Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbits. Our guest in this edition is
Russell Rusty Schweickart. Captain Schweickart is a US Air Force veteran and a veteran
of the Massachusetts National Guard, serving as a fighter pilot. He also served
as the lunar module pilot on the Apollo nine mission, a mission that was
critically important in preparation for the moon landing that would come just a few months
later. And Captain Shwyckart, thank you very much for being with us,
Sir, welcome. Where were you born and raised there in New Jersey?
I was born in a place called Neptune, New Jersey, on the shore
on the Jersey Shore, and lived in a little fact, it wasn't even
a town. I just lived in a area called Bailey's Corner, dirt road,
that kind of thing when I was born and raised. Was there a
history of military service in your family. My father had been in the army
at some point, I think in World War Two. I don't think he
was I don't know if he was drafted or joined frankly, but he was
in for just a relatively short time. I think in the signal Corps or
something like that. He didn't serve in any war to my knowledge. Why
did you decide to join the Air Force? Well, I mean I as
a kid, I'd always been fascinated by airplanes. Where we lived in New
Jersey on a farm. We were very near Lakehurst Naval Air Station. And
this was you know, basically when I was a young guy growing up,
a young kid boy in those days, it was gender specific. You know.
There were generally Navy fighter planes, but all kinds of fighter planes at
the beginning of World War Two, so they were dog fighting, you know,
over the farm all the time. I mean, so I saw all
kinds of airplanes dog fighting from the time I was probably five or six years
old until World War Two ended in forty five or so. You were fascinated
pretty area. Oh yeah, I knew all the airplanes. You know.
What were you flying when you joined? Well, I mean training was in
my era was T thirty four, I guess, and then the T twenty
eight. Then from T twenty eight I went into jet training with the T
thirty three. Out of basic training, I went from there into the F
eighty six Williams Air Force Base in Arizona. We had F eighty six f's
for training and then on active duty. Well, the last part of training
was in the F one hundred A at that time, and I went on
in active duty to fire Squadron in the Philippine Islands and we were flying F
one hundreds, F one hundred d's and the two seater the F as well.
And then in the Air Guard, I went back to a really good
airplane, which was the F eighty six h best airplane fireplane built. What
sort of assignments did you have or deployments of any kind? Well, out
of the Philippine Island was stationed at Clark Field in the Philippine Islands, and
we had the F eighty six, I mean, the F one hundred D
was a nuclear capable. We carried nukes. Was our mission fighter bomber type
work, and we stood alert not down in the Philippines, but our squadron
would deploy up to Taiwan. We had a couple of different bases up there,
but in general we stood nuclear alert tainan Air base on Taiwan, and
that was you know, we would typically be there for each of the sub
units out of the squadron would be up that would deploy up there like one
week out of every four or something like that. Three weeks out of every
four we'd be back home at Clark, but we would deploy up there and
the planes would be sitting there at the end of the runway, and we'd,
you know, every other every third or fourth day, we'd have a
day off in town, but most of the time we were sleeping out at
the end of the runway waiting for the you know, the whistle to blow
and the code words to come down the telephone, and off we'd go and
you know, bomb somebody. How did you get the opportunity to pursue astronaut
training? How did that opportunity present itself to you or how did you pursue
it? Well? After I finished my active duty in the Air Force in
nineteen sixty, I went back to graduate school at MIT, but in order
to make enough money to keep the family going, I also enlisted in the
Mass Air Guard, and so I was flying fighter planes even though I was
out of the air active duty Air Force. And I had always been interested
in aircraft, as I had already mentioned. And anytime you're a fighter pilot,
I mean, you want to go faster, and you want to go
higher, you go faster, and you go higher. Eventually you get into
space. Right. And of course again my education was aeronautical engineering in undergraduate
but when I got out of the Air Force and went back to graduate school
at MIT, by that time the department had shifted to the Department of Aeronautics
and Astronautics because we had launched the first satellites and the first humans actually while
I was active duty in the Air Force, and so it was very natural
that I my my interest and I hadn't mentioned yet, but I'd also been
interested not only in the sort of engineering and physical part of being a fighter
pilot, but also in astronomy, and so you know, again becoming an
astronomical object myself was a natural inclination. And when a president says he wants
to get to the Moon in the next decade, that that was a clarion
call. When Kennedy, you know, made the announcement of the demand Space
program and the goal of getting to the Moon, I mean, that was
that was a major charge in my life and a commitment that you know,
I was joined by other people, but that was a very serious commitment that
dealt not only with my ambition but also with a fundamental goal of the nation,
largely out of having been embarrassed by the Soviet Union getting into space first.
