Kind: captions
Language: en
what was the difference between the
first group of astronauts and the second
and third Group which group were you and
what was the difference
well I was a member of the third group
of astronauts selected
and
there was a kind of change in the
general characteristics of the of the
people along the way I'd have to say
that it tended to be less of a focus on
pure
flying background and skills
and an increasing focus on the level of
technical background and skills that
that the people had
uh in the beginning they were all test
pilots by the time they got to our group
everybody was operational jet Pilots but
they're only half of them that had
actually been working as test pilots so
it was kind of a slow change in there
not to mention the fact that uh as far
as academic backgrounds go they were
able to get a kind of a broader Base by
the time they got to our group they were
14.
when they selected the second group
which was the Gemini group they averaged
I think about a year or a year and a
couple months more college education
than the first group and when it came to
our group then it was another year or
more added to that average amount of
background and experience so I would
have to say that uh
when by the time they got to us that we
had a better grounding at least in
engineering technical skills
let me ask you this broad question how
important was it
that you guys were involved in the
development of the spacecraft
how involved were you with the
development of the spacecraft
well for the first
eight or ten years
of a manned space program
the astronauts were very much intimately
involved in all of the details because
they were busy building a spacecraft
that had never been built a Mercury
spacecraft
Gemini was started before Mercury was
complete and we were still trying to
design something to keep man alive in
orbit and when we came to Apollo that of
course had a tremendous technical
challenge to go out and do something
that
will be remembered as the technical
achievement of the 20th century if not
for the first 2000 years and that is to
land a man on another body in the
universe
so the technical challenge increased
tremendously
we were building new spacecraft doing
things that had never been done before
and the flight crew
had not
overstayed their welcome in the sense
that they were still anxious to get all
of our input all of the engineers all
the contractors knew that we were the
end user
that we had a lot of experience
operational experience in jet aircraft
as well as technical background and they
were just hungry for our input sometimes
that didn't work out all that great but
nevertheless it was a very receptive
atmosphere for our skills
how hard did you work on the Block two
block one and then block two the
spacecraft how many hours did you spend
how many months did you spend helping to
get that thing built
well by the time
I think I've been in the program almost
two years
excuse me
well I've been in the space program for
almost two years when I was assigned as
part of the crew for what was then
called Apollo 2.
up until that time I had spent General
training and I'd also worked on the uh
power control systems the environmental
control systems and other various other
subsystems on the Gemini program
but we did not have an opportunity to
contribute to the design and the way
they were going to be implemented and
Logic on switches and malfunction
procedures and things it was already
well along and we were dealing with
problems and trying to keep things on
schedule
when it came to Apollo
we were so early in the program that
while we were trying to train as a crew
there were no simulators there were no
place we could really train except at
the contractor so we were hungry for
time in the spacecraft what you would
call cockpit time to be able to familiar
ourselves with switches and switch
functions and just to see real Hardware
which wouldn't be around for a long long
time
they also had certain engineering
simulators at the contractors that could
usually do small tasks but not a fully
integrated task so we fought for time to
get on those as well so at the beginning
we lived at the contractors I mean I can
recall when we were testing Apollo 2
it's funny as I look back Apollo 2 which
was subsequently canceled
uh
which was identical to Apollo 1
the atmosphere was not near as hectic
or pressure filled or
hours of work spent per day as it
eventually became on what was Apollo 7
after the fire
so we were out there doing whatever we
could taking part in tests
but we were still kind of new
to the contractors they didn't know
whether to have confidence in us they
felt like we were a big slowdown for
them because the points that we raised
they did not want to address sometimes
and they felt like we were wasting their
time because we were slowing them down
and of course they had incentives to be
on time and they wanted to hold down the
cost
like we call one time at uh
