Return to Earth
By Buzz Aldrin and Wayne Warga
3.5/5
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About this ebook
“We landed with all the grace of a freight elevator,” Buzz Aldrin relates in the opening passages of Return to Earth, remembering Command Module Columbia’s abrupt descent into the gravity of the blue planet. With that splash, Aldrin takes readers on a journey through the human side of the space program, as one of the first two men to land on the moon learns to cope with the pressures of his new public persona.
In honest and compelling prose, Aldrin reveals a side of instant fame for which West Point and NASA could never have prepared him. One day a fighter pilot and engineer, the next a cultural hero burdened with the adoration of thousands, Aldrin gives a poignant account of the affair that threatened his marriage, as well as his descent into alcoholism and depression that resulted from trying to be too many things to too many people.
He didn’t realize that when he landed on his home planet his odyssey had just begun. As Aldrin puts it, “I traveled to the moon, but the most significant voyage of my life began when I returned from where no man had been before.”
Return to Earth is a powerful and moving memoir that exposes the stresses suffered by those in the Apollo program and the price Buzz Aldrin paid when he became an American icon.
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin (b. 1930) is an American astronaut, and the second person to walk on the Moon. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, he turned down a full scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in favor of an education at West Point Academy, where he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. After receiving a commission by the United States Air Force (USAF), Aldrin flew sixty-six combat missions during the Korean War, after which he continued his education at MIT before becoming an astronaut in 1963. Unlike most of the others chosen for that role, Aldrin was never a test pilot, but attracted the attention of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with his success in the USAF and his graduate work at MIT. Aldrin flew on Gemini 12, and was selected—along with Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins—for Apollo 11, the first mission to the surface of the Moon. Since retiring from NASA, he has done charity work and written numerous books, including Encounter with Tiber (1996), his first science fiction novel.
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Reviews for Return to Earth
28 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aldrin has a good book with a great moral. He was one of those blessed people - football star, all state, Air Force Academy, chosen to be an astronaut, chosen to land on the moon...then what. He shows both the power of setting goals and the let down that happens when all the goals have been "checked off."
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is Buzz Aldrin's memoir written in the early 1970s of the effects the first Moon landing had on his subsequent life and, in particular, on his mental health. In early 1970s America, he was one of the very few prominent public figures to speak openly about his mental health and to want depression to be treated without judgement as are physical infirmities.The account begins with three chapters detailing the massive round the country and round the world tours that Buzz did alongside Neil Armstrong and Mike Collins for many months after their return to Earth. The extensive and exhaustingly rapid changes of location, press conferences, speeches and receptions, often involving their wives and children as well, and with minimal downtime built in to their schedules, took its toll on most of them in one way or another.In the middle part of the book Buzz recounts his life story (at home, young Edwin "became known as “Brother.” My sister, Fay Ann, a year and a half older, could not quite manage that: her version came out “Buzzer” and it stuck until it evolved into Buzz"). His father was a pilot so Buzz flew from a very early age and, later graduating from West Point, entered the Air Force and flew in Korea during the war as a young man. Unlike Neil Armstrong and many other astronauts, he was not a test pilot, but became an astronaut in 1963 at the second attempt and took part in the Gemini programme (without the mishaps that Armstrong had undergone in his flight earlier on that programme).Buzz apparently had reservations about being on the first lunar landing flight: "My instinct was murmuring quietly that my own scientific interests might be better served by one of the longer, more adventurous missions later on and, if I went on the first flight, it might turn out a bit difficult to get back into the swing of the astronaut business again. My instinct eventually proved to be guilty of a major understatement". While prescient, I cannot help but wonder whether there is at least some post hoc rationalisation here; and other accounts have said that Buzz was upset at not being selected as the first man to step onto the lunar surface (whatever the truth of that, his father was very angry about the situation, regardless of his son's true feelings about it). Buzz records his feelings about the Moon itself: "the surface was “Beautiful. Beautiful. Magnificent desolation.”" and "was particularly struck by the contrast between the starkness of the shadows and the desertlike barrenness of the rest of the surface." He reflects on how he and his fellow moon walkers view their home planet in light of their experience: "If the twelve of us have any one viewpoint in common, it is that unlike most men we have a special concept of the earth. We have seen it from space as whole and bright and beautiful; we have seen it from the surface of the moon as not very large and somehow vulnerable. With all its imperfections, it is a great place to come from and an even greater