tv, foramerican history former apollo members discussed some of the operations for bringing astronauts to safety from splashdown to quarantine. this panel was part of an event hosted by space center houston to mark apollo 11's 50th anniversary. >> good afternoon, and welcome to space center houston on the 50th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing. [applause] >> my name is john charles, i am your moderator for this exciting panel. i am a retired nasa employee. i left nassau after about 30 plus years of civil service employment -- i left nasa after about 30 years of civil service and i meant. my role in this panel is to be a historian and help you

appreciate the significance and the scope of the effort of the apollo program. which could not have been successful if it did [speaking foreign language] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ not end successfully. the panel we have today is the panel on command module landing and recovery operations. they always say the job is not over until the paperwork is finished. the job is not over until the spacecraft is floating in the pacific ocean and the astronauts are successfully retrieved. we

have with us four heroes of that era, people i looked up to and admired as a 14-year-old watching on television back in 1969, and i wished i could be with them in the pacific ocean helping to retrieve those astronauts. we have on the panel to my left, denny holt, mily heflin, mel richmond -- milton heflin, mel richmond, and terry watson. i will open it up to questions from the audience. it us started. tell us a little bit about who you are, how you got to be involved in this business, what you did for apollo. >> i got here in june of 1967 after graduating in tennessee, just outside the appalachian poverty zone. i could not wait to get here because i needed to make some money. [laughter] i went to work in the landing and recovery business. at that time, in the training world. i will let these guys talk to you about what it is like to be on the recovery ship during an actual recovery.

the recovery effort was global, and i spent all my time in the wrong ocean righting airships into contingency landing spots. i moved off into the flight control world and retired from nasa after 35 years, and spent about 15 years consulting. you can do the math on that. i was one of the children of apollo. [laughter] >> first of all, thisis deb kunz in the audience? i was hoping she would be here. i wanted to embarrass her. she is the daughter of the man who hired me in 1966. i showed up here on 6-6-66. retired in 2013. there is a story about the sixes we probably don't have time to tell you, but maybe we do. i was hired by wayne koonz, deb's dad.

he lives in kansas now. his health is not that good. he was the command -- marine command chopper pilot that picked up alan shepard in may of 1961. a very special guy. so, i have been in eight/downs during apollo -- in eight splashdowns during apollo. i was in the splashdown in the unmanned spacecraft that came back. i was on the spaceship -- i was on the ship that recovered orion. that was in 2014. i had fun with that because when i left -- and i am

consulting with the kennedy space center, who is in charge of landing recovery, like we used to do. when i left the team, i made a comment to him. i said, this is my ninth splashdown, and i am still eight ahead of you. and i hope you can catch up. after that, i became a flight controller for the approach and landing testing. i worked as a flight controller in four different positions in mission control during the first nine missions of the space shuttle, and was very fortunate to be selected as a flight director in 1983 and supported 20 space shuttle flights as a

flight director, seven of those as the lead flight director. the most fun i ever had was by luck of the draw. i got to be the lead like director for when we went back to the hubble and restored its vision. that was a big thing, really enjoyed it. beyond that, i guess if you are good at something, they like to kick you up into management. so, i probably had five or six different management jobs. i won't mention them all, but i was chief of the flight office for a while. i was on duty, i was there when we lost columbia, and i was chief of the office. that did happen on my watch. i ended up in my career working in the center director's office. they made a special job for john young when john could no longer fly, and it was called technical

-- director technical of the johnson space center. they created a job for him, and he was the eyes and ears of the center director at operations and safety and that sort of thing. that job was vacant for about three or four years, and i was asked to come and take that job. i said -- and he said, replace what john young is doing. i said, i can take that job, but i cannot replace john young. i have been blessed with a lot of different things in this business and a lot of these guys. it has been really fun. i guess i need to leave some time for the rest of these. [laughter] >> i came to nasa in 1965 after four years as a weather officer in the air force. the first job i had after i got here, after about a month

i was told to go to hawaii and get on a ship out there. the first night i was in a hotel on waikiki beach, and i said, i think i will like this job. [laughter] that night, i was on a destroyer, and i thought, i'm not going to like this job. [laughter] and i was gemini 6. the target failed to deploy, so i got to come home. but i spent most of my career in recovery. our agreement when nasa was formed at the department of defense was responsible for recovery, so the navy and air force did all the recovery, but they constantly changed people. so, nasa was responsible for showing them how to do it. developing the equipment for them to do it, writing the requirements for each flight, tell them how many airplanes and