So what criteria were they looking for? How did they select the best
of the best from the people they brought in for training. Well, you
know, the whole selection process has morphed over the years. In the early
days, and we were in the third group, the third selection of astronauts
that was made in nineteen well at the end of sixty two, in the
beginning of sixty three. And in that third selection you became an astronaut.
Later on you became an astronaut candidate, and you went through a sort of
filtering process inside an ascad before you became an actual astronaut. But in the
early days, if you were selected, you were an astronaut. You were
going to fly. It was only a matter of how soon mission and that
kind of thing. So again, while flying both on weekends when I was
in graduate school, but also our guard outfit was activated when the Berlin Wall
went up by President Kennedy, and so all of the over both the graduate
work and when I was flying in Europe on active duty from the recall.
That was the same period that Alan Shephard flew. The Mercury guys were selected
while I was in active duty, first the first time before I came back
to graduate school, but then after I came back to graduate school, Shepherd
flew. The Mercury program was moving along, and when I was deployed to
Europe in the Airguard the second time on active duty, John Glenn had flown.
I was tracking all of that, of course, and it was a
question how can I get to be one? And it was actually John Glenn's
flight, and I was reading about it the morning after he flew at the
base cafeteria while drinking my morning coffee and reading the article, I sort of
went off, I think, subconsciously, just putting myself in his place and
the description that was being given of his experience, and I sort of came
too at some point and realized my coffee was cold, and I didn't know
how long I had been off kind of doing this, but I thought,
Wow, that was an interesting experience. If I really care about it that
much, I should commit to it. I do care about it that much,
I'm going to be one. And that was literally the first time in
my life when I had decided I really want to do something. Up until
a time, it was sort of whatever looks most interesting at the moment,
you know, And that's how he got to mit and why I went into
aeronautics and astronautics. But that was the moment when I said I want to
do this, and so from that moment on I was in graduate school,
of course, and getting my master's degree in aeronautics astronautics at that time,
and that became a goal. In nineteen probably nineteen sixty two, well when
John Glenn flew. That's US Air Force veteran turned NASA astronaut Rusty Schweikert,
the Lunar Module commander on Apollo nine, which was a critical mission, setting
the stage for the Apollo eleven moon landing just a few months later. Still
a haad, Schweikert takes us through his historic mission, but up next we'll
learn more about his training and how the shocking deaths of the Apollo one crew
impacted the space program. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans Chronicles. This
is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest this week is US Air
Force and Massachusetts Air National Guard veteran Rusty Schweikert. He later became a NASA
astronaut, serving as Lunar Module Commander on Apollo nine. Up next, we'll
discuss the training Schweikert went through as part of the Apollo program, and then
he takes us into the tragic loss of three American heroes in the Apollo one
disaster. Well, when, again, these things have morphed a bit over
time, but at that time when we went in, all of us came
from many different backgrounds. Some of us were in science and in educating you
had advanced degrees in the science or whatever. Other people came from the test
pilot school or things of that kind, so that there was a mix of
backgrounds. And the first thing that NASA did was to conduct a kind of
basic training which essentially mainly academic, but not entirely, which brought all of
these people to a common goal. So that even though the guys who were
test pilots didn't become the equivalent of a master's degree or a PhD if they
were graduate school somewhere, Nor did my experience in graduate school suddenly make me
the training at NASA make me a test pilot. Nevertheless, it brought us
all to a sort of basic minimum level of common experience and education. We
all also went through survival training at that time. That was another part of
the initial training that lasted for probably half a year to three quarters of a
year after we were selected as astronauts. And after that basic training period,
each of us took some kind of a specialty, some people the spacesuit,
other people controls and displays it would be in our future spacecraft. In my
case, one of the first things I did again coming out of MIT,
and in particular the laboratory I worked in was related to the MIT at that
time Instrumentation Lab, later in the Draper Lab, which developed the whole guidance
and navigation system for the Lunar module and the Apollo Command module. And so
because of my background at MIT, my assignment, one of my assignments at
that time was guidance and the guidance and navigation systems for Apollo. So each
of us had a different type of background or specialty that we oversaw. But
that was one of the things I did. Right after the basic training.