place to go back to."The effect of the demands of his life and career on Buzz's well-being manifested themselves in an early warning from his nervous system even before his Apollo days. One day after the ending of the Gemini programme at the end of 1966, he "felt an almost overwhelming sense of fatigue mixed with a vague sadness. I yearned for sleep so strongly, I considered nodding off right there and not going to bed. I made it to bed and stayed there for five days." Four years later after the razzmatazz of the Apollo flight and the subsequent tours had started to died down, when Buzz was re-assessing his life and deciding what to do next, this depression returned with a vengeance. While extensive research had been carried out into the effects of spaceflight on astronauts' physical health, none had been carried out on their emotional and mental health. So Buzz was charting new territory for a man in his position and, as was nearly always the case then and sometimes still is now, albeit less so, he hid his condition as he worried it would damage his career. His relationship with his father foundered, as the latter could not understand or accept his son's condition and his wish to change his life and move away from the structured career of the Air Force. Buzz was not able to get across to his father or other older family members the crippling effects of his depression: "my intellect was by now separated by the jagged and dangerous wall of my emotions. The rule of my emotions was absolute and ruthless. In no way could I stop what I felt, but I hoped somehow to stop feeling anything at all. I yearned for a brightly lit oblivion—wept for it." His marriage to Joan also suffered hugely and he had an affair with a New York widow, although at the time this book was published in 1973, they had to an extent patched up their marriage (however, they divorced the following year).Like many high-functioning sufferers from depression, he was extremely hard on himself: "I felt I was not entitled to have such emotions. My goal was command of every situation in which I might find myself, and such an aim was unattainable. When I sensed I was not in full command, there was no harsher judge of my actions than I myself." In conclusion, he sums up pithily what life has taught him thus: "I traveled to the moon, but the most significant voyage of my life began when I returned from where no man had been before."
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Book preview
Return to Earth - Buzz Aldrin
1
There was a jolt as the small drogue chutes opened, rather like a rough landing on a bumpy runway. I took a quick look out the window, then settled back to wait. Minutes later, three bright orange-and-white-striped main chutes opened, jerking us like puppets against our couches, and we slowed down considerably. We were, it seemed, in a state of suspended slow motion.
We floated down through a bank of stratocumulus clouds as big and lush as the ocean they covered. The change was impressive. I had become so accustomed to seeing the starkness of space, where there is no haze and where delineations are quite sharp, that the sensation of looking out on a hazy early morning on earth was a welcome change. I could see the ocean below, and as I looked at it, I sniffed to smell it. Not yet.
The sensation caused by the change of scenery pales beside the sensation of getting used to the fact of weight. For a number of minutes, movement is an effort. Arms, which had floated before, now hung heavily and had to be willed to movement. Legs, which are about as necessary to space travel as an appendix is to a body, stirred to activity by threatening not to function at all.
We landed with all the grace of an old freight elevator. Air Boss had announced to us that the wave height was between three and four feet, but it looked more like thirteen or fourteen. And it felt like it too. Our chutes, tilting in the wind, brought us in at one angle, and the moon, governor of the tides, sent a wave our way from an opposing angle. With an enormous thwack, as jarring as it was noisy, we landed. Before the impact, my hand rested on circuit breakers which, when pushed in, would enable Mike to jettison our chutes. After impact, my hand was jammed painfully down beside me. All of us grunted in distress; I grabbed the circuit breakers and Mike jettisoned the chutes.
The Apollo spacecraft is a marvel of engineering. It is totally life-supporting, a miniplanet containing all facilities necessary for maintaining life. It also floats, whether right side up or upside down. There is no way to determine which way you’ll end up after landing, especially in a good wind and a delayed chute jettison.
It brings a smile now, but at the time, it wasn’t quite so amusing. There we were, officially taking our position in the history books of mankind, floating upside down in the Pacific Ocean. It was July 24, 1969. The water was dark green and unfriendly, but its mist seeping in smelled good.
We bobbed around for seven minutes, the amount of time it takes the floatbag motors to pump air into the float-bags—three little balloons—which would turn us upright.
"Air Boss, Apollo 11. Everyone okay inside. Our checklist is complete. Awaiting swimmers," Neil radioed.
Air Boss came right on and told us three swimmers were already in the water, and our flotation collar would be attached in less than two minutes.
It was over. No exclamations, no slaps on the back. No handshakes. All that would come later, at least the handshakes. We sat in silence, three men alone together with their private thoughts. The reverie seemed to last much longer than it actually did. I spent most of it convincing myself not to be seasick, and so, it turned out later, did Mike and Neil. It was one thing to land upside down (we got ourselves upright before the world watched us on television), it would be quite another to scramble out of the spacecraft tossing our cookies all over the place.
