Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corrumbus. Our guest in this edition is
retired US Air Force Brigadier General and NASA astronaut Charles Duke. General Duke served
as the lunar module pilot for the Apollo sixteen mission to the Moon in April
of nineteen seventy two. In general, it's an honor to have you with
us. Thanks, thank you. A pleasure to be here with you.
Where were you born and raised? Sir? I was born in Charlotte,
North Carolina, but mostly raised in South Carolina. This was all during World
War Two, so we moved to count My dad joined the Navy and we
moved to California for a couple of years, and he went overseas. We
moved back to South Carolina, and then when he came back, we went
to Florida for a year and then back to South Carolina. My folks raised
us in my twin brother and I in South Carolina. Any other family members
with a history of military service in your family? My dad and then way
back in ancestors on my mom's sad, I'd fought in the Revolutionary War and
one others it This is a long list of of veterans. Why did you
decide to attend the US Naval Academy. Well, my dad had been in
the Navy during World War Two and he enlisted joined They made him an officer
because of his He was thirty five years old, if I remember correctly,
and didn't have to go, but he said, I'm joining. So he
went off to supply school and went to the Navy and went off supply school,
and he made him an officer and he served for four years almost five.
I guess as a as a naval supply of ser so growing up in
World War Two, my heros were all the military guys, and since my
dad had been in the Navy, I said, well, I want to
go to the Naval Academy. I didn't even know you could fly airplanes from
the Naval Academy. But when I went. But I went off to school
prep school an't Farragut Academy in Saint Petersburg, Florida, to get prepared to
get into the Naval Academy. And it was a good move for me.
I learned how to march, salute, obey regulations, live on my own
at fifteen, star did at fifteen and make my bed and all that stuff.
So I got the Naval Academy and I felt right at home, and
then I realized you could go. They gave me some airplane rides at the
Navy at Naval Academy, and that did it. I said, airplanes have
a lot more appeal to me than ships. So back then there wasn't an
Air Force Academy, and this was in the mid fifties, and so they
would allow west pointers and midshipman to volunteer for the US Air Force up to
twenty five percent of the glass. And so I had a choice to make.
It was should I be a naval aviator or an Air Force aviator?
And the decision was made by a doctor at the Naval Academy during my senior
year. He told me, I said, Mitchell, me, duke,
you have a stigmatism in your right eye, and you don't qualify for naval
aviation, but the Air Force will take him. So that put me the
Air Force much of a dilemma. He had your decision right there. And
so after you were commissioned, what were you flying? I went to flight
school, and this was in the summer of nineteen fifty seven. Was flying
T thirty fours and INN T twenty eight, and then I went to basic
training and that was a T thirty three first jet that was in black training.
And then from there and went to advanced training F eighty six the interceptor
model, since so it was an interceptor pilot, came out as an INTERCEPTI
pilot. Tell me a little bit about serving in Germany. Around the time
of the Berlin Wall going up. We were sitting alert. By this time
we had F one oh two's. I was in the five twenty six fighter
Interceptor squadron and I got to Germany in summer May of nineteen fifty nine.
It was also the that was the beginning of NASA and also the beginning of
astronauts and Yuri Gagarn that was sixty one. But Sputnik went up when I
was in flight school and changed the whole dynamics of Cold War, and so
I enjoyed being in Germany. It was a great experience. We had a
lot of exciting scrambles to intercept things along to Czechoslovaking border and East Germany.
So it was a good assignment. I really loved it. How did you
get the opportunity to pursue astronaut training. Did they find you or did you
go for it? I got finished in Germany in nineteen sixty two, was
my third year, and I felt like I ought to go to graduate school.
So I applied to graduate school through the Air Force Institute Technology and they
sent me to MT. MT had to contract to build Apollo guidance and navigation
system, so they needed two pilots to help out on this system. And
that was my thesis. And so as I was working on this program,
I met a lot of astronauts came up to visit to see what this thing
was going to look like, this guidance and navigation system, And I never
met anybody was so gung ho about their job and excited about their job.
