mission. we news the term entering the lunar sphere of influence. this is where the moon's gravity is becoming much stronger than the earth's gravity and during this period for a very short time, we have two abort options. one which will take you around the north side of the moon and one which will take you all the way around the moon. well, lenny has gone down to the trenches flight dynamics area and brought me up a list of all the options we've got. if i would execute what we call a direct abort, in the next two hours we could be home in about 32 hours, but we'd have to do two things. we'd have to jettison the lunar module which i'm thinking of using as a lifeboat, and we'd have to use the main engine and we still have no clue what happened onboard the spacecraft. the other option we got to go around the moon and it is going to take about five days but i only got two days of electrical power. so we're now at the point of making the decision, which path are we going to take?

my gut feeling -- and that's all i got -- says don't use the main engine and don't jettison the lunar module. that's all i got is a gut feeling. it's based -- i don't know -- in the flight control business, the flight director business, you develop some street smarts, and i think every controller has felt this at some time or another and i talk briefly to lenny and he's got this same feeling. meantime my trajectory people are scared out of their wits that we're going to execute this abort, direct abort, because it's very late in the trajectory to make this kind of a computation and swinging this mission around the front side of the moon is going to be very risky job. in the meantime, my systems guys want to get back home as soon as they can because they know they're in deep trouble. so it's now decision time and with nothing more than the gut feeling make the decision to swing the mission around, around the moon rather than come around front. so this then puts us on the

trajectory path that we got to start very rapidly coming up with answers for. we talk briefly to the crew. don't have much time to say why we're doing this and they're willing to follow whatever direction we're going to give them at this time. in the meantime, we've now got the crew moving over to the lunar module, starting the power-up process. and the team has finally come up to speed to the point where we can hand over to them. because my job now as the crisis team is to get off shift and come up with some kind of a game plan from here on out. as soon as glenn hits the console, he's immediately challenged, because our final fuel cell is now dying and he's got 15 minutes to get over to get it powered up. but what's most important he has to transfer the navigation data from the land module computer which is dying over to the lunar module computer. this is all pencil and paper and slide rule.

in those days we would have killed for a pocket calculator, but they didn't exist. this has to be absolutely perfect. as glenn's doing that, i'm walking downstairs trying to figure out which direction to go. it's obvious whatever we come up has got to -- we're going to have to come up with answer and hours and days what normally takes months and years from a mission planning standpoint. we're going to be outside all known design and test boundaries of the spacecraft. we got to come up with the answers. walk in to this room. my team is down there and it's loaded with my controllers and their back room people. this is a data room. it is a room that is used only when there's trouble and you can sense trouble in this room. it's got two overhead tv monitors, it's got one small com panel in there, but it's just filled with gray government desks around all sides where people can start spreading out their records and going over them. we were in the data room and the

orange telemetry records were scattered all over. one of the very difficult problems that we faced was that there was no instantaneous data retrieval in those days. it was literally hours from the time we would request a printout of the telemetry data until we would see them. so the only records that we had to work with were the ones that were in the recorders themselves and a few of the hard copies we could take and make a copy of the television display, a controller was looking at. so we had these pieces of paper and these controllers had been watching the life's blood drain out of the spacecraft and we knew there had been some type of explosion, but that was about all there was. so our job was basically to try to figure out what on board the spacecraft was still useable and to come up with a game plan to get them home. by now we had made the decision that we were going to go around the moon and i made sort of a brief opening speech because i had a lot of new players who

were starting to show up from the engineering community. we had astronauts who were reporting right onboard. it was obvious that this team was much larger than we really needed at this stage of the game. i needed to get focused upon the most immediate problems. now throughout all of this problem as it was emerging, we kept hearing one voice as we were going through the evacuation into the lunar module and that was tom stafford. and stafford had started telling us about problems that we would have in accomplishing an alignment of our navigation system using the lunar module optics while the spacecrafts were still docked together. and they kept being insistent in this to the point where this became a principle concern of myself and lonnie.

so with this background piece of information we're now starting to look at can we afford to pow ur down the spacecraft? and get it to the point where it could easily stretch these boundaries? the game plan broke down now into three distinct phases. one is come up with a set of master checklists that we would use to get the spacecraft from where we were around the moon and then back to earth. and i assigned one of my more trusted controllers -- it was arnie aldridge. he had been with us since very early in the "mercury" program. he's remote site engineering. he sort of became the model for the system engineers that we used in mission control. so arnie was given the job to sort of be the individual who would maintain the master set of checklists for the remainder of the entire mission. john aaron, a new controller, had joined us in the "gemini"

