Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

Shepard called out, “Hey, Houston, our abort program has kicked in!”

Every try produced the same result, and every check could find no errors. The lunar landing was put on hold while ground trials and evaluations finally found the problem to be a faulty abort switch, so they yanked computer specialist Donald Eyles out of bed in Massachusetts to write a new program to accommodate this faulty switch, and transmitted it up through the tracking stations to the spacecraft circling the Moon. Shepard, itching to be doing something but only able to wait, anxiously watched Ed Mitchell load and check out the computer, then called with relief, “Houston – we’ve got it. We’re commencing with the descent program.”

“Antares, you have a go,” replied the Houston Capcom.

It was close. There were fifteen minutes left. Fifteen minutes before having to abort and return to Kitty Hawk without landing. The next fright came as they approached the surface. The landing radar refused to lock on initially due to the system switching to a low range scale and if it did not find the target by 3,048 metres altitude, mission rules specified an abort. Houston were working on the problem and Capcom Fred Haise radioed up, “We’d like you to cycle the Landing Radar breaker.”

Shepard pulled the circuit breaker out and pushed it back. “OK, it’s cycled.”

Within seconds the caution lights went out and there was good data being displayed. Shepard and Mitchell went on to execute the most accurate landing of the Apollo Moon Landings, putting Antares down only 53 metres northeast of the planned landing spot at 3:18 am on 5 February. Shepard is reputed to have dropped it short on purpose as it was in the direction they were to walk first, and it would save them some walking, but he wrote, “The landing site was rougher on direct observation than the photos had been able to show. So I looked for a smoother area, found one, and landed there.

“Ed and I worked on the surface for 4 hours and 50 minutes during our first EVA; after the return to Antares, a long rest period, and then re-suiting, we began the second EVA. This time we had the MET – Modularised Equipment Transporter, although we called it the lunar rickshaw – to carry tools, cameras, and samples so we could work more effectively and bring back a larger quantity of samples. We covered a distance of about two miles and collected many samples during 4 and a half hours on the surface in the second EVA. I also threw a makeshift javelin and hit a couple of golf shots.”

The second EVA had considerable problems. The terrain was littered with rocks and navigating was difficult. They experienced optical illusions among the boulders and gullies. They slipped climbing up slopes of rubble. They found it was easier to carry the MET up the slopes.

Shepard complained, “You take one step up and you slip back half a step.” They were trying to collect rocks from the rim of the crater but they never found the crater. Houston told them to turn back. Mitchell expressed his feelings: “I think you’re finks.” The return trip was much easier as their suit temperatures dropped back to normal and they took a look at Weird Crater before chipping samples off some large white boulders. Back at base they completed the rest of the experiments and tasks before getting ready to depart.

Before he climbed back into the Lunar Module, Shepard pulled out a six iron tip from a pocket and fitted it to the end of the aluminium handle of his rock collector. Then he dropped a golf ball onto the lunar soil and announced, “I’m trying a sand trap shot.” Thick lunar dust flew as the ball dropped into a nearby crater. “I got more dirt than ball,” he muttered. He had a second ball ready and 0steadied himself before slamming it to what appeared to be nearly 100 metres. The “golf club” was made in the Manned Spacecraft Center’s Technical Services Division and bootlegged through the workshops to avoid detection by management. Antares left the lunar surface at 12:48 pm on 6 February.

The last three Apollo missions (18, 19 & 20) were cancelled. The crew of the next Apollo mission were Dave Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin. Lindsay:

Originally planned as the last of the simpler “H” missions, with only two excursions and no vehicular rover, the cancellation of the last three Apollo lunar landings made NASA anxious to make the most of the remaining missions, so the more comprehensive scientific “J” missions were brought forward to Apollo 15. The Apollo 13 mishap introduced a convenient delay in the program to help incorporate the hardware changes, as the “J” missions were designed to use the Apollo system capabilities to the limit, and to change the role of the astronauts from test pilots to explorers, preferably scientific explorers.

The lunar module was fitted with larger fuel tanks, extra batteries, and a bigger descent engine thrust and bell housing to carry the extra weight of the lunar rover and its gear. The trajectory engineers revised their procedures to accommodate the steeper descent path over the Apennine Mountains.

At the NASA station in Honeysuckle Creek, Australia, Operations Supervisor John Saxon remembered:

“We almost completely rebuilt the station between Apollo 14 and Apollo 15, working masses of overtime – so much so that some staff members begged for a break. The difference between 14 and 15 was almost like a new project. There were a whole new lot of communications with scientific experiments in the Service Module, there was a Particle and Fields sub-satellite which was ejected from the Service Module into orbit around the Moon, there was a lunar rover vehicle which they drove around on the surface of the Moon. The communications were becoming horrendous – there were so many links involved – back packs of the astronauts, the relay from the lunar rover, the Lunar Module, the Particle and Fields Satellite… we went into the mission not sure we could handle all this.

“Again we had the lion’s share of that mission – we had all the walks on the surface of the Moon, all the bringing up of the first lunar rover down link to the ground – all the critical parts of that mission we were prime. Although we went into the mission with quite a bit of trepidation, it was quite amazing, it all went by the book – it was perfect. Apollo 15 was the scientific and technical peak of our operation as far as I was concerned.”

On 16 April 1972 Apollo 16 launched, the first expedition to land among the lunar mountains. The crew were John Young, Ken Mattingly and Charles Duke. When they reached the moon and went into orbit, Mattingly told Houston, “It feels like we’re clipping the tops of the trees.” Duke described:

“It did feel like we were right down in the valleys. I couldn’t believe how close we were to the surface… we were rocketing across the surface at about three thousand miles per hour in this low orbit, with mountains and valleys whizzing by. The mountain peaks went by so fast, it gave you the same impression as looking out your car window at fence posts while travelling at seventy miles per hour.”

Young and Duke climbed into the lunar module, while Mattingly stayed in the CSM which they had named Casper. Just after they separated, the CSM was scheduled to make a burn to change orbit but when Mattingly turned the engine on, he reported:

“There is something wrong with the secondary control system in the engine. When I turn it on, it feels as though it is shaking the spacecraft to pieces.”

This was serious – that engine was their ride home! Young thought hard and though he hated to say it, ordered, “Don’t make the burn. We will delay that manoeuvre.”