Falling to Earth

by Al Worden

  We trained hard right up to launch time, but also had to squeeze in some more personal duties. One was to name the spacecraft. Although NASA wasn’t keen on personal touches like spacecraft names, they recognized that when two spacecraft docked and undocked they needed distinct call signs, otherwise the mission could get hopelessly confusing.

  Farouk El-Baz came up with our command module name. We believed that our flight was the first truly scientific voyage to the moon, and this concept made Farouk excited to help us find some names. At Washington National Airport one day, he spotted a children’s picture book about great explorers in history. Farouk bought it and gave it to me, and I shared it with Dave and Jim. As we turned the pages, we came to Captain James Cook and his pioneering scientific exploration of the Pacific two hundred years earlier. His first voyage took place in the sailing vessel Endeavour—Farouk particularly liked that name.

  Dave, Jim, and I had often discussed spacecraft names, but every time we came up with an idea we found there was already a rocket or an air force program with the same name. So Farouk’s suggestion was most welcome. We agreed with him that Endeavour seemed a natural fit.

  Although it has caused a few misspellings in history books over the years, we stuck with the English spelling Cook had used, with an extra u. If we used the name, we believed we needed to spell it right. Years later, I was delighted to see NASA name a space shuttle Endeavour, again with the original spelling.

  The call sign for the lunar module was a much easier choice. The Air Force Academy’s mascot is a falcon, the perfect name for the spacecraft that would glide and swoop down to the lunar surface. It also made a nice fit with the call sign for the Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle. Coincidentally, the name El-Baz means “the falcon” in Arabic, so Farouk had a link to both spacecraft names.

  Choosing the call signs was one of the few personal touches NASA allowed us. Another was to design a crew patch. We looked at hundreds of proposals and chose one submitted by, of all people, an Italian women’s fashion designer.

  Adored by the jet set, Emilio Pucci was famous for creating dresses in vivid, swirling colors, and his initial patch design was much the same. It was rectangular, with fancy curlicues in the corners, and in a shockingly vivid range of purples, violets, greens, and blues. It would have been hard to win NASA approval for this artwork.

  Nevertheless, there was something in Pucci’s design that really spoke to us. Most of the designs we had previously looked at were too complicated, too mechanical, or had little to do with the mission. The central feature of Pucci’s design—three stylized flying birds—was wonderfully simple, elegant, and charming.

  So we made some changes. The patch became round; the colors American red, white, and blue; and the background showed the lunar surface. We chose to depict our landing site area, so the three birds now swooped over the region we would explore. In Pucci’s design, one bird flew higher than the others, and we made that bird white. That made sense to represent me, as I would fly alone in orbit while the other two swooped in for landing. It also matched the color of my Corvette. The red and blue birds were Jim and Dave, and if we kept with the Corvette comparison that would make Dave the blue bird and Jim the red bird.

  We continued to tinker with the design until I believe we ended up with the best patch design of any Apollo mission. It described everything we planned to do, yet it was simple and recognizable. NASA wanted us to use the number 15 on the patch rather than roman numerals—and we did—but we also added something a little sneaky. By emphasizing some of the outlines of the lunar craters, we hid the roman numeral for 15 in the background. We were having fun.

  Then, twenty-seven days before our launch date, we received a shocking reminder that we worked in a dangerous business.

  On June 30, 1971, three Soviet cosmonauts were returning to Earth in their Soyuz 11 spacecraft after twenty-three days aboard the Salyut space station. It was an impressive achievement: the first successful visit to the world’s first space station, which also broke the space endurance record. The cosmonauts were no doubt looking forward to a hero’s welcome in the Soviet Union. Their spacecraft landed successfully under its automatically deployed parachutes. But when the recovery team opened the hatch, the three spacefarers lay in their couches—dead.

  The cosmonauts were given a lavish state funeral in Moscow, with Tom Stafford invited to serve as a pallbearer. But the Soviets were cagey with details of how the three men had died. They told us they were investigating, and if they discovered anything important that might relate to the Apollo program, we would be informed. All we knew was that the crew had not worn spacesuits.

