NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with John Young, astronaut and engineer who served as Commander of the Apollo 16 mission, part 2 of 2

That's what we're doing too. Do you want to check it out? Jacking out there, I'm going to get thrown over. It's really well. Jacking out. You were back up on Gemini 6th, rendezvous, and even been attempted yet. How hard did you expect rendezvous to be? We got to spend a lot of time on the plant at McDonnell in St. Louis practicing rendezvous. They had a simulator up there and we worked a second shift from like eight to four o'clock in the morning. We were about six weeks up there doing rendezvous, so I figured we were able to do rendezvous with everything failed except the thrusters, so I figured it would be with a stuff working

be nice to do it. It was a great mission. Well in Tom had a great mission to do that rendezvous on six. rendezvous was obviously crucial to LOR. What was the thinking around that time before they did their mission about LOR, about rendezvous? Didn't think they could pull it off, not they, but everybody. I wasn't associated with that. I figured we'd just pull off the things. We had to demonstrate in the Gemini program to prove things like LOR and the Linda-Royne of Louis and all those kind of things would work and we'd just go from there and make all the rest of the things work. The Gemini program pulled those things out. Proved out rendezvous, proved out extra vehicle activity, and proved out you could stay up there for long durations without being a basket case, so it was great. On the on on ten you did conduct an EVA.

Previous place it had a lot of problems, you see now cut because this is where my ignorance comes through since I don't know. Do you want to get into my columns, columns, columns, and why did you learn from serons, difficulties that you tried to make during that? On nine. Okay. Complicate a question. Okay, I'll just start over again. Gemini, ten, your EVA. What did you learn from serons, staff, or its experiences on nine? What did you do differently? Well Mike thought about that a lot. Mike Collins did. Who did the EVA? He decided that we're going to have a nitrogen backpack just like Gene was going to have that flying thing and Mike didn't want any part of it. He just said give me a long umbellical with oxygen in it, so we ended up with a 50 foot umbellical.

Mike had practiced sad on backing up Ed White and Jim McDavid on Gemini 4 and he went out there and did the EVA and he had some problems but he made him look easy. Mike's a really smart guy. He really knows how to do stuff and do it right real quick. He needed it. How long was this EVA? Well, I think the one where we went over there was about an hour but I don't remember. You know, we were running out of gas a whole time so we couldn't stay up there too long. What do you mean running out of gas? I used too much gas on the first run to do so we were making up for it, trying to make up for it on the second one, and we did pretty good but we still didn't have enough. Um, going back even a little further before Gemini or During, did you have a sense of what the Russians were up to, did you get any briefings or it was mostly sort of word of mouth? I know we've talked to. The only staffer about it and so on.

Yeah, the only thing I didn't knew about it was that somebody said the Russians were doing a big rocket and I didn't hurt such a thing and then when we had the Russians over here they came over to visit and they were not interested in, they were not interested in our rendezvous and dockens who were doing a simulator. They were interested only in the ejection seat pictures, the ejection seat stuff out of the lunar land and training vehicle. So I knew in my heart that they must be going to the moon because who would want to want something as dumb as that unless they're really serious, you know, and that's what they were interested in. What year was that about when I was right doing Apollo 7, which I don't remember when that was 1968 or some time frame in there, 67 or 68. We sold Jerenburg boy who's had a star city around. I didn't know that. Could you tell us a little bit about that, about I didn't know that we hadn't invited them over.

And 68. I don't remember and I don't remember why they came. We're just always being nice to folks, you know, even the Russians at that time. Sure. Well, Kennedy was a little more interested in kind of a joint program, wasn't he, I think, that's something Johnson might have been pushing. I don't, yeah, I don't know, be honest with this way, be on my peg grade in those days. I've just trained for the missions. Just two more questions. Where were you when you heard about the fire? We were backing up the next flight. We were backing up Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott, and Rusty Swacker for the next flight. And we were running tests. We just got out of the Command and Service Module out at down in California when we heard about the Apollo fire. The day before Dave Scott had just been shocked inside the pressure suit in 19 psi oxygen, I was lucky.

