Episode 71 – The Apollo Program, Part XVI
Welcome back to Ghosts of Arlington and thank you for joining me for Episode 71: The Apollo Program, Part XVI.
If you will recall, last week I finished by talking about how successful the Apollo 15 mission was but the last thing I mentioned was that careers of all three crewmembers came to an abrupt end shortly after returning to Earth. So. What happened?
Astronauts Dave Scott, Al Worden, and Jim Irwin made a side deal before the mission that tarnished their reputations when it came to light. They agreed to carry postal covers to the moon in exchange for about $7,000 each, which they planned to set aside for their children. While I have used plenty of snail mail in my life, I have never been a postal memorabilia collector and had no idea what a postal cover was. Postal covers refer to an envelope that has already passed through the mail, with either a postal stamp or a meter stamp on it, and appropriately cancelled with a postmark. Like stamps, postal covers are apparently collectable, and someone figured that postal covers taken to the moon, with a Kennedy Space Center postmark and an Apollo 15-specific mark matching the mission insignia would bring a nice price.
A broker, who had many professional and social contacts with NASA employees and the astronaut corps, served as an intermediary between the astronauts and a West German stamp dealer named Hermann Sieger. The crew agreed to carry 459 covers on the mission and loaded them into the lunar lander when Falcon touched down. The covers remained in the lander while the astronauts carried out their business on the lunar surface. After returning to Earth, the crew turned over the first 100 covers – known as Sieger Covers – to the broker who passed those on to Seiger for a nice commission. This deal was not cleared by Deke Slayton as required.
Seiger put his 100 covers on sale in late 1971 for $1500 each (the equivalent of $10,500 today). In April 1972, Slayton learned that the unauthorized covers and removed the crew members from their assignment at the time as the backup crew for the Apollo 17 mission. The matter became public a few months later and the three astronauts were reprimanded for poor judgement, none of them ever returned to space, and NASA set an official policy that prohibited the sale of personal items carried on subsequent space flights. During an investigation into the matter, the astronauts turned over the 359 postal covers still in their possession. In 1983, after Worden filed a suit against NASA, those 359 covers that had been surrendered were turned back over to the astronauts after the Justice Department decided it had no grounds for fighting the lawsuit. A Justice Department lawyer went on record saying that it appeared that someone at NASA had either authorized taking the covers on the flight or at the very least, knew they would be taken and didn’t stop it. This outcome seemed to vindicate the Apollo 15 crew.
After the Seiger Cover controversy, a second scandal hit the Apollo 15 mission, this one surrounding the Fallen Astronaut statuette that Scott had left on the Moon. Before the mission, Scott made a verbal agreement with Belgium artist Paul van Hoeydonck to sculpt the statuette. Scott’s intent, in keeping with NASA’s strict policy against commercial exploitation of the US government’s space program, was for a simple memorial with a minimum amount of publicity, keeping the artist anonymous, and with no commercial replicas made. The plan was for a single non-commercial replica to be commissioned after the sculpture’s planned public disclosure during the post-mission press conference that would be placed on public exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Van Hoeydonck had a different understanding of the agreement, where he would receive recognition as the creator of a tribute to human space exploration, with rights to sell replicas to the public. Under pressure from NASA, van Hoeydonck canceled plans to publicly sell 950 autographed copies.
During congressional hearings into the postal covers and Fallen Astronaut matters, two Bulova timepieces taken on the mission by Scott were also matters of controversy, or at least a cause for minor discussion – and not only because they were Bulovas and not Omegas! Before the mission, Scott was introduced to a Bulova representative, General James McCormack by Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman. Bulova had campaigned to be the official watch taken into space but, as I have mentioned multiple times before, after an intense evaluation, NASA decided Omega watches were better suited for space missions. Once again, without disclosing the fact to Deke Slayton as was required, Scott brought the two Bulova timepieces on the mission. During Scott’s second EVA, the crystal – what you might call the glass covering the watch face – popped off, so during his third EVA, he wore one of the Bulovas. The Bulova Chronograph that Scott wore on the moon was a prototype, given to him by the Bulova company, and is the only privately owned watch to have been worn while walking on the lunar surface. There are images of him wearing the watch as he saluted the flag, with the expanse of the Hadly delta in the background. Because it was a personal gift to Scott and he received no compensation for the watch, it proved less a controversy than the postal covers and the statuette.
