by Al Worden
I had a great time working with Dick on his command module. I already knew a lot of the systems inside out, but being a backup crewmember brought a whole new level of training. If anything happened to Dick, I would be flying to the moon in his place. I needed to learn that spacecraft thoroughly. Considering it was such a small vehicle, it is amazing how complex it was.
Not many people understand that American spacecraft like Apollo were flown solely by the pilots on board. Mission control could never control a spacecraft from the ground. They could send us information, either verbally or by transmitting data, but the astronaut had to perform an action inside the spacecraft to carry out the request. It was different from how the Soviets operated at the time, because their spacecraft were far more automated. This difference was something very important to us as pilots.
Another misconception is that the Apollo spacecraft used cutting-edge technology. In fact, the spacecraft that flew in the late 1960s and early 1970s used equipment mostly designed in the 1950s. I believe this was a conscious decision by the designers at NASA and North American: better to have something reliable than cutting-edge. I think all of the astronauts were happy with this decision.
Simple systems either work or fail. There is nothing in between. If the systems were lost, we had no real backup for many of them. However, repeated testing over the years had proved that their success rate was very high. I would rather fly a proven system than the space shuttle, for example, which has many computers that all have to talk to each other and then mutually agree. There is an analogy with flying multi-engine versus single-engine aircraft. It surprises people to learn that there are more accidents in multi-engines. If you lose your only engine, you quickly look for a place to land. If you have multiple engines, you may try to keep flying, which becomes increasingly difficult and dangerous. Simpler is often better.
Our computer was a good example of spacecraft simplicity. It was designed by MIT as a rudimentary piece of hardware. It was literally hardwired: you could zap it, turn the power off, and do pretty much anything else to it, and when the power came back on you were right back where you had been before. It had no silicon chips to burn out, was extremely reliable and virtually indestructible. Of course, simplicity came at a price: our computer had less storage memory than the average modern wristwatch.
Many of the tasks the computer needed to perform on an Apollo flight were already hardwired inside. The lack of storage capacity, however, prevented us from preloading all of the programs needed for the flight. For a simple thrusting maneuver, for example, we had to load in the data. The computer had no room at all for a particularly important program, called “Return to Earth.” The ground would need to send that one to us when we were in lunar orbit.
To navigate in space between Earth and the moon, we required two pieces of information. One was the attitude of the spacecraft compared to some fixed frame, such as the field of stars all around us. The attitude—in simple terms, which way we were pointed—was needed so that we could aim the craft during thrusting maneuvers and keep on course. The spacecraft had a set of gyroscopes to tell us. Attitude was not something we could otherwise know for sure in zero gravity, where there is no up or down. It was the equivalent of an attitude indicator in an airplane, which tells you if your wings are level. Crucially, we could also measure acceleration forces on the spacecraft, so we could gauge the accuracy of our engines when we fired them.
The other information we wanted was the precise location of the spacecraft in the Earth-moon system. We always needed to know exactly where we were. The team on the ground could track the spacecraft by precisely angling their large antennas, located on different parts of the globe. By measuring the precise timing of a return signal from the spacecraft and comparing the results, mission control could compute our location and speed with great accuracy.
Without constant checking, however, uncertainties about our position could grow larger over time. And no system was foolproof. Mission control’s calculations of our location would be useless if our radio failed and they could not share them with us. We also had one gyroscope set in the Apollo spacecraft, which we tested mercilessly before flight. Yet no matter how perfect we could make it, a little friction would always be acting on the gyroscopes. We needed to be able to calculate and correct any drift.
So, Dick and I focused on discovering our attitude and location with no help from the ground. We could be in lunar orbit with no working radio, and three lives depending on our own calculations to thrust the spacecraft out of lunar orbit in the right direction for a precise reentry into Earth’s atmosphere many days later. We needed at all times to be able to independently work out our state vector—that is, to find out precisely where we were within the Earth-moon system, how fast we were going, and what direction we were headed. We were navigators, and although we had some sophisticated equipment, Dick and I still had to master the same skills that ancient mariners once used to cross the oceans.
We would navigate using a sextant much like those used for centuries by seafaring navigators. The sextant was located in the equipment bay, at the bottom of the footpads where our feet usually rested. In space, an astronaut could float down there and have enough room to look through the optical equipment while in a standing position. We’d peer through a telescope with a wide field of view to locate stars we used as guide stars, then shift to a telescope with a much narrower field. By using the optics for sighting and the onboard computer to measure the line of sight to a star, then repeating that procedure with several stars, we could determine our exact attitude in space. By sighting on different stars and measuring their angles, the computer could average out the information.
Using that same equipment but this time using a split prism to form both a fixed and a movable line of sight, we could also precisely measure the angle between stars and the horizon of Earth or the moon. Their positions would look different against the starry backdrop as we traveled between the two, and these differences could be measured. The more sightings we made, the more accurately the computer could calculate our location and direction, until we knew precisely where we were.
