And where have they been while we're doing all this stuff? But they, they meant well, and they gradually infused into both the astronauts and the flight control teams. A big appreciation, a strong appreciation for what they were trying to do, and we got involved in it. After a while, it became part of one of the disciplines we had was the whole lunar surface thing. What do we do with EVAs? What kind of instruments are we deploying? How about this geology thing that was brand new to all of us? And what was the best way to run the traverses? There were a number of people developed real skills at that, not any of us, particularly. But we were able to appreciate then what they were trying to accomplish, and they were very patient with us, like they were with the astronauts, and over the next couple of years, as we did to follow on the landings on the moon, I think a good relationship

developed between the operations people and the science people back and forth, and last to this day. I mean, we're happy to see each other when we run into each other at some kind of event. But for me, at least I got off to kind of a bumpy start. That's great. That was perfect. That was perfect. Apollo 8. I'm sorry, she was in the shop there. Okay. Duck down. No, no, no, duck down. Apollo 8 was a stroke of genius. I mean, it really was. We had flown one mission, Apollo 7. The lunar module wasn't quite ready to fly. Saturn 5 was probably ready, although we had problems with it on the previous flight. But it was a stroke of genius, in my opinion. And Apollo 8 was like opening the door and putting you on the sliding board to go down to the lunar landing mission.

Once we opened that door and got ourselves on the sliding board, getting to the landing mission was greatly enabled. So I think Apollo 8 was the key decision, the flight decision, the type of flight decision that allowed us to then get to the lunar landing by the fifth flight in Apollo 11. It was a gutsy call. I mean, it was ahead of its time. I wonder how easily it would be to make those kind of decisions today. But it was a real courageous thing to do. And it was right. Where I was, I was struggling here with Apollo 7, this little Earth orbit, then go for 10 days. And then my friend Cliff Charles Worth was the prime flight director for Apollo 8. And he kind of put his arm on my shoulder and said, well, let me tell you what we're going to do on Apollo 8 now that you're done with this one. And he told me, and my first reaction was probably like a lot of people. It was a little bit like my reaction to the President Kennedy's speech. Oh my goodness, don't you know, can we do this on the next flight, the second flight of

the vehicle? We're going to go to the moon. And that lasted about a minute, okay? And then the more I thought about it, like everybody else, it just clicked in the place. As a matter of fact, I think everybody that was in the program said, why did I think of that? I mean, it was such a great stroke of a decision that would allow us to get on with everything that we had to learn to land on the moon. And then once decided, and then once executed, especially in the fashion that it was by the Apollo 8 crew, it was just kind of an enabler. The door was open, it was a downhill slide to the lunar landing mission, and we were on our way and got their three flights later. But it was a great decision, it was a great flight. And then on top of all that, you know, the Christmas Eve, the Earthrise, reading from Genesis. I mean, it was just like, if you had sat down and tried to imagine or create a flight, I don't think you could have done a more magnificent job of characterizing or portraying

what we were trying to do by having that reading from the crew on Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve. I mean, it was a grabber for me. It really was. Okay, fabulous. Apollo 11, we tried to land on a great, big flat place with the best chance of landing so that we could land and achieve the mission that we were trying to achieve. Again, I found myself getting off of Apollo 11 working on it and then coming back to the planning team and finding out that we were going to land right next to a surveyor on Apollo 12. And again, another one of these mind-blowing things, I just couldn't imagine that. I mean, I thought we were lucky to get down within 100 miles of anything on the moon the first time. But people had been thinking about it.

And the reason for that was, as people began to look at the further out lunar missions, they realized that for scientific reasons, they wanted to land at particular places and really have a good feeling for where the astronauts would be so that they could plan their traverses. And by that time, we had begun to think about having the moon buggy on board some of the later flights. So there was an expanded envelope, but again, it required us to land within a few miles or within a mile or two of where we wanted to be or maybe even less than that. So the surveyor was picked as a place to go land. It seemed to me, it seemed to me incredible that we could steer something with the combination of the network that we had in the control center tracking and then the onboard systems and land at this thing that was already there, called surveyor, just incredible. But we started working on it and guys developed all these little Doppler things and little ways to correct the navigation of the vehicle, now in 69 it was called so that we could put in little deltas based on the Doppler shifts and readings. And then we were able to target the vehicle so that lo and behold, we could take Apollo