program, was given the responsibility to sit on top of all consumables, all resources available on both spacecrafts. and john aaron had absolute veto authority over any checklist entry. so they were almost welded at the hips with aaron being the guy who had the veto authority. a third one -- it was obvious we needed -- was some guy to figure out how to turn the lifeboat into a survival vehicle. bill peters, one of my limb controllers, got that. basically these were the three key individuals and i told these three people to look around the room and anybody that they didn't think they needed for the next few hours to send them back to their consoles and get them out of there so we could focus the smaller team. we then did a blackboard exercise that very quickly

listed the majority of the issues that had to be worked and who would work them. john aaron who was the power guy came and said, gene, one of the things we got to do is we got to get powered down immediately. i said, john, i'll work on this but we got to figure out new ways to navigate because we can expect the navigation system to continue drifting and we have to find some way to realign it, so we gave phil shaffer the responsibility to come up with ways to use the -- i'm sort of getting ahead of myself. one of the things that was giving us a problem was that this explosion that occurred had set a cloud of debris around the spacecraft and frozen particles of oxygen. and we normally navigate with stars and we couldn't see stars anymore. all we could see was the sun, the earth and the moon. so phil shaffer was given the responsibility to come up with techniques to check our

spacecraft attitudes for maneuvers and those kind of things using only the sun, earth and moon and to continue to refine the techniques of aligning the navigation system onboard the lunar module once we did have to shut it down. i took my team offline and tried to figure out ways to cut down the return trip time because john aaron said there's no way we're going to make five days with the power in the lunar module. we got to cut it down to at least four days. maybe 3 1/2. so i now had the team split up and moving in several different directions. i had one team working power profiles. i had another group of people that was working navigation techniques. i had a third one that was integrating all the pieces we need. my team picked up the responsibility to figure out a data to -- way to cut a day off the return trip time and we set up formal tag-in ties.

we set up working areas down in the control room proper. and it was amazing how literally presidents of corporations would respond to these 26, 27-year-olders i had in charge of these teams. but again, i think that was one of the real miracles in mission control here is that not only the team structure but the relationship between program manager, designer, flight controller, crew was one of absolute and pure trust and once a person was given a responsibility to do the job, everybody would snap to and support them. once decisions were made, you never second-guessed those decisions. this process continued for the first 24 hours and my team came back on console again to execute a maneuver that goes back to "apollo." during "apollo 9" we did a lot of testing of the lunar module

engine while the two spacecraft were docked together. and immediately as soon as we recognized we had to perform a maneuver to speed up our return journey, that's the set of procedures we fell back to. we updated these procedures based on the situation at hand. my team came back on console and executed these procedures and increased our velocity on return by almost 1,000 feet per second. changed the landing point from the indian ocean now to the south pacific. sent the aircraft carrier "iwo jima" to the landing location. now with this maneuver behind us we could power down for the first time. and then the power level, you can explain it very simply, it was about the equivalent of two 100-watt lightbulbs in your house, or about a quarter of what today's microwave uses. that what we had to sustain. it was a survival level to get

the crew all the way back to earth. once we started this, got into this power-down process, we had only one major management flap. they wanted me to get the crew to sleep and he was very forceful about wanting to get his crew to sleep. i said, no, we're going to keep them up and awake until we get the spacecraft in a passive thermal control mode. kraft wanted to power down even more. i had to tell him, chris, no, we're not going to power down completely until we get this passive thermal control. what we had to do, we had to invent a rotisserie-type maneuver to spin the spacecraft on its axis because the only energy we had was the sun. and it took quite a while to do this. the first attempt was unsuccessful and again we had kraft and others grousing, they thought they had the right take on things and thought we could solve this problem later and basically i was the guy in charge and said, no, this isn't the way we're going to do business, we're going to set up

this ptc. there were emergencies, contingencies all the way through this process of returning to earth. there was no such thing as a free ride. we had to perform a couple of emergency maneuvers because our trajectory was flattening out. we didn't know why. we had to correct that. the crew was suffocating. we had to invent techniques of using the square -- chemical scrubbers we used for the air from a standpoint of the command module and be able to adapt those over to the lunar module. finally as we were approaching the final phase of entry, the procedures weren't coming together quite as nicely as we would have liked to. the crew wanted to see how we intended to accomplish this final sequence. basic problem we had was we had a command module that was our re-entry vessel. it had the heat shield but only had about 2 1/2 hours of electrical power lifetime. we had the service module which is where the explosion occurred. it was virtually useless. we had the lunar module attached to the other end of this stack through the small tunnel and

that was our lifeboat. we had to come up with a game plan to move this entire stack into an attitude where we can separate all three pieces in different trajectories so they wouldn't collide with each other in entry. then the crew had to evacuate from the lunar module lifeboat at the very last moment, power up the command module, get its computer initialized and separate the pieces and get into attitude for re-entry. so this was the game plan we had come up with. we didn't really get all the pieces put together and get them verified in simulators until about ten hours prior to the time we had to execute this plan. and the crew was quite concerned that they could see the earth continuing to grow in the wind screen of the spacecraft and they still didn't have the game plan at hand. this was another time when deke came in and said hey, they're work on the plan. they're going to have it. cool down. okay. he had just the magic of being