  We prudently reexamined our schedule for wearing spacesuits during the flight, particularly for maneuvers that might expose us to vacuum, such as undocking. We had complete confidence in our spacecraft hatches and the tunnel between the command module and lunar module. But you never knew what might happen up there. This way, we would be doubly safe.

  The Soviets eventually revealed that when the two modules of their Soyuz spacecraft separated before reentry, a pressure valve seal had unexpectedly jolted loose. In less than half a minute, there was not enough air left to survive. That was too short a time to take any action unless they wore protective spacesuits. It was a tragic way to end a successful mission. Just over a month later, Dave Scott would gently place a memorial to the three lost cosmonauts, and all known fallen spacefarers, on the surface of the moon. It was a moving reminder that although we were on opposing sides in the Cold War, we shared a brotherhood of exploration.

  The Soyuz 11 tragedy also made me think about my colleagues flying in Vietnam. If anything, it made me feel less guilty. I had always figured I had the easier, safer job, even after the Apollo 1 fire happened. Now, with the Soyuz 11 tragedy, the risks of flying in space felt about the same as the dangers faced by my friends in combat.

  If I had never been selected by NASA and had been shot down and killed in Vietnam, I might have gained a brief mention in my hometown newspaper. However, if something bad happened during the Apollo 15 mission, I knew I would be remembered in the history books forever, which almost balanced the fact that I might die out there.

  Many of us at NASA thought the Vietnam conflict was pretty stupid. Nevertheless, while I served in the military, I would never have openly criticized or second-guessed my country’s foreign policy. The military enforces policy—they don’t decide. I would have followed the orders of my commanders even if I’d personally felt wary of their decisions. It was the way I had been trained ever since I enrolled at West Point.

  So I may have felt less guilty, but I still felt awkward. War was what people went into the military for, and what we were trained to do. My two West Point roommates were now flying combat missions in Vietnam. Worse, one of the stars of my West Point class was shot down and imprisoned for half a decade over there, and was so mistreated that he never really recovered. He came back a broken man. They were over there, unknown, unsung, fighting a war that I believed could not be won. And what was I doing? I was sitting pretty in Houston, walking red carpets, designing pretty patches with a fashion designer. I always felt a bit funny about that.

  I didn’t have time to think about the political scene during our intense training. But in addition to the difficulties, for the government, of an ongoing war, it was also a tough time for NASA. The Vietnam War was expensive. Washington wouldn’t give NASA the money they needed to develop the space shuttle. Repeat missions to the Skylab space station, which was growing closer to completion and launch, were scaled back. A more permanent space station would evidently not be funded until long after the shuttle flew. Had it not been for a planned joint mission with the Soviets, NASA would have faced a lengthy hiatus while shuttle development inched along.

  I was insulated from most of this political wrangling, because my mission was already bought and paid for. Although NASA pilfered all the money it could from other programs to fund the shuttle, they could siphon nothing from A
pollo 15. I suppose they could have canceled the mission, but thankfully they didn’t.

  As we grew closer to the end of the Apollo program and fewer Saturn Vs thundered off the pads, jobs began to disappear down at the Cape. I heard stories not long after our flight about engineers who lost their jobs and simply walked away from their homes, defaulting on their loans. You could have bought hundreds of homes in Titusville back then by just picking up the bank payments. The boomtown that came with the early space program was going bust.

  It was the start of a really tough time for the workers at the Cape, and there were rumblings of morale problems. But I never saw that myself. Despite the cuts which loomed over them, the people I worked with were so excited to be part of our moon mission that they poured their hearts and souls into the preparations. I loved those people: they did so much to make our mission a success.

  One more peripheral afterthought surfaced in the middle of the training grind. Something else I could stuff into my PPK. I spent little time pondering it. Bad mistake.

