Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Don Isles. I worked on the software for
Speaker 1: the Luna module when it landed on the Moon. You're
Speaker 1: listening to the Doctor Sky Experience.
Speaker 2: And welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Doctor Sky Experience,
Speaker 2: heard exclusively here on Talk Radio seventy seven WABC in
Speaker 2: New York. Our producer for the Doctor Sky Experience is
Speaker 2: doctor d Richard Dugan. The Doctor Sky Experience talks with
Speaker 2: great guests from the realms of astronomy, space, aviation, weather
Speaker 2: and celebrity guests in the mix. And how about common
Speaker 2: sense interviews about our American heritage and a great guest,
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, if you're big fan of the Apollo
Speaker 2: missions of the nineteen sixties and seventies, and who wasn't.
Speaker 2: As we just celebrated the fifty third anniversary of the
Speaker 2: Apollo eleven landing on the Moon, that part in history
Speaker 2: is what we're going to be talking about today with
Speaker 2: an author and a person who knows so much about
Speaker 2: how to land an Apollo lunar module and the surface
Speaker 2: of the Moon. His name is Don Isles. His book
Speaker 2: Sunburst and Luminary and Apollo Memoir, A little bit of
Speaker 2: a brief outline about our guest and the book. It
Speaker 2: opens the curtain on a complex story never before told
Speaker 2: from the inside. The creation the onboard software for the
Speaker 2: Apollo spacecraft. Every word is written by the author himself
Speaker 2: and his own fluent and unfiltered voice. Pressure to college,
Speaker 2: he's assigned to program the lunar descent, the complex maneuver.
Speaker 2: At the apex of the mission, his code is running
Speaker 2: and the lunar module's computer as Neil Armstrong and Buzz
Speaker 2: Aldrin descend the lunar surface. On Apollo eleven, he works
Speaker 2: directly with astronauts to perfect techniques for landing more accurately.
Speaker 2: He explores Houston and at Cape Canaveral, he flies lunar
Speaker 2: landings in NASA's best limbs simulator. On Apollo fourteen, he
Speaker 2: experiences a taste of fame when he finds a timely
Speaker 2: answer for a problem that could spoil Alan Shepherd's mission.
Speaker 2: With that, we'd like to welcome Don Isles to the
Speaker 2: Doctor Sky Experience. Sir, how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm very well, thank you very much. Happy to be
Speaker 1: with you today.
Speaker 2: Well, happy to be with you, sir. I'm so fascinated.
Speaker 2: As a young boy I was thirteen years young when
Speaker 2: they Apollo eleven landed on the Moon. And little did
Speaker 2: I know that one day I'd be talking to a
Speaker 2: man who he and his team were so much responsible
Speaker 2: for that safe landing on the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 2: Let's start off with your background and your bio. Let's
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about how you got started in
Speaker 2: this whole area, which I'm going to say respectfully as coders.
Speaker 2: I hope that's a good way to describe your profession
Speaker 2: at that time. How'd you get started?
Speaker 1: Don We didn't call it coders at the time. We
Speaker 1: called ourselves software engineers or something computer scientists. I got
Speaker 1: started because while searching for a job after graduation, I
Speaker 1: had the good luck to fan my way into a
Speaker 1: sort of a back road behind the railroad track behind
Speaker 1: MIT where the MIT Instrumentation Lab had its head quarters.
Speaker 1: And I walked in and asked for a job, and
Speaker 1: they gave it to me.
Speaker 2: Wow, kind of by luck. That's interesting. In the world
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty six was kind of a much different
Speaker 2: world than it is today. But coming straight out of
Speaker 2: Boston University, this must have been an exciting time and
Speaker 2: great thanks, I guess goes to who John McCarthy and
Speaker 2: then George Cherry and so many others that help you
Speaker 2: get that job. And it's amazing because you were saying
Speaker 2: in your book that there was kind of not a
Speaker 2: good spate of success in the job interviews that you
Speaker 2: were getting, so you kind of just walked in here
Speaker 2: and lo and behold. The rest is what the history
Speaker 2: of what we're going to talk about in this interview.
Speaker 1: Well, the key is whether the place you walk into
Speaker 1: is hiring. And at that time they felt the need
Speaker 1: to staff up quickly because a new phase was the beginning.
Speaker 1: The software for the lunar module had to be written.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. And describing your salary there, I've loved did
Speaker 2: a little bit of research on you, as every host
Speaker 2: should do. You were paid approximately six hundred and forty
Speaker 2: dollars a month in those days. Was that considered to
Speaker 2: be in those days a little bit of money or
Speaker 2: was that considered to be fairly decent for the time.
Speaker 1: It was certainly not a princely strategy, but by the
Speaker 1: ground rule that you should be able to afford your
Speaker 1: housing your rental on one quarter of your gross salary,
Speaker 1: it worked well.
Speaker 2: And you also have a great interest see what I
Speaker 2: love about your book, and ladies and gentlemen, in this
Speaker 2: particular book, it's not a man who's just talking about
Speaker 2: code and all technical scientific things. There's some of that
Speaker 2: in the book, which is necessary to explain great achievements
Speaker 2: that he and his team did. But what I liked
Speaker 2: on about your book is you have a human side
Speaker 2: to this book. You describe personal feelings in the time.