The flotation collar was fit into place, the hatch flew open and three gray-green biological isolation garments were thrown in. They came from one of the water rescue team men: a navy frogman, also wearing an isolation garment topped by a face mask with a filter on the side of it. He looked weird, right out of Jules Verne. But he still looked like a human being.
The isolation suits were like rubberized flying suits except that the zipper ran diagonally from lower left to upper right. A hood was attached, with a visor and a filter for breathing. You could talk, but the sound was muffled, and you could hear, but the information was garbled. As soon as we had our suits on, we put on Mae West life preservers and crawled out of the spacecraft into the rubber raft bobbing alongside the flotation collar. The suits were supposedly tested and airtight, yet minutes later moisture was seeping in and it was sticky and uncomfortable.
One of the frogmen helped us to stumble into the raft and another was right there with us from then on. Waves started rolling and splashing us, causing the hatch to slam into the head of one of the frogmen. He weaved for a moment as we all moved to catch him, but he recovered quickly and motioned us back down. Another handed us scrubbing cloths and detergent with which we had to thoroughly douse ourselves twice—once with one cleansing substance, the second with another, all to counteract any contamination we might have brought from the moon. One by one we finished and were motioned to the other end of the raft, where we sat down and waited. The cloths we had used to scrub ourselves were tied to weights and dropped into the ocean. It was all conducted as a solemn ritual, as if it had been done through the ages. There were virtually no words spoken, partly because it was difficult to speak and understand through the suits but mostly because four helicopters hovered noisily above us.
I had begun to feel queasy inside the spacecraft, and bobbing around in the raft caused more rumblings in my stomach. I breathed deep; the cool air felt good, even though filtered. I looked about the raft for anything I could, if necessary, improvise into a motion-sickness bag. I had forgotten about the special plastic bag in my pocket. Activity is a great cure for incipient seasickness—I was still looking when I realized I now felt fine. We sat there for what seemed to be an eternity. It was only fifteen minutes, but being idle was distinctly foreign, and I kept glancing up, waiting for the helicopter to start down to pick us up. We communicated by a kind of improvised sign language, and I, for one, wondered how many people were watching us. The aircraft carrier USS Hornet was now in view, less than a quarter of a mile away, and I developed a sudden craving for a razor, shaving cream, and hot water. I wanted to feel presentable even though nobody could tell whether I was or not because of the isolation garment. The president of the United States and a lot of television cameras were waiting on the Hornet.
A Billy Pugh basket appeared from one of the helicopters and began dropping down in our direction. The Billy Pugh basket, named for its inventor, is a practical plastic and metal scooplike object which can literally scoop people right out of the water. I was second up in it, and during the ride, which lasted about two minutes, I had a peculiar feeling of loss. It wasn’t until I glanced down that I could understand the feeling. Down in the water was Columbia, our spacecraft: small, compact, and a virtual extension of each of us. Now we were leaving. It had done its work and we had no more use for it. We had shed it, discarded our cocoon. It seemed small and helpless, yet minutes before it had represented safety and security.
I scrambled into the helicopter and the first person I saw was Bill Carpentier, a short, wiry, and humorous doctor from Canada who was a paramedic. If one of us had been injured, he would have jumped directly from the helicopter into the water to treat us. Instead, he was standing in the door smiling, his hand extended in greeting, the first recognizable face from what I would hereafter refer to as before.
We shook hands and he helped me out of the bulky Mae West.
Mike was walking around the inside of the helicopter, stopping now and then to do a deep knee bend and I started around behind him. We were both unsteady, trying to make legs that felt like rubber function on a floor slick with salt water. Neil scrambled in next and grinned when he saw us pacing and bending around. He took a few unsteady steps and sat down, fastening his seat belt. He shot us a glance, a communication which we understood without his speaking. He was giving us Neil Armstrong’s rumored philosophy about exercise: I am allotted just so many heartbeats in a lifetime and I’m not going to use any more than necessary at any time.
Since Mike and I were frequent and enthusiastic exercisers, Neil was advising us that we were using up valuable heartbeats.
But I wanted to get my legs working and steady. After all, in a few minutes I would be stepping out of the helicopter to be greeted by the president and I preferred, if at all possible, not to fall on my ass in the process. It seemed a rather undignified possibility.
On the flight to the carrier we continued to exercise. The ride lasted about fifteen minutes and at the end I still felt unsteady, though much improved. We fastened our seat belts to land, and once we touched down on the flight deck and waited for the elevator to take the helicopter below deck, we paced and bent some more.
Just before we left the helicopter we ripped the Apollo 11 insignias off the isolation garments and handed them to the helicopter crew. It was spontaneous and a way of saying thanks.