after one critical design review
that the head of North American Rockwell
space division at the time said to uh
Bob gilruth Who was the director of the
Johnson Space Center
said well we would be doing a lot better
on the schedule if you just didn't send
the astronauts out here so much
and Dr gilruth bless his heart and he
was a believer in us from the very
beginning he says that's okay we're not
charging you for their time
and
I'm sure that Dr Gilbert was believed
that our input was very very important
very very critical and consequently we
had a lot of Leverage
in some cases some of the guys had too
much leverage I mean we had young people
sometimes uh very inexperienced Roger
Chaffey who was on Apollo 1 for example
had a tendency to do Micro Engineering
and it'd be one thing to point out a
problem and indicate even a possible
solution if you're very careful about
that Roger had a tendency to sit down
and take the switch and say this is what
he wanted on this switch and on this
position and this one that position
and it may or may not have been the best
answer
but because Roger was going to ride that
first one the engineers go back they
would do that it would show up at the
next design review
and NASA might not really like it and
would just assume not have it
and Rockwell had a perfectly good excuse
they said we did it just like the crew
told us to
and it wasn't necessarily always the
best solution so it was a it was a lot
of Authority
that didn't go with the responsibility I
mean we were not responsible for the
design of that machine
we were responsible for operating it and
flying it and Performing the mission
but because we were the flight crew and
we showed up out there every week
sometimes five days a week sometimes
seven days a week
we showed up out there
and our word was like a direct manifest
from God
so it was a power and a responsibility
excuse me a power and an authority that
you had to be very careful with
all right okay
how much input did Gus want over the
Apollo block point of craft
well Gus Grissom commanded the Apollo 1
Crew
and Wally sharah was the commander of
our crew which was Apollo 2. both of
them were
experienced astronauts from the Mercury
program in the Gemini program
they had a lot to say on how it been
done before
influential in getting the flight crew
accepted as you will
I had worked with Wally for quite a
while
but not near as close with Gus
and during this period of time when we
were the backup crew excuse me we were
the prime crew on Apollo 2 and then
subsequently the backup crew to Apollo
one I began to work with Gus for the
first time and I found that Gus to be
very very conscientious very much
involved with the details and I
developed a lot of increased respect for
Gus trying to get ready for Apollo 1.
and Gus was like most of us at the time
that we recognized that there were a
great number of deficiencies in Apollo
1.
those of us who are brand new the
rookies like myself Don Eisley Roger
Chaffee we were so anxious to get any
flight in space
that we would
be willing to live with things that they
knew better than living with in spite of
that we all had this go fever that we
call it
and we felt that we were such good
aviators that well maybe the machine
isn't quite perfect we've done our best
but it may not be perfect but we're so
good we can fly the crates they packed
these things in
and it was a mistake because of that and
because of our anxious to go anxiety to
go fly
we ended up living with things that were
totally intolerable Gus recognized that
he recognized the simulator wasn't up to
speed uh Gus felt like uh we were just
trying to get through this Apollo 1 and
the Apollo 2 which was kind of a
metoo-like mission very much like Apollo
one and then we could get on with the
real business of developing the
spacecraft even better unfortunately
that's not the way it turned out
uh Gus and his crew in January January
27 1967.
they were killed in a fire on the pad
by that time they had canceled Apollo 2
Wally Shaw Don Eisley and I were the
backup crew to Gus and Roger and Ed
and uh
we began to recognize immediately that
until a lot of things were changed in
that spacecraft we were not going to fly
again good okay changing film just ran
out right at the end of that
Mark where were you the night of the
fire how did you hear about it
well
he Don and I were the backup crew for
Apollo one
and we were down to the last month of
the schedule
we know now would never made to that
last month on time but nevertheless we
had to pretend like it was I mean we had
to operate on that schedule the night
before we had performed exactly the same
test called plugs in which meant we had
the cables running into the hatch the
hatch was open and we did all the same
tests but since the hatch was open we
couldn't pressurize and didn't have 100
oxygen in there
the next
morning was when Gus was having his test
and it was hard to get started a lot of
delays and it was going to be plugs in