where to be and which ships and where to be. i was not here doing mercury. i know they had a lot of ships out in the ocean, a lot of airplanes. by the time apollo and apollo skylab was over, i think we had one ship, and that was the prime ship. during that period of time after i got here, i was responsible for writing the requirements of the department of defense. i did not do it by myself. a lot of people had inputs into it. it

developed, as we went along each nation, we learned more and had more confidence the spacecraft -- more confidence in the spacecraft. i worked for apollo 7, 9, 11, 13, and i think i wrote the rest of them, but i don't remember. i was on the recovery ship for apollo 9 and i was on the recovery ship for 11, 13, 17, and three skylabs. and on the skylab, i was the nasa team lead. it was a good job. after apollo and skylab was over, we no longer had water landings, so i was training flight directors and flight crews. i can say i was training them, but i wasn't. i was just

letting them work on the problems. that is pretty much everything we did. you could say you did it, but you were really part of a team. everybody did their part. i guess what you would like to know is what i did on apollo 11, and as i said, i was on the recovery ship. and i was kind of the nasa trajectory guy. i knew about the mission. so i was assigned to a nasa office on the ship, which was next to the combat information center, and we spent about a week going through exercises, throwing the boilerplate over -- we didn't throw it over, we dropped it into the water -- then steamed off and had the airplanes hone in on the begin

and the ship -- on the beacon and the ship would drive up and then we would pick up people, pretend they were astronauts, drive the ship up my pick up the command module, put it on the ship, and go through the procedures we would go through on a regular flight when it came back. i was thinking about it this morning. it was sort of a thing you did for a week after practice, every other day, with all the people. then the day of the flight, it just happened. the spacecraft was going to come back and you were going to do your part and it all worked out because you had done it so many times. i guess the only thing that i remember most about it is

when the astronauts got off, the helicopter went into the mobile core deed facility -- when the astronauts got off the helicopter, went into the mobile quarantine facility. the president went to talk to them. i was standing six feet behind nixon, and i remember that about the flight. i also remember that i was a courier for some of the film that was shot. i remember bringing it back. it came back commercial, and i was checking in with the airlines, and they were saying, we want to x-ray this film. i said, i don't think so. [laughter] we hassled a while, and finally, i said, i am not leaving this film and you cannot x-ray it. so they let me go. and i know came back and i

must have given it to somebody, but i don't remember who. [laughter] i guess that is what my career has been. thank you. [applause] >> i graduated from georgia tech february 1967, and i had been going on various job interviews for engineering jobs. none of them were very exciting. they were exciting a little bit, but you would go off to huntsville, alabama, and they would say, this is fred and joe and charlie and this is where we

go to eat lunch, and this is the lab. i had interviewed with nasa and did not hear anything back. they came to campus and i came up. i thought that would be great. one day, i got a call from a man in the landing recovery, and he said, we want you to come out to houston, work in the landing recovery division, travel around the world, travel on air force planes and get on navy ships, see the world. air travel back then was really expensive. i don't think i had actually flown on an airplane until one of my job interviews. it is not like it is today. so this job had a big adventure checkbox next to it. i said, how much is this going to cost me? no, we are going to pay you to do this. i am thinking, what could be better? so i came out to houston right out of college, a great degree. i am going to show these

people have to do things right. you walk into your first job, and you are the dumbest guy in the office. there is a lot of learning experience going on. i worked mainly in the control centers, so i got to spend a lot of time in the recovery room next to the mission control center, and also went out to some of the d.o.d. recovery centers, worked on the mobile quarantine facility. we took it out 10 days to sea. so we were quarantined for 10 days. that is another story. ended up on the recovery ship for apollo 10 with milt heflin. actually, i was ordered on the ship. i said, is there anything i can do on the ship? he said, read this book. you can powerdown the spacecraft and pull all the stuff out of it and seal up thrusters. i am thinking, this is incredible.