You were part of the backup crew for Apollo one, which of course ended
tragically in January of nineteen sixty seven. Gus Grissom, Roger chafe and Ed
White lost their lives. What can you tell us about that day and what
that was like to be so near that. There was a great deal of
fluidity in the program and our crew, which was Jim mcdibbott, Dave Scott,
and myself were identified as a crew and we were initially assigned as the
backup crew for the first Apollo mission, the first man to Pollo mission,
and the crew for that mission was of course Gus Grissom, Ed White and
Roger Chaffee, and we were all friends. We lived near each other,
you know, in the Houston area, and that was that was great,
and it was the first time when Gus and I really got to like one
another. He'd seen me as kind of of a nerd, you know,
up until that time, and Gus was an interesting, rather gruff sort of
guy. But Gus and I got to be great friends at the time,
and we worked very closely with them. But we were also seen sort of
as the first crew that would probably fly the lunar module. We were back
up to the first crew, but it was sort of understood that we would
have the first lunar module mission then because of various changes that are too complex
to go into. It turned out that the second the guys who were going
to fly the second mission, which is Wally Sharrah and his crew, became
the backup crew to the first mission, and Jim mcdivott our crew moved to
the third flight, which was going to be the first flight of the lunar
module. And so that's how so we actually made that shift away from being
the backup crew for the first flight to being the prime crew on the third
mission. Probably you'd have to look it up, probably four months before the
fire on the pad that ended up killing the Gussen and his crew. So
we were on our own, had our own mission at that time. We
were the prime crew on the third mission. And I can remember I was
literally in Los Angeles doing some work with Rockwell or what was North American Aviation
became Rockwell, the prime contractor on the Command module, and I was literally
driving south on Sepulvita Boulevard for those who are familiar with the La area,
right before it goes under the runways at LAX and I was driving my little
car. I don't know, it's headed toward the hotel or something, but
I can remember hearing on the radio that this big announcement that the first Apollo
crew had been killed in a fire on the pad at Cape Kennedy, and
I can remember the shock of hearing that, and just before I went underneath
the runways, I pulled off to the right on Supulvita Boulevard and I just
sat there with my hands on the steering wheel, listening to the radio and
being totally in shock. I think I probably sat there for half an hour
before I could put the car back in gear and continue with the day.
I mean, it was an incredible and instantaneous shock that I heard being announced
to the public. What kind of shock waves did that send through the Apollo
system? And then did it kind of make you not reassess what you wanted
to do, but think differently about what you're about to do. I think
my response, and I perhaps we always think everybody's response is like our own,
but I think the primary response that most of the guys had was my
God, How could we not have anticipated that tragedy. I mean, the
design of the command module hatch at that time was such that we call it
the Block one command module. There was going to be a Block two.
We all knew that it had different character characteristics, and the design difference between
the Block one and Block two in terms of the command module hatch was that
because you have a you know, when you're in space with a vacuum outside,
you want the pressure of the inside to spacecraft to help hold the hatch
clothes, and so logically the design was such that there was an outer hatch
and an inner hatch, and that inner hatch was held against the seal around
the open hatch by the pressure inside the spacecraft. It was sort of a
safeguard actually seen as a safety feature, so that to open up the hatch
you had to pull in the inner hatch first and then open up the outer
hatch outward. But the terrible reality was that on the on the pad during
the testing, which was of course going on on Apollo one at the time,
because of a fire inside started inside, the pressure went up and that
held that inner hatch close and the guys couldn't open it. So this safety
feature actually killed the guys, you know, And and the question came up,
how could we not have understood that that was a possibility, you know,
And with the enriched atmosphere one hundred percent during the test that we needed
one hundred percent in flight, So you know, you tested one hundred percent
one hundred percent oxygen and a hatch that was held against the seal and you
couldn't pull that in that that was a killer, And it was just a
shock to realize that we had not understood and understood the terrible consequence of a
simple any kind of a fire, anything that would raise the pressure inside of
the spacecraft during testing. So that was the main thing. Of course.