Speaker 2: Describe to us for those that weren't around in the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties when you were a young man, describe that
Speaker 2: whole experience then. I mean, things were a lot different
Speaker 2: than they are today. I'd like you to explain to
Speaker 2: the listeners of this audience, just give us the feel
Speaker 2: of the sixties.
Speaker 1: Well, it was it was the counterculture.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The music had changed with rock and roll, sexual morays
Speaker 1: had changed, in part due to the birth control pill.
Speaker 1: There were it was a renewed interest in what we
Speaker 1: now call recreational drugs, in particular pop or grass or marijuana,
Speaker 1: if you will. And it was also, of course the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War and consciousness that came out of that that
Speaker 1: activated people in a hold you way, and all those
Speaker 1: things were going on at once at the time when
Speaker 1: I was entering my twenties and living in the middle
Speaker 1: of the middle of it.
Speaker 2: Yes, a different time. Indeed, as we talk about and
Speaker 2: listen to so many great guests that we have on
Speaker 2: this particular arc ive known as the Doctor Sky Experience.
Speaker 2: And if you're just joining us, ladies and gentlemen, so
Speaker 2: much more to come here on the Doctor Sky Experience again.
Speaker 2: This particular podcast here heard exclusively on talk radio seventy
Speaker 2: seven WABC in New York, and our producer proudly is
Speaker 2: doctor d Richard Dugan John. Describe this because I'm looking
Speaker 2: at the book here, and you've written this book, as
Speaker 2: I said, not just from a humanistic side, but also
Speaker 2: from a technical side, which makes it really good. And
Speaker 2: you have the book, as you know well, over three
Speaker 2: hundred pages. Part one is about learning, Part two, as
Speaker 2: you know so well, is flying, and part three is exploring.
Speaker 2: I want to learn what was it like to be
Speaker 2: in that particular position there as you're working in this
Speaker 2: particular laboratory. Weren't they first starting to work on navigation
Speaker 2: systems like gyroscopes and accelerometers for what conventional military aircraft?
Speaker 2: Was that how they really got their start?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, to some extent that's true. The start of
Speaker 1: inertial guidance system goes back. Systems goes back to the
Speaker 1: early fifties, and it happened in Boston, i should say,
Speaker 1: in Cambridge at Doc Draper's laboratory, which was the MT
Speaker 1: Instrumentation Laboratory, and they first used gyros and accelerometers for
Speaker 1: instrumentation in this sense of strapping them to engines to
Speaker 1: learn things about now to improve the performance of engines.
Speaker 1: During the Second War War, they used some of this
Speaker 1: technology gyros in particular to create a gun sight for
Speaker 1: the Navy that made a tremendous difference the ability of
Speaker 1: surface ships to defend themselves from air attack. And then
Speaker 1: finally after the war they began to apply the principles
Speaker 1: much more generally. And a famous event from the instrument
Speaker 1: teby Instrumentation liaboratories history was in nineteen fifty three when
Speaker 1: the first self contained system was installed in an airplane.
Speaker 1: It turned out that MIT owned a bomber at that time,
Speaker 1: no bombs, I'm pretty sure, but this B twenty nine
Speaker 1: was equipped with the guidance system and flown from Hanscom
Speaker 1: Field near Boston to la and the purpose of the
Speaker 1: flight was first of all to test this system and
Speaker 1: also to take Doc and his team to a conference
Speaker 1: in La where navigation systems were going to be discussed.
Speaker 1: And to make cut the story short, they arrived in
Speaker 1: LA with an error of only ten miles, which was
Speaker 1: a triumph. And at the meeting, DoD Draper, after listening
Speaker 1: to many reasons from other speakers why it could not
Speaker 1: be done yet, came to the front of the room
Speaker 1: and announced that he had just done it. But from
Speaker 1: that system it was a straight line to the Apollo system.
Speaker 1: And as you say, some of the stops along the
Speaker 1: way were military. Many of the components of the Apollo
Speaker 1: inertial sensor, not the computer, but the inertial sensor are
Speaker 1: in common with the early sea launch ballistic missiles.
Speaker 2: Very interesting.
Speaker 1: But it all came to a head an Apollo where
Speaker 1: the human interface had to be added, where the computer
Speaker 1: was added, and it became a much more flexible and
Speaker 1: complete system.
Speaker 2: Well, folks can get a good view and actual pictures
Speaker 2: in this particular book with our special guest Doniles. The
Speaker 2: book entitled Sunburst, Loom and Apollo Memoir. And here I'm
Speaker 2: looking here at page one ninety one, as hopefully listeners
Speaker 2: out there will get a good copy of this book
Speaker 2: wherever copies of this book are sold, which is just
Speaker 2: about everywhere, including Amazon. You see Doc Draper and the
Speaker 2: navigation simulator on the roof of the building you know
Speaker 2: so well, AISL seven at seventy five Cambridge Parkway. It
Speaker 2: looks real happy in there, and I guess that must
Speaker 2: have been a safe spot, in a really proud position,
Speaker 2: and a proud moment, sitting on top of that building
Speaker 2: developing these very complex systems that were yet to go
Speaker 2: to another level to the moon.