last you think this was -- lest you think this was exciting, part of it was cleaning out the waste management system and bagging it all up. they studied everything. [laughter] i think my job was better than theirs. [laughter] after that -- one thing i should mention. you have never lived until you have crossed the equator on a navy ship. it is a big ceremony for the first timers. if you were in a fraternity and ever went through hell week, it does not prepare for what the navy had for you. i carried that card for years. i was not going to go anywhere without that shellback card. >> any shellbacks in here? there are a few. >> anyway, after apollo 10, i thought, is that all there is for recovery? i felt that i wanted to do more.

i spent a lot of time next to mission control and had friends in the flight control division. somehow, i came back from hawaii and was immediately in the flight control division and never looked back. started off in one of the back rooms, worked my way up. i was the lead on ap -- on apollo 16 and 17. i worked the console. i think i was the only guy -- i worked the job on the skylab vehicle and also on the apollo spacecraft. quite often, i would do two shifts in

a row where we would be doing a launch or a reentry. i have to say, it was a really great experience, working with some of the greatest people i have ever after that, after we stopped flying the space shuttle, the whole environment changed. things became different. i felt it was time to move on. i went to the west coast and sit a stent with jpl -- and did a stent -- stint with jpl. and then in houston, where everything is right now. then you go to an organization done by committees of phd's that take a week to decide anything. i felt like i was trying to swim through quicksand. i don't want to belittle it. they do good work there. their whole role was different. it did not have the action or excitement we had in houston. and it of moving to trw, where i was doing mission operations on nasa satellites. some other satellites i can't talk about. >> thanks, that is a

good introduction to the breadth and scope of the panel members. i want to ask a couple of questions, then we will turn it over to the audience. the first question relates to the fact that i understand apollo was a global recovery requirement to the spacecraft code conceivably splashdown anywhere in the world. what was the planning that led to that kind of uniformity of recovery location and time and what other factors might have influenced that? maybe others can answer. >> the beginning of the apollo program made planning easy. they drew a line right in the middle of the

pacific ocean. one down the middle of it -- one down the middle of the atlantic. the planning was to time it so the landing will occur over one of those two places. it just depends on how fast you wanted to come back from the moon. and where the earth was turning that it would land. i guess it was more ocean than pacific. >> that was a longitude line. >> it was a longitude line. >> anywhere along that, depending upon mechanics, depending on where the moon was, and its orbit around the earth, with a result there were down there, it would

land on that line. >> one of the reasons for the early-morning landings was, when we landed on the moon, one of the requirements was to have the sun around 20 degrees of the horizon, so she had slant lighting. the moon landing fixed on where this is to the relative to the earth and the moon. you figured out where the pacific would be at the end of the missions. you must -- probably saw the figure eight around the room -- moon. that put the landing zone on each side of the earth opposite the moon. you ended up in the south pacific partly because of the way the moonlighting was -- the earth moon son -- earth-moon-son

geography. -- sun geography. > depended on where the moon was the time. apollo 13 ended up down south near samoa. hawaii is a good place to leave from as well. >> i had the privilege of being in the atlantic. that was four apollo eight, the first lunar return. the primary recovery ship had technologists and engineers from rockwell and all the world's press. randy

stone and i were on a troop carrier in the middle of the atlantic ocean. we had one of these metal suitcases that had a recovery strap in it. a couple of throat boards and a recovery manual. we were the early return. could hit the atlantic about 12 hours quicker. if you needed to get back early and about to of the primary recovery, the atlantic was your place. that was in december. we around the equator. had the mission slipped, we would have been as far south as uruguay. just based on what the difference in the trajectory was. we did not end up as far south as montevideo and uruguay. the captain of the ship was perplexed as to why he did not

have liberty to multi-for deyo -- montevideo, when a series, he had a good end of career tour planned. we interrupted it. at the end of the day, today, people are so used to talking to their friends who are in afghanistan. the communications and 68 -- 1968 were not that. we were on the recovery ship. randy and i were to single guys. -- two single guys. everybody wanted to be with their families, and we were single. we got to the middle of the atlantic and we were told it launched. another one in that

checked out ok. -- another one in that checked out ok. another one said they were ok. we had no clue as to what the mission look like. -- looked like. we got home and were put into rio de janeiro. life magazine of the earth on the front and a big spread on what happened. it was in portuguese. >> anyone have any questions about recovery operations for show less text apollo? >> let's discuss for apollo 11, the quarantine. how many people went into quarantine with the astronauts from the