The next thing was, my god, here we are. I guess that
was what sixty eight coming right up on the on the end of the decade,
and Kennedy's commitment to get to the moon and return person from the Moon
by the end of the decade was racing up on us. And the question
is, my god, are we going to miss that goal because of this?
Or can we get this repaired and fixed and redesigned and move on with
it and still meet that goal. So that was the second issue. But
the shock of those three guys being killed by that design and not really having
paid proper attention to safety was a real shock to everybody, and not just
to us as the crew. It didn't change anybody's sense I mean, you
know, when you're a fighter, pilot or survey anywhere in the military,
you know you can die. That's what the military is air for. The
military is there to defend the country. That means against enemies who are trying
to kill you. Right, you're going to trying to kill them, that's
the deal. And even without enemies killing you, you know, airplanes crash,
you're doing eye performance stuff, which is fundamentally risky by as basic nature.
It's part of the deal. We accept it. The public, you
know, they might expect people in the military to die, but people didn't
necessarily think about people in the space program dying. We did. It was
part of what you you know, that was the probability. It was a
matter of probabilities. So it didn't affect anybody's sense of wanting to be there
or that kind of thing. I can't say that in any absolute way.
As a matter of fact, I can tell we don't need to talk about
it. But I can think of one circumstance where I think one of the
guys did end up rethinking his presence in the program partly as a result of
that. But that was an exception. By and large. The main thinking
after the shock of the accident, per se was over. The main issue
was we got to meet that goal nineteen seventy Kennedy's commitment, and everybody just
put their shoulder to the wheel and worked that much harder. When we come
back, Captain Rusty Schweikert takes us along on Apollo nine, his testing of
the lunar module and much more, including his powerful moment looking back at the
Earth. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans
Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest this week is US Air Force and
Massachusetts Air National Guard veteran Rusty Schweikert. He then became a NASA astronaut and
served as Lunar Module commander on the Apollo nine mission, just months before the
historic moonlanding with Apollo eleven. Now it's time for the mission, as Captain
Schweikert walks us through his time and space as part of Apollo nine. Well,
the primary purpose of the mission really was that it was the initial flight
of the lunar module. We would fly it in Earth orbit because for the
first test flight you want to check out as much as you can, but
you don't want to do unnecessary risks, so you don't want to do the
first flight out at the Moon. So the mission was designed to fly ten
days in Earth orbit and we would test everything about the lunar module that could
be tested in Earth orbit. But there were a few things like, for
example, the most obvious thing the landing radar. For example, you couldn't
test that flying in orbit around the Earth. So there were some things that
were left for an initial checkout on Apollo ten before the first planned landing on
Apollo eleven. But everything about the fundamental characteristics of the spacecraft itself, maneuvering
all the engine, everything, ninety percent of the functionality of the lunar module
could be tested in Earth orbit and that was the primary set of objectives.
But right behind that was the fact that the guys would be going out on
the surface of the Moon collecting rocks and whatnot, and so we had The
Apollo suit was different from the earlier Gemini suits, Thank Heaven, because a
Gemini suit was really terrible and it created a lot of problems with the EVA
actra hicul or activity. But the Apollo suit was a new design which enabled
you to through convolutes at the major joints, the knees and the shoulders and
the elbows, far more maneuverable suit. And I was the first one to
do an EVA using the new Apollo suit, and that was a secondary objective,
but it was right behind the primary objective of the tests, testing and
validation of the lunar module itself. So that was that was a great privilege
for me to be, you know, testing both of them. Let's talk
about each of those briefly in terms of the module. How did it perform
and what if any tweaks were necessary? Well, it performed very very well.