Speaker 1: Correct, Yes, that's very true. The purpose of that simulator
Speaker 1: was to see whether the optics and the interface, the
Speaker 1: human interface was capable of, shall we say, aligning the
Speaker 1: inertial censor. By the time I came along, it was
Speaker 1: not in heavy use because it had served its purpose.
Speaker 1: But you could go up there and look at it,
Speaker 1: or even sit in it if you liked.
Speaker 2: John. I'm fascinated about this, and I've always had a
Speaker 2: gap in my knowledge of the Apollo program, and what
Speaker 2: I'm about to ask you is probably some things that
Speaker 2: many people out there, of course, would like to know.
Speaker 2: We always think of Apollo like Apollo seven, and I
Speaker 2: know you've had the honor, I'm sure of talking to
Speaker 2: Wally Sharrah. We've had him when he was with us
Speaker 2: here on the Earth a few times on our radio
Speaker 2: shows in the past. But talk to us a little
Speaker 2: bit about the early apollos, because what we're going to
Speaker 2: hear in this interview, ladies and gentlemen, is a man
Speaker 2: who helped to vevel so much of the software for
Speaker 2: the descent stage, the power at the scent stage, which
Speaker 2: is about a twelve minute experience. We'll hear this later
Speaker 2: in the interview. But what were some of those early
Speaker 2: apollos that maybe a lot of people don't know about.
Speaker 2: Where the lunar module was, what simply tested in Earth orbit?
Speaker 2: Am I correct?
Speaker 1: Well, Yes, the early flight mostly concerned the command module,
Speaker 1: and I was a lunar module specialist, so I didn't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot to do with them and mostly
Speaker 1: did not meet those astronauts. But the exception of that
Speaker 1: was the flight that called LIMB one at the time
Speaker 1: because it was the very first lunar module off the
Speaker 1: out of the clean room at Beth Stage where Grummand
Speaker 1: built it, and it was an unmanned test whose main
Speaker 1: purpose from NASA's point of view was to verify the
Speaker 1: propulsion systems, by which I mean the ascent stage that
Speaker 1: would get the spacecraft off the moon after they had landed,
Speaker 1: and the decent stage that would take them down to
Speaker 1: the Moon. And they accomplished those objectives. But because of
Speaker 1: the case, where shall we say, our software was misinformed?
Speaker 1: What we missed on that flight was a rehearsal of
Speaker 1: the computer control of the spacecraft.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is amazing off today, ladies and gentlemen just
Speaker 2: hearing this, but please continue, don I'm sorry to cut
Speaker 2: you short.
Speaker 1: Oh, no problem at all. It meant that for Alan
Speaker 1: Clemp and I only was really my mentor and my
Speaker 1: partner in creating the lunar landing programs. Our first rehearsal
Speaker 1: was thus rained, and our next time to see our
Speaker 1: software running was Apollo eleven itself. Maybe I should say
Speaker 1: another word about the limb one problem. Yes, please, We
Speaker 1: had software that was required to test whether thrust had
Speaker 1: appeared after the engine was activated the decent engine, and
Speaker 1: if trust was not measured within a certain length of time,
Speaker 1: to shut the engine down. Unfortunately, we had not been
Speaker 1: told that a decision had been made. I think just
Speaker 1: before launch to delay the arming of the engine. As
Speaker 1: a result of had not come up to thrust in
Speaker 1: our software since the engine off signal, and it was
Speaker 1: impossible to recycle the software at that point, so NASA
Speaker 1: took control and did the engine firings under control from Houston.
Speaker 2: It's amazing because when you look at the beautiful spidery
Speaker 2: craft that you know better than anybody that I've talked
Speaker 2: to about in Grumman of course aerospace manufacturing this out
Speaker 2: investige Long Island. I imagine this must have been an
Speaker 2: honor of a lifetime to be able to not only
Speaker 2: be part of writing the software, but can you describe
Speaker 2: the visual of that. I mean, we've seen these particular modules,
Speaker 2: the lunar module, the command module in museums, but what
Speaker 2: was it like to be a young man? I mean
Speaker 2: more from the humanistic side. You walk into places like
Speaker 2: Grumman and you see this craft there, I mean, it
Speaker 2: looks otherworldly. To describe your experience, it must have been onspiring.
Speaker 1: Well, ironically, I've had better looks at real lunar modules
Speaker 1: well after Apollo eleven that I ever did beforehand. Interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, the one that's in the air and space
Speaker 1: Museum at Washington is really if you're at Washington, you
Speaker 1: should certainly go and see that because it was a
Speaker 1: real lunar module and it was lovingly restored and it's
Speaker 1: quite quite a sight. My experience of lunar modules while
Speaker 1: it was working on the job was from the inside,
Speaker 1: from the cockpit out. There was a mock up sharing
Speaker 1: the space with the cockpits in Florida that was used
Speaker 1: for rehearsing the walking down the ladder, exiting the limit,
Speaker 1: going down the ladder on the lunar surface, but that
Speaker 1: was a fairly crude replica except for those features. But
Speaker 1: the cockpits that were available in the simulators were the
Speaker 1: opposite of that. They were realistic to the last detail
Speaker 1: and quite an experience to get to a play astronaut
Speaker 1: in or sometimes a company an astronaut in during lunar
Speaker 1: landing simulations.