I say Scott received no compensation, and that was true in 1971, but that changed dramatically in 2015. I recently learned that any NASA standard issue Omega Speedmaster is “always and forever” the property of the US Government – unless they gift it to someone which doesn’t happen very often. In fact, as far as I can tell, every Omega worn on the moon is still the property of Uncle Sam. In 2015, Dave Scott put his personal Bulova up for auction. Two weeks before the October auction, the watch website Hodinkee published an article about the timepiece and said it was estimated that the watch would sell for $50,000. When the bidding was said and done, the watch sold for $1,625,000 – making it one of the most expensive astronaut-owned artifacts sold at auction and the 134th most expensive watch sold at auction at the time of this recording.
[TRANSITION MUSIC]
Even before the post-Apollo 15 mission problems, Lunar Module Pilot Jim Irwin admitted that he was having problems in his personal life. In 1952, the year after he graduated from the US Naval Academy and nearly fifteen years before he was part of NASA’s fifth group of astronauts selected in 1966, he married, but the marriage only lasted two years. He said it was an unhappy marriage made worse by his devotion to his new Air Force career and – in his words – his borderline cruel treatment of his wife.
In 1959, he married Mary Ellen Moore. They were together until Jim’s death in 1991, thought their first several years together were also rocky. Mary said that it was Jim’s rediscovery of his faith during the Apollo 15 mission that saved their marriage and made their lives together much happier – but more on that in a minute.
Irwin’s astronaut career nearly ended five years before it began. In 1961, a student pilot Irwin was training crashed the plane the two were flying in. They both survived, but Jim suffered compound fractures, amnesia, and nearly lost a leg. It was through the miraculous efforts of Air Force orthopedic surgeon John Forrest that not only was the leg not amputated, but Irwin regained full movement and control of the limb.
During Apollo 15’s time on the lunar surface, both Dave Scott and Jim Irwin experienced an intense final 23 hours where they got no sleep, conducted the final moonwalk, reentered lunar orbit, and rendezvoused with the command module. It was during this high stress time that flight surgeons back on Earth noticed some irregularities with Irwin’s hearth rhythm. It was so bad that the docs told Chris Kraft, “It’s serious… if he were on Earth, I’d have him in the ICU being treated for a heart attack.”
However, the doc also noted that the command module was probably an even better place for Irwin to be – “In truth,” the doc said, “he’s in an ICU. He’s getting 100% oxygen, he’s being constantly monitored, and best of all, he’s in zero g. Whatever strain his heart is under, well, we can’t do better than zero g.” By the time the crew splashed down, his rhythm was normal, but it was a sign of things to come.
Irwin had been raised in a Christian home but had personally stopped practicing at 10 years old. After the mission, he said that his experiences in space had made God more real to him than before and rekindled his faith. <QUOTE> “I felt the power of God as I’d never felt it before.” After retiring from the Air Force in 1972, he founded the High Flight Foundation – a Christian ministry that provides military families with spiritual counselors, post-traumatic stress counselors, marriage coaches, and financial advisors. He spent the next 20 years of his life as a “Goodwill ambassador for the Prince of Peace”, stating that “Jesus walking on the Earth was more important than man walking on the Moon.”
Beginning in 1973, Irwin led several expeditions to Mount Ararat in Turkey, in search of remnants of Noah’s Ark. In 1982, he was injured during one of these treks while descending the mountain and had to be evacuated the rest of the way on horseback. In 1983, he published a book of short essays titled More than Earthlings: An Astronaut’s Thoughts for Christ-Centered Living.
Despite an active and healthy lifestyle, Irwin’s heart continued to plague him in his post-NASA life, and he suffered four heart attacks. The first happened less than two years after Apollo 15, when he was 43, while playing handball; he underwent an emergency triple bypass. Two months later, he suffered a second heart attack while skiing in Colorado. His third heart attack came in June 1986 at age 56 while he was out for a jog. He was found collapsed with no pulse before being resuscitated and rushed to a hospital. In August 1991, Irwin suffered another heart attack after a bike ride. This time, he was unable to be revived and died later that day. He was 61 years old.
Of the twelve men who would untimely walk on the moon as part of the Apollo Program, Irwin was the first and youngest to die. He was survived by his wife Mary and their five children – Joy, Jill, James, Jan, and Joe. He was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1983 and posthumously into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997, well after the controversy surrounding the postal covers went away. The James Irwin Charter High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado is named in his honor.
Air Force Colonel James Benson Irwin was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 3, Grave 2503.
[TRANSITION MUSIC]
Well dear listener, I have done it again. I have tried really hard to keep everything straight – to remember which astronauts are buried where, while eulogizing the original Mercury Seven or those buried at Arlington. I think that I have done a pretty good job with this… or at least I thought I had done a pretty good job with this until I looked at my list and saw that in my haste to get to Apollo 13, I had missed someone. So before moving on to Apollo 16, I aim to right this wrong.