I think we're pretty lucky we didn't lose him. And we were running this test and there was a big pool of water glycoffs floating around on the bottom of a vehicle. And the wire bones in there were the biggest of my arm and I said, man, it's terrible looking at the wires and that's the way it was back in those days, you know, I was mighty sorry because I thought Gus was one of the greatest and I sure liked dead white and Roger, that was terrible. You flew with Gus on Jimmy's lap, Jimmy three. How's the reflections of him? Did he talk about getting to the moon? Well, he was, Gus was the kind of guy that really worked hard and played hard and did everything right and he'd never got the credit. He deserved for designing the Jimny capsule but it was really a really a pilot type flying machine. It's really well laid out and well arranged and he had a lot to do with that and I thought he was a great guy. We also participated in all the tests and check out and that's really the key to knowing those early spacecraft because there was no books, no handbooks, no way to have simulators

ready. That's right in the middle of things, I know if we're helping or getting in the way but we're doing test and check out right along with the McDonald's, people that make Donald people in those days that worked on the vehicle this great. Jim, I'm sure. Good. Oh, I just want to last question if something you want to look at. I'm just going to say being one of the original three on the handful that made it into a Apollo, how much was he talking about going to the moon? He probably really wanted to make it there. Well, I don't know, Gus didn't really ever talk about going to the moon. I figure if he hadn't gotten killed in the fire, he'd been the first person to land on the moon. One of the, you know, he'd been the commander of the first flight to land on the moon and probably would have. But he never talked about it. He just talked about doing the job right at the time and I thought that was an admirable trade actually because if you worried about anything else besides what you're doing in this business, you wouldn't last long. Last question, what do you tell your grandchildren if they're old enough about the moon and about

your experiences there? I'm real lucky that my grandchildren on occasion get coming here my talks about how human space exploration is going to save the human species for what we're done and they like it. I don't know they believe it, but I sure do. Do they have any interest in getting there? Well, they're very interested in science and mathematics for which I'm eternally grateful. Yeah, it's tough to get kids interested in that hard stuff. Yeah. Okay. I'm more curious why he chose to stay on here. The only person who walked on the moon, flew the shuttle, flew the Gemini's, really stayed on at NASA. Can you tell us a little bit about your decision if you wanted to find that?

I never thought about it one way or the other. There's just to turn many interesting things going on around here and so many things that need somebody to give them a nudge. And I really do and sincerely believe that human space exploration is a key to the future. I really do. I think that we're just beginning to learn all how little we know about what's going on in the solar system and we need to get out there and really explore what human beings and we sure need to spread out the human species, we need to get around on all these little planets so that we don't end up, you know, it's pretty evident from studying space for the last 25 years or so that and what can happen on Earth, this can be very dynamic and very hard on the Earth people, planet Earth won't care, it'll still be here long after all of us are gone. But why don't we just spread out and do all the kind of things we can do to help make life better for people on Earth, even if bad things do happen?

Well, human space exploration is by accident, it's just doing that right now. I mean, imagine living in an environment where you recycle all your food water, waste and grow crops in a totally closed-loop environment. Suppose Earth get hit by bad asteroid, you might have to do that if you want to make it. And we're doing it right over here in this building right across the way, right now, trying to learn how to do it. It's going to be very difficult. Yep. Great, that's a great, say way to do a little motion around it. Yeah? Okay. No, that's great. Thank you. So if you can give us a few minutes, we'll do a microphone around just to get some atmosphere. It'll take me a minute to your agenda. Yeah, we're going to change over. I thought we'd just shoot you off into the main hall. Okay. Down here or the center part? Yeah. Okay. All right. You

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You You You went to Dick Harden and Kayley prepared to find volcanoes. Yes. I mean, that's what the geologist is for telling you. What were your, can you take us back there, your first words, your first impressions on CVAs? Well, we didn't find any volcanic rocks. I think they thought we was going to find riledilitic type rocks where we'd done a lot of geology field tips, but we didn't find any. We just found the north of the sides and norites and breaches, and we explained that to everybody, and that's a different kind of rock altogether. It's a mountain, a rock, very rare on the earth, but very plentiful on the moon. I suspect that's what most of the highlands on the moon is made out of, and the ground argued with us that we'd found the wrong kinds of rocks all the while the whole time we're up there, they were telling

us we didn't know what we're looking at, and finally just said, won't we wait till we get back to earth and see you take a look? Well, that's great. We got that on audio, but our film ran out, so I'll figure out what we do is, we can finish the question on audio, because we can use that voiceover over some of the, but I can ask you that again. Sure. That was great. We're getting rid of what I did. Well, that's all right. It was good. You know, we're having, we've been an executive producer who, our concept question is, you know, why should I care? Why should I care about the moon? Why should I care about a breccia? Yeah. And so I'm in this concept back and forth with my co-producer and with the executive producer. Yeah, I want it. So, but actually, breccia's to tell you a lot about impact. Great. Well, let's start with that.

Let's start with that. Let's see. Mark, sorry, second sticks. Second sticks, Mark. This is room tone on John Young interview. This is room tone on John Young interview, March 10th at Johnson Space Center. Once again, we're going to do room tone on John Young interview, March 10th at Johnson Space Center. Thank you.