recovery team? >> you had a doctor. they were responsible for the mobile quarantine operation. >> there were five people inside the mobile quarantine facility? the two folks from the recovery team and the three astronauts. >> was there consideration to making the apollo 11 recovery carrier the uss john f. kennedy the primary recovery vessel? >> i can't speak for the navy. i suspect not. once the flights were over, the ships seemed to disappear from the inventory. it worked well for what we needed. >> mothball made me think about the ticonderoga. we used it on

apollo 16 and 17. that was it for the ship. what i remember is i kept seeing old gray desks and chairs, a lot of furniture taken

in and thrown into the ocean, because that was the ship's last sale and they were getting ready to decommission it. by the time we get back onto the west coast, i don't know what we got into, but that carrier was really high in the water. they jumped up a lot of weight coming back [inaudible] >> can you tell us about your feelings about being involved on the recovery of apollo and skylab missions? >> i hope i'm answering your question. skylab was a longer duration. there was concern about the condition of the crew once they splashdown. at that time, we decided we were the the crew inside the command module. instead of them getting out and getting to the helicopter. they could have done that if they needed to. we weren't -- we

weren't knowledgeable enough to know what the condition of the human body would be for 50 days or whatever it was. did i even get close to your question? [laughter] >> danny says the answer is no. i don't know what

the question was. >> it was, how did you feel to be a part of the recovery team? [laughter] >> terry, you are to answer that one. >> it depends on what position i was doing at the time. the first time, i was out at apollo nine. the weather was terrible and the captain never came around. the press was terrible. i threw up in my bosses state room. i was very happy to be off of the ship. apollo 11 was kind of an adventure. that we went through these shellback ceremony. at the time, i don't know how to explain really. it was a worldwide operation. once we

figured out what was going on, and the military would only give us a little information, and when the landing occurred, i think we were listening to the radio or something, as everyone else was watching it on tv. i told my boss, i don't want to go on those ships anymore. he said, ok, you don't go. when skylab was coming up, which was two

months or three months, my boss didn't want to go out there all the time. he said, now you're going to do all of them. i said, ok. a different position on that. i was a deputy team leader then, and skylab, i was a team leader. a lot more responsibility. i don't know if i would say i enjoyed it, but it was a different kind of job. >> i will take a different take on that. i worked in recovery for

years. it was bliss. it was the coolest thing. i couldn't believe they hired me to do this job. how did i get so lucky. a lot of us were really lucky in that respect. we were in the right place at the right time. there wasn't anything special about us. the opportunity presented itself and we took advantage of it. we were part of a bigger thing. >> i was blessed to have been associated with the navy, air force, and marines, basically the dod that made up the team. i really liked what i did during that time, because

what i learned, being around our military was command-and-control, dedication. that has served me well through my career. i would've never been in the service. i feel like that experience -- i'm so glad i got it, because it made such a big difference to me. the camaraderie and all these units we worked with was remarkable. it made you feel good. [applause] >> i was blessed to be at the cape for the first launch. recovery was not treated like everybody else. we were in the old mercury control room, which was around the air force

station side. no lock on the door. the room wasn't brief -- rough shape. it was functional. we were all squeezed in. i was sitting there, and it was a test of the heatshield. at two minus nine, the guy i was with, to this day, i am in his great gratitude, there's no reason for you to sit here and listen to all of this. why don't you watch it? i had the privilege of standing on a little stand just above the sagebrush, down to keep, when the first one went off. about one minute later, you could see the sound standing in the way and knocking down the

brush coming across. i have heard shuttle launches from closer. the only thing that everybody that was down there could hear was it was an earthquake. that was an incredible sound. that was in november of 1967. i had only been there for about five months. it hurt me for 50 years. [applause] >> we have time for more question. [inaudible] >> how has technology from back then to now-- >> how has technology advanced from the 60's to now made the job easier

or has it? >> i have a good example of that. i'm on a modest consulting contract with kennedy space center. been observing the space center landing routine. it's a double-edged sword. there were a lot of things we did back in the day, where, -- i'm 26 years old. i am a nominee -- i'm on an aircraft coming back from the command module from pearl harbor back to houston and i am a senior national official and i'm boarding the plane at 26. almost everything we did was simple. lots of stories there. today, what i see, is that the

technology these young men and women have available to them are super tools there's a number of things you could work on. back in those days, it was about going out and trying something. you're basically in charge of getting things done. today, there are a lot -- there's a lot more overhead and what we do. chris craft, i had conversation with him when i was chief of the directors office. he asked me how things were going out there the johnson space center.