Dick Gordon was a finalist for the Next Nine – NASA’s second class of astronauts – and the oldest member of the third class of astronauts, the Fourteen. At the time of his selection, he was 34 years old. Going back to Episode 54, Dick Gordon was the junior member of the Gemini 11 crew where he took two spacewalks for a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes, setting a then-record for most time spent in open space by a single person.
Then in Episode 67, Gordon was the command module pilot for Apollo 12 and remained in lunar orbit while Pete Conrad, his Gemini 11 crewmate, and Al Bean became the third and fourth people to walk on the Moon.
After Apollo 12, Gordon stayed with NASA, was the backup pilot for Apollo 15 and was supposed to walk on the moon as the commander of Apollo 18, but that was the last Apollo mission cancelled do to budget cuts. In 1971, after Apollo 18 was axed, he became the chief of advanced programs and worked on designing the Space Shuttle, but retired from NASA and the Navy in January 1972, well before that program was ready to fly.
After leaving NASA, Dick was the executive vice president for the New Orleans Saints in the National Football League from 1971-1976, before moving on to serve as an executive for several oil and science companies in Texas and California. Additionally, he served as Chair of the Louisiana Heart Fund, Chair of the March of Dimes, honorary Chair for Muscular Dystrophy, and was on the Board of Directors for the Boy Scouts of American and Boys’ Club of Greater New Orleans. He was a fellow of the American Astronautical Society, an associate fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, and a member of both the Navy League and Phi Sigma Kappa.
Gordon was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1982 with nine of his Project Gemini colleagues and into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1993.
Navy Captain Richard Francis “Dick” Gordon, Jr. died on November 6, 2017 in San Marcos, California at age 88, and buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 18, Grave 30047 – quite close to the Henderson Hall parade field for any Marines out there.
Though he passed away five years ago, his personal website dickgordon.com is still up and running. Much like the moon tree directory I mentioned in Episode 69, this website also looks like it is straight out of the late-1990s or early-2000s.
The Richard Gordon Elementary School in Kingston, Washington is named in his honor.
[TRANSITION MUSIC]
Now that that is out of the way, lets move on to Apollo 16. This mission would be led by veteran astronaut John Young making his fourth space flight. He would be joined by command module pilot, Ken Mattingly, and lunar module pilot Charlie Duke, both making their first flight. Though Ken Mattingly was making his first flight, this is not the first time that he has graced the podcast. You might remember Ken from Episode 68, he was originally slated to fly on the Apollo 13 mission but was exposed to rubella just a few days before liftoff and had to be replaced. He never did come down with the disease, but NASA couldn’t risk him getting sick in space.
The insignia for Apollo 16 is dominated by a Bald Eagle atop a red, white, and blue shield, representing the people of the United States of America. This was over a gray background representing the lunar surface. Across the front of the shield is a gold NASA vector orbiting the Moon. On its gold-outlined blue boarder are 16 stars, representing the mission number and the names of the crew members.
Young and Duke chose Orion as the call sign for the lunar lander. According to Duke, he and Young went with Orion because they wanted something connected to the stars. Orion is one of the brightest constellations as seen from Earth and is one that would be visible to the astronauts for the duration of this trip. Mattingly went with Casper for the command module’s call sign in homage to the cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost. He said, “…there are enough serous things in this flight, so I picked a non-serious name.”
With only two more planned lunar missions, this and Apollo 17, there was no new hardware for astronauts to test out, but they presented opportunities for astronauts to clear up some uncertainties in understanding the Moon. Specifically, scientists were hoping to shed more light on the Moon’s early history.
In April and May 1971, the ad hoc Apollo Site Evaluation Committee met and decided where these final two missions would land. Apollo 16 was assigned a landing zone in the Descartes Highlands near the eponymous Descartes Crater. It was believed that volcanic material would be abundant in the area and it would be older than the lava that formed Apollo 15’s Mare Imbrium; both hypotheses ultimately proved incorrect.
Apollo 16 launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center six minutes before 1:00 pm on April 16, 1972. After two orbits of Earth, the crew left orbit and was on its way to the Moon. Four days after launch, the spacecraft entered lunar orbit, and on day 5, Orion separated from Casper as Young and Duke began their way to the lunar surface. After landing, the crew prepped for the next day’s surface activity and to bed down for the night.