The helicopter door opened and, with Neil leading, we walked down the ramp. I noticed that Neil instantly gripped the handrail on the stairs and the next thing I knew I was hanging on too.
There was a lack of reality about everything, a kind of euphoric strangeness to all that was going on. The plastic face mask was such that I had no peripheral vision and it tended to fog up slightly. I could hear music from the band but it was somehow delayed.
There was only one opportunity to do anything as we left the helicopter and I suddenly realized that nothing had been planned, nothing rehearsed or discussed as just about every other thing had been. I wanted somehow to convey a greeting and convince whoever was looking on that though we probably looked absurd, we felt just fine, thanks. We waved and walked the short distance along a red carpet to what was officially called the Mobile Quarantine Facility (which was a big mobile home purchased at a trailer show and refitted for our use). John Hirasaki, the engineer in charge of the trailer and the second familiar face from before, held the door. John, Bill Carpentier, and the three of us would remain together in the quarantine trailer until we were in permanent quarters back in Houston.
The first thing we did on board the Hornet in our trailer was lock the doors, close the draw curtains on the windows, and take off the isolation garments. One by one we lined up for a rather hurried set of medical measurements: blood pressure, temperature, respiration, and heart rate. It took just a few minutes and then we headed for the showers. Or rather shower. There was only one, a condition causing momentary dismay, but after eight days, five more minutes didn’t hurt much and I waited for my turn.
I did, however, become irritated when I started to dress and found a pair of baggy boxer shorts instead of the jockey shorts I had requested; I had anticipated returning to the amenities of earthbound living and now there was the slight irritation because it wasn’t right. Before Bill Carpentier had been deployed for the recovery some ten days before the launch, we had given him the personal items we wanted on board, along with a list of supplies (booze, mostly).
Once shaved and dressed in a loose and comfortable flying suit—with sneakers, not the customary boots—I quickly explored the quarantine home. There was lots of blond wood and the upholstery was predominantly blue. Double-deck bunks lined either side of the long hallway, and there was a pullman kitchen and conversation area with a table that could be used for eating or work, but opened out into an area for physical examinations. In the bathroom, which was located in the front of the trailer and to one side, there was a window. While Mike and Neil finished dressing, I pulled back the drapery enough to see what was going on outside. I could see that they were constructing a plastic tunnel leading to a larger enclosed area which before long would contain the spacecraft. We were in the Hornet’s cavernous hangar bay.
The next order of business was a conversation with President Nixon, who had flown halfway around the world for the splashdown. A microphone was rigged up just outside the trailer, close by the main window, and we took our places behind the window and had our first encounter with the priorities of protocol, the president, and the odd construction of trailers. We couldn’t look out the window unless we were kneeling or seated, but we figured that the president would understand. We didn’t know that the national anthem would be played at the start of the ceremonies and that three astronauts would stand up and present three crotches to the world. Since the zippers could be opened from either end, we had only to glance down to check our flies; this was fortunate because using our hands for a quick check would have been observed by a good part of the television audience. We sat down as soon as possible, checking to be sure we were correctly zipped up.
President Nixon was clearly enthusiastic. He danced a kind of jig when he greeted us through the window and then went on to announce that our safe return concluded the greatest week since creation. It was only a matter of time before he would be reminded that there once was a fellow named Jesus Christ—reminded by editorial writers and cartoonists around the world. Because of my state of mind those first several hours back on earth, I didn’t realize what he had said until I read it in a newspaper several days later.
For our part, we had had no time to prepare any remarks; so we kept up a steady flow of Yes, sir
and Thank you, sir.
The president also remarked about Mike’s mustache, something about its having grown under rather unusual circumstances. The subject of promotions came up, as it invariably and obliquely does after every space flight. Neil was a civilian and I was already a full colonel; so I deferred to Lieutenant Colonel Mike Collins, who not many days later became Colonel Mike Collins.
When it was my turn to speak, I requested a moment of silence to pay tribute to Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White, who had become to us symbols of the sacrifice put into space travel. They had given their lives in a flash fire in the first Apollo spacecraft two years earlier. The moment was observed and the president, after telling us he’d be seeing us soon at the White House, was gone.
There were more medical examinations, one of which was not the most restful activity for guys as tired as we were. One by one we were checked on an ergometer, which looks like an exercycle except that it gets progressively harder to pedal during the eighteen minutes we each rode it with our noses clipped shut and a breathing device in our mouths. The ergometer provides a fairly thorough check of your physical condition at any given moment; it gives a vital clue of the extent of deterioration during a period of weightlessness. The check was repeated twenty-four hours later and the results were that our deterioration was typical and our bodies were returning to normal.