I'm just trying to think, as you're asking the question, whether there
were any tweaks in the sense of anything going wrong during our mission that was
corrected for Pollow ten or for that matter of Pollow eleven. I mean,
certainly, the software that we had within the Apollo guidance computer and the backup
computers was did not contain all of the lunar landing software. So we had
an earlier version of the software where but that was not corrections from problems that
we had. It was simply the evolution which would enable you to in fact
add landing on the surface to what could be done. I don't think anything
that we learned change anything we planned. I think every pretty much everything that
we did on Apollo nine validated what we were planning and training for on the
subsequent landing missions. There are some things people might be interested in. I
don't know how much you want to go off into things of this kind,
but for example, in the rendezvous, the whole set of sequential procedures that
you take in a rendezvous, and that's true whether you're rendezvousing around the Earth
or whether you're rendezvousting with something around the Moon, And of course that's what
you're doing when you come up off the Moon, you know, the command
module was still an orbit and you've got a rendezvous with it to get in
come back home with a heat shield, you know. But a fundamental difference
is that you're doing these same maneuvers in a sense, at the same place,
if you will, around an orbit or several orbits. So the geometry
is the same in a way where you're making these different maneuvers. But around
the Earth it takes you ninety minutes to go around, whereas around the Moon
it takes you two hours to go around all right. So the fact of
the matter is that these things that you have to do come closer together around
the Earth than around the Moon. And in addition to that, let me
say that when you're simulating these things that you have to do on the ground
in training, those nasty guys out there on the control panel are making things
fail all the time. And so you're flying a rendezvous or a landing for
that matter, but we're mainly doing rendezvous. So you're flying a rendezvous in
docking, and things are going wrong all the time. So anytime in training
that you're flying a rendezvous, not only are they happening faster around the Earth
in our mission than they would around the moon. Okay, but everything's going
wrong. So here we are. You're always fighting, you know, the
loss of this valve or that engine or whatever. And you go through this
training and you can almost always make a successful rendezvous and docking, you know,
in spite of everything going wrong. So there mcdivott and I are flying
in Apollo nine and we're into rendezvous, you know, after doing our maneuver
going back one hundred miles in order and then coming into rendezvous as if we
came up off the Moon simulating that, and we're part way through the rendezvous
and we're sort of standing there side by side. Jim's over here, and
we're kind of looking at each other and saying, why do we have all
this time? And the answer is because nobody's making things fail, you know,
And so we're having and then the guys going around the Moon doing the
rendezvous or they have even more time to do it because it takes two hours
for an orbit instead of an hour and a half. So it was really
funny to think about these things, the difference between training and the reality.
The reality was almost always easier than the training, and which is the way
it should be, right, That's exactly the way you want to Yes,
So and let's talk about the spacewalk for a moment of the testing of the
space As you already mentioned, I've also read how you were kind of mesmerized
for a bit while you're out there looking back at the Earth. Talk about
that moment a little bit. Yeah, I mean, first of all,
let me let me just talk about the planned EVA. I mean, I
again, I was testing for the first time the new Apollo suit, and
so the primary objective of the EVA, which was planned to be about two
hours. Was in fact to test the suit itself. That was the main
issue, and the backpack which I had on which made me of course independent
of the spacecraft for the first time. All Eva's up until that time,
all through Gemini you had umbilicals hoses which connected you to the environmental control system
inside the spacecraft, and so that's an umbilical. But on Apollo I didn't
have an umbilical. I had just a simple tether, a rope that was
all okay, and the backpack provided my life support, and so I was
an in dependent spacecraft really uh, And all it was connecting me was was
was a simple tether, which was a pain in the butt. By the
way. Let me let me just say the safety tether created hazards, right
because there's always flopping around and hook over a antenna or over a thruster or
something. You have to keep caring for the for the damn tether. But
in any event, so the objective was to go outside test the backpack and
the suit. But in that process, because we were the next day we
were going to be going out and separating the two spacecraft one hundred miles and
coming back in and doing a rendezvous to test the rendezvous procedures and the docking.
