NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr., astronaut, engineer, and Commander on Apollo 12, part 2 of 2

3 Well, it was very routine for 32 seconds and got very exciting. I obviously had the only window. You know, you have five windows in the spacecraft, but you have the boost protective cover. So I had the window outside. And I saw a little glow. We were in the clouds, obviously, it was the weather was 600 overcast and raining.

And I heard a little crackle in my earphones and I heard the master alarm go off and looked over at the question and warning panel and they had succeeded in doing something. They hadn't been able to do any of the sims before, which was to turn on all 11 electrical lights associated with the electrical system at one time. And so that's probably a blessing, you know, having never seen that before, it took me a little while to get collected and not do anything drastic. A lot of thoughts went through my mind like, you know, we're going to wind up in orbit in a dead spacecraft or something. But anyhow, I had no sooner gotten to that than we got 50 seconds into the flight and that did the thing again. And at that time, it dumped the platform and then that really got exciting because many people don't realize we did have a backup plan for loss of the Saturn V guidance where

we could actually use our platform reference and we had direct control back to the engine gimbals on the Saturn V and we could actually fly it into orbit manually. And that was a great game in the simulator, but I probably would have had cardiac arrest if it had happened in flight. But anyhow, we now had a tumbling ball in front of us which meant our platform had tumbled which meant that we wouldn't have any backup guidance if anything had affected the big bird. And fortunately, the analysis afterwards, the most problems occurred to the command module and the further down you went in the stack, the fewer problems showed up to where the

IU called the instrument unit in the Saturn V. It didn't even, which was where all the guidance was for the Saturn V to get us into orbit. It didn't even flicker when this happened, fortunately. So the big call was the one, the big call was the one from the ground which was to get our signal conditioning equipment switched to auxiliary because they had lost us also. Everything had shut down that was electrically powered, basically, or almost everything had shut down. And so they had lost the telemetry so they didn't know where we were. We obviously didn't know where we were. And I always remember the call because the Capcom Jeric Car called up and said, SCE switched to auxiliary and there's some voice on the voice tape that says something like, what the switch is that, and that's me, except it's about four octaves higher than my normal voice.

It was a panic situation. And then another little voice says, I know what it is, and that's Alan because the switch was over on his side, and so we got it straight down. They were able to see that we hadn't suffered any real damages and basically what happened was when it discharged, everything it was over voltage protected fell off the line. And that included our main fuel cells. And so what electrical loads were still on the spacecraft fell on the reentry batteries which were online as backup. And when you hit batteries with a load, they don't instantaneously pick it up, they sagged. So the batteries sagged and voltage and that, that everything that was undervoltage protected, which basically was what was left on the line, it shut down. So that's why everything shut off, that's why all 11 electrical lights lit. I mean, I read them off, I don't even remember them now, but I remember reading them all

off and then I told the ground after we sort of got it sorted out that that was one of the better Sims. How close do you think you would come into hitting that switch in a boarding? I never really got around to that, I was too busy thinking about what was going on. By the time I figured out enough of what was going on, I was over it. What could have happened at a worse time? I mean, if you'd have been in, I mean, was it a really particularly bad time to have that major amount function? Well, I don't believe it would have happened later for the following reason as my understanding is what happened was we actually generated the discharge. In other words, we were acting, we were generating the static electricity on the vehicle by passing through the clouds, and when it discharged, what it did is it went right down the exhaust plume of the rocket engines, which were all ionized gases, and that acted like a conduit

to the ground and that acted like the pipe or the electrical line to the ground. So I don't believe it would have happened much later in flight at my dev, I don't really know. But that much of a major malfunction, 35 seconds into the flight, is probably about the worst time it could happen? Well, yeah, it is, but it's also when you're very busy in your nervous and you're probably going to try not to screw up a bad situation. One of the things that test pilots learn sometimes is don't do anything in hurry when something happens until you really understand what is going on. Okay. Cut. Who's the first new there? Anyone take two. What occurred and who's the first one to see it? Well, I think everybody heard the master alarm at the same time, but at that point I did catch the glow and a little later on I made the remark that I thought we'd been struck

by lightning. Good. Perfect. Let's talk about the landing. Did you have any kind of trajectory problems with the landing, with the lunar landing coming in that first time? Now, 11 had to maneuver a little bit and one of the things you guys wanted to do was do a pinpoint landing. Yeah, well, the main thing that happened with Apollo 11 was they landed successfully but four miles from where they were supposed to. And so it fell on the engineers and Art Crew to figure out what happened. We found quite a few things. Some were procedural, some were technical, and these were all fixed. Very last thing that they figured out how to do was after we made the descent burn, which was now going to put us down to where we would light the engine for the final burn, that takes place on the backside of the moon.

