Horizon (1964) s02e16 Episode Script
Man In Space
Archive programmes chosen by experts.
For this collection, Prof Alice Roberts has selected a range of programmes to celebrate Horizon's 50th anniversary.
More Horizon programmes and other BBC Four Collections are available on BBC iPlayer.
RADIO: 'America's number one car from the number one dealer' IGNITION STARTS UP '.
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Davis Chevrolet, '3555 Old Spanish Trail - 'the easiest place to get to in Houston.
' ASTRONAUT: We all live in the community of suburban America here, not in barracks, but in individual little private homes.
I feel just like a father that lives in suburbia who's trying to raise two boys and I'm away from home more than I'd like to be.
ROCKET THRUSTERS ROAR If a person would imagine themselves in a small motorboat tied to a dock, with perhaps a 10hp motor running half speed and then someone cuts a string It's a rather smooth acceleration and then, of course, as you go on, the size of the motor changes from 10hp to 20 and then in about two minutes you can imagine yourself at the back end of a steam engine or a diesel locomotive And after that area, well, everything got quiet and you felt like you were on the end of a needle that was threading its way up towards the heavens.
Well, the view was spectacular.
I was particularly impressed by the view over North Africa, round themouth of the Nile where you could see the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, all up into the Dead Sea and the Holy Land and the, uh It was very, very interesting to sit back and see this whole panorama below you, it was quite interesting.
During the daytime we were unable to see the stars, this was This confounds the scientists, but perhaps it was due to light scattering on our windows, or perhaps it was due to the earth-light reflection, we were unable to see the stars in the daytime.
INTERVIEWER: But when you get to the moon, you WILL be able to see the stars in daylight, they say.
ASTRONAUT: We hope so, we hope so.
And the reason we hope so, of course, is that our navigation depends upon seeing the stars, so INTERVIEWER: Yes.
NARRATOR: 'David Lutyens, Horizon reporter.
' That voice you heard was Colonel Frank Borman - astronaut, commander on the flight of Gemini VII.
You probably remember that on that flight, Borman and Lovell set a new endurance record for space flight of 14 days or thereabouts.
What sort of men do this job of being an astronaut? What's it feel like to live and work 100 miles above the Earth? I know that most of us wouldn't care even to sit in this seat for two weeks without being able to get up and stretch.
And in a minute, Borman will be talking about what it needs to keep a man alive in space, how even the simplest operations become really quite complicated.
How you eat a weightless meal and drink a weightless drink because even in orbit, of course, you can't keep water still in a cup.
And the view out through the porthole here, as the capsule begins its flaming re-entry into the atmosphere.
Also, what is the medical evidence as to how well humans can adapt to these extraordinary and new conditions? You may know that they recorded Borman's heartbeat continuously through his flight, they also monitored his brainwaves on two nights to see how well he was sleeping.
How do you sleep when the sun rises and sets 16 times each day? Well, this is the Gemini spacecraft, it's virtually identical to Borman's.
I'm sitting in Borman's seat.
Over here is the co-pilot's seat.
Well, as you see, things are rather cramped and to complete the impression, I'm going to close this hatch.
Now, to manoeuvre.
This is the primary control, this is the so-called attitude control lever, it's comparable to a stick on an aircraft.
If I move it this way, I make the spacecraft pitch - nose up, nose down.
This produces a roll, this a yaw - that's like that.
On an aircraft the rudder pedals do that.
I can see what I'm doing on this attitude indicator, which shows me the tilt of the spacecraft relative to the Earth's horizon or indeed, to another spacecraft if I'm trying to rendezvous.
Now, to apply a larger thrust and, for instance, change orbits, I would use this thrust control.
This gives me forward thrust, backward, left, right, up, down and I can see what I'm doing on this space-age speedometer here, this gives me the change in velocity that I'm producing.
And I would, in fact, use both these controls in conjunction, using the readout from the computer, the on-board computer.
Now, a few other controls.
Here's the button, for instance, which separates the spacecraft at the end of the launch from the booster.
At the end of the flight, in preparation for re-entry, here's the button that fires the retrorocket.
And when we're coming down towards the ocean, here are the two buttons for the high altitude drogue and the big parachute.
And finally, here's the control that we hope we never have to use, the abort lever.