And I asked him, Charlie Bassett. I was killed shortly after that,
but in an airplane crash. But Charlie said, I said, Charlie,
how do I get this job? He said, you got to finish your
degree and go to test pilot school and you might have a chance. So
when I graduated and as summer of nineteen sixty four, I got selected to
test polot school and started out in test pilot school and Edwards Air Force Base,
and the next year I graduated and went to went on staff at the
Test Bolot School and I was in July sixty five, and then in September
NASA had another call for astronauts and it was my chance. So I volunteered
and was selected and started in nineteen sixty six. Now, one of the
big jobs you had after becoming an astronaut was to oversee the development of the
lunar module propulsion system. Correct, yes, correct, What were the keys
to putting that together successfully? Well, the decent engine was having no problems,
but the ascent engine was on the verge of instability. Now I'm not
a propulsion engineer, but I was monitoring the systems for the Astronaut Office,
and so I was meeting all of these NASA engineers who were propulsion engineers,
and they were very concerned about the stability of the stent engine. That thing
had to work if you're going to get off the Moon. That engine had
to run for seven minutes without a blimp. And the director of the Apollo
program, George Lowe, got concerned about the engine, so he developed a
appointed, let me say, a special committee of engineers. And I was
the astronaut representative on that committee, and we had to go around to investigate
the present manufacturer who had to contract, and then find if we weren't satisfied,
we had to go out and look for other rocket companies that maybe could
fit the deal. Well, after about six months we had decided that as
a committee that we need to change contractors and go with rocket Dine. That
was submitted to George Lowe. We ever gave him a brief end and he
made the decisions, Okay, we're going to go Rocket Dine. And then
and when they started testing, their engine was perfect. So that's how that's
a big change change. Yeah, it was. I mean it was close
to the end, I mean to the first lights of the lunar module,
so it was it was a great decision. We didn't have any problem with
the s and none of the Engians own Apollo lunar module had any problems.
When we come back, General Duke tells us about his roles in the historic
Apollo eleven moon landing and the Apollo thirteen crisis from the ground, and later
he'll walk us through his own mission to the Moon. I'm Greg Corumbus and
this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our
guest in this edition has retired US Air Force Brigadier General Charlie Duke. He
is one of just four living Americans to have walked on the Moon. He
did so as a crew member for Apolo sixteen, but before that mission in
nineteen seventy two, General Duke was very involved on the ground with two other
famous Apolo missions. He was on the backup crew for the Apollo thirteen mission
and also served as capsule communicator or CAPCOM for the historic Apollo eleven mission.
And General Duke picks up his story explaining what the capcom does and what it
was like to have that role on such a history making mission. Well still
today, capcom is the only person in mission control who can actually talk to
the crew in flight, and so it's always an I'm not sure now,
but then it was always an astronaut, and that gave your familiarity. We
all knew one another, gave your familiarity, and you could talk in their
length pilot language if you will, and you relayed the information that was generated
in mission control go no go, and monitor this system, that system,
whatever. And then you've transmitted that up to this crew and they would respond,
and so you had a conversation with the crew, and everybody else in
mission control was listening in and advising the flight director on their systems, and
so you basically were of the voice of mission control. And it was a
very important job. You had to you had to say it right, and
you had to say it and pilot language, if you will. They really
depended on you transmitting the information that was correct and no mistakes. And so
I did that on Apollo ten, which first time we took the lunar module
to the Moon but no landing. And two months later we Apollo eleven,
we landed. And since I'd done that on Apollo ten, Neil Armstrong and
invited me to come do it on Apollo eleven. Just keep that whole team
together. We just moved from ten to eleven, and we were well trained
and except for the landing port, we had done it all. So it
was a tremendous opportunity for me, a great thrill to be involved in that
first landing, and I was just really pleased that I was selected. And
so of course the whole world heard jur communicating that the landing had taken place.
What the world didn't know for a long time was how close they were
to running out of opportunity to make the landing. Take us inside what it
was like at mission control as we were waiting to hear that they had landed.
