Episode 69: The Apollo Program, Part XIV

It was a long time coming - ten years in fact! - but after being grounded due to an inner ear problem, Alan Shepard (center) recovered from a painful surgery and was given command of the Apollo 14 mission.

Before I talk about Apollo 14, here is the promised Apollo 13 photo I mentioned with the crew needing something more formal that ball caps and flight suits to meet with the president so they put on ascots!

After stepping on the moon, Shepard remarked that it had been a long but he had made it. He also quipped that it wasn't bad for an old man. At 47, he was the oldest of all the astronauts to walk on the moon.

It didn't work as well as NASA had hoped, but Apollo 14 went to the moon with what was basically a handcart (seen above with Shepard) to help the crew haul equipment around the lunar surface. Carrying experiments made the already taxing moonwalks even harder but the undulating surface wasn't really made for a cart. The next mission would have an all-terrain rover.

Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell spent a lot of time during their second EVA trying to find a particular point to collect rock and soil samples from but the terrain features on the lunar surface look different from the maps they had, made from pictures taken in orbit. Above, Ed Mitchell is looking at one of those maps trying to navigate.

One of the largest moon rocks brought back by any Apollo mission was Apollo 14's Big Bertha which turned out to be ejecta from Earth and more than four billion years old, making it among the oldest known rocks in the universe.

 

The most enduring image of the Apollo 14 mission is probably when Shepard pulled out a makeshift six iron and took swings at two golf balls.

The insignia for this mission depicts the Earth, the moon, and an astronaut pin drawn with a comet tail. The pin is worn by military astronauts on their uniforms to indicate their military occupation. The design is based on a sketch made by Shepard who had been the head of the astronaut office while he was gounded and meant for the pin to symbolize that through him, the entire astronaut corps was flying ot the moon.

Before his Air Force and astronaut career, Apollo 14 command module pilot Stu Roosa was a forest service smoke jumper and firefighter. During the mission, he brought hundreds of tree seeds into space. After the mission, these seeds were germinated and distributed around the US (and to a few international sites) to see if the zero gravity and radiation of space would effect how their growth. By in large, it did not. 

By the mid-1990s, the story behing the moon trees and their locations had mostly been forgotten until a third grade teacher and her class came across a tree in Indiana with a plaque on it and wrote to NASA aking for more inforamtion . That inspired a NASA researcher to begin searching for moon trees and tracking their location. Several of them had plaques accociated with them, like the plaque above from a  Georgia moon tree and others were tracked via newpaper articles at the time of their plantings. The wonderfully 1990s website is still available today.

I just learned that I grew up near a moon tree located at Lowell Elementary School in Boise, ID.

In 2005, on the 34th anniversary of Apollo 14's splashdown, a half-moon tree (a tree produced from the seed of a moon tree) was planted at Arlington Naitonal Cemetery, not far from Stu Roosa's final resting place.

Air Force Colonel Stuart Allen Roosa passed away on December 12, 1994 from complications due to pancreatitis at the age of 61. He was bured at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 7A, Grave 73.

The Black Sheep of the Mayflower - Supplemental Episode #2

 

The Mayflower was a cargo ship built to travel the short distance between England and France. It was a garbage choice to carry 102 passengers and 30 crew across the Atlantic to the New World and yet the pilgrims traveling to establish a new colony had little choice in the matter. Betters can't be choosers.

Before disembarking in the New World, 41 Mayflower passengers (the adult men) signed the Mayflower Compact, agreeing to abide by the Puritan-inspired laws of the new colony. After I finished recording the episode, I discovered John Billington was the 26 signature on the document.

John and Eleanor Billington were an argumentative couple that none of the other colonists liked. Their teenage sons John, Jr. and Francis have been called America's first juvenile delinquents. Francis discharged a firearm on the Mayflower, near several power kegs, and nearly blew up the ship.

Myles Standish, the military leader of the colony, brought John Billington up on insubordination charges, the first criminal proceedings in Plymouth Colony - yet another proud moment in my family's history.

After being allowed off the Mayflower, John, Jr. got lost in the woods for nearly a week. When a rescue party finally found him, he was with a group of 100 native Nanset who had found they boy, bedecked him with beads, and given him a ceremonial knife.