12 and Pete now landed right next to surveyor, brought back parts of it and so on. But again, if you told me the day after Apollo 11, we're going to do that, guys, they did, you know, I didn't think it was possible. I didn't think it was possible, even then, after all we'd done, I didn't think that was possible. And... The geologists were not very happy with it. They thought it was a pretty boring day. Yeah. Well, they did that about a number of things that we tried to do. But, you know, it gradually began to fall in place, that is the scientific exploration stuff. Did you know that it was about the site selection stuff, the controversy is going on? No, I mean, I knew it went on. But I was remote from it, I didn't have a vote in it. As far as we were concerned, it was fine with us, wherever they wanted to land as long as it wasn't, you know, a slope of a mountain or something. And after the Apollo 12 experience, we became convinced that gee, we really could target this thing and correct and tune it so that it could land. The pilots had a good chance of landing it within, you know, yards, hundreds of yards or

tens of yards, maybe, of where we were trying to land. I mean, they walked over to that surveyor. So it couldn't have been that far away, could it, I mean, probably a hundred yards from the target? I'm getting pretty impressive. Good cut. 13, what had happened right before you knew there was trouble? Apollo 13, we were, you know, 50 some hours out on the way to the moon, two thirds of the way there, and the trips out to the moon and back are generally very quiet, kind of boring, as a matter of fact, generally quiet and not much going on, crews kind of probably check, going over their checklist, et cetera. They had a TV day that day where the crew took everybody out to the capsule and so on and

had kind of a homemade TV show and that was winding down and they were securing from that and getting ready for sleep time. I was, when I came on duty, when I come in the control center, I usually get here about an hour ahead of time and then I make a tour of the back rooms where there are support beyond the front room to all of the different functions disciplines within this room. And I was in one of the back rooms, I'd checked in here in the front room and I was in the back room just kind of walking through each one, seeing how everybody was doing and somebody turned to me and said, a glanie better get back in the front room, they had some kind of problem. So I came back in and the Houston we've got a problem call had been made and Gene's team was at the end of a long day but they began to deal with this thing that was not well understood at the time and certainly the extent of it was did not dawn on people within five minutes, I mean it took probably 40 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 45 minutes

for people to realize that we really were losing the CSM, the command service module and we were going to have to move the crew into the lunar module and we're going to have to resort to a lifeboat kind of a mission, the landing mission was over. You know at first when something like that happens your tendency is to not jump and say, well maybe there's something wrong with the telemetry, maybe there's some electrical glitch going on here where the readings are all funny, there's so many funny readings that we don't think anything physical could have caused all these things to happen at the same time, not putting the bump together with an explosion. And then the crew started reporting venting and seeing stuff out the window and the command module just started to sink in terms of power, the fuel cells just started, one of the tanks to cryo tanks was leaking, the fuel cells started to sink down and but I would say that it took all 30 to 45 minutes best part of for for it to really sink in on us and the

guys upstairs that we were faced with not just a glitch or not just a hey maybe we're not going to land when we want to, maybe we're not going to go in the orbit the way we want to but we were dealing with a survival situation. And by that time it was getting close to 45 minutes to an hour I think from the time the boom happened and the crew reported it and it was the end of a long day for Gene Kranz's crew and Si who was chasing this problem at the Ecom console and that was about the time Gene and I changed over, I can't remember how that exactly happened but Gene might have said it's time to bring a fresh team on, I think he did say something like that and my team had been around for an hour like I was getting ready to come on duty for what we've seen was going to be a boring sleep shift and lo and behold we were faced with a survival. What was the first critical decision you had to make when you knew that everything had gone to hell in an end basket?

The one, the first thing was to get the crew moving over to the lunar module to power the command module down as graciously as we could, I'm not sure we knew what that meant but things were really beginning to sag and we were using the batteries out of the command module which are used for entry, that's the only power source we have for entry. So we were actually because the fuel cells were gone, we were draining down the entry batteries that we needed if we were ever going to get this command module back on earth. So we had this sense of urgency then to get the crew over and get the lunar module powered up and at first we just started to power it up then quickly realized especially with the prodding of Jack Laosma who was the capcom on duty that night with me that we needed to get the crew on a checklist. So we put them on the power up checklist that they would have used for the moon, for the lunar landing and they began to use that and then we began to introduce deletions from it because we didn't want to put any more power, we didn't want to use any more power