Speaker 2: You're listening, ladies and gentlemen, to the Doctor Sky experience
Speaker 2: proudly here on talk radio seventy seven WABC in New
Speaker 2: York our producer extraordinair, Richard Dugan, Doctor D. We're today
Speaker 2: talking with Don Isles. Yes, there's so much to talk
Speaker 2: about in this interview today and in our special podcast
Speaker 2: the Doctor Sky experienced the book entitled Sunburst and Luminary,
Speaker 2: an Apollo Memoir. As we continue here in this rather
Speaker 2: exclusive interview with a gentleman that I think really has
Speaker 2: so much knowledge and we're so proud to have him
Speaker 2: and call him a friend of the show. As you know, sir,
Speaker 2: this is interesting. So the title of the book Sunburst
Speaker 2: and Luminary, if I have it right, Sunburst was the
Speaker 2: program for the Earth orbit testing a lot of the
Speaker 2: lunar module, while Luminary was the lunar landing portion of that.
Speaker 2: Elaborate a little bit more about that because I know
Speaker 2: for people that are not as technical, you go through
Speaker 2: some incredible detail in this book, which is important. But
Speaker 2: please describe the difference between the two and how they
Speaker 2: were developed.
Speaker 1: Well, we knew these programs best as a big book
Speaker 1: of paper. The Sunburst was the name of the program
Speaker 1: that flew the mission I was talking about just a
Speaker 1: few minutes ago, the Limb one mission and Earth Orbit.
Speaker 1: Luminary was the program that flew all the lunar landing missions,
Speaker 1: and also Apollow ten, which was the process rehearsal for
Speaker 1: the lunar landing. There was also by the way, a
Speaker 1: sun Dance in between there to Apollo nine, which was
Speaker 1: a mission in Earth for me. With both the command
Speaker 1: module and the lunar module, I suppose I could call
Speaker 1: the book Sunburst, Sundance, and Luminary, but I chose to
Speaker 1: leave out sun Dance because didn't really concern the lunar
Speaker 1: landing very much. What these books showed us, because remember
Speaker 1: we're at a time when there were no terminals of
Speaker 1: any kind to read code own. What these books contained
Speaker 1: was the program did fit inside a computer that was
Speaker 1: really very modest by today's standards. It had in all
Speaker 1: thirty eight a words. Each word was the size of
Speaker 1: two bytes, so you could say it had memory totaling
Speaker 1: seventy six kilobytes, of which only four kilobytes was what
Speaker 1: we called a racimal memory, meaning read write memory. The
Speaker 1: other seventy two kilobytes contained the program, and since it
Speaker 1: was divided into two byte words, there was the vasti
Speaker 1: for something thirty six thousand instructions, and that was all
Speaker 1: written down in this one lump of paper, which is
Speaker 1: what we stared at when we wanted to think about
Speaker 1: the code. It was organized operationally into a number of
Speaker 1: programs key programs because they were designated things like P
Speaker 1: forty or P sixty three, which happened to be the
Speaker 1: beginning of the liutar landing was P sixty three, And
Speaker 1: there were also routines that wore our names. And this
Speaker 1: was all laid out in somewhat vague form in a
Speaker 1: requirements document called the A Guidance System Operations Plan. But
Speaker 1: we very soon realized that the real time nature of
Speaker 1: what we're doing was the hard part, and that was
Speaker 1: not really very well covered in the the GEESOP as
Speaker 1: we called it. So that's what we were doing. We
Speaker 1: were figuring out how to write the navigation, the other
Speaker 1: and the human interface and the things that went with
Speaker 1: that inside rather small number of possible instructions, say thirty thousand,
Speaker 1: and to do it in a way that maximize the
Speaker 1: capability of this little machine.
Speaker 2: Incredible, John, I got to ask you this more from
Speaker 2: a humanistic side. You know, Apollo eight, we all remember
Speaker 2: I was just a young boy. We watched around Christmas
Speaker 2: even sixty eight, and I've spoken to Jim Lovell on
Speaker 2: this one and I got his interpretation of what they did.
Speaker 2: Of course it was great, But were you kind of
Speaker 2: surprised that NASA had moved that quickly forward to do
Speaker 2: that man mission around the Moon. I mean it seemed
Speaker 2: like in my opinion, and I'm not a space scientist
Speaker 2: like yourself, but wasn't that a little quick? I mean,
Speaker 2: they made a decision to go and a manned effort.
Speaker 2: And look at Artemis today, we're trying to get artemists
Speaker 2: to go around the moon, not with people in it.
Speaker 2: Was that a little surprise to you that they did
Speaker 2: it in a relatively quick way?
Speaker 1: Well? I was I crossed, shall we say. It showed
Speaker 1: me working down in the trenches. It showed me that
Speaker 1: they were serious about doing this. Yes, you know it
Speaker 1: came across as a bold decision, but I think it
Speaker 1: was very definitely the right decision. It was one of
Speaker 1: those variant decisions that I think were probably necessary for
Speaker 1: us to meet the goal that Werestin Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Had said, absolutely, you know this is amazing. Let's go
Speaker 2: back to November sixth, nineteen sixty seven. You described that
Speaker 2: as a very interesting day. There you are, I guess,
Speaker 2: with your other colleagues conducting a special meeting with the astronauts.