  A few months before the flight, I was enjoying lunch at the Hilton hotel near the Cape with my car-racing friend Jim Rathmann, when he introduced me to a Miami friend of his. Jim was fond of this old man and thought I would enjoy meeting him, too. A jolly, chubby guy with long white hair and a silvery beard, the oddly named F. Herrick Herrick was striking to look at: a cross between Santa Claus and everyone’s favorite grandfather. During the casual conversation, the subject of Spanish treasure from galleons sunk around the Florida coast came up. It turned out that Herrick had Spanish gold coins. It might be interesting, I thought, to fly some of that antique gold in space as a way to connect past exploration with our lunar trip.

  During the lunch, Herrick tossed me his keys and asked me to go out to his enormous fire-red Cadillac convertible and bring him his briefcase. I did as he asked and brought the case back to the table. Herrick opened it and, sure enough, he had a hoard of gold coins and jewelry he said he had salvaged from a sunken Spanish treasure ship.

  To say I was impressed is an understatement; I fell in love with the guy. Herrick struck me as a jovial, flamboyant, romantic soldier-of-fortune type, who told me tales of big-game hunting, directing movies in Africa, and other exciting adventures. He was so much fun and had done so much with his life that I never stopped to think how odd it was that he drove around with gold and jewels in a car trunk.

  I didn’t buy any gold from him in the end. Instead, our flight carried some Spanish silver, which I obtained from another source. Herrick proposed a different idea, eagerly suggesting something else to take on the flight. “Commemorative postal covers,” he proposed and then had to explain what they were. I had never heard of them.

  Herrick, evidently, was an avid collector and dealer of rare stamps. He offered to supply me with a bunch of lightweight envelopes, bearing a mission-related image, which could be stamped and postmarked the day of launch and also on the day of return. Inside, he’d place a card describing the spaceflight. He’d make them at his own expense and send them to me. In return, he asked only to have some after the flight for his own use. They would be mementos of my flight for the rest of my life, and I could also give them to family and friends, he continued. It sounded like a no-lose situation for me. Sure, I replied casually, get them to me before the flight and I’ll take them.

  I was very clear, however, in our conversation that day. We had a verbal agreement: he could give his covers away, but until the Apollo program was over, or I retired from NASA and the air force—whichever event was later—we agreed that neither of us would sell them. I didn’t want to do anything that would embarrass either myself or NASA, and I believed Herrick was as good as his word. It was a huge lapse in judgment on my part to trust this stranger: I was too old to believe in Santa Claus.

  At first, Herrick lived up to his promises. I discussed a cover design with a commercial artist colleague of his, and about two months before the flight Herrick sent me 144 covers. Most had a design on them showing the phases of the moon. We’d agreed that I would keep around 100 of them, and he would get the other 44 back after the flight. I added them to the items I planned to put in my PPK. I also added a Wright Brothers commemorative cover, autographed by Orville Wright himself, sent to me by Forrest Cook, a friend of my parents. Forrest, who lived in a small town just outside of Jackson, was a kind, gentle man and asked me to take the cover to the moon for him. I was happy to help a family friend and right after the mission sent it back to him. I added all of these covers, and everything else I took, to the PPK contents list that I provided to Deke.

  Jim Irwin added some postal covers to his PPK, too, and made sure Deke knew about them. He carried a few covers with a shamrock logo on them, many of which he gave to NASA friends after the flight. He even took more than eighty covers as a personal favor for Barbara Gordon, Dick Gordon’s wife. She was an avid collector, and although her covers took up a good amount of Jim’s PPK weight allowance, that was the kind of generous guy he was. Those envelopes flew on the mission and were given right back to Barbara.

  I was done with my PPK list and thought I was done with thinking about covers for the flight. Then came another meal, another introduction to a new face, and another offer.