It sounds complicated, but it was technologically simple. There were no science-fiction–like computers to tell us what to do and make enormous calculations on our behalf. We relied on skills learned in extensive training and memorized the stars that would surround us on our journey. If we lost our navigation computer or our gyroscope, we had an even more basic backup method. We could resort to a World War II–era gun sight. We could clip this optical device to the edge of a spacecraft window, look through it just as you would with a hunting rifle, and line up the crosshair with a known star. We would then know the direction of the spacecraft’s line of thrust, and that information was better than knowing nothing.
This all required a great deal of astronomical knowledge on our part, learning and remembering dozens of different stars that we could use to help us navigate. This knowledge was vital, however, in case we ever lost radio contact with the ground. We would head to the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, or the Morehead Planetarium in North Carolina, and use their planetarium domes to simulate the view of stars from space. Tony Jenzano, the planetarium director at Morehead, had a great way of training us. To begin, he would ask us to close our eyes. He would then spin the star field on the planetarium dome, ask us to open our eyes and tell him where we were. Over time, he would gradually decrease our field of view. It became increasingly harder to identify our position in the sky with fewer stars in our vision, so we really had to memorize them. Eventually he put us in a small box inside the planetarium with a ten-degree window cut into the front. Once again he’d spin the view and we would have to give him our position. Man, that was hard. But we were seeing the same view that would fill our spacecraft optics, so we had to master it.
The focus on astronomy meant that whenever I was flying anywhere in a T-38 at night, I spent far more time watching the stars than I did looking at the ground.
On moonless nights, above the clouds and away from city lights, the star view from my cockpit was stunning, and all the more interesting because I could now name hundreds of those stars.
While I was spending time in Downey with Dick to ensure the Apollo 12 command module was ready and training with Dave and Jim in case we needed to fly the mission, other important events were taking place. After the success of the Apollo 9 mission, NASA felt confident about flying back to the moon in May of 1969. With Apollo 10, they sent both a command module and a lunar module. Some spectacular test piloting proved that NASA was ready to go all the way on the next flight: a lunar landing.
Apollo 11 was in many ways the whole point of NASA’s efforts over the preceding eight years. The Apollo program had been created to land humans on the moon and return them safely to Earth. I wasn’t going to get an opportunity to fly until after that mission had taken place at least once. Although NASA still had an ambitious schedule of lunar landing missions, I had noticed how politicians were still whittling back the budget. Rather than the fulfillment of an ambition, I hoped that Apollo 11 would be the beginning of sustained exploration of the moon. Not least, I will admit, because I wanted to fly there myself and didn’t want the program to end before I had my chance.
I vividly remember the moment in July 1969 when mission commander Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, his lunar module pilot, touched down on the moon. I had been on yet another trip to the North American plant and was in the cockpit of my T-38 at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County, south of Downey, preparing to fly home. The tower at the airfield told me that Apollo 11 was about to land and asked me if I would like them to relay the audio coverage. “Absolutely,” I replied. “I am staying right here.” So I sat in the aircraft and listened to the magical, nail-biting, unreal moment as guys I knew gingerly guided a spacecraft to the lunar surface. We had done it. Humans were on the moon.
I didn’t linger long enough to hear live coverage of Neil setting foot on the surface. I headed back to Houston, looking up into the late-afternoon sky and thinking, “My God. There are people up there, on the moon.” My thoughts naturally strayed to my friend Mike Collins, orbiting the moon solo in the command module. It was a job I hoped I would soon be doing. For Apollo 12, I’d be one step closer to the action.
As Apollo 12’s backup command module pilot, it was my job to strap the prime crew into the spacecraft out on the pad just before launch. I was in the spacecraft on November 14, launch day, making sure all of the switch settings were correct before Pete and his crew arrived. As I stood in the foot well of the spacecraft, the crew arrived, laughing and cracking jokes, and I began strapping them in. When two of them were inside, I had to climb out as there wasn’t room for me anymore. After I squeezed out, Dick Gordon slid into the center couch, and I reached back inside to help strap him in.
As I wished him luck, I have to admit I was still a little jealous. Dick was about to fly to the moon with a couple of great guys. Pete Conrad’s fearless and fun streak created a freedom among his crew to bond in a way I had yet to experience.
Once the hatch was closed, I headed down the elevator to a waiting car to take me back to the viewing stand for the launch. It was raining really hard by the time I reached the stands, but I never gave it a thought. The Saturn V was a tough rocket, and I figured that it would take more than a little water to postpone a launch.
The rocket lifted off, right on schedule. And then, less than half a minute after launch, a huge lightning bolt struck the spacecraft. The Saturn V was poking up into the clouds, and the lightning found a perfect grounding through the spacecraft and rocket exhaust all the way down to the pad. We scrambled to find a radio. I could hear Pete talking a mile a minute as they tried to work out what had happened. NASA could have called off the mission right then, but they decided to keep going and see if everything still worked. The command module had temporarily lost its internal systems, but the separate system that guided the rocket was still functioning and kept them on course.