William Bradford became the second governor of the colony when the original governor unexpectedly died - probably from an aneurism. Bradford was decidedly anti-Billington and documented problems with Billington in multiple letters.

In 1630, John Billington was accused of murdering John Newcomen. We know next to nothing about Newcomen except that he arrived sometime after the original Mayflower passengers and dies of a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Billington was tried for Newcomen's murder and a jury that already didn't like him, convicted Billington on what would be considered very circumstantial evidence today and sentenced him to death.

A few short days after Billington's quasi-show trial he was hanged, becoming the first European confided of murder in colonial America and the first person executed there. Guilty or not, Grandpa John makes for an interesting story in my family tree!

Episode 68: Houston, We've Had a Problem (The Apollo Program, Part XIII)

After Jack Swigert replaced Ken Mattingly just two days before the flight, the "official" Apollo 13 crew photos became a little more casual that those of past missions.

The Apollo 13 mission insignia depicts the Greek Sun god Apollo, with three horses pulling his chariot across the face of the moon. This was to symbolize the Apollo flights bring the light of knowledge to to all people as Apollo was to have brought the light of the sun to all people in Greek mythology. The mission motto: Ex luna, scientia (From the moon, knowledge) appears on the lower felt portion of the insignia. Lovell adapted the motto of his alma mater, the US Naval Academy, which is Ex scientia, tridens (From knowledge, sea power). The mission number appears in roman numerals. The patch did not have to be modified after Sweigart replaced Mattingly, as it is one of only two Apollo mission insignias without the crew’s name – the other being Apollo 11. 

On the second day of the mission, an onboard explosion changed the entire focus of the mission form one of landing on the moon to one of figuring out how to get the three astronauts back to Earth alive. It wasn't until just before reentering Earth's atmosphere, when the service module portion of the command module was jettisoned that the astronauts saw just how much physical damage the explosion had caused.

The explosion happened about 56 hours into the mission. It was possible to get the astronauts back to Earth without journeying all the way to the Moon but without knowning the exact extend of the damage to the command module, it was safer to plot a 4-day return route that had then pass behind the far side of the moon before venturing back to Earth.

One of the dangers of the Apolo 13 return flight wasthe accumulation of carbon dioxide in the lunar module where the astronauts had to evacuate too after the explosion. The CO2 scrubbers in the lunar laner were designed to support two astronauts for two days, not three astronauts for four days, and dangerous amounts of CO2 began to accumulate. The scrubbers in the lunar lander were designed to go into a cylindrical slot and the extra scrubbers in the command module were designed for a square slot.

Using only the materials available to the astroanuts in the spaceship, engineers on Earth MacGyvered a way to use a square CO2 scrubber with a cylindrical filter slot and coarbon dyoxide levels in the spaceship quickly fell back to near zero.

Another harship of the mission was that to conserve electricity that would be vital to the reentry process, many systems, including the heating sytem, had to be shut donw after passing around the moon and some places in the spaceship reached near-freezing temeratures and the astronauts had to spend much of their free time fighting the frigid condition. Showing their professionalism, the crew dud not complain about any of the hardships they faced - including poor Fred Haise who developed a painful urinary track infection.

 

If the accident had happened after the lunar surface activity poriton of the mission, the astronauts would have had no chance of making it home alive becasue the lunar module would have already been jettisoned. As it was, Aquarius served as a lifeboat and got the crew safely back to Earth orbit before it was jettisoned just prior to reentry.

An unknown passenger on an Air New Zealand flight from Fiji to Aukland snapped this picture of the disgarded service module and lunar module reentering Earth atmosphere. Both burned up on reentry and the remianing debris fell into the Pacific Ocean. Several other flight in the area also reporting seeing these crafts reentering.

Against all odds, the Apollo 13 mission managed to return to Earth and the three astronauts safely splashed down in the vecinity of American Samoa.

Episode 67: The Apollo Program, Part XII

 

Back in Episode 60, I mentioned that Buzz Aldrin shot down two MiG-15s in 1953 during the korean war. The above photo shows him celebrating his first aerial victory with a MiG-15 painted on the side of his F-86 Sabre.

Pictures from Aldrins gun camera showing the MiG pilot ejecting after being hit were published in Life Magazine in 1953.