The docking mechanism was a Rube Goldberg device, I mean an extremely complicated,
complicated device, a funnel which was a drogue with a hole in the
middle and a probe which went into it, and it had all kinds of
moving parts and springs and pressurization and little hooks. Amuse amazing device that had
ever worked. Actually it never failed, but it was just amazing that it
did. But flying at the first time, we recognized that that was a
prime source of problems, that that complex mechanism might not work, but we
would have to get back into the command module or we couldn't come home and
re enter. It survived. So another objective during my EVA was to externally
transfer from the lunar module out the front door and across a set of handrails
to get into the command module so that we could come home in case that
tunnel was screwed up or the probe and drogue messed up. So everything worked
fine the first part of the EVA, and I'm just starting that traverse up
the front of the lunar module to get over to the command module and Dave
Scott over in the command module has got a movie camera. We didn't have
any TV cameras in those days, all right, so we had a movie
camera. And the film camera jammed after I had gotten maybe five feet up
the front of the handrail, up the front of the lunar module, and
Dave says, oops, the camera just jammed. And Jim mcdibbott says,
okay, Rusty stop, Dave. I'm going to give you five minutes to
fix it. That's all time we can afford. Rusty. Stay right there,
ay, ay, sir, Nothing like being unemployed in space. It
was like, right, Jim, I'm not going to go anywhere. So
instead of holding on to the handrail like it was vertical in a sense,
I let go in my right hand. First of all, in my head,
I'm saying, okay, this five minutes is for me. Okay,
I'm not going to start thinking about what comes next. I'm going to take
these five minutes to really be here. So I let go with my right
hand, just swung around with the left hand, and I mean, here
is the Earth, the Sun up there, the Earth over here, and
I'm looking at the at the Earth horizon, you know, it's just absolutely
spectacular and it's completely quiet, Nick, I don't know what mcdivott was doing.
Dave Scott was trying to fix the camera, and I'm just gaga looking
around and mcdivott was doing whatever he was doing. The radios only work when
you're talking, when somebody's talking, so the radio's totally shut off. There's
no buzz in your ear. You don't hear anything. The backpack is very
quiet, and so there you are, complete silence, and I'm just looking
around and it's like, let this come in, okay. And I started
to say back in the beginning, you know, I have a sort of
philosophical bent anyway, and so historically, you know, I was well aware
in a sort of academic way of the historic nature of what we're doing.
But unexpected to me as I'm just swinging around and letting all this come in.
My job I saw then was to be a human sponge to just absorb
it. I wasn't going to try to analyg just just let it come in
process later, you know. So I'm just look taking this in and all
these questions start just flooding in. You know, how did you get here,
why are you here? What is what does this mean? What's what's
going on? And not in the sense of out here on a Saturn five
you know, I mean, that's not the deal. I'm here, and
this wasn't what I thought right then it was the questions came in. It
took me like five years afterward to really go through and think about the answers
to these things. But I mean, I'm here because of this incredible marriage
between humanity and our machines, which has allowed us to extend our capability as
humans to explore, which is somehow built into us. I'm really here as
a representative of all of humanity, in fact, all of earth life on
this frontier as we're beginning to move out into the cosmos. And this is
not just the American taxpayers, this is life, This is everybody simply here
on this frontier as the sensing element of humanity, of life, of Earth
life moving out. Five minutes is up. Couldn't fix the camera, Okay,
Russy, you know we got to get back in now, Okay,
to move up the handrail quickly, go back in the door, et cetera.