And so they were able to figure out that when we came around from the backside of the moon and they were looking right directly at us as we're moving, the radar would get the best Doppler effect and they would be able to calculate how well that burn was and they would be able to calculate any final errors that were going to be in our landing zone. And they didn't have the ability to pass it up electronically fast enough. And so what they did was they looked at it, they got the answers, and then they passed it up verbally to us and we entered correction into the computer and I remember it was like plus 600 feet and left 400 feet or something and I remember exactly, but those were, we were very, very, the rest of the work we had done took out most of the errors. So we had a very small correction to go in there. Now on the way down, you don't really get to look at the lunar surface until you're

your feet first heads up coming down and so you're looking out here and the surface is down there. It's my remember with 7,500 feet when you pitched over and you'd get a look and that's when I knew I'd pick out that crater pattern we called the snowman crater pattern. Of course we pitched over and there's 10,000 craters out there and there's absolutely 10,000, I'm thinking, my gosh, where am I? And Alan called out the right look angle down to look through our little optical side and as soon as I look down to the right spot, boom, the crater pattern popped out and I knew we had it made in the shade because we were headed right for it. Great. Yeah. One, two, one. The way we targeted the landing, we targeted for the center of the crater knowing full well that you were going to take over and manually land.

And what we looked for was the four o'clock position so that we would land and then I would be looking into the crater, perhaps to see the surveyor and so forth. And we got close enough and I took over manually, I realized that I could not land in the four o'clock position. There was some boulders that didn't show up in the photographs and I had to fly around and basically landed about the two o'clock position. So now we're looking away from the crater and you couldn't see in it. The limb windows were very small. I knew we were in the right place but it wasn't until I got out and first thing I wanted to make sure the surveyor was there. I knew we were in the right place but I know where the surveyor was there. Didn't see it on the way in because it was in the shadow. Were you happy with the landing? Oh, you betcha. Yeah. No. Very, very good.

Like I say though, it wasn't until I got outside and saw the surveyor and then I knew we had it made in the shade. Good. Any other night? Uh-huh. So you through this is that Pete Conrad spoke with me. Will he be as memorable as Neil Armstrong? Well, nobody remembers the second and that was why I said what I said. Which was based on a bat I had with somebody that they felt that the Neil's words had been propaganda and not written by him and I tried to assure this person that that wasn't the case and so it was in August of 69 before the flight when I made this bet that I would say something that they would know we'd figured out that I would say something and then they would know that the United States government wasn't big brother telling us what to say. So I said it may have been a small one for Neil but it was a big one for a little fellow like me and it came out somewhere close to that and I was right.

Nobody remembers what the second person said anyhow and the only bad thing was is the person that I made the bet with didn't pay off. All right. The landing site. The geologists were really unhappy with the second site after the after 11 they thought okay now we're going to do some good lunar science and some good geology. Guys like Jean Schumacher and a couple of other folks said you know that's it. NASA is not interested in doing good science. How did you feel about the site selection? Did you think you were going to, were you happy with where you were going? Did you know about the controversy going on with the geologists? Well, in first place, no I didn't know about the controversy with the geologists in the second place. I had thought that one of the reasons that I mean obviously I believe it was General Phillips was up in Washington running the office of space flight at the time and it was his decision to make the accurate landing in a place where you could tell it was an

accurate landing by going to the surveyor. Now I think that they found some interesting things on the surveyor but I was also under the impression that because this was down a Copernican ray they were hoping that they would find some rock material that came from deep within the crater Copernicus and that would be different than the surface material. Now if you don't understand I'm an operator and I learned to do as much geology as I needed to do as good a job as I could to bring back the proper samples. So I did that and what happened to them afterwards I'm not really sure so I don't know whether they get good science out of it or not. But I was happy with their putting us there for the surveyor obviously that made a big difference to us to know that we were going to be able to do that.

