NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, part 1 of 3

You When you join welcome in 1967, what was it like? What was going on there? And what was welcome? When I joined welcome in 1967, it was very interesting because it was a company that was set up by NASA with people from IT&T or AT&T. When I started working with the program in 1967, I worked for a company called Belcom and Belcom was part of AT&T

that NASA established to help it in planning the missions and work on the systems analysis, so to speak. Because one of the most important components of the program was going to be how do we communicate with astronauts? So communications became important, so AT&T, the Bel Telephone companies had to get involved because of that communications. So it established that company and I joined the program through this company as an advisor, a consultant or a systems analyst for NASA headquarters. And our offices were actually right next to the headquarters people, and my office was right next to the Apollo program director. And they used this very cleverly as a matter of fact, so that we could represent NASA headquarters when we went to the NASA centers. But since NASA people were not our bosses, because our bosses were at AT&T, we could actually tell them that this is wrong, don't do this, and don't do that. So it was a very clever thing to do.

Your first job when you got there was not the most glamorous. Can you tell us about that? Your very first job, sort of the photographs? My very first job at the Belcom was really to, they called it Paper Shuffling. I was going to receive reports from NASA, and they would look at them, review them, and then bring it to the attention of the Apollo program manager as a evaluation, so to speak. So I wanted to see what actually happens in the program. One of the things that I learned was the fact that 125 geologists, 25 from all the NASA centers, and nearly 100 from the U.S. Geological Survey that were secunded to NASA, meaning NASA that paid their salary, and they were working in preparation for the Apollo program, were going to meet at Langley Research Center in Virginia. So I thought, okay, maybe that's a meeting that I should really attend to, get an idea of what goes on there. So I went, and they sat down with the rest of the group, and we see every hour, one of these famous geologists would stand up and review a feature of a creator, or something Jean Choumaker stands up, and he talks about the Copernicus system, and somebody else had Mazursky would stand up and talk about the Marius Hills and Apollo. And after a day, and then in a second day, midway through the third day, I asked the man that's sitting next to me as an older man with a great beard.

I asked him, has anybody made a classification of lunar surface features, and their distribution on the moon? And he said, what do you mean? I said, not just a classification of what the features are, and where they are. He said, well, we know what they are, and where they are. I said, okay, to myself. So I knew that I really had to understand the lingua myself, and so I went back to NASA headquarters where they had the photo archives. I went into the photo archives rooms. I saw a heap of a mess. Dust messes all over the place, piles of pictures, not organized, not anything, and it is as if they have not been looked at for a year. So I thought, all right, let's me clean them up. And they did. It took me three weeks to clean them up, one by one, to remove the dust and so on, and then put them in piles, and then organize the piles with different missions and different groups of pictures taken by different lenses, and all of that, and they all said. Then I sat with these pictures, one by one, with a three by five card, to look at the picture, each one, and they write what is on it, and where it is. Then I saw I had a complete set then of these descriptions of what lunar surface features are, and where they are.

And at the whole, when I finished the whole thing, I asked myself, now, we are going to go to the moon to study as many of its surface features as we possibly can. If we want to study all the different types of surface features and the moon, where do we go? Based on these little cards that we haven't based on what we saw, and all of the pictures of the moon. So I sat down, collected the information from these cards, and they found out that there are 16 places on the lunar set. If we go and visit them all, we would have seen every single type of surface features on the moon, and sampled rocks from every type of mountain range, the real hill, round crater, or oblong crater, and all of them. So the next time for the meeting I called, and they said, I would like to take one of these hours to talk about what I have looked at. That is fine. They asked me, what is it that you want to discuss, and they told them, and they put me on the program. So I went back, and they took my hour, and they started doing it, and there was at least half an hour of discussion, because they became interested in interesting to tell them that these are 16 sites. If we go to any one of these, all of them would really have visited all of the lunar surface features.

It was very interesting that the gentleman, that was sitting next to me the first time, had stood up during the discussion, and they said, I will have you all know that this young man, he didn't know my name from Adam. Even after it was introduced, that all of this young man had asked me the last time we were here, whether we have a classification of lunar surface features, and where they are, and where they are. And I told them that we know both. So I want to thank him publicly, that he told me, or he showed me, that we do not know where they are, or where they are. That was a very significant move, to get by foot in the door among the geologists who were really concerned about looking at the moon for the selection of the lunar landing sites for the Apollo missions to come. And that was in about two years before the Apollo 11 mission went to the surface of the moon.