It was tense. That's an understatement. It was so tense. It
was dead silence if nobody, I mean, if if you weren't transmitting that
information within the room. Everybody was monitoring on their system, and we'd had
a series of problems on the descent. At first, we had communication problems,
and the mission rules us, if you lose communications for thirty seconds,
you aboard the mission. So we were rearranging the spacecraft to the different antennas.
Then we got computer overloads, which was really, I thought, very
serious. Without the computer you cannot land. And so we were having these
computer overloads, but the computer engineers were saying, we're goal on these on
these alarms light And then when we got to seven thousand feet above the moon
to lunar module, pitch us down. So the windows are air pointing at
the lunar surface, and Neil apparently looked out the window and says, we
can't land. Here we had him targeted into the wrong place. So he
levels off at about five hundred eat and he flies several miles horizontally across the
moon, picked out a landing spot, stopped his forward the velocity, and
then lower the lunar module. Now, well, that five miles at five
hundred feet or whatever it was used up all our reserves and the fuels.
So now we got a minimum fuel and we had a margin of four percent.
When we got to four percent and decent engine, we were going to
a board. So the propulsion engineer said flight sixty seconds. That means he
had sixty seconds to get on the on the ground. So I said eagle
sixty seconds, and then I said eagle thirty seconds. And he wasn't on
the ground, but courting my stop watch, and it was thirteen seconds later
I heard buzzolder and say contact at engine stop. And the tension was through
the roof in mission control. In fact, the tension in me was higher
in mission control than it was when I landed on the moon on Apoli sixteen.
People have different numbers, but in my mind it was seventeen seconds left
before we would have called Eagle aboard. So it was very close. What
was the atmosphere in mission control? Once you knew there was a successful landing,
we all erupted. It's like punction a balloon. All the tension left
and we were clapping and sharing and then didn't last long because Gene Trance,
the flight director, said get back to work, do you guys make sure
this thing is safe and we can stay. So we had a series of
stays, if you will, T one, T two, T three as
it went on down, and we made sure that the lunar moga was nothing
to lead king and nothing broke all of those things. So we finally got
down to okay for the final stay, and we were okay for the rest
of the twenty four hours on the moon. Well, let's talk about Apollo
thirteen. You were on the backup crew for Apolo thirteen and you went to
visit a friend who had a child with the German measles. Correct, Yeah,
and that kind of impacted the fate of that mission. Explain how that
led to one of the primary crew members being removed. Well, I was
on a backup crew for Apollo thirteen, as you said, and I forgot
about ten days or so before the flight I come down with the German measles.
Well, I mean the doctors, and I was stunned, and the
doctors were stunned. Kids get the measles. Well, my younger sons three
years old, Well, he had a friend, Paul House. Well,
Paul came down with the measles. Then my son came down with the measles,
and I came down with the measles. I hadn't never had the measles.
They said, we got to test everybody. I'd exposed everybody in training.
So of the prime crew and backup crew, everybody had had the measles
except T. K. Mattingly and Ken was supposed to go on that flight
as the command module Pollen Well, as I remember, there was a big,
big fuss about from the doctors to the operations guys. But the doctors
decided that we need, really need to take him off because he gets sick
at the moon. With the German measles, he could be really sick,
and so he was. It was decided to take him off. And this
was about a week before liftoff, if I recall correctly, and so they
substituted Jack Swiger. The idea of the backup crew was if somebody something happens
to the prime crew, you take him all off and the substitute the backup.