than we possibly could. I can't remember the numbers exactly but the lunar batteries were good for let's say two days, the lunar module batteries and we figured we had four, five or six maybe to get back to earth. So we were at this tremendous sense of being constrained with how much power we could use and we were trying to be as careful and stingy as we could about that but we were faced with another problem and at the spacecraft this is the first mission where we had gotten off what we called free returns. The previous Apollo missions were designed so that you went out and around the moon and you would have come back close to a reentry corridor, something that you could have trimmed to. Because of the landing site selection that was made for scientific reasons and the conditions that we want to land under, we were not on a free return trajectory anymore. We were on a trajectory that would have gone out away from the moon and well away from the earth. So we knew we had to stabilize that situation as quickly as we could and we didn't know

how we could bring up the guidance system and get it aligned in the lunar module. So we were in a rush to transfer the knowledge from the command service module guidance system before it cratered and get that into the lunar module so that we could get the guidance system up so that we could do a maneuver and get us back on a safe return trajectory. So the problem with getting guidance up and getting ready to do a burn is that's the highest power level that you operate the spacecraft at. So we were torn between getting powered up, getting this thing so that we could use the engine and make a maneuver and get us on a safe trajectory and not use too much power as we went along. And so we did the best we could to struggle through that and I don't know a couple hours later we were able to get it all done and somewhat carefully go about making our first maneuver that would get us on a free return trajectory. And while we were doing that we had some people planning on okay once we get to that stage

what do we have to do to power the vehicle down so that we can make it as safe, make it as low a power drain as we possibly could so give ourselves the most margin because it was both power and water. Our return out water was the more cooling water was the more critical parameter. Were the competing desires for what needed to happen? Yeah, they were. They were. Yeah they were. There was always people trying to do more and the systems guys want to power everything up you know and the flight director and the planners want to keep things no more powered up than they had to. We quickly agreed though that we need to power up enough to get a maneuver off because both the mission and we in the control center and certainly the crews were left on this you know flying out to God knows where at trajectory and until we got that turned around we knew that was going to overhang and in effect kind of be an emotional background for everybody that was involved in the flights. So we wanted to get powered up, be able to do the maneuver, get it done and then begin

to power down so that we could get to reasonable levels and then start projecting our consumables for the trip home which again we didn't know how long it was going to take what kind of options we had and a number of other problems we had that we used what we call the barbecue mode going to the moon if this is the earth and this is the moon we stood to vehicle on its tail and rotated it like this so the sun kind of barbecued it kept it sort of done on all sides and we'd never done that with the lunar module. So the crews had to get in there and kind of manually get this thing spinning right and it's very it's easy to set it off on a wobble it's very delicate kind of a balanced thing and just the right amount of pulse will get it right and a little extra a little not too much and the thing will wobble off and you have to start all over again. So after we got the maneuver off we had to get one of these passive thermal control modes that's the official name for the barbecue set up so that it was so the spacecraft was

thermally okay. We had to start looking at power and everything down so that we could get as low a drain on the power and the water cooling as we possibly could and then we had to start imagining how we're going to get back. In the background we had some problems like the canisters for scrubbing carbon dioxide weren't right they didn't you know one was round the tubes and another one was square boxes so we didn't have they didn't fit but that problem was recognized almost immediately by the engineering guys and as soon as we flight guys got around to recognize and that was going to be one of the red lines that we're going to bust and we had to have a solution for it you know by the time we talked about it in here they told us how we're already working on that and we'll have a solution for you in another shift or so which they did and it worked fine but by the end of the shift by the end of my shift which was say eight or ten hours after the tank blew we had also laid out all of the return strategies because we had a set of options having to do with which engines would we choose to fire

and we'd given up on the command service module the service module engine but which of the lunar module engines we would fire and how much we would use of it how much would we keep in reserve and should we and the more we fired when we came around the moon on the way back there the quicker we got home so there was a discussion about well should we fire the lunar module the lunar descent engine and the SN engine to get us back as quickly as we can but then we're only down to the SN stage and it had even less power and coolant than the whole vehicle did so we went through a whole set of trade-offs about okay you know we decided we'd keep the guidance system up because we were beginning to feel comfortable about our consumables and then two hours around the moon once we swung around it on the way back we kind of fired the SN engine again to get us back to what we figured was the best trade-off of using the using as much fuel as we could not doing anything