By the time our exams were completed, the president was in the air on his way home and the USS Hornet plus three was steaming toward Honolulu. And John Hirasaki was on his way to the kitchen, reappearing a few minutes later with a tray of glasses and ice, offering us a choice of Scotch, bourbon, or gin. Scotch, with ice and water applied as one applies vermouth to a martini, was what I had. Dinner a few hours later was steak with more of the same liquid refreshment. Nobody drank too much, but everyone slept very well indeed.
Before we had gone to bed for the night, Bill Carpentier had helped us compute a schedule for waking and sleeping. In space we remained on the same time schedule as Houston, and the decision was that the six hours lost by traveling east from Honolulu back to Houston could keep us on schedule—provided we didn’t start sleeping late. The next morning we did sleep late and kept right on taking our leisure until we were totally off schedule but more and more rested.
The spacecraft Columbia, looking somewhat the worse for wear with its scars from the heat of reentry and a good dunking, was at our side. After breakfast we left the trailer and went through the plastic tunnel to the spacecraft where, more because of training than necessity at this point, we began straightening things up. We took the boxes of lunar rocks out of the back wall of the spacecraft, and John placed them in a special sterilization mechanism. From there they were put on a plane and flown to Houston.
More than anything, I wanted the pleasure of doing nothing for a while, a desire shared by both Mike and Neil. We played hearts, read a little, and eventually Mike and Neil began a marathon gin rummy game, which would endure through the weeks of isolation. I played some solitaire but mostly tried to think about nothing in particular. The enormity of it all was beginning to occur to me. I had often thought of it before, and Neil and I had talked about it off and on during training. But there was something different about it now: the trip was over, the goal accomplished, and so much time and effort had been put into it. Before, thoughts had been focused on the technical achievement ahead of us. All that precise work was now done and behind us. It would take a couple of years for it to become clear to me, but that day on the USS Hornet was actually the start of the trip to the unknown. I had known what to expect on the unknown moon more than I did on the familiar earth.
That afternoon there were ceremonies officially welcoming us aboard the Hornet. The captain and the chaplain officiated and we were presented with plaques and a set of mugs. Earlier we had been given hats with our names, flight, and carrier embossed on them. The chaplain conducted a service of thanksgiving. We then officiated from our trailer at the reenlistment of four Hornet crew members, giving them their oath and congratulating them. I signed their orders as the reenlistment officer. There was also a large cake especially decorated for the occasion and the traditional sword for cutting it. Because of quarantine precautions, we weren’t allowed any cake, although food was sent in through the air lock sterilizer. Neil acted as our spokesman and thanked the crew for their excellent recovery work. When it was all over, somebody in the mobile quarantine—I don’t remember who it was and we never did agree on who said it first—innocently remarked, And now it begins.
We were on the Hornet two nights. On the morning of the third day, we steamed into Pearl Harbor for our first solid ground in more than a week. And our first ceremony on solid ground.
Just after we were hoisted from the carrier, Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., commander of the Pacific forces, stopped for a chat through the rear window. He is a short, wiry man who has a reputation for being a bit salty and always going directly to the subject at hand. He looked at us, smiled, and said, You lucky sons of bitches. I’d have given anything to go with you.
Admiral McCain is also as honest as he is direct.
The quarantine trailer was by now on a flatbed truck which backed directly up to a platform containing a somewhat more subdued Admiral McCain, various dignitaries, press, and a crowd of some two thousand people. From one of the windows of the trailer I could see a broomstick flying from the mast of the Hornet, the symbol of a mission well done.
With the perspective of hundreds of ceremonies and a number of years, the ceremonies that day in Honolulu have become a pleasant memory. The enthusiasm was genuine, the elation was real on both sides of the trailer window; and there we were, three goldfish maybe, but we were safe goldfish.
From Pearl Harbor we traveled on the truck bed to Hickam Field. It was a long trip because we hardly exceeded ten miles an hour all the way. Mike and I couldn’t understand why we traveled so slowly and though we asked a number of times, no one could tell us why with any degree of certainty. Somebody somewhere had made the decision and that was that. Along the way there were crowds at various places, and all the way to Hickam a young boy, who we were told had at one time had polio or some other crippling disease, ran along beside the truck. His name and address were communicated to the trailer and John Hirasaki put his name on the autographing list. Quiet, efficient John kept the list of names to whom we’d send pictures. We autographed pictures and first-day covers whenever we had spare time. It became a kind of escape, a way of not thinking too much about the long isolation and debriefing ahead or about the unknowns beyond that. To be sure, there were many people to thank. So many that I am still signing pictures, even though we signed what seemed like thousands during the first few weeks.