specifically in operations. dr. kraft is the man who invented the business of mr. -- mission control. i wanted to tell him that i thought the men and women who showed up -- this is like 10 years ago -- the men and women who showed up to do this job today, they had the fire -- in their belly that we had in those days. what i wanted to do craft was, was that i thought the teams always seem today worked in mission control. they were probably as good as what he had back in the day. as i'm getting ready to tell him, i said, dr. kraft, after terry, the men and women of mission control today

are -- he said, stop. this is dr. kraft, who invented this business. i'm thinking, i'm going to get my head handed to me. he said, milton, no. they are better than we were. they are better because of the tools they have today. this country could do this again as long as they are being told to go do it, get what they need to do it, and then, everybody else who doesn't have a clue how to get it done, get out of the way. [laughter] [applause]

>> you specifically asked about technology. when i lived here, did a lot of unmanned satellite work. i can tell you the technology we have today is orders of magnitude better and smaller and quicker and more efficient and does 10 times more the movie had in the apollo era. on apollo, we were looking -- taking star sightings to frame the altitude of the spacecraft. now they have autonomous car trackers that look at the stars and they tell the satellite with the attitude of the spacecraft is. no ground intervention. we

had gyroscopes that were strapped down that was a backup attitude control system. we always looked down on the strapped down system. it was rude and crude. 99% of the satellites -- satellites in order today have drop-down systems. they are really good. hubble telescope sees things like that. little magnetic cords, wrapped with hair size wires in the programming was coded by the which way the wires ran around. if you wanted to make a software change to the apollo commuter -- computer, it was a big deal. they had to change all the wiring. it was a major thing. technology was huge. it should make the job easier. i don't think politics and all that other stuff makes the job easier. technologies worlds ahead. >> i will give you an example. i mentioned before we had landings in the atlantic and pacific ocean. all over the

world. lots of ships. orion, no matter where the moon is, it will land off of san diego. the matter what the trajectory has come and gone, they're gonna land in san diego because of the increased knowledge from the atmosphere. the guidance was so much better. when we were doing it, we were worried about acting the atmosphere and skipping out and going back into space. we don't worry about that anymore because the guidance is so good. technology has changed a lot of things in that aspect. >> with that, we will wrap up this section -- session. thank you

very much. [applause]

it was believed that she was kidnapped. possibly as young as 12 years old. >> in the film which we are about to see, a brief glimpse of her and her name in the film is sally smith. bought by a man called washington smith. he gave her his name.

four of the survivors were bought by him and they were given his name. a diminutive, it's a name that you give to a child. or to an animal. a way of showing ownership. it was the last space -- space ship to reach the u.s.. for many years it was meant as a archaeologists discovered it less than two months ago. survivors lived there and their descendents still live there today. >> why did you spend so much time researching it and why is it important for our audience to understand who she was? i was doing a project and i

guess i have learned from other people, scholars and colleagues there was almost no first-hand account. when i just have to find her name, i knew that she [indiscernible] name, iappened upon her knew i had to try to see if i can find anything about her. important -- we can never imagine what it must of been like to have been taken across the atlantic and stolen from their homeland. i think it's important to reflect and hear the voices of those who endured it.

over 30 years, agricultural workers have labored to eradicate diseases. the demonstration work out long grown into a nationwide extension service. at this map shows the status of this work among knee grows in 1937. there are over 225 agricultural agents and 175 home this -- demonstration agents now working for better farming and living among southern egos. andy smith born in africa long past per 110 year when she to see the7 lived hard work of her generation and that of her children better by his campaign. you can watch our films on public affairs in their entirety on our weekly series "reel

america," sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern, only on american history tv. >> next, from the society for of american formulation annual conference, 99 years after the 19th amendment. the audiencens in to discuss the influence women have had on foreign relations it's obtaining the vote in 1920. coming toou for this panel, 99 years after the 19th amendment. , and you to our panelists caitlin mystery and jason x 10, who put this panel together and where the cochairs of the conference program committee, and are responsible for the wonderful program we will be enjoying over the next few days. thank you as well to