But I was sick. I couldn't go, So that was so it
was decided one on one. So Jack Swiger took his place, and Ken
came back on the backup crew with us. And so thats a testimony to
the thoroughness of the and the similarity of training. A guy could step into
that job and in a week be ready to fly with a cohesive crew,
which is amazing. It's just hardly done. And but they did, and
Ken mannerally came back on our crew, and then fifty five hours later after
liftoff, they had an explosion that required the three of us as a backup
crew to get the mission control and we spent thirty five hours before we got
relieved to getting them the procedures to get them back safely. It was very
tense. I don't know how accurate the movie is, you can tell me,
but they depict you working with everything that was known to be in the
capsule to help solve the problem. So talk about the accuracy of that and
what you remember working on. Well, John and I mostly were in a
simulator getting the procedures that they would have to use the lunar module to get
them back as the lifeboat to get them back safely. They were fifty five
hours out from Earth. They were on our trajectory that if they spun around
the Moon without doing anything, they weren't coming back to Earth. They were
on a non refree return. So John Young and I were in the simulators
doing the lunar module power up and those procedures and the burn and all of
that, while Mattingly was in the lunar the command module simulator. How are
you going to shut this thing down safely? And it had never been designed
to shut down out in space, so he was really busy with those procedures,
and there were other astronauts involved also. But what was to me the
critical part was that we've got a machine now, the lunar module, which
was designed for two guys for three days. Now we got three guys for
four days. How do you make it all last? The oxygen, the
water, the carbon dioxide filtration, and so that's what you see in the
movie. And it was good they had. They did a good job with
the movie. I had a little bit a problem with the way it seemed
to me that they were focused on Jack Swiker wasn't really qualified, but he
was highly qualified. And but that was a little drama that they put in
that was not real. But we enjoyed the movie. We saw the movie
the first one time it was shown. They came to Houston and showed it
to two hundred and fifty of us who'd done it, and they said,
now, this is a movie, not a documentary. Tom Hanks said and
said, we gave him a standing ovation. We down deep. We liked
it. I told him, I said, Tom, I said, I
knew height was coming out and I was sitting on the edge of my seat.
That's when you knew it was well done. Yeah, it was well
done. You talked about the cheer when Apollo eleven touchdown, when Apollo thirteen
splashed down, What was that cheer? Like louder, I think it was
really the tension was through entry. You know, we didn't know the command
module had been shut down. It was now just houred up, and we
jettisoned a lunar module and we didn't know what it was going to do when
it came in, and it was just a lot of unknowns and it was
I think because of the command module was so cold, soaked and so cold.
It took a while to get through that blackout period and Hello thirteen,
Houston here and dead silence. But then they finally came up and that that
was a big cheer, and then when it splashed down, it was a
tremendous relief. Retired US Air Force General Charlie Duke, who played critical roles
on the ground for both Apolo eleven and Apolo thirteen. When we come back,
it's his turn to go to the moon on Apolos sixteen. I'm Greg
Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg
Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is ret hired US Air Force Brigadier General
Charlie Duke. In the previous segment, General Duke told us all about his
work in connection with the Apollo eleven and Apollo thirteen missions. In the spring
of nineteen seventy two, it was his turn to go to the moon aboard
Apolo sixteen, and that's where General Duke picks up his story. Well,
the Apolo sixteen was the second of the j missions. The first first three
landings on the Moon were twenty four hour maximum stay on the lunar surface,
but they wanted to do more science, they wanted to do more explorations,
so they extended the stay of the lunar module to three days on the lunar
surface. So they gave us a car and other experiments. So we were
the first and only, turned out only mission to land in the lunar highlands.
And if you look at where Neil Armstrong landed versus where we landed was
eight or nine thousand feet altitude difference. So the idea was, these rocks
are going to be different than what they found on the mari and sure enough
they were, but they weren't what they expected. They expected two kind of
volcanic rocks, but there was hardly any volcanic rocks up there on the Moon
in that area. So all experiments, all of the use of the car,
we were the second with the car, was designed to understand what the
lunar highlands was composed of. And so we worked very hard to to get
the right samples and to deploy all the experiments that we were to do,
and and everything worked well except for one experiment, the heat floor experiment,
which required me to drill two holes into the moon, but the electrical system
was out, so we abandoned that. That that experiment that was but that
was the only failure we had. So it was a very scientific exploration of
the lunar highlands was a whole quote big objective of Apollo sixteen, and you
were trained by geologists for what to look for. Right. NASA saw the
importance of teaching us geology. So from the very first month that I reported
into NASA, we started geology training. Nobody knew who was going to fly
to the Moon, but everybody was being trained in geology. So we had
some of the world's experts in geology. The chief of our geology team was
the head of the geology department University of Texas. He became a good friend,
and we had a number of scientists that came from the Lunar Geology Institute
and Flagstaff and other famous uh well not famous in the world sense, but
famous in the geology world who were training us. So we went on a
three day geology trip every month for I think we did six months six years.