  Dave, Jim, and I were in the middle of a tough training day at the Cape when Dave said all three of us were invited to dinner that night at the home of Horst Walter Eiermann, a German who I was told worked for a company that manufactured part of the Apollo launch vehicle. As Dave later explained to a congressional committee, he considered Eiermann a “rather close friend,” with whom he’d had dinner a number of times. Dave said he believed it would be a really good idea for us to go, so Jim and I said yes, without asking more.

  We were having cocktails before dinner when Dave and Eiermann started talking about postal covers. As Jim and I sat there and listened to the conversation, Eiermann suggested to Dave that Apollo 15 should carry a hundred special covers for a stamp dealer he knew in Germany named Hermann Sieger. He had previously arranged signed stamp deals with at least twenty of my fellow astronauts.

  Jim and I, the rookies in the room, were assured that all of the Apollo crews had done this before. It’s not a big deal, we were told. We’ll be covered. We were reminded, rather ghoulishly, that insurance companies were no longer offering free life insurance to Apollo crews, and we needed to think of our families by making deals such as this.

  Here was the plan: Apollo 15 would fly the covers, the crew would sign them, Eiermann would give them to Sieger, and then Sieger would hold them until the Apollo program was finished, or until we had all left the program. At that point, Sieger would be free to sell them, but only through private sales—no public, commercial visibility.

  In return, Sieger said he would set up bank accounts for us, place seven thousand dollars in each, and if we left the money there and let it grow, the funds should pay for our children’s college educations. Even back then it was not a lot of money, but when added to our small air force salaries, it would make a big difference. With the covers stored away after the flight, no one would know the plan until we were retired from NASA or the air force.

  Dave and Walter both talked quite a lot about the plan that night. It was, essentially, a sales pitch. Everything was laid out for Jim and me, and already felt close to a done deal. Jim, who went along with everything Dave asked, said yes. Then it was my turn, and all heads turned to me.

  I nodded my head and said, “Sure.”

  It was, without a doubt, the worst mistake I ever made.

  That was the last I heard or thought about the covers until after the flight. I never saw them, never heard about them—nothing. I never saw or signed any written agreement, and never met Eiermann again. I assumed Dave would place the covers on his PPK list to submit to Deke. I knew all the covers from Herrick were on mine. I listed all the stuff I personally took, held nothing back, and had nothing to hide.

  Had I thought it through at the time, I would h
ave realized that the agreement with Eiermann wasn’t right. No one was really supposed to arrange to make money from the program while they were still in it. Even if the money would only appear after we had left NASA, the whole proposal was still shady.

  I didn’t break any formal rules, but in hindsight I broke an unspoken trust. As NASA Administrator Robert Frosch later admitted to a Senate committee, the agency’s casual stance was that it was “generally understood—but not explicitly stated—that PPK items were personal memorabilia and not intended for future commercialization.” Nevertheless, in hindsight, I believe that agreeing to Eiermann’s deal was wrong.

  So there you have it. To say I trusted my commander instead of my conscience is not much of a defense, I admit. Nor to tell you that I truly believed what I was told: that every other crew did it with no risk. Nevertheless, that is the truth. That is what I believed. And unless you have been in the military, particularly in situations of danger and split-second decisions, it is hard for me to explain how ingrained it is to trust your commander. If you trust him with your life, you trust him about a few lousy envelopes.

  Therefore, after one evening of conversation, I forgot all about the covers. What arrangements Dave, Eiermann, and Sieger made to get the covers onto the flight, I never knew until later. Dave later told a congressional committee that he had placed them in a pocket of his spacesuit, but he never shared that information with me. All they had needed from me was a yes.

  Completely unaware, foolishly naïve, even, about the ticking time bomb I had now thrown into my future, I continued furiously with my training.

  We were almost ready to fly. But as we neared the launch day, I feared we were missing something. NASA was leery of letting little children witness live launches and imposed age restrictions. This limitation may have protected them, but it also missed an opportunity to engage them. I knew a Saturn V launch was a pretty astounding experience, and children grasped the excitement of flying to the moon in ways that adults did not. If we wanted public support for NASA and space travel, we needed to inspire and inform the kids.