Pushing it there shuts off the booster, and the whole way fires the entire capsule free from the booster using the retrorocket.
Now, if something went wrong lower down or on the launch pad, we'd use a different system, this would simply eject the seats alone out of the capsule and there's a ring I would pull down here between my legs.
The life-support system is below us and behind us, this pressurises the cabin at about a third of an atmosphere.
Pure oxygen recirculates, it takes out the carbon dioxide, keeps the moisture right and so on, and we We have a hose here, which circulates oxygen through our suits and attaches to the front of the spacesuit here.
Then there's Everywhere, as you can see, there's storage compartments.
That's very important to keep things stored tidily away.
If you leave them out, of course, they just float free in zero gravity.
All in all, it's not exactly the kind of place you'd choose to spend a two-week vacation.
Well, I think that people can project the problem if they imagine living two weeks in the front seat of a Volkswagen.
NARRATOR: 'Colonel Frank Borman, Gemini astronaut.
' What about weightlessness, does it give you a great sense of exhilaration? I'm afraid I almost am a A little anti-psychologist because they always try to project these great and wonderful things and I think it was actually a relativelynormal experience.
LUTYENS: It's amazing how adaptable the human being is.
Yes, it is, and I don't think that the people are quite prepared to accept this.
On this question of being cramped, were you in your spacesuits the whole time? No, this was one of the very fortunate parts of our flight, we were able to take our spacesuits off.
At first we took 'em off in series.
Jim would take it off for a while and then I'd leave mine on and then vice versa, and finally, after three days, we got permission to take 'em off at the same time, so we completed the flight in our underwear.
LUTYENS: Was that a very great relief? It was a tremendous relief, and the post-flight reports indicate that we came down in better physical shape than many of the other ones and I attribute a great deal of this to the fact that we were able to fly without pressure suits.
I think if the layman could imagine himself being inside an inner tube, continually, you'd get some idea of the the cumbersomeness and the stiflingness of the pressure suit.
The cooling was in spots, it would be hot and cool, and it really is not a function of any particular pressure suit because we had a special one designed for us that was a fine one, it was up to the very best and the state-of-the-art.
LUTYENS: What happens if you get an itch, can you do anything about it in your suit? If you get an itch, you can scratch.
Our suit was very light and we could get right through, feel it.
It was actually a very thin layer of rubber covered by one thin layer of nylon and that was it.
Now, what about eating? We ate food that was freeze-dried and we had to reconstitute it by adding water.
It came in plastic bags and we squirted about 3oz of water in, mushed it up and then ate it, much as you would a tube of toothpaste.
This metal bag contains the meal which Borman and Lovell ate in the middle of their 13th day in space and in my inexpert way, I'm going to show you what was involved in eating that meal using the fork and the knife which is available to them in their capsule.
I genuinely don't know what's inside this bag, it's going to be quite exciting to find out.
Of course .
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all the food is freeze-dried, that's to say it's had all the water taken out of it and before it can be eaten, you have to add water in a way which I'm going to show you in a minute.
Now, let's see what goodies we've got in here.
Don't forget, of course, that this package wouldn't sit here so peacefully if we were up in zero-G, it'd be in danger of floating away at any point.
Now, here's There are two of everything, of course.
Here are two pieces of fruit cake.
Here are a couple of towels, I guess for washing up after the meal.
This says, "Orange grapefruit drink.
" This says, "Apricot pudding.
" Maybe we'll come to the meat course in a minute.
The astronauts do dictate their diet to some extent.
It says, "Tuna salad.
" I guess this is a second tuna salad and a second apricot pudding.
The main trouble we had with the food was that I guess the people didn't realise that we were going to operate on a regular day and try to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.
So, the meals weren't prepared that way and several times we had shrimp cocktail and peas for breakfast, and so on.
Now, let me try to show you what's involved in having this drink of orange grapefruit.
First, let me get some of these other delicacies out of the way.
What I have to do now is to introduce some water into this dehydrated .
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fruit mix, which is easier said than done, but I guess up in space you have all day to do this kind of thing.
This is the water gun, which I insert I don't know if you can see, I'm trying to insert this into this valve, there it is.
And I will now introduce water.
On the newer makes of guns there's a meter which tells me exactly how much water I'm introducing.
This is very important since each astronaut, of course, has got to keep his intake of water carefully controlled.