Following his time with NASA, Colonel Aldrin wanted to be the Commendant of the Air Force academy. That position went to Hoyt Vandenberg, who now has a Space Force base (previously an Air Force base) in California named after him. Instead, Aldrin was appointed Commendand of the Air Force Test Pilot School, despite having no test pilot or managerial experience. He had hoped the position would be a relaxing one - it proved anything but. While in command, he was diagnosed with depression and hospitolized for four weeks. He retired form the Air Force soon after.

After retirement (and after conquering some deamons like alcholoism) Aldrin continued his adventurous life, traveling to the north pole, the south pole, and in 2017, becoming the oldest person to fly with the Thunderbirds, the Air Force's demonstraiton flying team.

Aldrin has continued his advocacy for space exploration but believes that the moon should not be the destination - NASA has been there, done that. In his mind, any moon venture should be a stepping stone for Mars and that humans should strive to become a two planet species by 2040.

In 2015, Aldrin tweeted a copy of his travel voucher to the moon, showing that he received $33.31 in per diem

Another tweet showed the customs form that he and his Apollo 11 colleagues had to sign for the rock and soil samples the brought back from their lunar mission.

Not resting on its laurels, NASA sent a second mission to the moon before the end of 1969. The Apollo 12 crew consisted of (left to right) Mission Commander Pete Conrad, Command Module Pilot Dick Gordon, and Lunar Modual Pilot Al Bean.

One of Apollo 12's objectives was to visit the Surveyor 3 lunar probe, sent to the moon by NASA in 1967, and bring some pieces of it back to earth (inclusing its camera and rock samples it had collected and photographed). This was the first time humans had visited a man-made object sent to the moon. The lunar module Intrepid is visible in the upper right of the image.

During the return trip to Earth, the Apollo 12 crew took some pictures of a solar eclipse that occured when the Earth passed between their spacecrft Yankee Clipper and the sun. Al Bean called it the most spectacular site of the mission.

There are four prominant stars on the Apollo 12 mission patch - three represent the members of the crew, and the fourth star is for Marine Major CC Williams who was assigned to the crew but died in a plane crash before the mission. He was replaced by Al Bean.

Marine Corps Major Clifton Curtis "CC" Williams, Jr., the first member of NASA's 5th astronaut class to be assigned to a space mission, is burried in Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 3, Grave 2503. He was 35 years old.

Episode 66: The Apollo Program, Part XI

 

After the crew of Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, there were recovered by the USS Hornet and placed in quarentine in a modified Airstream trailer until they could be transported to the larger quarentine facility in Houston, TX.

President Nixon was waiting on board to greet the astronauts, welcome them back to Earth, and congratulate them on a successful and historic mission.

Jan Armstrong, Joan Aldrin, and Pat Collins were flow to Hawaii to great their husbands after they were unloaded from the USS Hornet at Pearl Harbor.

Today, the quarentine trailer can be visited at the Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia.

Aside from the occasional photo op, there was not a lot for the astronauts to do after splashdown until they arrived in Houston and their formal debriefing began.

After the Astronauts were released from quarentine, they received a plethora of accolaids and celebrations, including the traditional ticker-tape parade in New York City.

After an around the world goodwill tour with the entire Apollo 11 crew, Armstrong was invited to the Soviet Union and was presented a badge by Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.

After his unexpected death, Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Neil Armstrong was cremated and on September 14, 2012, his remains were buired at sea from the USS Philippine Sea.

After his death, the Armstrong family encouraged everyone to remember Neil on the moon, go outside and give him a wink. This started the trending hastag #winkatthemoon and a memorial twitter profile of the same name.

After Apollo 11, Michael Collins held multiple high profile public jobs, including Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs, the first president of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, and undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

One of the more obscure facts I discovered about Collins is that he had no middle name
 

My middle name is “none”, as in I don’t have one. When I was younger, I kind of resented not having a middle name. Now, I like the simplicity of Michael Collins. #MiddleNamePrideDay pic.twitter.com/sT9jfQ6ac2

— Michael Collins (@AstroMCollins) March 6, 2020

Air Force Major General Michael Collins passed away in Florida on April 28, 2021. He was 90 years old.