The next day, April 21, 1972, the moonwalk began with commander John Young having his chance to speak some first words and he became the ninth person to walk on the lunar surface. The surviving audio of this moment is really rough, so you’ll have to settle for hearing me repeat his words: <QUOTE> “There you are: Mysterious and unknown Descartes Highland plains. Apollo 16 is going to change your image.” He was quickly joined by Charlie Duke who, at age 36, is still the youngest person to walk on the moon as of this recording. The pair unloaded their rover, set up a few experiments, saluted the flag, and went for a drive.
Their first stop was the Plum Crater. It was there that Duke, at the request of scientists back on Earth watching the EVA through the camera mounted on the rover, retrieved what would be the largest rock returned by any Apollo mission, a breccia nicknamed Big Muley after the mission’s principal geologist William Muehlberger. The next stop that day was a small crater called Buster. It was at this point that scientists began to realize that the area hadn’t been formed by ancient volcanic activity as they had hoped.
It was at Buster crater that Young showed the world what the lunar rover could do. He put the pedal to the metal, rushing over the lunar surface and throwing up moon dust in his wake in a ride dubbed the Grand Prix. If you are wondering, flooring it got the Rover up a blistering speed of eight miles per hour (or thirteen kilometers per hour if you prefer). That might not sound like much but the 16mm video that Duke shot makes it look much more impressive – I’ll post some video of the drive on the website. This first spacewalk lasted just over seven hours.
The next day’s surface activity was centered around driving to Stone Mountain and climbing its 20-degree slope to five craters creatively dubbed Cinco craters. This rise in elevation put them 500 feet (about 150 meters) above the lunar lander and the valley floor. This was the highest point any astronauts were above their lunar lander during the Apollo program. Charlie Duke described the view from Stone Mountain as “spectacular.” After stopping at a few more craters, Young and Duke set up lunar experiment equipment and called it a day after spending 7 hours, 23 minutes, and 26 seconds outside; the longest EVA of the Apollo era.
The third and final day on the surface saw the astronauts heading to the North Ray crater, the largest craters any Apollo expedition had visited. It was 3280 feet wide and 750 feet deep (or 1 kilometer by 230 meters). While there, they visited a boulder taller than a four-story building that they dubbed house rock which had numerous bullet-hole like marks where it had been struck by micrometeorites. Near House rock is a smaller boulder which is almost certainly a fragment from House Rock. I only bring that up to say that while the smaller boulder’s official designation is South Boulder, it is unofficially known as Outhouse Rock.
After leaving the North Ray crater, these speed demons set a lunar land speed record. While traveling down hill they hit 10.6 miles or 17.1 kilometers per hour in the rover – go Speed Racer, go! Before wrapping up this moonwalk, Duke placed a photo of his family and an Air Force commemoration medallion on the lunar surface and this EVA ended five hours and forty minutes after it began.
Instead of sleeping after this surface activity, Young and Duke prepared Orion for lift off and they rejoined Mattingly in Casper in lunar orbit. During the return flight, Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly performed the second deep space EVA. This time, he not only retrieved film cassettes, but he also set up a biological experiment to evaluate the response of microbes to the space environment.
Eleven days after liftoff, Apollo 16 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near Christmas Island – part of the Republic of Kiribati – where it was recovered by the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga.
As both Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 were J missions, their objectives were fairly similar, but the crews greatly differed in how they achieved those objectives. While Apollo 15’s Scott and Irwin were very business-like during their EVAs, many saw Young and Duke as more of a comedy duo. The infectious enthusiasm of rookie Charlie Duke had an effect on the usually taciturn veteran John Young that made the pair unusually entertaining to listen to. Their banter during moonwalks included jokes, impersonations, and a lot of jumping around in low gravity. My favorite photo of this mission is one taken of Young who is jumping while saluting the flag. I’ll made sure that shot get onto the website, too.
As with all things, its all fun and games until someone nearly gets killed. During one jump, Duke lost his balance in mid-air and landed smack on his life support backpack. Fortunately, it wasn’t damaged, but could have been tragic if it had been.
And that, dear listener, is where I am going to leave things for a week or two. This Sunday is Christmas and there is a lot going on in the Ghosts of Arlington household. I may drop one episode after Christmas, before the new year, but then again, I might not. Like I said, life is busy right now. If this is my last episode of the year, rest assured that come Monday January 2, we will lift off once again, this time with Apollo 17, the last of the Apollo missions.
In the meantime, if you need more Ghosts of Arlington content in your life, there are pictures related to every episode on the website www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com. You can help others learn about the podcast by leaving a 5-star rating and review at Apple Podcast or wherever you listen. If you really want to make my day, refer the show to a friend. And remember, fear not death, for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.
