On the Moon: The Apollo Journals

504 Pages·2007·46.65 MB·English

by  Grant Heiken

On the Moon
The Apollo Journals
Grant Heiken and Eric Jones
On the Moon
The Apollo Journals
J'K. Published in association with
^ Springe] Praxis Publishing
Chichester, UK
Dr Grant Heiken
Independent Consultant
Freeland
Washington
USA
Dr Eric Jones
Wodonga
Victoria
Australia
SPRINGER-PRAXIS BOOKS IN SPACE EXPLORATION
SUBJECT ADVISORY EDITOR: John Mason, M.Sc, B.Sc, Ph.D.
ISBN 978-0-387-48939-1 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York
Springer is part of Springer-Science + Business Media (springer.com)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007920176
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism
or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this
publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of
reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the
Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms
should be sent to the publishers.
© Praxis Publishing Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2007
Printed in Germany
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free
for general use.
Cover design: Jim Wilkie
Copy editing: Jody Heiken
Typesetting: Originator Publishing Services, Gt Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK
Printed on acid-free paper
Contents
Foreword vii
Preface xi
1 Adapting to a New World 1
2 Pinpoint Landing, Great Science, and a Lot of Fun 27
3 A Damned Hard Walk Followed by a Little Golf 117
4 The Lunar Dune Buggy 201
5 Drilling Troubles 257
6 The Descartes Highlands - High Land But No Volcanoes 327
7 The Volcanoes of Taurus-Littrow - Explosive Volcanism on the Moon . 361
8 Boulder Rolling - the Last Apollo EVA 389
9 Lessons from Apollo for Future Operations on the Moon 451
Afterword - The Spirit of Exploration 475
Acronyms 477
Suggested Reading 479
Sources for Figures 481
Index 485
Foreword
"A ridge of mountains of prodigious height which appear to consist of nothing but
barren rocks, covered in many places with large patches of snow which appear to
have lain there since creation. No country upon earth can appear with a more
rugged and barren aspect than this doth."
It has been customary over the centuries during voyages of exploration for the
Captain of the ship to record daily events of significance in the "Captain's Log."
The above entry was made by Captain James Cook in the log of His Majesty's Bark,
Endeavour, during February 1770. It reflects his amazement at seeing "mountains of
strange, volcanic appearance totally unHke anything in Europe ..." Captain Cook,
during his 3-year voyage of scientific discovery in the South Pacific, was the first
known explorer to view the Southern Alps in New Zealand (Syme, Ronald,
The Travels of Captain Cook, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1971).
Just over two hundred years later, I too had the opportunity to view an amazing
and unfamiliar scene of "mountains of strange, volcanic appearance totally unlike
anything in Earth ..." As our spaceship Endeavor circled the Moon, I stared at our
spectacular landing site in the vast Apennine Mountains. But unlike Capt Cook, I had
no time to record my observations in a Captain's Log. Every minute of our 12-day
voyage was packed with tasks, objectives, experiments, observations, investigations,
and a whole manner of activities necessary to complete the first extended scientific
exploration of the Moon. As an illustration of contrasts, every 15-minute period
during our 1971 voyage of Apollo 15 was comparable to a full day (24 hours) during
Cook's 3-year voyage of 1768-1771.
Before Captain James Cook embarked on his historic first voyage to the South
Pacific and Australia, he invested 3 months in its preparation, using his crew of 70 to
prepare the bark Endeavour, gather equipment, provisions, and instruments; and
generally plan the expedition. After departing from Plymouth on 26 August 1768,
he and his crew of "94 persons" spent almost 3 years conducting the first truly
viii Foreword
scientific expedition by sea, arriving back in England on 15 July 1771. His original
"Journal" was not published until 13 years after he returned (London, W. and A.
Strahan, 1784). However, it was not until 171 years later that a comprehensive analysis
of his entries, including a detailed description of his ship, equipment, and instruments,
scientific results, and anecdotes of interest, was published (Beaglehole, The Journals of
Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, Cambridge, University Press, Vol. I,
1955).