Speaker 2: That would be the first and second and possibly third
Speaker 2: and may even fourth to the landing of the moon.
Speaker 2: But you describe in there the humor of Pete Conrad.
Speaker 2: I always followed him. I never had the privilege and
Speaker 2: honor of speaking with him, as we know, sadly he
Speaker 2: perished in a motorcycle accident, as very much as sad
Speaker 2: as that is back here on earth when he did
Speaker 2: all these things in space. But describe that meeting, because
Speaker 2: now we're talking one in that room with not only
Speaker 2: national heroes that go to the moon, yourselves and the
Speaker 2: people developing the luminary portion for the lunar landing and descent.
Speaker 2: That must have been quite an experience. Talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about that in Pete Conrad.
Speaker 1: Well, it was my first exposure to astronauts, and it
Speaker 1: quickly erased any idea that astronauts were the least bit
Speaker 1: that's the right word, the least bit cut from the
Speaker 1: same cult, shall we say, because they showed a variety
Speaker 1: of types. I wasn't invited to the meeting in its entirety,
Speaker 1: but at the point where the meeting reached the area
Speaker 1: of the literal landing programs, Alan Klump, who I mentioned
Speaker 1: a few minutes ago, he let me know that I
Speaker 1: should come in, so I did, And at first I
Speaker 1: assumed that the sort of molding a guy with a
Speaker 1: gap between his teeth and a nice glint plaid sued
Speaker 1: who was mostly on his seat, was some sort of
Speaker 1: particularly buoyant Nassa manager. But it was actually the astronaut
Speaker 1: Pete Conrad, who was very expressive. You know, It's a
Speaker 1: little hard to describe because it was a blend of
Speaker 1: you know, extreme intelligence with a little bit of an
Speaker 1: all shucks sort of the manner. Yes, ironically, of the
Speaker 1: Apollo astronauts, he was the only Ivy leaguer. He was
Speaker 1: from he got his degree at Princeton. Didn't know that, yes,
Speaker 1: I you know, I in the book, I resisted the
Speaker 1: temptation to characterize astronauts according to what film star they
Speaker 1: remanded me. But for me, Pete Conrad was sort of
Speaker 1: the mix of Richard Widmark and Slim Pickens, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the cold calculating versus the you know, the fun loving.
Speaker 1: But also at the meeting where Jim Lovell, who I
Speaker 1: don't remember so well from the meeting, and Neil Armstrong,
Speaker 1: who I do remember. One of the things he was
Speaker 1: interested in, which was the one of the meters that
Speaker 1: that our software used to give into information to the astronauts,
Speaker 1: and the cockpit was oriented in a fashion that made
Speaker 1: interpreting its meaning not totally straightforward. So he discussed that
Speaker 1: a little bit, which was an eye opener for me
Speaker 1: as to astronaut thinking the way astronauts stall.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, folks, you're here with me, Doctor Sky here
Speaker 2: on talk radio seventy seven WABC in New York. The
Speaker 2: Doctor Sky experience continues, and what a great guest, folks.
Speaker 2: Don Isles his book Sunburst, Luminary and Apollo Memoir. When
Speaker 2: you watch, if you're old enough like myself, I'm sixty
Speaker 2: six years young. I remember seeing this lunar landing. I
Speaker 2: had to ask permission done for my parents to stay
Speaker 2: up late that night on the East Coast time zone there.
Speaker 2: But wow, what an experience as we all saw. The
Speaker 2: handiwork that you and your team help is kind of
Speaker 2: the silent heroes of this particular mission, as I would
Speaker 2: like to describe it, but I want to go and
Speaker 2: I always do. A tribute to the astronauts of Apollo
Speaker 2: one with a sad event that happened. January twenty seventh
Speaker 2: is nineteen sixty seven. But I learned something in your
Speaker 2: book by describing, and there is no reflection on you
Speaker 2: on the software side of this. But poor Gus Grissom,
Speaker 2: God blessom. You describe him sitting in a bar by
Speaker 2: himself in Cocoa Beach, and he was kind of frustrated,
Speaker 2: as I'm sure I would be in any other astronaut
Speaker 2: at the time, with the spacecraft, all the problems they
Speaker 2: had with the Apollo one capsule. What do you say,
Speaker 2: and I quote, what we have here is a heath kit,
Speaker 2: and that's an amazing end to quote describe him. Had
Speaker 2: you ever met Gus Grissom yourself, sir.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid not. I never did have occasion to meet him.
Speaker 1: I began to meet astronauts in the run up to
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven, other than the meeting in nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: that I described.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talt in there. Let's continue here and the
Speaker 2: rest of the time that we have here. And I
Speaker 2: appreciate your time, sir. This is just awesome. I could
Speaker 2: go on for hours here. The Apollo eleven mission, of course,
Speaker 2: Apollo ten came within fifty two thousand feet of the
Speaker 2: lunar surface. And you know, if I was on board there,
Speaker 2: I probably want to brought that baby down to the surface,
Speaker 2: but they followed the good rules with all the software
Speaker 2: that you had developed and things that happened. To describe
Speaker 2: this whole scenario as we describe it in your book,
Speaker 2: and I think people should really read this, is that
Speaker 2: there's actually three separate maneuvers that have to take place.