How did Egyptian-born scientists study metallurgy in the U.S. and are working on the Apollo program? That was very interesting to find out that there is a Egyptian geologist in the Apollo program, and a metallurgist for that matter, or an expert on economic geology like that, making money out of the geology. It was very interesting to find that there is an Egyptian-born geologist who was an expert in economic geology about minerals and ore deposits to be working on the Apollo program. In reality, I came to that program because I could not find any other job, so it was really finding something until I could get a job, knowing that it might be just for a year or so, and then I became interested and stuck it. The astronauts themselves are the ones that never believed this, that they later, in stages, would ask me, and whom did you study under one of the great astronomers or the astrophysicists and whatever, and then I told them, no, I don't know them. Why? Because I came from such a such school and wiped it.

What was your expertise? I didn't let them sing deposits of Missouri, did I? Why? And we'd been learning from a guy whose expertise did let them sing deposits of Missouri. So that was really, that's the route so we're flabbergasted by that fact. Was it Nixon who hired you and did his relationship with his brother? Have any help in keeping the later J-Mission Scaling? Just curious. Well, it Nixon was the one man that actually hired me at Bill Combe. He's himself as a geologist. He has a master's degree in geology. And when I went to for the interview, he's the first one to see me and the last one to see me. And then he said, you really would love it in here because it is an interesting program. And so nobody knows about the moon, so you're not an expert on the moon, but nobody knows about it anyway. Why don't you come and try it this way? Look at me. I'm actually in the personnel department right here and have the degree in geology, but I'm working as a manager, and this is management too, and it is wonderful.

So we had a friendship developed right away, and his brother's relationship with him was always good, but it never really interfered with him. And he never really conveyed much of the work that we're doing to his brother. His brother knew that he was working with the streets programs, so to speak, but it never interfered with that. My first boss at Belcom, Dennis James, and he was actually the boss of my boss, said that yes, we hired this Egyptian. He never really liked me at the beginning. And we probably will not last for a year, and it was later that Dennis James is the one that supported me wholeheartedly. I must say it. What did you say wouldn't work out? He said that it wouldn't work out because how could an Egyptian geologist even come close to the kinds of things that we need to do? An Egyptian cannot possibly work out here.

You How do you map the moon when we haven't been there yet?

To map the moon when we have not been there, and we do not have any topographic information, was absolutely very difficult. The one thing that we could not figure out easily are the slopes. Is this area flat? Is it tilted to this way or tilted that way? It was fascinating how could we do this because we have no information whatsoever. At the very beginning we started working with something that we call photometry, measuring light. So we would say that if a surface is inclined at 90 degrees to the sun, it will be absolutely white or the brightest anyway, because it's reflecting all of the solar rays. If it is out in the other end completely, it will be black because it will be in shadow. And in between there are shades in between. So how do we measure the shades in between, and we've tried to start it making maps, and that was the only way to make photographic maps of the apocalyptic sites, which is really incredible. But we did that at the same close to reality.

Later years we were able to get stereophotographs that is three dimensional maps, but only that only started with the Apollo 15 mission. So the three last missions we were able to get photographs from which we could make good maps. Let's talk about choosing the sites. You were with a group that you named. Can you tell us about that? We gave it a nickname that was the GLP was the group and you had a shadow group. Can you tell us about that? We had a group within NASA to responsible for the scientific aspects of the selection of landing sites. And that was called the group for lunar exploration planning. GLP, and within that we had a site selection committee. So this was the RUM GLP. So this was basically the all get all of scientific requirements put together and figure out how do we consign this scientific requirements with the Apollo mission specifics, as well as the engineering tasks. Were your sites when you proposed a site where they were they taken seriously at first by the engineers or let's talk about the site for 12, for example?

Are there a number of sites proposed? How did that go? First of all we should have to consider that the Apollo sites were selected, basically to make absolutely certain that the astronauts would be safe. So the safety of the astronauts was supreme. So to get a site that has just a little bit of any hint of difficulty the engineers would absolutely veto it completely. And I would never forget the numbers when they were their numbers when they came against us completely when they would call a site. This is box canyon they want us to land in a box that's impossible that is that that's and that that would be a very heated discussion. But when the Apollo program director would stand in the line with the scientists and the engineers would find the way to do it. So we found that who found out that the best thing to do is really to go to the Apollo program director first completely convinced him that this site is fascinating. It's very intelligent and very significant to the Apollo exploration and the whole knowledge of what the moon is made of and the relationship between the earth and the moon and so on and he would know it all.

Then he will put his foot in and the engineers will come out. It was a very interesting it was very interesting that at the very beginning of the program when we started putting in scientific requirements the engineers were just completely and totally resistant for no reason whatsoever. For instance on the Apollo 11 mission we wanted the astronauts to go and look for a crater and photograph the interior of the crater. And we tried to explain that the only reason we want to do this is to figure out how thick is the soil in this part. If the crater had actually penetrated through the whole soil it will have rocks in the bottom. If it had not it will have soil on the bottom. Very simple. Just go walk over to the crater, take a picture and come back. I mean this is not asking for the moon.