able to work with these crews like kraft had the ability to work with us. i think those were the two real pioneers of space flight op races. they set the mold for everybody else that would come from that day on. we got the procedures up to the crew. fred hayes had the lunar module. about the time we were voicing up these procedures we realized how desperate it was onboard the spacecraft. it was in the high 30s, low 40s. the crew had cotton cover-alls, flight suits they had. very moist. fred hayes by this time had developed a high body temperature, about 104 degrees, severely dehydrated, bad urinary infection. he had the shakes and we had to voice the instructions up to him so he could do the lunar module part of the procedures. we kept working back and forth. throughout this entire process two other guys come to mind. it is ken mattingly and joe kerwin. ken had been very instrumental in looking at troubleshooting

all the piece parts of these procedures, game plans, et cetera. joe kerwin would be the voice of mission control during the final hours and he's a medical doctor and his bedside manner with this crew was absolutely superb. he was a mentor, tutor, disciplinarian, teacher, i mean the whole nine yards that at times i almost felt he was onboard the spacecraft placing the crew's hands on the switches and just keeping them going. bottom line was, we continued to have a lot of surprises we had to do on emergency maneuver. one of our three command module batteries failed just about -- or was expected to fail just about the time the parachutes were due to come out and at the time that we landed, this issue was still in doubt. the final thing i remember about this mission was this re-entry period, because the mood in this

room was becoming very -- what i'd say mellow. when we got ready to jettison the lunar module, we started speaking sentimentally to the lunar module as we were getting ready to jettison. we'd say, farewell, "aquarius," we thank you, you were a hell of a good spaceship. in front of the entire world to start talking -- but you didn't even know the world was watching at that time. you were just so focused on getting these guys back. finally comes time to express our feelings and again the entire world is listening and mission control isn't going to admit we're emotional and the rookie onboard the spacecraft, jack swigert comes down and says all of us up here want to thank you guys down there for the fine job you did. and that sort of broke the ice and we got a few atta boys from lovell and hayes. then we go into blackout. blackout is the time period in the mission where the fire of the re-entry prevents communications to the spacecraft. by this time the program, we

could nail it when it starts and when it finishes to within a second. and each controller during blackout -- this is an intensely lonely period because you're left -- the crew's on their own and they're left with the data that you gave them. maneuver data, attitude information, all these kind of things and each controller is going back through everything they did during the mission and was i right? and that's the only question in their mind. and there isn't any noise in here, you hear the electronics, you hear the hum of the air conditioning occasionally. in those days we used to smoke a lot. you'd hear a rasp of a zippo lighter as somebody lights up a cigarette. you drink the final cold coffee and stale soda that's been there and every eye's on the clock on the wall counting down to zero. when it hit zero i tell kerwin, okay, joe, give them a call. and we didn't hear from the crew after the first call. we called again and we called again. we're now a minute since we should have heard from the crew. for the first time in this

mission there is the first little bit of doubt that's coming in to this room that something happened and the crew didn't make it. but in our business, hope's eternal and trust in the spacecraft and each other is eternal. so we keep going and every time we call the crew, it's will you please answer. we were 1:27 seconds since we should have heard from the crew before we finally get a call and a downrange aircraft has heard from the crew as they arrived for acquisition signal. then almost instantaneously from the aircraft carrier we got sonic boom "iwo jima," radio contact, "iwo jima." then we have the 10x10 television in the room and you see the spacecraft under these three red and white parachutes and the intensity of this emotional release is so great that i think every controller is silently crying. you just hear a whoop, then you're back down to business again. in mission control, the

unfortunate thing is -- i guess it's necessary -- you can never express an emotion until well after this mission is over. and you get this whoop and you're back in there. the emotion you can hear it in the voice of the people. you got some final instruction to voice up the crew. you really got to work to get them. then these guys are in the warm air of the south pacific. they're home, they're alive. you see them come out of the spacecraft. "iwo jima" circling, deploying helicopters and pjs. at mission control our job isn't done until we've handed over the responsibility to the carrier task force commander. and it is only when that is accomplished that we can start this internal celebration. and our celebration always started with cigars. i don't know what the young controllers are going to do today because you can't smoke in mission control. somebody ought to write a federal regulation that maybe will change it the day that the

shuttle teams recover their crew members against long odds. but anyway you start with cigars. they got to be good cigars. because nobody in mission control is going to smoke a bummer. and we had some darn fine cigars. there were about 700 that we had acquired. not only through mission control teams, our back rooms, program offices, the factory, the laboratories. everybody had their mission cigar to light up at the same time that we did. >> thoughtfully provided by the cigar institute of america. >> yeah. and it was really, really spectacular. but anyway, once you get the cigars lit up, there's all the atta boys and celebration, mission control. then you unlock the doors because they've been locked and the real heroes start pouring in at that time, because these are the folks in the back rooms who came up with the answers we needed when we needed them. final phase of every mission, final celebration is to pass out an american flag and we had