Welcome back to Ghosts of Arlington and thank you for joining me for Episode 71: The Apollo Program, Part XVI.
If you will recall, last week I finished by talking about how successful the Apollo 15 mission was but the last thing I mentioned was that careers of all three crewmembers came to an abrupt end shortly after returning to Earth. So. What happened?
Astronauts Dave Scott, Al Worden, and Jim Irwin made a side deal before the mission that tarnished their reputations when it came to light. They agreed to carry postal covers to the moon in exchange for about $7,000 each, which they planned to set aside for their children. While I have used plenty of snail mail in my life, I have never been a postal memorabilia collector and had no idea what a postal cover was. Postal covers refer to an envelope that has already passed through the mail, with either a postal stamp or a meter stamp on it, and appropriately cancelled with a postmark. Like stamps, postal covers are apparently collectable, and someone figured that postal covers taken to the moon, with a Kennedy Space Center postmark and an Apollo 15-specific mark matching the mission insignia would bring a nice price.
A broker, who had many professional and social contacts with NASA employees and the astronaut corps, served as an intermediary between the astronauts and a West German stamp dealer named Hermann Sieger. The crew agreed to carry 459 covers on the mission and loaded them into the lunar lander when Falcon touched down. The covers remained in the lander while the astronauts carried out their business on the lunar surface. After returning to Earth, the crew turned over the first 100 covers – known as Sieger Covers – to the broker who passed those on to Seiger for a nice commission. This deal was not cleared by Deke Slayton as required.
Seiger put his 100 covers on sale in late 1971 for $1500 each (the equivalent of $10,500 today). In April 1972, Slayton learned that the unauthorized covers and removed the crew members from their assignment at the time as the backup crew for the Apollo 17 mission. The matter became public a few months later and the three astronauts were reprimanded for poor judgement, none of them ever returned to space, and NASA set an official policy that prohibited the sale of personal items carried on subsequent space flights. During an investigation into the matter, the astronauts turned over the 359 postal covers still in their possession. In 1983, after Worden filed a suit against NASA, those 359 covers that had been surrendered were turned back over to the astronauts after the Justice Department decided it had no grounds for fighting the lawsuit. A Justice Department lawyer went on record saying that it appeared that someone at NASA had either authorized taking the covers on the flight or at the very least, knew they would be taken and didn’t stop it. This outcome seemed to vindicate the Apollo 15 crew.
After the Seiger Cover controversy, a second scandal hit the Apollo 15 mission, this one surrounding the Fallen Astronaut statuette that Scott had left on the Moon. Before the mission, Scott made a verbal agreement with Belgium artist Paul van Hoeydonck to sculpt the statuette. Scott’s intent, in keeping with NASA’s strict policy against commercial exploitation of the US government’s space program, was for a simple memorial with a minimum amount of publicity, keeping the artist anonymous, and with no commercial replicas made. The plan was for a single non-commercial replica to be commissioned after the sculpture’s planned public disclosure during the post-mission press conference that would be placed on public exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Van Hoeydonck had a different understanding of the agreement, where he would receive recognition as the creator of a tribute to human space exploration, with rights to sell replicas to the public. Under pressure from NASA, van Hoeydonck canceled plans to publicly sell 950 autographed copies.
During congressional hearings into the postal covers and Fallen Astronaut matters, two Bulova timepieces taken on the mission by Scott were also matters of controversy, or at least a cause for minor discussion – and not only because they were Bulovas and not Omegas! Before the mission, Scott was introduced to a Bulova representative, General James McCormack by Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman. Bulova had campaigned to be the official watch taken into space but, as I have mentioned multiple times before, after an intense evaluation, NASA decided Omega watches were better suited for space missions. Once again, without disclosing the fact to Deke Slayton as was required, Scott brought the two Bulova timepieces on the mission. During Scott’s second EVA, the crystal – what you might call the glass covering the watch face – popped off, so during his third EVA, he wore one of the Bulovas. The Bulova Chronograph that Scott wore on the moon was a prototype, given to him by the Bulova company, and is the only privately owned watch to have been worn while walking on the lunar surface. There are images of him wearing the watch as he saluted the flag, with the expanse of the Hadly delta in the background. Because it was a personal gift to Scott and he received no compensation for the watch, it proved less a controversy than the postal covers and the statuette.