Speaker 2: One three phases for the lunar landing, and you described
Speaker 2: them in the p version like p. Sixty three, P.
Speaker 2: Sixty four, p. Sixty five. Can you give us I
Speaker 2: know it's kind of technical, what do they need to do?
Speaker 2: And how did the Apollo eleven then makeage journey down
Speaker 2: to the surface of the bone.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'll describe that. Let me backtrack on one point.
Speaker 1: I mentioned that Luminary flew all the lunar landings, but
Speaker 1: Luminary was a program that continued to evolve, So in
Speaker 1: a sense, the program for each mission until we got
Speaker 1: to Apollo fifteen was actually different. New capabilities were being added,
Speaker 1: occasionally bugs were found, and so the Apollo ten program,
Speaker 1: which I believe was Luminary Revision sixty nine approximately, would
Speaker 1: not have done needed more work before it was ready
Speaker 1: for a lunar landing, so for Apollo, and leaving us
Speaker 1: side of the question of fuel, for Apollo ten to
Speaker 1: have tried to land would not have worked out very well. Now,
Speaker 1: the lunar landing did have three phases, which was important
Speaker 1: in large part to make possible landing accurately at a
Speaker 1: spot on the Moon. There were two. The main thing
Speaker 1: that had to happen to land, to go down from
Speaker 1: lunar orbit to the Moon was to shed velocity. We
Speaker 1: were going. You go around the Moon much slower than
Speaker 1: around Earth, so we were going I believe the number
Speaker 1: is around thirty six hundred miles per hour fifty five
Speaker 1: hundred approximately feet per a second the way we've thought
Speaker 1: of it, and that's with respect to the Moon. And
Speaker 1: the main job is to cut that down so that
Speaker 1: your velocity with respect to the Moon at the point
Speaker 1: you touch it is a very low you know, a
Speaker 1: few you know, three foot feet for a second. Let
Speaker 1: us see say you also need to be a right
Speaker 1: side up when you land on the Moon. You also
Speaker 1: wanted to be not in the middle of any violent maneuver.
Speaker 1: You want to be in a fairly calm state. So
Speaker 1: to do that required an equation that could satisfy fairly
Speaker 1: complex terminal conditions. The other thing was that it had
Speaker 1: to be possible for a reasonable amount of time or
Speaker 1: the astronauts to be able to look out the front
Speaker 1: window of the limb and see the area in front
Speaker 1: of them where they were going to land, and to
Speaker 1: be able to modify their trajectory if they saw that
Speaker 1: they were coming down in a place they didn't like,
Speaker 1: and that required cutting the landing into several phases. The
Speaker 1: first phase, which was designated P sixty three, was called
Speaker 1: the breaking phase, and it began at an altitude of
Speaker 1: about fifty thousand feet, the velocity of about fifty five
Speaker 1: one hundred feet per second, and it began with the
Speaker 1: limb thrusting directly ahead, directly into the direction of motion,
Speaker 1: trying to shed that velocity. And during that phase, which
Speaker 1: lasted ten minutes or so, the limb gradually did maneuver
Speaker 1: to a more erect posture, but even until the end,
Speaker 1: the view ahead was not really satisfactory. The way we
Speaker 1: achieved the visibility requirement then was to switch to a
Speaker 1: second phase, which used the same equation but with different targets,
Speaker 1: and as a result of the targeting that caused the
Speaker 1: limb to pitch forward, so that now the astronauts had
Speaker 1: a good view of the surface. And on every mission
Speaker 1: except Apollo eleven, you'll find the astronauts are reacting vociferously
Speaker 1: and enthusiastically at that moment because they've trained, above all
Speaker 1: to be able to orient themselves at that moment, to
Speaker 1: recognize the pattern of craters ahead that would orient them
Speaker 1: and show them where to go.
Speaker 2: Well going this upswer, Yeah, because excuse me for just
Speaker 2: jumping in here. They're all watching something called what the disky,
Speaker 2: which is five display kind of five five line character display.
Speaker 2: And I'm amazed that that was there. What that was
Speaker 2: actually the key to this where they had an input
Speaker 2: on that screen or onto that device, the various p
Speaker 2: programs that you're talking about. But how did you describe it?
Speaker 2: You call it the disky? Is that correct?
Speaker 1: Discy for display and keyboard?
Speaker 2: And I'm just curious. I go back in the old
Speaker 2: days when a lot of my electronic engineer friends of
Speaker 2: the sixties, they said, in those days, they didn't have
Speaker 2: really good displays like we have today, they had something
Speaker 2: called NIXI tubes. Is that something that was around at
Speaker 2: that time? I guess the old place.