they had to close the Hat they were
going to pressurize it and put 100
oxygen all the things that proved to be
uh
you know so dangerous in retrospect and
so stupid as we look back on it we
thought of ourselves as engineers
I mean it is pitiful
uh
so we have stayed around because we were
going to fly back together we three
t-38s would have handled all six of us
and as the day went on and they never
did get the test started and they'd
start and stop and start and stop we
finally decided that since it was the
weekend that the three of us would head
on back
and try to get back by seven o'clock
which we did we hopped in t-38s we flew
back to uh
Ellington
and
as we pulled into the line there in the
t-38s bud Rehm was out there to meet us
and we never had a reception like that I
mean it was they had a somebody that
would park the airplane and we'd go
inside and head home
uh buttery medicine wouldn't tell us why
I took us upstairs
and I proceeded to tell us there had
been an accident which we thought well
that's that's bad
uh when he said that the crew had been
killed the entire crew had been killed
it was
almost unbelievable to us
and as you know Pilots are used to
hearing about their friends getting
killed one way or another
so it didn't take us too long I mean we
it wasn't unbelievable in the sense that
we didn't believe him it just seemed
that's amazing I mean just it couldn't
happen like that on the ground
short time later
all of us figured it must have had
something to do with the spacecraft
because we knew the spacecraft was not
as good as we were
making out it was as we went along on
these on these tests
so it was a pretty uh it was a pretty
tough time we also hoped that it would
not stop the space program
we immediately of course we hoped that
we'd get on with it and of course we
expected to fly again if they got on
with it tell me about go fever well you
you said a little bit
a little bit earlier describe go fever
the audience doesn't get it and yet Gus
Wally was all over go fever you know
well
go favor is something that you get late
in the
in the preparation phase I guess
it's probably not fair to call go fever
when you're back at the contractors and
you're trying to get through these tests
what you do at that time is when
something doesn't check out you'd like
to have it not hold everything up so you
kind of reschedule that you set it aside
and you start doing things in parallel
and before long you keep building up
this backlog of things that still have
to be checked out well eventually you
pay the piper
because you got to get rid of all those
things uh and under the pressure of time
then you have a tendency to move through
them quicker or maybe accepting a
resolution that you wouldn't accept
otherwise not just the flight crew but
the engineers the responsible technical
people at Nasa as well
uh
but we all thought we could do it as it
gets down to the cape and you're doing
these tests you get very impatient
about it because there are a lot of
things that can hold up a flight
the flight crew would like to go fly but
they know that they have to get a
certain number of re-entries into the
simulator the simulator is not working
uh Deke Slayton who is the head of our
flight crew operations would be saying
yeah the flight crew is going to be
ready and the people on the spacecraft
testing would say you know hey the
spacecraft's going to be ready everybody
knew that there was going to be some
kind of a delay but nobody wanted to do
what we called hold up the umbrella say
whoever raised his hand first and says
hey I can't make it I need a hold then
of course everybody else would come in
under this umbrella and get all their
things done
so it was holding up the umbrella as it
gets close the flight crew is trying to
get off the ground because we realize at
some point some place you've got to bite
the bullet and you've got to go
and there's no better decision maker in
the loop that I can think of than the
flight crew themselves as a matter of
fact as it gets close to
uh launch day
a lot of the technical people the
engineers you'd be amazed at how many
phone calls we get or visit the guides
stop by and say you know that funny
little thing that happened so so maybe
you ought to be careful about this this
and this I mean everybody want to have a
clear conscience as we approach launch
day and get off and go
despite his confidence
um
what
if I have one on Wally as the commander
of seven
well the fire
had a huge impact on Wally
in more ways than one
up until the fire Wally had
been commander of a metoo mission an
unimportant Mission if you will that was
going to follow on the heels of Apollo
1.
Gus who had the same kind of attitude
about science as Wally did had worked
diligently to throw off anything having
to do with science experiments on Apollo
1. he wanted to concentrate on what he
called an engineering test flight purely
and simply
well when he threw it off of Apollo 1 it
ended up on Apollo 2.