I say Scott received no compensation, and that was true in 1971, but that changed dramatically in 2015. I recently learned that any NASA standard issue Omega Speedmaster is “always and forever” the property of the US Government – unless they gift it to someone which doesn’t happen very often. In fact, as far as I can tell, every Omega worn on the moon is still the property of Uncle Sam. In 2015, Dave Scott put his personal Bulova up for auction. Two weeks before the October auction, the watch website Hodinkee published an article about the timepiece and said it was estimated that the watch would sell for $50,000. When the bidding was said and done, the watch sold for $1,625,000 – making it one of the most expensive astronaut-owned artifacts sold at auction and the 134th most expensive watch sold at auction at the time of this recording.
[TRANSITION MUSIC]
Even before the post-Apollo 15 mission problems, Lunar Module Pilot Jim Irwin admitted that he was having problems in his personal life. In 1952, the year after he graduated from the US Naval Academy and nearly fifteen years before he was part of NASA’s fifth group of astronauts selected in 1966, he married, but the marriage only lasted two years. He said it was an unhappy marriage made worse by his devotion to his new Air Force career and – in his words – his borderline cruel treatment of his wife.
In 1959, he married Mary Ellen Moore. They were together until Jim’s death in 1991, thought their first several years together were also rocky. Mary said that it was Jim’s rediscovery of his faith during the Apollo 15 mission that saved their marriage and made their lives together much happier – but more on that in a minute.
Irwin’s astronaut career nearly ended five years before it began. In 1961, a student pilot Irwin was training crashed the plane the two were flying in. They both survived, but Jim suffered compound fractures, amnesia, and nearly lost a leg. It was through the miraculous efforts of Air Force orthopedic surgeon John Forrest that not only was the leg not amputated, but Irwin regained full movement and control of the limb.
During Apollo 15’s time on the lunar surface, both Dave Scott and Jim Irwin experienced an intense final 23 hours where they got no sleep, conducted the final moonwalk, reentered lunar orbit, and rendezvoused with the command module. It was during this high stress time that flight surgeons back on Earth noticed some irregularities with Irwin’s hearth rhythm. It was so bad that the docs told Chris Kraft, “It’s serious… if he were on Earth, I’d have him in the ICU being treated for a heart attack.”
However, the doc also noted that the command module was probably an even better place for Irwin to be – “In truth,” the doc said, “he’s in an ICU. He’s getting 100% oxygen, he’s being constantly monitored, and best of all, he’s in zero g. Whatever strain his heart is under, well, we can’t do better than zero g.” By the time the crew splashed down, his rhythm was normal, but it was a sign of things to come.
Irwin had been raised in a Christian home but had personally stopped practicing at 10 years old. After the mission, he said that his experiences in space had made God more real to him than before and rekindled his faith. <QUOTE> “I felt the power of God as I’d never felt it before.” After retiring from the Air Force in 1972, he founded the High Flight Foundation – a Christian ministry that provides military families with spiritual counselors, post-traumatic stress counselors, marriage coaches, and financial advisors. He spent the next 20 years of his life as a “Goodwill ambassador for the Prince of Peace”, stating that “Jesus walking on the Earth was more important than man walking on the Moon.”
Beginning in 1973, Irwin led several expeditions to Mount Ararat in Turkey, in search of remnants of Noah’s Ark. In 1982, he was injured during one of these treks while descending the mountain and had to be evacuated the rest of the way on horseback. In 1983, he published a book of short essays titled More than Earthlings: An Astronaut’s Thoughts for Christ-Centered Living.
Despite an active and healthy lifestyle, Irwin’s heart continued to plague him in his post-NASA life, and he suffered four heart attacks. The first happened less than two years after Apollo 15, when he was 43, while playing handball; he underwent an emergency triple bypass. Two months later, he suffered a second heart attack while skiing in Colorado. His third heart attack came in June 1986 at age 56 while he was out for a jog. He was found collapsed with no pulse before being resuscitated and rushed to a hospital. In August 1991, Irwin suffered another heart attack after a bike ride. This time, he was unable to be revived and died later that day. He was 61 years old.
Of the twelve men who would untimely walk on the moon as part of the Apollo Program, Irwin was the first and youngest to die. He was survived by his wife Mary and their five children – Joy, Jill, James, Jan, and Joe. He was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1983 and posthumously into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1997, well after the controversy surrounding the postal covers went away. The James Irwin Charter High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado is named in his honor.
Air Force Colonel James Benson Irwin was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 3, Grave 2503.
[TRANSITION MUSIC]
Well dear listener, I have done it again. I have tried really hard to keep everything straight – to remember which astronauts are buried where, while eulogizing the original Mercury Seven or those buried at Arlington. I think that I have done a pretty good job with this… or at least I thought I had done a pretty good job with this until I looked at my list and saw that in my haste to get to Apollo 13, I had missed someone. So before moving on to Apollo 16, I aim to right this wrong.