Uh As we started training. That was one of the first things we
started training in a geology and then we as you got on a crew,
you continued that training. And so I probably had a master's degree in geology
when I when I went to the Moon, but no degree. But that's
how much training I'd had. The rocks were, as I said earlier,
the rocks were different than the geologists had studied from a photo standpoint. Uh
and uh. So we started describing these rocks that were not what they thought
they would be, and I think we can fused them for a while and
maybe they even thought, well, we've wasted six years training on these dummies.
They not even telling us what's right. But then they got they caught
on that this is really unique and we hadn't seen any rocks like this,
so they got very excited about it. And then we modified our travers's some
to make sure we got the widest variety of the lunar Higland rocks that we
could find, and I think we did a really good job. So they
were pleased when we got back way back up just a little bit. And
ask you about a couple of things before you got to the moon. First
of all, for most of us who will never know what it's like,
describe blast off. Oh, okay, liftoff in the Saturn five was a
tremendous experience. It wasn't loud. The sound went sideways up to the spacecraft
and we were up on the top of a three hundred and sixty foot tall
vehicle and the only thing I can remember was a vibration. You got four
engines as five engines at the bottom pushing with seven and a half million pounds
of thrust, and the four on the circumference they wiggle to control the trajectory,
and that wiggling down there comes through this aluminum structure, shaking like sideways,
taking your sideways from side to side, and we're strapped in real tight,
but you can feel the vibration and if you look at it, it
was a high frequency, not as high a Space Shuttle, but really high
frequency. And it was a good amplitude. And to be honest, I
got a little nervous. I didn't remember people telling me it was supposed to
shake this hard, but I was holding on and John Young was saying,
we go. He'd flown the Saturn before, and we'll go, and Mission
control says, you go. And for the first two minutes and forty one
seconds was first stage on our flight. That vibration never stopped and it was
always the same, but not any pogo, but just side to side.
And that's really the only thing I remember from the ascent was that vibration on
the first stage and about three and a half minutes I have to lift off
where now in the second stage they jettisoned the cover over the wooden windows and
you can see outside for the first time, and that was spectacular. There's
a lantic ocean and then deep blue and then the blue of the the atmosphere
that fades into the white, and then in the top of the window was
the blackness of space. It was life transforming. Really was incredible, and
the G level wasn't so bad. And I found out later that my excitement
on liftoff was one hundred and forty four beats per second my heart as I
was, I was really ready to go. John Young his was seventy,
so he was the cool one on the flight. But that's the only thing
I can remember, is just a vibration. Now we talked about the drama
of the orbit and the landing on Apollo eleven. You had your own challenges
in lunar orbit that threatened the potential landing what was the problem and how did
you resolve it. The problem occurred about an hour before we were scheduled to
land. We were on the backside of the Moon, out of contact with
Earth and the command module. We ran a orbit that was sixty miles on
the backside and seven miles on the front side, so that we have the
best landing chance. Well, he had to change his orbit on the back
side to sixty miles circle so he'd be in the right position when we if
we had to abort on decent, well, he couldn't. The main engine
was out, and not the ignition of the main engine, but the control
of the main engine. And when he reported this, John Young made the
decision don't burn. And when he said that we weren't going to land on
the next relf, well, I mean, if you heart can sink to
the bottom of your boots and zero gravity hours did and so we now the
landing's no goal. So we come around the back and mission control they were
shocked and and we were down, and so John told they dumped all the
data down and said, well, we'll look at it. Well, we
went around the side, came around again, and now we're coming around to
be four hours behind schedule, and the moon is slowly rotating out from under
us, and so if we get a go, we gotta go over fly
Cross range. They said, we're working on it. So we disappeared around
the back and came around the front and they said, we can't fix it,
but we know what's wrong and this is your work around. So they
gave Ken a procedure and he said, your goal for a burn on the
next rev. And then right before we went lost a signal, they said
you're going for landing, and boy did our hearts eureka, you know,
I mean, I can't explain the excitement we got. So we would go
for landing, and it was the last rev that we could make our aning
site. So six hours behind schedule, we started our decent Manningly's burn went
well and so we didn't worry about that problem anymore, and we started down
and made a successful landing, probably within two hundred yards of where we intended
to land. So John did a great job. You mentioned the amazing samples
that you were able to find, different perhaps than what was originally expected.