these flags we -- we started this tradition when we sent our fir american -- second record, but it was really the record when we rendezvoused two space crafts for the fir time. for every mission from then on there's been an american flag in the hands of every controller at the time of touchdown. and this was just for us a spectacular time to live. i don't think anything or anyone will ever forget those days. final comment on this is, crew parties are always, always something. and while we were waiting for the crew to recover, the backup crews and the cap coms always developed some kind of a parody on what happened during the course of a mission. and this was a parody that was taken off after a very short set of comments i made during the

mission. i said hey, i don't understand that, cy. and then cy says i think it's an instrumentation flight. and then deek slaten says, hey, we're going to have to do something about that. they took these three segments of words and interspersed them with -- and today's people won't understand spike jones and his music. we had some gospel singing in this and we had comments by chris kraft and president nixon. they interspersed all of these on a tape and we had to listen to this thing over and over and over as we drank the beer and smoked some more cigars with this crew. but it was that kind of a way of business. this was an honest to god brotherhood that existed in those days that i don't think anything, any group of people in peacetime has ever come together in a similar fashion. >> does that old gang ever get together today for reunions of any sort? >> we have one coming up.

generally every five years we get together for some type of a reunion. i think they're all together too infrequent, but i think two or three things have done a lot to help us in this most recent years. i think that the "apollo 13" movie has done a lot to bring back and bring some recognition to some really great people, people who stood tall when the times were short and odds were long. i think john glenn's flight i think helped us bring together some of the real joy of living and the work that we did. and i think that's helped. and i believe now that the coming celebrations for this 30th anniversary and we're going to have a lot of 30th anniversaries for lunar landings, as well as various

missions, you know, that we have flown here. i think that's bringing it back together. it's good to get the folks back together. >> now we've stopped right now with "apollo 13." there were other follow-on "apollo flights" although the "apollo" program was cut short. nonetheless, there were others and they were quite important. what was your role during the 14, 15, 16 and 17 phase? >> it changed. we were at the point of having to move engineers over to the coming sky lab program so that was one dimension. i was having to string my teams out more and more and more and we literally had our feet in two programs, "apollo" and sky lab. at the same time, the flight directors had become a very valuable commodity because many of the people who caused the "mercury," "gemini," "apollo" programs to come into being were

now retiring, they were leaving the program. my flight directors, cliff charlesworth was one of the first to go. we were now looking at how we could apply some of the technologies we had to other problems on earth. glenn lunny left. he picked up the "apollo soyuz" program at that time which is now this next generation of involvement trying to involve the russians in space as partners. all of a sudden i started finding myself short in flight directors and having to bring new people onboard. so i was -- role was sort of a mentor, teacher, tutor, same as kraft had done in the early days, and at the same time to stretch our assets because i had to move training people over there. we started standardizing many of the mission flights. i would a launch the "apollo 15," "16," "17" from both the earth, as well as the moon.

and the other flight directors would handle the evas. griffin would do the landings. we kept the experience as high as we could and moved new generations over to the sky lab program. 14 stands out because probably one of the most famous things that griffin -- it's the one i remember griffin in. he had an abort switch and as we were getting ready to go shutdown to the surface of the moon, he had -- we had recognized this indication. one of my other controllers came up with a software patch. this patch was improved by m.i.t. and we executed a patch on this mission that had no more than two hours shelf life. from the time we recognized the problem to the time we started down to the surface of the moon,

we were executing a very complex procedure onboard the spacecraft to patch the software. during the startup phase. what we did was we used the engine to solder it on the back of the switch. then we reenabled the abort function. we were doing this to the point where this mission control team literally knew no limits. they could do no wrong. there was no problem too tough or too time critical for them to sign up for. "apollo 15" i remember because of the heavy penalty the crew paid due to the intense workload down in the lunar, where we had dave scott and jim irwin basically now with their rover extending the surface operation, extending the surface time. and basically working against the suit. their fingers were hemorrhaged. they became dehydrated. by the time they finished their evas and we lifted them off,

they got into lunar orbit and glen lunny was on console at that time and he had the darnedest time trying to get the spacecraft ready for the separation of the two spacecrafts. getting the equipment transferred to the command module. i was sitting next to him and it was like the crew had mental lapses, blackouts. the instructions we'd get then we'd clarify the instructions for the suit integrity check, cabin integrity check. this wouldn't get done. the separation maneuver wouldn't get off in time. it was like we lived in a time warp. after the mission we found due to the crew's dehydration we ended up with severe potassium deficiencies as a result of surface operation, the fatigue.