In comparison, NASA-of-Apollo invested 20 months in the preparation of the
Apollo 15 mission - using more than 100,000 people to prepare the launch vehicles
and spacecraft; gather equipment, provisions, and instruments; and generally plan the
expedition. After departing Cape Kennedy on 26 July 1971, our crew of three
journeyed to the Moon, spent 3 days in lunar orbit, three days on the surface, and
returned to Earth on 7 August 1917. However, because of the enormous amount of
intellectual capital invested in preparing the mission (100,000 times 20 months) as well
as the added dimensions of "modern technology," the exploratory information
gathered during the mission could not be comprehensively recounted in brief daily
journal entries (as per Captain Cook). Only now, with the time available to compile
and analyze these highly compressed minute-by-minute events and activities, do we
see the emergence of comprehensive records of the mission to include personal
observations, technical explanations, scientific results, and anecdotes of interest.
Fortunately, Eric Jones and Grant Heiken have taken it upon themselves to
integrate all of these features in the preparation of On The Moon: The Apollo Journals.
And thank goodness they have ... !!
In 1989, inspired by the work of 20th century New Zealand historian J.C. Beagle
hole, Eric Jones began to review and correct the recorded transcripts of surface
activities during the six Apollo lunar landing missions. Using the transcripts as a
guide, he subsequently conducted over 450 hours (56 days) of personal interviews with
10 of the 12 astronauts who explored the surface of the Moon. He then intertwined
these personal observations, explanations, descriptions and memorable anecdotes
with the edited transcripts. And finally, he integrated with the narrative the
6,998 photographs taken by the astronauts to document the spectacular scenes
and the in-situ locations of lunar samples returned to Earth. The result is the precise
and highly detailed Apollo Lunar Surface Journals (available on the Internet only:
www.ha.nasa.gov/alsj), the equivalent of four 600-page books (2,400 pages). Because
of worldwide interest, the "ALSJ'' has become a "living" record; updated frequently
with new analyses and new findings and continuous probes of "what did you mean
when you said that at (some particular) GET (Ground Elapsed Time)."
Eric has now joined with Grant Heiken to write On the Moon: The Apollo
Journals, a combination of the major sections in the ALSJ with summaries of the
scientific data and technical results. Grant, whom I have also known for many years, is
a renowned geologist and co-author of the Lunar Sourcebook - A User's Guide to the
Moon, a comprehensive compendium of lunar science and engineering data. During
Apollo, Grant was a member of the Lunar Sample Examination Team and a geology
instructor in the astronaut-training program. The result of their collaboration. On the
Moon: The Apollo Journals, is essentially a condensed combination of the ALSJ and
Foreword ix
the Lunar Sourcebook, an invaluable record of the most complex and carefully
planned expeditions in the history of exploration. Other than the 381 kilograms of
lunar rocks and soil returned by the Apollo crews, this unique treasure is a major
source of accurate information and careful analysis of the 80 hours of actual human
physical exploration of the lunar surface. Basically, On The Moon is intended to
complement the ALSJdind the Lunar Sourcebook by providing the reader with a flavor
of the activities and events on the lunar surface, what was involved in getting the work
done, and some fundamentals regarding the resulting science.
In preparing the Journals of Captain Cook, J.C. Beaglehole became the foremost
authority on European exploration of the Pacific, and especially the three voyages of
Capt Cook. It can now be argued that Eric Jones and Grant Heiken have become the
foremost authorities on the six Apollo expeditions to the surface of the Moon.
Without their tireless, determined, and dedicated efforts, the recorded legacy of
human lunar exploration would be left in random piles of decaying paper stored
in some remote warehouse long since abandoned by NASA.
Most importantly, this superlative book and the supporting ALSJ and Lunar
Sourcebook record and elucidate the results of the bold decisions to send men to the
Moon - six times ... !! - with, by today's standards, crude technology, limited
resources, and the many unknowns and uncertainties of, for the first time, humans
living and working on a hostile "planet" 240,000 miles from our comfortable home on
Earth. However, the real significance of this narrative may very well be its value to
future planetary explorers, including robotic explorers and even "virtual" explorers.
When these future explorers look back, they will surely ask: what did we learn from
Apollo? How does it apply to the future? When will such an adventure happen again?
In any event, it should be pointed out, for whatever meaning it may have
today, that in historical equivalents the age of planetary exploration is barely
post-Colombian in its development. Columbus has returned to Spain and perhaps
the Earth is not flat after all. But Cabot and Magellan have yet to make their voyages -
and Capt. James Cook of the Endeavour has not even been born.