Once inside Hickam, we moved quickly and efficiently to a C-141 starlifter, a giant transport jet. The isolation trailer rolled into its belly and then we were in the air on our way to Houston. Inside the spacecraft we had not felt particularly cramped, but the trailer was confining and the feeling was increased by its being enclosed in the starlifter. We could barely see out the trailer windows to the plane windows. There was space around the trailer for three or four people to stand. Some of the rescue crew was on board the plane along with some of the NASA recovery team. Our watches were set on Houston time, the time schedule for the entire trip. But by now time made no sense. In Houston it was the cocktail hour; so we obliged most agreeably. We were supposed to arrive at roughly midnight Houston time.
We touched down in Houston, sat back, and waited to roll onto another flatbed truck. We waited and waited and waited. If the loading at Hickam Field had been smooth and quick, the off-loading at Ellington Air Force Base was anything but. First one method of getting onto the truck bed failed, then another wouldn’t work, and finally, on the third try in more than an hour, we bumped and swayed down onto the truck bed and were driven slowly into a brightly lit area and backed up window-first to another platform. Bill Carpentier couldn’t resist: They can send men safely to the moon and back, but they can’t get the men off their airplane.
We smiled.
Louis Welch, mayor of Houston, was there along with several thousand other people. Robert Gilruth, the stately director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, spoke in his characteristic halting way about his genuine pleasure. There were television cameras everywhere.
Four other important people were there, although I had to do a bit of looking to find them. Joan, with Mike, Jan, and Andy, thirteen, eleven, and ten at the time, had steered off to the side, since they had spent the last many days in the glare of television lights and the peering gaze of many people. They looked ill at ease and no wonder. They had been given several arrival times and, once finally advised and reassured, had come to Ellington only to arrive two hours ahead of me. After that they spent better than an hour watching us being unloaded.
Small red telephones were hooked up to the trailer during the ceremonies and we were allowed to speak to our families. It was a nervous, hesitant series of conversations and not at all private, but as private as could be in such circumstances. I don’t remember any revelations in the short talks with my kids, but I do remember asking my youngest son how he was doing in school only to be told, Daddy, it’s summer vacation.
Jan and Mike spoke with me briefly, Mike’s agony somewhat more evident because his voice was starting to change. And then came the first words with my wife: Joan, would you bring me some jockey shorts tomorrow morning?
Oh, thank God,
she said and started crying. After that we just looked at each other for a minute.
By 1:30 A.M., we were moving slowly along NASA Road 1 on our way to the Manned Spacecraft Center and there were still people in the street waving to us. It was nearly 2:30 A.M. when we arrived at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory and it took a while for the trailer to be sealed to the side of the lab before the door opened and we entered our new quarters.
The quarantines have since been discontinued, but for this first experience various scientific organizations had gotten together and set down various rules. It was extremely remote that any germs could survive the lunar environment, but it was generally considered that if there were any germs, they might thrive fairly well in the earth’s fertile environment. There was also interest in testing to see if any toxic properties had somehow made their way back with us. The air-conditioning system inside the laboratory maintained a pressure lower than outside so that air was always coming in and none of it escaped without traveling through a number of filters and pumps before reentering the outside world. All of the precautions were explained to us so that we wouldn’t think it was just a bunch of Mickey Mouse thinking, but whenever the opportunity arose, one or the other of us would poke fun at the NASA engineers who supervised the quarantine. They met their sealed-off Waterloo several days later when a stream of red ants appeared in the kitchen and proceeded to grow steadily in numbers. We happily kept them well informed about our visitors.
In the Lunar Receiving Laboratory our number grew: two cooks, a photographer, a NASA public relations man, another doctor who was a lab specialist, and a man who took care of the janitorial duties. After that, the number continued to grow whenever there was the possibility of somebody being contaminated. One man came in because his glove ripped while he was holding a moon rock, and a photo technician accidentally put his hand on one of the film magazines with lunar dust on it. After he had his picture taken showing his dusty finger, he came to live with us. Each new arrival was required to wear a sterile mask for the first day.
We were an all-male group until just before Neil’s birthday on August 5, when a young woman assistant in some of the rock analyses was involved in a spill, put on her mask, and joined us. It caused quite a stir in the press at the time and became somewhat of a joke within the lab—especially when she was assigned to the room adjoining Mike’s. It turned out after her arrival that there was, well, something questionable about her contamination. The quarantined area had a special phone for families to call in and our lady arrival had not so much as entered when she got a telephone call from her boyfriend. We were all suspicious, but remained cordial and made no comment on the matter. Yet we couldn’t help speculating: How did he get the number? Did she give it to him? Had she expected to be Contaminated in advance?