But how did you know when you had everything you needed to bring home?
Well, we just picked up I tease everybody, we just picked up one
of every color, and that's not true. But you you you could tell
the difference in some of the rocks. And we had objectives to pick up
not only rocks, but to pick up soil samples. And everywhere we stopped
it was it was get get a rock from here, get a soil sample
from here, and which you were picked up a rock, you just you
just looked at it, and uh, you could tell it was brech You're
mostly brecheous, which are fragments of rock in a matrix, and the matrix
had crystals very minute. Uh, but you could see it. And so
we were picking up what not only what they told us, but also what
we saw and described. And with all of the other samples that we were
collecting, we got a great suite of rocks from the lunar Hollis and were
Signis were very pleased when we got back. Now you're obviously very busy with
that work, but there had to be points where you're just stopping for a
moment, thinking, I am on the moon. Well that happened right away
after we landed. You know, we were him on the moon. I'm
on the moon, and you couldn't. You couldn't, could hardly believe it
because we were six hours late. Now we're here and man and lunar modules
working great, and we're going to pen seventy two hours on the surface and
uh, so we were very excited about it. And uh they changed the
flight plan on us, and so instead of going outside for the first excursion,
we took off our suits and they said, go to sleep for eight
hours. Well I was a little hard. You know, four five hours
after you landed on the moon, somebody says go to sleep. Well,
uh, that didn't work very well. But I finally got about four hours
sleep after taking a sleeping pill, and so we got out and uh,
and that then it really hit me. I'm on the moon. I'm on
the moon. And the excitement, the wonder, the thrilled, the adventure
of it all, and it's buzzolder described. It was this magnificent desolation,
and you kept thinking, nobody's ever been here before, my first that my
footstep is the first time it's been a footstep in that spot. And so
that wander never left. Everywhere you went you saw something different. You sold
detail the photographs that we had studied of our landing site only had resolution to
forty five feet, so ob PUCs less than forty five feet you couldn't see
in these photographs, but when you got there, you could see little tiny
pebbles, and so there were a lot of craters, there were a lot
of boulders. There were a lot of things like that scattered around our landing
site that we didn't even know we're there. And it was a lot more
rolling and rougher train because the car was bouncing through these little craters and over
these little rocks and stuff like that. So it was three days of wonder,
if you will, an excitement. I assume you already know this,
but you know that every little kid watched you guys drive around the moon those
moon cars and wanted to be you. Right. Yeah, Well John drove,
he had to really focus on the area ahead of him. I was
the navigator and a travel guide, if you will, because without a without
a as you bounce across the moon driving Dan Tona's going like this, so
you don't have any TV. And so I'm describing the what we're seeing so
well, only right Houston, I and every fifty meters I'd take a picture
and I see this there, and I see that, and so I'm navigating
for John, and he's taking my instructions and getting us down to Point A
or plump Crater or whatever we were going to. And U so I just
kept talking. It was fascinating terrain that we were going by, and I
wanted them to understand just from the pictures and for what I was describing.