And until we humans once again embark on a venture of planetary exploration,
historians, writers, journaHsts, and the human inquisitive will continue to probe and
learn from the six remarkable Apollo missions that explored the surface of the Moon.
And their root source will surely be On The Moon: The Apollo Journals and its
treasured companions. The Apollo Lunar Surface Journals and the Lunar Sourcebook,
which are exceptional legacies of the first human expeditions to another world.
David R. Scott
Commander, Apollo 15
Los Angeles
December 2006
Preface
On the Moon - The Apollo Journals describes both the challenges and the exhilaration
that the Apollo astronauts experienced on the Moon. The pages provide a closeup
view of the harsh lunar landscape, which has a stark beauty all its own. The chapters
also reveal the six teams' courageous, sometimes creative, and occasionally humorous
adaptation to the field conditions on another planet. On the Moon is based on selected
transcripts from Apollo crew communications both with Earth and between them
selves while on the lunar surface. The astronauts' recorded commentary from the
missions is interspersed with commentary about the landing sites and the work,
including discussions about the importance of their specific tasks and how the results
from their experiences changed the way we look at space exploration. Extracts from
post-mission and more recent interviews conducted with the astronauts in the early
1990s highUght their thoughts not only during their missions but also after more than
25 years of reflection.
Many people who are interested in space exploration are too young to remember
much about the events that led to the Apollo Program and the global excitement that
accompanied the missions. That first lunar landing transcended all poHtical, eco
nomic, and social borders. For a brief moment, the world was united by a grandness of
vision, the courage of the voyagers, and the wonder of their accomplishments. On the
Moon is a call to memory for many, but it also tells a new generation about these
events, how they affected our understanding of the universe, and the value of explora
tion to the human psyche.
Explorers from the Earth will return to the Moon - three nations have already
announced their plans to make another journey. But before those next trips, it is
vitally important to revisit the roots of mankind's boldest exploration, examining the
astronauts' observations, tallying the accuracy of our assumptions, and gaining new
perspective for this century's missions.
Author Eric Jones' interest in exploration of the Earth's Moon began on July 20,
1969, when the lunar module Eagle landed on the Sea of Tranquillity. A graduate
xii Preface
student at the University of Wisconsin, he invited a few friends to watch the
lunar landing in his small apartment. More than 45 people showed up with beer
and food; conversations grew louder until the TV signal from the Moon started.
From then on, the moonwalk had everyone's undivided attention. Co-author
Grant Heiken was already working in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at the NASA
Manned Spacecraft Center as a junior member of the Lunar Sample Preliminary
Examination Team and part of the astronaut-training team. He stayed with NASA
through Apollo and Skylab and later moved on to the Los Alamos Scientific Labora
tory where the two authors met. Heiken later co-edited Lunar Sourcebook - A User's
Guide to the Moon (Cambridge University Press, 1991) with David Vaniman and
Bevan French. Jones co-edited Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience
(University of California Press, 1985) with Ben Finney. Jones is the originator and
leader of the international team that created the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (ALSJ),
a comprehensive online, evolving history of the Apollo program that is based
on transcripts from the Apollo missions and interviews with the astronauts
(http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/frame.html). On the Moon - The
Apollo Journals is based on material in that Journal.
The ALSJ would not exist without the participation of ten of the twelve moon-
walkers. Their active support of the effort to accurately document the lunar surface
operations conducted during Apollo has been invaluable. Apollo 15 Commander
Dave Scott provided very useful comments on portions of the draft of On the Moon.
The authors profusely thank Jody Heiken, who agreed, on very short notice, to
edit this book and Dave Scott for contributing the humbling foreword. The
many collaborators who work with Eric Jones on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
are to be thanked, especially ALSJ Co-Editor Ken Glover, Ulli Lotzmann, who
created the marvelous drawings featured in Chapter 2 and provided telescopic
photographs of the Moon, and Kipp Teague, editor of the online Project Apollo
Archive (http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_archive.html). Clive Horwood and
his team at Praxis have been both marvelously quick and thoroughly professional.
And, finally, our thanks to Jody and Di for their ongoing patience and under
standing of their husbands' lunar mania.
Grant Heiken
Freeland, Washington, USA
Eric Jones
Wodonga, Victoria, Australia