while he was saddled with two rookies on
Apollo 2
uh
I believe that the flight had originally
been intended for Deke Slayton he had
originally hoped to fly Apollo 2 when he
couldn't get ungrounded
then Wally had been had put been put in
there to fill his spot until he could
get ungrounded
in the end it turns out that
dick couldn't fly so Wally was stuck
with this mission that did not really
excite him he was thinking about leaving
the program those were back in the days
when we thought people over 40 probably
weren't going to fly anyway
so uh Wally was kind of at that stage in
his career
when they had the fire
and Wally lost one of his very best
friends and his next door neighbor Gus
in the fire
we all realized that we shared some
responsibility in that
because of what we had put up with
and all of a sudden when we got assigned
a couple of weeks later
we got assigned to fly the first Apollo
mission
Wally knew that it was a very important
mission that a lot of
reputation of NASA was riding on it that
we couldn't afford to have another
mistake maybe they would cancel the
entire manned space program
and Wally then had a renewed interest
he also
I think had had his mortality
brought out in front of him to see Gus
who he thought highly of was gone
and Wally didn't want to end up that
same way so Wally was kind of a Jekyll
and Hyde from here on one he really
wanted to do the the mission now I
believe wanted to do a good job
he always liked that
but I think that also he felt that the
the challenge was something that he was
not going to take casually uh
it became a problem at different times
things that he would insist on because
he was going to make dog onshore
that when this spacecraft flew it was
going to work
but in about a minute how did you get
that spacecraft Ready To Fly
well it was a 21-month Hiatus after the
fire
we didn't know what caused the fire but
we knew that a lot of things had to be
fixed we knew that the fire was caused
by some spark someplace so under that
umbrella now holding up the umbrella
fixing it so it wouldn't burn again we
were able to go in and get a lot of
operational changes made changes in the
stabilization and control system changes
in the environmental control system and
the electric power system all of these
things that we've been turned down
before since because they would hold up
the program now we were able to get a
lot of those things done so that's where
I ended up concentrating tremendously on
the engineering and developing
procedures for fixing malfunctions when
they happen and probably my principal
contribution to the Apollo spacecraft
was during those 21 months
did they try to stick a lot of science
on seven
uh
yes they did uh
they did try to put a lot of science on
seven as much as they could considering
that we had to go back and prove the
spacecraft
uh
Wally's attitude basically is that we we
didn't need any of it
uh he now wanted to fly that engineering
test flight the Gus had not flown
[Music]
we
Wally and Don and I were probably a
little bit different in there because
well Don and I had not flown we were
willing to put up with some things that
that Wally would not have although all
of us operational fighter pilots
are not very much interested in just
doing something
out of curiosity to doing it for
curiosity's sake so we always insisted
on whatever the experiment was that they
wanted to propose we'd sit down we'd
listen to the scientists we'd let them
try to sell it to us and we try to find
out what it would really accomplish many
times
we were successful in avoiding doing
those experiments because we it was just
collecting data
sometimes we didn't win and we ended up
living with some pretty
awkward experiments for uh Apollo things
that were better prepared for flying on
Skylab for example metabolic studies
calcium balance studies other things
that they wanted to go on the spacecraft
never did fly there was an airlock That
was supposed to go in the hatch for
example it got thrown off of Apollo one
we had it on Apollo 2. couldn't get it
off when we flew Apollo 7 we had enough
leverage that we were able to insist
that we weren't going to be trying
airlock experiments on Apollo 7. good
all right roll that
good I'm gonna get to what what we only
refer to it as
junk
what did what did Wally refer to the
science as and did that affect you and
Don uh
it only affected Us in the sense that
we knew that many things were going to
fly in spite of what Wally thought
therefore we had to live with them we
had to work with them we had to
fly to various places for briefings and
we had to do the reviews on them and
things like that
and uh Wally was perfectly willing to
let us be the ones that had to do it but
he I think he resented the time that it
took away from other things we looked at
it as all of equal importance we had to
be prepared to do all these things and
we knew that we would be measured during
the flight by how much we accomplished
uh
and I recall that the headline when we
came back was we were 101 percent
successful which really meant that we
just accomplished a few more mission
objectives than had originally been
planned they'd added a few later on and
we'd gotten those things done
but my thought at the time was really
that
we could have done a whole lot more
we spent 11 days in that first Apollo
mission
no spacecraft before or since or maybe
ever is going to go 11 days the very
first time it's out of the packing box
so we're very pleased with that
because we wanted to be in orbit long
enough to accomplish what was then
conceived to be as the longest lunar
Landing mission
well to do that we end up spending the
last four or five days with very little
to do we only had we could take like 20
pictures a day because we couldn't carry
enough film we were worried about that
we ran out of experiments other than the
calcium balance on the metabolic stuff
the things you really didn't like these
biological experiments
so we ended up with time on our hands
for the last four or five days that we
could have done something more
productive with