And frankly I think the fact that we set up the first nuclear powered lunar surface package and we landed next to the surveyor and did the accurate landing and we did the geology that to be real honest I wouldn't swap the ride in a go kart on 15 or 16 or 17 or would I swap the ride for Apollo 11 because I think we got to do the most interesting things of all of the lunar landings and I enjoyed it the most. How did you feel when geologists started to come in and want to ride and things like that? What was your reaction to the astronaut versus the hyphenated astronauts? I didn't have any problem with that. The guys that made it in the science side were as good pilots as we were and I hope they would think we were as good scientists as they were for doing the job so I didn't really problem with that.

Did you feel like you were equipped to do the geology and that kind of thing or did you I wasn't equipped to do the geology I was well equipped though to make the proper decisions about what to pick up and so forth. You came back quarantine. What was that experience like? Did you understand why you were being quarantined? What was it like to? Oh yeah, sure. We understood why we were being quarantined and I think I'm trying to remember exactly when I found out that they found the little bacteria that was in the surveyor camera that had made it from Earth all the way to the moon and the surveyor camera and stayed there for 33 months and plus or minus 250 degree temperatures spread and took all the radiation from the sun and all the rest of it and it came back to Earth on Apollo 12

and came back a lot. I thought that was one of the more significant things but I don't think anybody else did they wrote a nice report on it, that was it, but it says that we're pretty hearty, you know, maybe a little heartier than we think we are. I didn't know that. I'd never heard that. Yeah. Okay, let's talk a little bit about, do you think that the Apollo program ended too soon? Well, sure it ended too soon but it also accomplished an awful lot. We have to realize that it was before we ever landed on the moon that between President Johnson and President Nixon, they killed anything in the future. President Johnson because he was having trouble with Vietnam and the Great Society, President Nixon because I think he was a good politician and if you remember a lot of people did not think that it was worthwhile going and the moon had gotten to be controversial even before

we landed. Now, I'll tell you that I think in the future, nobody's going to go back to the moon until I go for commercial reason. Yeah, well what do you think about that? Should we go back? Yeah. Do you think there's a reason? I think that we can't ignore our energy problems down here and helium-3 is a great demand up there. There are all kinds of things I'm sure that people can think of that when we bring the cost of getting into orbit and being able to go to the moon on a relatively economic basis where you can make it pay, it will be a commercial reason. Everybody forgets old Christopher Columbus didn't sell across the Atlantic for the good of all mankind. He sailed across to make a buck and he was supported by a government that wanted to make a buck and so it's not until we get into the commercial world where space begins to

pay for itself that you're going to see these things go on. I don't believe taxpayers' dollars should pay for us to go back to the moon now. I do believe taxpayers' dollars should pay for things like going on to Mars and to Mars expiration and all that sort of stuff but we've got to get the commercial world really going and bring those costs to getting into orbit down and really begin to use space and what you can gain from it in an economical manner. What are you doing here? What are you doing to that end? Can you make a buck in space? Sure, we're trying to start and we've got four little companies here that are working in Ikeholm Space Services. We're trying to do really low cost expendable launch vehicle for the commercial guys. They realize all the stuff that's flying now is government-funded.

They never really built those things with the same objectives in mind and so we're trying to do that. They're also recognizing that it's mostly the government that has done the management of space infrastructure like tracking stations and so forth and so we've got another little company that's building a world-wide tracking network and we've already put that together with foreign entities that have tracking stations and put them together in a network where we can offer services to commercial satellite users to use our system like a telephone. They don't have to maintain a station just to talk to their satellite. They can call their satellite through our network and they can probably get it a lot quicker than they can over their own station because we've got almost worldwide coverage now. And lastly, the sort of parent company that found all these things is the operating company universal space lines and we intend to be the first commercial space lines going and

we, if we got to use expendables to start, we will and we would like to be the first owner-operator of reusables and so I got a lot of bright young guys or a lot younger than I am and we're having fun. Would you think, would you be interested in going back to the moon in a commercial sense? Sure. Come in. Come in. Oh, well, yeah, I'd love to go back to the moon. I don't know. Now, if the government has been evident like they were with Senator Glenn, I figure when I'm 77, I don't want an earth or a bit right, they can send me back to the moon. Good. Okay. Cut. I think we got it. Good.