Since we fell into this humorous little intrigue as though Sherlock Holmes would soon be helping, it must be clear that the three weeks of quarantine became increasingly boring and confining.
The lab had dormitory bedrooms for the people working there, plus separate private rooms for the three of us and the doctors. There was a kitchen, dining area, and a large living room recreation area where we could watch television and, in the evenings, show movies. Two pictures that evoked considerable audience response, mostly negative, were one starring Raquel Welch as a man-eating Spanish revolutionary and another in which three sex-starved women imprison a virile young man in their attic and then proceed to wear him out.
The major project was our debriefing. It was divided into two parts, the written and the taped. The taped sessions were conducted with the three of us sitting in a room that resembled a control booth in a television studio. Outside the angled glass wall sat various people, all with questions to ask and information needs to be fulfilled. Our crew trainer would be there one day, the men on the next Apollo mission another, then all of the astronauts. We always knew well in advance what subject was going to be covered; so it was relatively easy to prepare for the sessions and, for me, much more pleasurable than the written reports. We hunkered into easy chairs around a rectangular table and our conversation came through a loudspeaker in the next room.
For the written section I labored long and mightily, as is customary with me. Mike handled most of the command module stuff and Neil the earth lift-off, while I specialized in the rendezvous exercises. Neil and I worked at length and in considerable detail on the lunar surface activities.
We were also under constant medical observation, and of the three of us I was the most carefully watched. The day after we had started our isolation my temperature had risen and remained at one or two degrees above normal. No reason could be found, and by the end of the three weeks isolation there was some discussion that I stay on after the others had left. I set out to convince Bill Carpentier this wasn’t necessary and that I wasn’t bothered by it at all. Finally I got on the phone to the star-struck Chuck Berry, the astronauts’ physician,
and convinced him I was feeling swell. Actually, I wasn’t bothered at all, but I was puzzled and suspected it was connected with the pervading apprehension of being confined and unsure of what was yet to come. I decided exercise would help; so after the debriefing ended in the afternoon, Mike and I would jog around the halls. My temperature still didn’t go down and, in fact, remained above average for the next several months, through our cross-country tour and throughout the round-the-world trip. By the time it started down, I was going along with it. When my personal odyssey was over, the temperature returned to normal and has stayed there.
Joan has since told me that she too was quite concerned about my temperature and also by the fact that I was constantly complaining about having too little to do. About this time, priorities began to mix themselves. The jogging became an excuse for not working on my written report, and nights I’d spend mostly awake, tossing and turning. I began to notice that I was well off my normal speed. No one else noticed, or if they did, it was never mentioned to me. I have a picture taken during one of the debriefing sessions which to me is an accurate representation of how I felt at the time. Everyone else appears relaxed and there I am—eyes wide and looking frightened.
As we had been doing since we were in the trailer, the three of us spent a portion of each day signing pictures and autographing envelopes with commemorative mention of space flights. This was long before first-day covers became a controversy abruptly jolting a few careers. Telegrams and bags of mail arrived daily and after we looked at it we piled it in various places. There was a great deal of tedium to our activities by this time, but we tried to be good-natured about it.
As was expected of each of us, I dutifully filled out an expense account for the trip. From Houston, Tex., to Cape Kennedy, Fla., to the Moon, to the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii and return to Houston, Tex.,
was how it read. How we traveled was by Government Aircraft, Government Spacecraft, USN Hornet, USAF Plane.
Total expense reimbursement: $33.31. This amount took care of mileage in and around Cape Kennedy during the time immediately prior to lift-off. The expense account is one of my most treasured souvenirs of the trip and sits framed in a place of honor in my study.
Early in the debriefing we dealt with more routine matters such as food. In a word, nit-picking. We had a slight problem on our flight which others had had, but the food advisers felt it had been rectified. Not quite. As we prepared our food we had to put a special filter on the end of our water gun before mixing water with the food. The filter was supposed to lessen the amount of hydrogen we consumed by releasing it into the cabin air instead of into our food. Instead, the hydrogen went directly into us and, naturally, did what hydrogen does to anybody: it caused flatulence and, in our cramped quarters, considerable fragrance.
These debriefings were transcribed and circulated to all people involved in the mission. Naturally, the food people would tend to read the food debriefing while, say, the radiation people would tend to ignore it. At the time, I was unaware that anything was ignored. I thought everyone read it all.