what did Wally how did Wally refer to
the science well Wally uh science
experiments well most of science uh in
those days I think it's not fair not
unfair
to say that Wally thought that science
sucked
that these were not times and places to
be doing science
uh he was partially right
um
all right so you're up there when did
the start to hit the fan when once
you got up there
uh what are we talking we're talking
about the flight during the flight yeah
but you you were talking about
engineering stuff what are we talking
about when when Wally started to reject
to what was coming up
uh
there was no
there was there was no new stuff that
was coming
up there there's a television show to do
well no there was it was television
camera setting up
uh
this is not consistent with what you're
trying to do on the storyline no I'm
talking but I'm talking about the
science and so forth while he started
science didn't have an impact on it we
didn't have that much science I mean
science caused Wally no problem in orbit
Oh I thought it did no okay
only two things
go off camera because I'm not sure yeah
um
when they started to introduce the
concept the idea of the science I think
you're the one who used to coin the
phrase hyphenated astronauts
um which I think is pretty fun what was
your attitude about scientists coming
into the geologists and scientists
scientists well we felt like
basically they were taking up space
they didn't have the qualifications that
we felt were essential
and that was to be a fighter pilot
no living breathing gung-ho fighter jock
a couple of them had some training had
jet training experience others had not
uh first thing we did is we sent them to
Pilot training uh one of them quit right
away
Jack Schmidt who eventually flew
Jack took for a long time to get through
Flight Training I remember at the time
saying that if God admit man to fly
wouldn't have made him jack Schmidt
when Jack came back it took a while
before they let him be safe for solo
he ended up flying helicopters Jets
unlike some of our guys he went through
his whole career without an accident I
mean so these guys they were good I mean
they were sharp people but they were cut
from a different mold
we also felt like they were
would kind of undermine the office on
our official positions which was kind of
like anti-doctor
anti-scientists uh
you know
you're going to have to just put up with
us I mean we're the ones that are doing
the real work well you got some
scientists in there one of them started
working over in the scientific area of
Johnson Space Center and that wasn't
very well received on the other hand
others of them uh
became just like the rest of us I mean
like Joe Kerwin was a medical doctor and
a flight surgeon
he'd also been a Navy pilot
and I don't remember Joe ever acting
like a doctor the whole time he was
there
I brought call him over one time right
after Apollo 7 because we went out to
the contractors at Rockwell
and came back with what later proved to
be Hong Kong flu but we had to leave
right away and go on up to do a Meet the
Press segment
and I had a temperature I called Joe
over
to my house he came over and he opened
his little kid up and took out a rusty
stethoscope
that was his personal medical kit
so uh some of them they just joined the
team the other thing that I remember
thinking at the time there were about
three or four of us
at the time before the scientist
astronauts showed up who had been a
couple of guys had phds a couple of us
were on doctoral programs and we felt
like that might have been a little bit
of an edge
that might help us someplace along the
way but when some real scientist showed
up all of a sudden that was gone as well
you see so we were kind of uncovered as
as pseudo guys what was the term you
used to describe these guys coming in
well when these guys showed up of course
uh
we up until that time we'd all been
astronauts and now we had a bunch of
scientists astronauts so I started
calling them hyphenated astronauts
hmm
okay big picture
what an Apollo mean
to you
I don't think it's very important what
Paula meant to me
it is important probably for what
those of us who flew Apollo think
that Apollo meant to the world
and
in that respect
Apollo which is characterized by Man's
first landing on the moon
is going to be looked at in history
different than anything else in our
lifetime but that's trivial
it's not only
the event of the 20th century
the one that will be remembered long
after they don't remember World War II
or World War One
they probably remember man landed on the
moon
they'll probably remember
the Einstein's theory of relativity
they'll remember
nuclear
fission and fusion
but that's those are the big things
about it I personally believe that man
landing on the moon was the greatest
technical technical logical
achievement
in mankind so far
and it'll be a long long time before its
equivalent is going to happen again
because it won't be the same just when
we go to Mars even
because For the First Time with Apollo
man stepped out from this small
planet
and set foot on another body in the
universe escape the pull of Earth's
gravity and set foot on another body in
the universe
there's no reason why we can't do the
same thing today on Mars
had we been willing to
pay the price we could have done it 15
or 20 years ago it's a matter of
cost certainly but it's all mostly a
matter of the will to do it
you know
you'll get a lot of different opinions
from people about going back to the moon
or not
I'm one of those that sees nothing to
gain by going back to the Moon
it's as if
you don't have the nerve to set foot and
go on and move the boundaries back
farther and go to Mars it's like a poor
man's way to get back out into
exploration
a case is made for finding materials and
using water that they now seem
reasonably certain is that some places
on the moon manufacturing things on the
moon
what a ridiculously difficult way to do
it I cannot imagine it being in any way
cost effective compared to
other ways of spending money that will
get us out from here to the other
planets
so I'm not a fan of it