Speaker 1: Nixi tubes were around the displays in the DISKI were
Speaker 1: not Nixy tubes, and I can't really speak to exactly
Speaker 1: what they were, but some sort of electroluminescent display, and
Speaker 1: it was strictly numeric. They were just looking at numbers,
Speaker 1: and they had to know what those numbers meant, and
Speaker 1: they had to know where the decimal point was. Now,
Speaker 1: some of the phases did not have to be selected
Speaker 1: through the discy. Some of them could be selected automatically,
Speaker 1: or some of them could be selected by changes in
Speaker 1: the switch settings in the cockpit. And I hadn't quite
Speaker 1: gotten to the sorry for that dinging. I hadn't quite
Speaker 1: gotten the third phase of the liberal landing, which was
Speaker 1: the very last part where the astronaut with the assistance
Speaker 1: of the computer, is flying the limb somewhat like a helicopter,
Speaker 1: sort of a stick and rutter style during the final
Speaker 1: couple of hundred feet of the lunar descent.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's incredible what we're hearing here on this particular
Speaker 2: interview today. But don is the spacecraft was the sunning
Speaker 2: to the moon. To Paulo eleven. We have this thing
Speaker 2: that I never got anybody to be able to explain it,
Speaker 2: and I know you can. They get a twelve o
Speaker 2: two alarm and then a twelve oh one alarm. Is
Speaker 2: that correct? Is they're getting down to the surface of
Speaker 2: the moon.
Speaker 1: There were five alarms in all, and the two types
Speaker 1: you mentioned. They were all of the two types you mentioned.
Speaker 1: And it was of course a scary moment because something
Speaker 1: was happening in our computer that at the time we
Speaker 1: did not understand. However, the spacecraft state owned trajectory and
Speaker 1: didn't show any other problems than these alarms. What happened, however,
Speaker 1: when each of these alarms occurred, was a reboot of
Speaker 1: the software on the fly, and that of course was
Speaker 1: a bit scary. Yes, it was all calls by sort
Speaker 1: of they listener standing the electronics. It was made possible
Speaker 1: by a switch setting in the cocktent that possibly was
Speaker 1: ill advised and maybe hadn't been totally fought through.
Speaker 2: But they came kind of close to what potentially won
Speaker 2: the abort button which you don't want to push. Correct,
Speaker 2: I mean that was or is that not true? They
Speaker 2: were actually on to continue. Obviously mission control thought it
Speaker 2: was good, but were they actually really close to actually
Speaker 2: telling them to punch that aboardment.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think they were quite close. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that was exactly the situation. Do we continue this
Speaker 1: lunar landing? Is it safe to continue this lunar landing?
Speaker 1: Of course the lunar landing is never safe. But shall
Speaker 1: we continue this lunar landing or shall we aboard? And
Speaker 1: in this case, mission control had a better perspective on
Speaker 1: the problem than we did in Cambridge.
Speaker 2: Well, Don, it's all to the success not only a
Speaker 2: mission control, but you and the great people behind this
Speaker 2: team to develop something that most humans on this planet
Speaker 2: really don't have an idea of about how to get
Speaker 2: to the surface of the Moon in the most difficult
Speaker 2: what twelve minutes of all But hopefully in a future interview,
Speaker 2: if you're so kind to give us your time, I'd
Speaker 2: love to continue, but just really quickly through this, and
Speaker 2: we have a few minutes left on Apollo twelve. Never
Speaker 2: had half the opportunity to meet Pete Conrad, but I
Speaker 2: did talk with al Bean once. As you describe it
Speaker 2: in the book, the rocket is launched and lightning strikes
Speaker 2: the actual Saturn five and then they get this whole
Speaker 2: on a blackout, on their whole consoles, and then there
Speaker 2: was this way to save it that really not too
Speaker 2: many people knew about. It was something where you had
Speaker 2: to hit a switch or do something called see to
Speaker 2: auxiliary And I guess what that saved the emission. That
Speaker 2: would have been a potential real disaster. Right if nothing
Speaker 2: came back online, Well.
Speaker 1: The astron the spacecraft would have reached orbit safely. Oh
Speaker 1: even without SCEE the hawks. It is a famous instant,
Speaker 1: John Aaron, I believe it's credit with coming up with that,
Speaker 1: and by thinking of that, and by the switch being
Speaker 1: flipped in the cockpit, it gave it restored information to
Speaker 1: the ground. It allowed the ground now to see what
Speaker 1: was happening. So I think it was very important for
Speaker 1: that reason.
Speaker 2: Well that the reading in history. But I wanted to
Speaker 2: ask you quickly and again if you're kind enough to
Speaker 2: do this with us in the future here on the
Speaker 2: Doctor Scout Experience, would love to do a part two
Speaker 2: of this and even do some other things where we
Speaker 2: do on big movie theaters around the country where we
Speaker 2: have guests pop in on different various means like zoom,
Speaker 2: where we actually have an audience in there to do
Speaker 2: a talkback. But what I'd like to ask you, is
Speaker 2: we both had the opportunity of knowing it, doctor edgar Mitchell,
Speaker 2: But tell us briefly the story of Apollo fourteen, because
Speaker 2: you obviously had your fifteen plus minutes maybe in fame
Speaker 2: on this and it wasn't your plan, but you're the
Speaker 2: one who figured out something. What was it that happened
Speaker 2: with Apollo for fourteen?
Speaker 1: Well, once more, it was my software that was involved,
Speaker 1: as it had been a limb one and again on
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven with the alarms, because it was discovered in
Speaker 1: Houston during the hours leading up to the lunar landing
Speaker 1: that a switch in the cockpit was sending a spurious
Speaker 1: signal and it was the abort switch or the abort button.