As I labored my way through the food debriefing, I remembered being hungry for a snack one night while I was nestled in my hammock. And then I remembered something I thought important. I recalled seeing light flashes not unlike sparkles during several nights of the trip. I discussed the phenomenon briefly. I thought the experience unique. It sure as hell turned out to be unique.
Within two days I was sitting around wondering why nobody came back to ask additional questions. I knew it was a weird subject, but it wasn’t that weird. Finally, I decided to call the radiation people. The radiation people were traveling and weren’t expected back for a week. The next day at a management debriefing I brought the flashes up again. Management was definitely interested and work began that afternoon.
I had first seen the flashes during two of the nights on the way to the moon. When we slept, the spacecraft was quite dark and the windows were shaded. I thought nothing of the flashes the first night, and the second, I sleepily wondered if they were of any importance. The first time was somewhat like an animated cartoon where someone gets hit on the head and little stars appear in their vision. There would be a brief flash, then nothing. Occasionally there was a streak, not unlike a tiny meteor streak, and another time there was a double flash.
On another night, en route to earth, I saw them again and it jogged my memory. In fact, I had all but forgotten my earlier sightings. I had been thinking then of the moon, and now that part of the trip was over. I wondered if either Neil or Mike had seen anything like it, but they had not mentioned it.
Hey, you guys seen anything peculiar? Like little flashes at night when all the lights are down and the covers are on the windows?
Both looked at me blankly.
Well, look, this is the last night before reentry. Why don’t you take a look to see if you see any of these things.
Next morning not a word was said. I finally asked Mike if he had seen anything. He had not. I asked Neil.
Yeah. Saw about a hundred of them.
What do you suppose they were?
I dunno.
At the debriefing I said that at night I could open my eyes and wait and eventually there would be a little flash. Eventually, I’d go back to sleep. My immediate analysis was that tiny particles of some sort were penetrating the spacecraft and I was seeing the ionization caused by the atmosphere of the spacecraft. I next tried to figure to out whether the phenomena had any orientation with the position of the sun, and could find none.
Eventually a great deal of speculation was going on. I questioned the Apollo 8 crew, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, because they had made exactly the same trip as we had but without a moon landing. They had seen nothing.
It turns out that the phenomenon of flicker-flash,
as it is now called, is rather subjective. Some people have a tendency to see them and others don’t, and what little research there is indicates that seeing them has to do with the desire to see them.
At the time I saw them, I had naturally believed I had to open my eyes to see them. The crew of Apollo 12 returned and all three said they had not only seen them, they had seen them with their eyes shut. What’s more, they could tell whether they were seeing them through either the left eye or the right.
It turned out these particles not only penetrated in and out of the spacecraft, but they penetrated through our helmets and our heads as well. It is still unknown if what we see is a secondary emission—a high energy particle imparting energy to something else—or if it is the actual flash caused when the particle penetrates our retinas. Whichever it is, the particle travels through the head, exits, and continues on through the helmet and out of the spacecraft. There is no physical sensation connected with it at all; it is strictly a visual impression.
Some scientists announced recently that in the future flicker-flash might cause blindness during long space flights. They claim that the flashes not only destroy a brain cell or two but also make it impossible for other cells not destroyed to function properly. They surmise that the blindness, if it occurred, would not appear for quite a few years after a long-duration flight to a place as far away as Mars.
The particles themselves do not go through the Van Allen belts surrounding the earth. The Van Allen belts are magnetic belts reaching down to about two hundred and fifty miles above the South Atlantic and extending to about thirty-five thousand miles above the earth. Because they are magnetic, they trap nearly all of the cosmic radiation coming toward the earth.
If there was a totally engrossing part of the debriefing, this was it. It began with a casual observation buried in the food report and continued to grow. It is still growing—I often see in the newspapers articles discussing the results of further research.
During the debriefings, particularly when the controversy over flicker-flashes continued to grow, Neil began to look doubtful and annoyed whenever the flashes were discussed. I had always envied his facility with words and his ability to give a speech, but now I sensed he was annoyed by my discussions about this phenomenon. I suspect it was an inevitable thing, but I’m certain it was nothing either of us had ever contemplated. We had been the back-up crew on Apollo 8 and had become drinking buddies. Our friendship was casual and respectful and, as friends often have, we had something going for us: a total and enthusiastic immersion in our work. When the feeling finally became apparent to me in the Lunar Receiving Lab, I quickly suppressed it. It struck me as an emotional and unscientific thing to feel, and human feelings weren’t in keeping with the image we had as scientists and astronauts. In addition, Neil, being the flight commander, often functioned as our spokesman. Whenever it would expedite matters or save time, instead of the three of us giving speeches, Neil