Dick Gordon was a finalist for the Next Nine – NASA’s second class of astronauts – and the oldest member of the third class of astronauts, the Fourteen. At the time of his selection, he was 34 years old. Going back to Episode 54, Dick Gordon was the junior member of the Gemini 11 crew where he took two spacewalks for a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes, setting a then-record for most time spent in open space by a single person.
Then in Episode 67, Gordon was the command module pilot for Apollo 12 and remained in lunar orbit while Pete Conrad, his Gemini 11 crewmate, and Al Bean became the third and fourth people to walk on the Moon.
After Apollo 12, Gordon stayed with NASA, was the backup pilot for Apollo 15 and was supposed to walk on the moon as the commander of Apollo 18, but that was the last Apollo mission cancelled do to budget cuts. In 1971, after Apollo 18 was axed, he became the chief of advanced programs and worked on designing the Space Shuttle, but retired from NASA and the Navy in January 1972, well before that program was ready to fly.
After leaving NASA, Dick was the executive vice president for the New Orleans Saints in the National Football League from 1971-1976, before moving on to serve as an executive for several oil and science companies in Texas and California. Additionally, he served as Chair of the Louisiana Heart Fund, Chair of the March of Dimes, honorary Chair for Muscular Dystrophy, and was on the Board of Directors for the Boy Scouts of American and Boys’ Club of Greater New Orleans. He was a fellow of the American Astronautical Society, an associate fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, and a member of both the Navy League and Phi Sigma Kappa.
Gordon was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1982 with nine of his Project Gemini colleagues and into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1993.
Navy Captain Richard Francis “Dick” Gordon, Jr. died on November 6, 2017 in San Marcos, California at age 88, and buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 18, Grave 30047 – quite close to the Henderson Hall parade field for any Marines out there.
Though he passed away five years ago, his personal website dickgordon.com is still up and running. Much like the moon tree directory I mentioned in Episode 69, this website also looks like it is straight out of the late-1990s or early-2000s.
The Richard Gordon Elementary School in Kingston, Washington is named in his honor.
[TRANSITION MUSIC]
Now that that is out of the way, lets move on to Apollo 16. This mission would be led by veteran astronaut John Young making his fourth space flight. He would be joined by command module pilot, Ken Mattingly, and lunar module pilot Charlie Duke, both making their first flight. Though Ken Mattingly was making his first flight, this is not the first time that he has graced the podcast. You might remember Ken from Episode 68, he was originally slated to fly on the Apollo 13 mission but was exposed to rubella just a few days before liftoff and had to be replaced. He never did come down with the disease, but NASA couldn’t risk him getting sick in space.
The insignia for Apollo 16 is dominated by a Bald Eagle atop a red, white, and blue shield, representing the people of the United States of America. This was over a gray background representing the lunar surface. Across the front of the shield is a gold NASA vector orbiting the Moon. On its gold-outlined blue boarder are 16 stars, representing the mission number and the names of the crew members.
Young and Duke chose Orion as the call sign for the lunar lander. According to Duke, he and Young went with Orion because they wanted something connected to the stars. Orion is one of the brightest constellations as seen from Earth and is one that would be visible to the astronauts for the duration of this trip. Mattingly went with Casper for the command module’s call sign in homage to the cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost. He said, “…there are enough serous things in this flight, so I picked a non-serious name.”
With only two more planned lunar missions, this and Apollo 17, there was no new hardware for astronauts to test out, but they presented opportunities for astronauts to clear up some uncertainties in understanding the Moon. Specifically, scientists were hoping to shed more light on the Moon’s early history.
In April and May 1971, the ad hoc Apollo Site Evaluation Committee met and decided where these final two missions would land. Apollo 16 was assigned a landing zone in the Descartes Highlands near the eponymous Descartes Crater. It was believed that volcanic material would be abundant in the area and it would be older than the lava that formed Apollo 15’s Mare Imbrium; both hypotheses ultimately proved incorrect.
Apollo 16 launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center six minutes before 1:00 pm on April 16, 1972. After two orbits of Earth, the crew left orbit and was on its way to the Moon. Four days after launch, the spacecraft entered lunar orbit, and on day 5, Orion separated from Casper as Young and Duke began their way to the lunar surface. After landing, the crew prepped for the next day’s surface activity and to bed down for the night.