It is asking for a very small thing. At their level forget that when these engineers I was sitting with them at the very beginning at this requirements meeting because I was representing NASA headquarters then. And one of them would listen. Listen guy our mandate is to send a man to the moon and bring him safely back to Earth. It didn't say and bring back some rocks or dirt or pictures. We only want to send them. And that was the attitude at the beginning. How many times did you hear that over the years? Repeatedly, all of the repeatedly we would hear this same comment from engineers that it is really inside this. This has nothing to do with the requirements. We want to go there and make sure that we land right and we'll take pictures and get a few rocks and come back. This is not an exploration to satisfy geology. So it was at the beginning it was much more difficult. I jumped to the astronauts. Tell us about Maddenly or others who may have helped you in that as you trained them and they became interested. Where did they?

The astronauts finally helped us in doing that. At the beginning it was not at all. Most of the astronauts actually hated geology. They didn't want to touch a geology with a 10-foot pole. Because the first courses in geology were taught the way I was told geology in a classroom with the thin sections and the microscope and learning the chemical formula of a mineral which they will never see again or never used. And they would tell each other that we're not going to get that microscope and look at this stuff. What the hell are we doing this for? And they would say that loud and even in the lectures. And so they really never liked it. And so it took us a great deal to even hint that there is something interesting or useful for them to do on this. When they became interested and involved they helped us very greatly because they are the ones that requested the time and additions stay on the moon and additional time and orbit and so on to take more pictures and what not to cover additional ground. So they certainly became the advocates for science but that did not come until the end of the program or near the end.

It's also about Madingland. The first time I had an entrance into the astronauts to teach them about what they will see from lunar orbit and how they actually figure out where the landmarks are so they can fix their orbit and look at the moon and provide us with pictures for the selection of future landing sites and so on. I think it was about 1960 into 1968 right before the Apollo 11 mission when we knew that there was a group of people that would be in Apollo 12 and 30. And a friend of mine from NASA Houston told me, well this guy I can Madingland was asking about what they will see from lunar orbit. You want to go and talk to him? I said absolutely so he said okay I'll ask him and see what they will see you. So I went to him actually to see Ken Madingland and he said I hear that you want us to brief us on something I said yes. And he said why is this briefing going to be different? I said because I am going to show you only the places that you are going to fly over and they will talk specifically about the landmarks that we can figure out the orbit much better. And he said then how are you going to do that? I said well we are showing you the pictures of lunar orbit with your orbits or the trace of your orbit marked on him and said okay I will give you an hour.

I will come by myself and we will give you an hour. Come to the Cape but such and such time and such and such date and do it. If it is if I am convinced that's any good we will see what happens after that. And indeed I went to the Cape and I fixed up everything and I was ready for him completely and totally and he came with the rest of the crew not just by himself. So I started talking to them and they took them around the pictures were all around the whole room and the Cape showing them the orbits and they told them orbit one you fly over this and you call the right this and over this one. So I began to talk to them about the landmark that they will fix on the 6th across here of the 6th and say that mark so that we will know the exact position of over the lunar orbit. And I did not stop talking for 3 hours that day because they really became so interested and when it ended he said well can you come next week? I said sure. And that was the very beginning of of trading and orbital observations.

Can Mattingly became so fascinated by the whole thing and he became a great student and he really started learning things and the word apparently spread in the astronaut office. I was as I walked into the astronaut office building 4 and NASA Houston. A young man with red hair and tall and slim and so on he looked as the radish was walking out of the building so I was just talking. He said hey are you for vocal bias? I said yes. He said hi I'm Sturusa. I think I'm going to be an Apollo 14. Listen I want you to make me as smart as Ken. Hell no. I want me to make me smarter than Ken. That was such a comment. It really taught me at the right time that from that moment on we have the attention of the astronaut because as soon as they begin competing with each other in scientific knowledge we've got them because they are very competitive bunch. Incredibly so. They really wanted to compete with each other fiercely. But all of the competition was on the stick. How they land, how they move this, how they do this and how they mark and how all of that stuff that had to do with piloting the craft or even landing it.

But when we would get the attention in competing in the science we knew that we got it and that was through that was the very beginning the spark of competition among the astronauts in their scientific knowledge of them. Were they the you were very young to be a teacher were they the best students he ever had? They really were and some of these people learned so much about the about the moon they some of them would put as soon as they fly the first time even awarding himself said my God. After the King's training with which they called me King because he is a guy called for who came from Egypt so my nickname was King and is that I feel I've been here before and he was.