Eva is over back to reality. That's what it was. What was
the reentry like re entry is really fun. And in Apollo and again also
Gemini and Mercury before it, you know, you got this blunt, gum
drop shaped thing that you're in re entering, and you got to have the
blunt end forward, not the pointy end forward. Right, So you're going
backward, and because of the you want a bit of lift. I mean,
the center of gravity isn't exactly on the center line, and because the
center of gravity is displaced, the spacecraft is tilted a little bit and that
gives a little bit of lift as you're going in, So you want to
have that lift vector up. Well, that happened to me. Your heads
are down, so you're not only going in backward, but you're also going
in upside down right, and the windows are in front of you, and
you know, your heat shield behind you is really really hot to the point
where it's boiling off, and it's boiling off through a very very thin atmosphere,
and your speed is such that you are ionizing that vapor of your heat
shield burning off. And so here you are, and you're also rotating as
you're moving the lift vector around to get where you want to be on so
as you're looking backward, you're seeing your heat shield boil off and fluoresce because
it's ionized, and you're going backward through a neon colorful orange and white,
blue green tube, you know. So you're looking up a neon tube that
you just created, which is your heat shield, you know. But you
don't get hot because there's enough of it there. But anyway, it's a
very interesting. So the heat pulse comes, by the way earlier than the
maximum G. Okay, the deceleration peak occurs considerably after the heat peak.
So the pretty show is pretty much over. And now you're beginning to feel
pressure, you know, from the re entry and the drag, and you're
the G forces are going up and up and up. And I remember I
looked over at mcdimmitt and I said, how many g's we got now,
Jim. Jim looks up at the G meter and he says zero point two.
I said, what you know? I got? It feels like ten.
Right, So anyway, and everything everything works, I mean, the
the amazing thing about the reentry is that there are a whole series of things
that have to happen in sequence. Any one of which that doesn't happen,
you're dead, right, And so you're sort of counting off. You know,
there's the fifth one from the last it worked yay, or the fourth
one worked, it's the second one gonna work yeah, And finally the last
thing happens, you know, the parachutes come out, and it's like,
yes, we're gonna make it. So it's it's a very interesting time.
And now again each vehicle is different, and so the show shuttle comes in
belly first and the view is completely different, et cetera, et cetera.
So they're all unique. But it was a pretty exciting and fascinating experience to
re enter. You're not I mean, I shouldn't speak for everybody, but
you know, generally speaking, you're not fearful. You're not You've done enough
training. You know that you're looking at the gaugees, you're believe in what
you're seeing, you know, and everything's going right. But it's really pretty
spectacular. Just a few months later, Mansett's Foot on the Moon July of
nineteen sixty nine probably the most globally marveled that event, not only of that
time, but maybe ever. What's it like to know, as you're watching
that that you've been a major contributor to that process? Again, I think
people's reactions are unique to them. Obviously a lot of commonality, but I
think all of us were very aware, very much aware that we were a
privileged, incredibly privileged to take part in a truly historic event. I do
with no question about that. Again, as I say, individuals react differently
and put it in a different context. The context that I see now is
a bit different and larger than it was right after and during the events.
In some ways, While that first landing on the Moon was truly unique and
absolutely the epitome, my own personal sense, without taking anything away from Apollo
eleven, was that Apollo eight was really the more historically significant moment in the
sense that the Apollo eight crew were the first who literally had moved out the
birth canal of Mother Earth out into the cosmos. They were the first participants
actively in what I have come to call cosmic birth, and they looked back
from around the Moon and saw the Earth from outside its gravitational sphere of influence.
They are the first people who represented Earth life moving out from the birthplace
of life in our little corner of the universe. And that is what Apollo
was on all about, and in my mind, that's the uniqueness of Apollo
eight. Apollo eleven, of course represented the accomplishment of the of the Kennedy
goal, which was incredible. And by the way, even in the Soviet
Union, the people would come up. I would be there, and years
afterward people would come up, and I knew people Americans who were there at
the time of the landing in nineteen sixty nine, and the Soviet people would
come up. Everybody was excited. People in Africa were excited. I mean
people who didn't even have the capability to write their names, to have a
language, to have a written language where you would tell them and they would
be excited. Captain Twikart, I can't thank you enough for your time today.
It's been a true privilege speaking with you, and I thank you beyond
words for your service and your courage for our nation. Thank you, You're
very welcome. That's United States Air Force veteran as well as the veteran of
the massive chuse It's National Guard, Russell Rusty Schweikert served as a fighter pilot.
He also served as a lunar module pilot and did the first Apollo spacewalk
on the Apollo nine mission, A mission that was critically important in preparation for
the moonlanding. It would come just a few months later. I'm Greg Corumbus
and 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
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