You tend to overestimate the number of rocks on the surface. You know,
you were saying forty, but you look back later and you count the rocks
and it wasn't nearly that high. But I mean, that's the excitement that
comes in and the enthusiasm and the extravagance. I guess a few potholes along
the way, Yeah, yeah, we did. We got lost a lost
staring. We lost a fender on the backside, on the back of the
rover. That turned out to be a real problem because the moon dust is
very very fine, like powder, and so as the wheels, the fenders
blocked the dust from flying up over you. But without a fender, the
dust would from the right rear fender would come down and rain down on us,
and our suits got filthy and you couldn't brush it. Off the lunar
dust which just get into the fabric, and it turned out to be a
real problem for some of the equipment we had on the rover, but the
connectors were We were worried about our connectors. But we when we took off
our suits and started refreshing the suits for the next DVA, we could clean
that real well. You just couldn't brush the dust off the suit. Just
a couple of minutes left in our time together, sir, you left a
couple of things behind on the moon? Ye? What those were? And
why? I left two objects onto the Moon that were personal and nineteen seventy
two was the twenty fifth anniversary the United States Air Force. It was formed
in nineteen forty seven. I was the only astronaut Air Force officer going to
the Moon that year. So I had this idea, let's say, happy
birthday Air Force or happy anniversary, and so I got in contact with the
Pentagon in some way. I don't remember how I did it, but anyway,
the Air Force said that's a good idea. So they minted two special
coins about the size of a silver dollar that commemorated the twenty fifth anniversary of
the Air Force and I left one on the moon. I dropped one on
the moon and took a picture of that. Another one I brought back.
It's now on display at the Air Force Museum and right Patterson Air Force Base,
Ohio. And the other was an idea that I had to include my
family, and we tried. We trained in Florida, but families all lived
in Houston, so we were gone a lot. So to get my kids
excited about what dad was doing, I said, boys, y'all want to
go to the Moon with me? Yeah, Dad, that'd be great.
And so I said, well, of course you can't really join me on
the spacecraft, but let's take a picture of our family. So I had
a little snapshot of my family and got permission to take it and leave it
on the moon. And so the last thing I did was to take this
picture out of my pocket and drop it on the Moon, and took a
picture of the picture, and it's still there. Sall burn up now after
fifty something years. The temperature on the Moon when I dropped that picture was
probably about two hundred degrees fahrenheit, so it was getting hot on the moon.
The higher the sun gets, the hotter the surface gets, and you
can't feel that in your space suit, but you can see the effect of
it when you drop a plastic picture and it starts to curl up almost instantly.
So those are the two things I did. And then we ended up
with the Moon Olympics. We decided to do the Moon Olympics, and and
we're going to do the high jump, and then we're going to do the
broad jump. And down here with all my equipment on, I weighed three
hundred and sixty three pounds up on the Moon sixty pounds, and so I
was in shape then and I could start bouncing and John was bouncing. So
when I bounced and I said, here we go, and I straightened up,
Well, the secret center gravity went backwards and over I went backwards,
and that life supports. If I hit on that life support system and it
breaks, I'm dead like that, So do something. And I had the
thought roll right. So I roll right, and I broke my fall on
my right side and my right hand and right leg and my heart. I
landed on my back and so there's the earth out there and I'm flat on
my back and John runs over and says, that wasn't very smart. Charlie,
and I helped me up, John, and but I'm still alive.
And I had a pressure game and it said normal. We had a remote
control united up here on our suit and the oxygen supply everything was normal.
So he helped me up and and but my heart was pounding, I tell
you, and uh so at then I looked up and a TV camera was
looking right at me, and uh mission control had seemed us stupid stunt,
and uh so that ended the Moon Olympics. I have to say they were
very upset. And uh so we got back inside. John parked the car
and we got back inside. Two hours later we left. Final question,
Sarah, real quick. When you look back at your role throughout the Apollo
program, but also just the opportunity to be on the moon, what are
you most proud of? Two? I think two events. One was,
of course landing on the Moon, being honored being one of twelve that walked
on the Moon, and that had to be the tops of paulo career.
But the second was helping land Lunar Module eleven Neil Armstrong Paulo eleven on the
moon with boz Aldron. That was a great thrill, a great honor for
me. Well, sir, It's an incredible legacy and it's been a true
honor to speak with you today. Thank you so much for being with us
my pleasure service. Thank you very much. Charlie Duke, retired US Air
Force Brigadier general, also a capcom for Apollo ten and Apollo eleven, and
he also served as the lunar module pilot for the Apollo sixteen mission to the
Moon in April of nineteen seventy two. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans
Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans
Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information, please
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