The next day, April 21, 1972, the moonwalk began with commander John Young having his chance to speak some first words and he became the ninth person to walk on the lunar surface. The surviving audio of this moment is really rough, so you’ll have to settle for hearing me repeat his words: <QUOTE> “There you are: Mysterious and unknown Descartes Highland plains. Apollo 16 is going to change your image.” He was quickly joined by Charlie Duke who, at age 36, is still the youngest person to walk on the moon as of this recording. The pair unloaded their rover, set up a few experiments, saluted the flag, and went for a drive.
Their first stop was the Plum Crater. It was there that Duke, at the request of scientists back on Earth watching the EVA through the camera mounted on the rover, retrieved what would be the largest rock returned by any Apollo mission, a breccia nicknamed Big Muley after the mission’s principal geologist William Muehlberger. The next stop that day was a small crater called Buster. It was at this point that scientists began to realize that the area hadn’t been formed by ancient volcanic activity as they had hoped.
It was at Buster crater that Young showed the world what the lunar rover could do. He put the pedal to the metal, rushing over the lunar surface and throwing up moon dust in his wake in a ride dubbed the Grand Prix. If you are wondering, flooring it got the Rover up a blistering speed of eight miles per hour (or thirteen kilometers per hour if you prefer). That might not sound like much but the 16mm video that Duke shot makes it look much more impressive – I’ll post some video of the drive on the website. This first spacewalk lasted just over seven hours.
The next day’s surface activity was centered around driving to Stone Mountain and climbing its 20-degree slope to five craters creatively dubbed Cinco craters. This rise in elevation put them 500 feet (about 150 meters) above the lunar lander and the valley floor. This was the highest point any astronauts were above their lunar lander during the Apollo program. Charlie Duke described the view from Stone Mountain as “spectacular.” After stopping at a few more craters, Young and Duke set up lunar experiment equipment and called it a day after spending 7 hours, 23 minutes, and 26 seconds outside; the longest EVA of the Apollo era.
The third and final day on the surface saw the astronauts heading to the North Ray crater, the largest craters any Apollo expedition had visited. It was 3280 feet wide and 750 feet deep (or 1 kilometer by 230 meters). While there, they visited a boulder taller than a four-story building that they dubbed house rock which had numerous bullet-hole like marks where it had been struck by micrometeorites. Near House rock is a smaller boulder which is almost certainly a fragment from House Rock. I only bring that up to say that while the smaller boulder’s official designation is South Boulder, it is unofficially known as Outhouse Rock.
After leaving the North Ray crater, these speed demons set a lunar land speed record. While traveling down hill they hit 10.6 miles or 17.1 kilometers per hour in the rover – go Speed Racer, go! Before wrapping up this moonwalk, Duke placed a photo of his family and an Air Force commemoration medallion on the lunar surface and this EVA ended five hours and forty minutes after it began.
Instead of sleeping after this surface activity, Young and Duke prepared Orion for lift off and they rejoined Mattingly in Casper in lunar orbit. During the return flight, Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly performed the second deep space EVA. This time, he not only retrieved film cassettes, but he also set up a biological experiment to evaluate the response of microbes to the space environment.
Eleven days after liftoff, Apollo 16 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean near Christmas Island – part of the Republic of Kiribati – where it was recovered by the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga.
As both Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 were J missions, their objectives were fairly similar, but the crews greatly differed in how they achieved those objectives. While Apollo 15’s Scott and Irwin were very business-like during their EVAs, many saw Young and Duke as more of a comedy duo. The infectious enthusiasm of rookie Charlie Duke had an effect on the usually taciturn veteran John Young that made the pair unusually entertaining to listen to. Their banter during moonwalks included jokes, impersonations, and a lot of jumping around in low gravity. My favorite photo of this mission is one taken of Young who is jumping while saluting the flag. I’ll made sure that shot get onto the website, too.
As with all things, its all fun and games until someone nearly gets killed. During one jump, Duke lost his balance in mid-air and landed smack on his life support backpack. Fortunately, it wasn’t damaged, but could have been tragic if it had been.
And that, dear listener, is where I am going to leave things for a week or two. This Sunday is Christmas and there is a lot going on in the Ghosts of Arlington household. I may drop one episode after Christmas, before the new year, but then again, I might not. Like I said, life is busy right now. If this is my last episode of the year, rest assured that come Monday January 2, we will lift off once again, this time with Apollo 17, the last of the Apollo missions.
In the meantime, if you need more Ghosts of Arlington content in your life, there are pictures related to every episode on the website www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com. You can help others learn about the podcast by leaving a 5-star rating and review at Apple Podcast or wherever you listen. If you really want to make my day, refer the show to a friend. And remember, fear not death, for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.