Speaker 1: It would be used during a landing to immediately command
Speaker 1: an a board and if that did occur during the landing,
Speaker 1: it would were in the mission because it would have
Speaker 1: been impossible to recycle. So the reason my software was
Speaker 1: involved is that that switch sent a signal to the computer,
Speaker 1: which at this point, well before the landing, we weren't
Speaker 1: looking at They just were able to see it on
Speaker 1: a console in Houston. But once the lunar landing started,
Speaker 1: a piece of software would start running which I had written,
Speaker 1: which tests for an input from those switches, because they
Speaker 1: are actually too the aboord and aboard state switch, and
Speaker 1: if it sees that one of them has been pushed,
Speaker 1: it dispatches the correct program to do the abort. And
Speaker 1: so what I was able to do was to come
Speaker 1: up with a way to defeat my own software to
Speaker 1: make it not sensitive to this input. And so that
Speaker 1: was the germ of the idea, was to set something
Speaker 1: that indicated and the board was already in process, which
Speaker 1: wasn't true, but the indication could be set which fooled
Speaker 1: the software into not looking at the buttons. And of
Speaker 1: course there were some other consequences that had to be
Speaker 1: dealt with. But we did develop that procedure in Cambridge
Speaker 1: over the course of an hour or so. Tests it
Speaker 1: in Cambridge, it was tested in Houston, and it was
Speaker 1: right up to the spacecraft and with admirable song Fla
Speaker 1: it was adopted and Keiden the computer by metrol.
Speaker 2: You know, that's real genius and I'm so honored to
Speaker 2: have you here today. Done Really, I'm serious. I'm a
Speaker 2: big fan of the space program. I never flew anything
Speaker 2: in space, nor am I an asher, not just a
Speaker 2: journalist that tries to do the best by listening to
Speaker 2: great stories. But I got to ask you this as
Speaker 2: we talk about NASA twenty twenty two. We've been talking
Speaker 2: on our shows around the nation about Artemis One interesting
Speaker 2: I find out that the SR twenty five engines on there,
Speaker 2: they're not brand new engines. They've been flight tested, they say,
Speaker 2: four hundred and five flights. The SR twenty five's have
Speaker 2: been a generally good engine. But let me ask you
Speaker 2: from the personal side, the NASA of today. I mean, again,
Speaker 2: I don't mean to get very political here, but I
Speaker 2: just got to ask the question. There seems, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: by talking to so many space pioneers and people, that
Speaker 2: there was a different type of feeling and your description
Speaker 2: of what the feeling was like, and I'm quoting you
Speaker 2: primed for Adventure end of quote, what's going on with NASA?
Speaker 2: I mean, if you were there to tell them to
Speaker 2: advise them, are they doing everything right? Or is there
Speaker 2: something wrong that we're not looking out here? And art of.
Speaker 1: Us, Well, it's a difficult subject. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: anything wrong, but I do think that some spirit that
Speaker 1: we had back then is missing, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: put your finger my finger on what that is. It
Speaker 1: was an ability heat to go directly at the problem,
Speaker 1: it seems like, and in a way I mentioned our
Speaker 1: little computer that had the capacity for thirty thousand lines
Speaker 1: of code, but in some small way that was an advantage,
Speaker 1: and the very practical and simple design of the lunar
Speaker 1: module was sort of looking directly at the problem without
Speaker 1: somehow there's a sense of complication having entered that we
Speaker 1: didn't feel in those days. I don't think I've expressed
Speaker 1: this very well, you know, I still have confidence in that.
Speaker 1: I'm also amazed by what Musk is done, and I
Speaker 1: think they will have success. And their concept I think
Speaker 1: is sound or the moon the way to Mars, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to them having a success with FAD,
Speaker 1: even though I think perhaps they are.
Speaker 2: Too.
Speaker 1: There's certainly much more bonded down in a managerial culture
Speaker 1: than we shall we say.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I was going to say. I agree
Speaker 2: with you there, sir. I'm again a big, big fan
Speaker 2: of what has has done, and especially what you folks
Speaker 2: have done. But I hope in the future that we
Speaker 2: can do this again here on the Doctor Sky experience.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you for your time and please
Speaker 2: stay on the line with us as we conclude this
Speaker 2: Doctor Sky Experience here exclusively on talk radio seventy seven
Speaker 2: WABC out of New York with our producer Richard Dugan,
Speaker 2: Doctor Dean, as we explore these great realms of astronomy, space, aviation, weather,
Speaker 2: celebrity guests, and common sense interviews about our American heritage.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Don, it's a privilege and honor.
Speaker 2: The book Sunburst at Luminary and Apollo Memoir again published
Speaker 2: by Ford Point Press. You can get the book wherever
Speaker 2: good books are sold. And let's talk again. I always
Speaker 2: say this to everybody, and I think you would degree here.
Speaker 2: Always what remember to keep your eyes to the skies
Speaker 2: and thank you for what your team did back there
Speaker 2: quite a while ago. Ladies and gentlemen at the great
Speaker 2: Minds of Mit their logo there they're mantramends at manas
Speaker 2: mind in hand. Thank you so much, Don Niles. Stay
Speaker 2: on the line with us and thank you. Until next
Speaker 2: week we'll talk more on the Doctor Sky Experience. Email
Speaker 2: me at Doctor Skyshow at gmail dot com at the
Speaker 2: drs Ay Show at gmail. Thank you, Don thank you.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it,