By the time they got into orbit, the mission was in pretty good shape. Basic, well-insulated equipment meant that the spacecraft survived. With some quick thinking, the power and instruments were brought back online. Once again, I was glad that it had been designed with such well-tested components. It was amazing—everything was fine—but I bet that the launch was a very scary experience for the crew. I know I would probably have crapped myself.
A couple of days later, Pete Conrad was ready to make his first step on the lunar surface. Neil Armstrong’s first words as he stepped on the moon—“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”—were famous by then. Pete was Neil’s polar opposite in temperament, and many people wondered what he would say when he made his own first step. We had sprinkled a whole bunch of suggestions throughout Pete’s in-flight checklist, many of them so risqué that he would have been fired if he’d dared say them. He ended up using one that we’d written down: a joke about his height, or lack of it, that had been going around the astronaut office for a while.
As the world listened, Pete brought the house down with his clever wisecrack. Making his first step, he quipped, “Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me!”
Days later, when the Apollo 12 command module splashed down, Dave, Jim, and I were a backup crew without a purpose. We hoped the pattern would hold, and we’d be the prime crew three flights down the line. Nothing was certain, however, until there was a public announcement. Some Apollo backup crews did not make it to prime. Our work performance was key, but NASA also scrutinized any personal issues. Part of the concern was rooted in fear of negative press coverage. In the past, divorce had been one of those dreaded areas, and many astronauts held crumbling marriages together in the hopes of getting one more flight.
Pam and I had been separated for about a year by this time, and the marriage was beyond hope of repair. We had drifted further and further away from each other until there was just no other way for us to go. It was obvious to us both by then that a final, official divorce was the only option. Now came the toughest part: I had to go and tell Deke.
I certainly had reason to worry. I would be the first astronaut to publicly divorce before flying in space. There were really only two precedents I could look at. Duane Graveline had been selected as a scientist-astronaut in 1965, but his wife almost immediately threatened him with divorce, and NASA asked him to resign right away. It all happened so fast, I heard, that most astronauts were never even aware he had been at NASA in the first place. Apollo 7’s Donn Eisele was the only other astronaut who divorced while in the program. He had done so in 1969 after his flight, only to be completely ostracized by the other astronaut families. Donn was hanging in there, but it seemed there was no chance he would ever fly in space again. I heard different reasons about why, but I knew one thing for sure: I did not want that to happen to me.
Perhaps, I thought, my choice was either to fly to the moon or to divorce. I might not be allowed to do both. If so, this was a hell of a place to find myself. I knew that I could have asked Pam to delay a divorce for another couple of years, until I had flown in space. If it had been a one-sided decision to split up, I may well have done that, and I think she would have done it for my sake. But it would not have been fair to her. I had too much respect for Pam to ask her to stay with me.
It was a very tough moment. My marriage had suffered for years because I had pushed my career so hard. And now here I was so close to the golden prize. I suspected I was weeks away from being named to a prime crew for a lunar mission. I might have been throwing it away by being honest, but I decided that if divorcing was going to take me out of the program, then that was just too bad. I’d have to live with it.
It was with a bad case of nerves that I asked to meet with Deke in his office, where I laid out the facts clearly and honestly. Deke, to my immense relief, was supportive. In his brief, precise way, he told me that if there was no funny business
going on, and if it was just that Pam and I were splitting up, then he had no problem with it. “Keep your nose clean, don’t get into a public squabble, and keep it out of the newspapers,” he told me, “and you’ll be fine.” That was all he said, and all he needed to say. I knew that Deke would be true to his word, as long as I was true to mine.
I also needed to talk with Dave Scott, which was equally nerve-wracking. He was a straight-arrow guy, who I feared might frown on a divorce. I never wanted to give him any reason to think less of me, either for my work or my personal life. But, like Deke, Dave was supportive. He soon proved that he would protect me on this particular issue.
There was a neighborhood party going on right after my divorce became official, and I heard that some astronaut wives didn’t want me there. I talked to Dave about it, and told him, “I am not sure I want to go, because I don’t think some of the wives are really happy about my divorce. I think it is because if I can go through a divorce and everything goes alright for me, they are going to think, ‘Oh, shit, I’m next.’ Their marriages might be in jeopardy, too. It could happen to them.”
Dave sat me down, and with the calm words of a born commander said, “Al, you cannot let that bother you. You go to that party, you look them in the eye, and just be yourself. The worst thing you could do is not show up.” Dave was right. I went to the party and was glad I went.
A couple of the wives continued to disapprove of me for years. One of them was Deke’s wife, Marge, which was always a little frightening, because I imagined Deke hearing all about it when he was at home. And yet, over time, the wives came to understand that I was no threat to them, and in fact Marge eventually became one of my biggest advocates.
When Pam and I split up we took apartments across the street from each other and sold our beloved home. We now lived even closer to the space center than before: I only had to come out of my front door, walk one block, and I was at NASA’s front gate. The kids came over to stay with me on the weekends, and seemed to do fine with the separation. In many ways, nothing much changed for them, as I had always been away during the week. Pam was well liked by the other astronaut families and stayed in town, but she left the astronaut family circuit. That was, after all, what she had wanted to get away from all those years.