I can also take a drink of water direct from this gun if I want to.
Now, notice how this is a one-way valve, no water can get out that way.
This is to stop droplets of water getting loose and floating around in the capsule.
I'm mixing this up now.
I must say, it looks rather good.
And Next, I've got to open this end in order to withdraw the tube through which I'm going to drink the stuff.
The other solid parts of the diet are hydrated in the same way as this.
Again, I'm having difficulty getting this tube open.
Um Incidentally, this actual meal was up with Borman on the flight and apparently they didn't eat it.
I guess they were getting very near the end and they just didn't feel like it.
Now I'm going to drink this.
Now, I should, of course, finish this, but I'm not going to right here.
The next thing I would do would be to disinfect what was left using this bactericidal pill here, I'd cut this out of its little pocket, put it in, and then squeeze the pill around inside, roll up the package and now I have to store it carefully because, of course, over 14 days' space flight we get a lot of these packages and the stowage problem is a severe one.
Here is the wastebasket, as it were.
Now for an after-lunch clean-up with this impregnated towel.
This is part of an astronaut's personal hygiene.
Um It's very refreshing, incidentally.
They also do have a toothbrush and they have here some special chewing gum, which prevents the plaque forming on their teeth.
They don't as yet shave in space, though a good deal of attention is being given to this because, of course, whiskers are just as dangerous as anything else.
If they float around in the capsule they could get into equipment, into instruments, they could even be inhaled by the astronauts.
But, of course, with only 14 days, it's not a major problem yet.
Now, after-dinner exercises would be done with something like this.
Strictly, this part where my left hand is, should go around my foot and I would pull up against it, but you can see that you can do quite a bit of exercise with this and that keeps the muscles in trim.
Here's the piece of equipment that an astronaut uses if he wants to urinate.
He attaches it to himself - at this point having opened his spacesuit - opens this valve Remember that the whole thing will be weightless all the time .
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and allows the urine to pass into this bag here.
And he closes the valve.
He may take a specimen of his urine back to Earth by using this device here, but ignoring that, to get rid of the urine, he attaches this nozzle here to a hose which passes to the wall of the spacecraft, opens this valve and the valve in the wall of the spacecraft, and immediately the vacuum of space will suck the urine out and, as it's put, vented.
Human faeces are collected in much the same way, but they are not vented to the outside, instead, the astronaut adds a germicidal pill into the bag and stores it with the other waste until the end of the trip.
Incidentally and perhaps paradoxically, the astronauts report that the venting of urine produces a coloured rainbow plume of crystals, which is one of the most beautiful sights in space.
RADIO: '.
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29 '9.
29 south' LUTYENS: 'During each flight, 'it's very necessary to monitor the astronauts' 'essential body functions from the ground - 'lungs, heart, blood pressure, brain and so on.
'At the medical centre in Houston, 'I'm having the various electrical sensors applied to me.
'For instance, these sensors monitor respiration sounds.
'This tiny microphone on the arm acts as a stethoscope.
'It goes under the usual inflatable cuff '.
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which is pumped up by the astronaut 'and his blood pressure is measured in the usual way.
'Normally, there are four head sensors monitoring brain activity, 'but I'd need to have my head shaved to apply all of them.
'Signals from all these sensors go to signal conditioners, 'about the size of cigarette lighters, 'carried in these pockets in the astronauts' underwear.
'Their responses are passed to this bio-plug, 'which in turn is connected to the telemetry system in the spacecraft.
'From there, via the radio link to ground control.
' RADIO: 'And then when the actual times were recorded' NARRATOR: 'Dr Charles Berry, Gemini medical chief.
' LUTYENS: What are the main physiological problems that you've uncovered so far? Well, there are three principal problems.
The first involves the response of the heart and blood vessels to the zero-G state, and we've measured this through the three long duration flights and we have seen that there is a if you will, a relaxation of the reflexes in the lower extremities, lower portions of the body, which reduces the amount of blood flow back to the heart so that you have inadequate amount of blood to circulate.
If the heart was having to work harder following eight days of flights than it was following four days, and harder following four days than it was following three orbits - as the first Gemini flight - if you projected this information ahead, you would feel that you might be into some serious difficulty following a 14-day flight.
I didn't feel this, I didn't feel that we were going to have unconscious astronauts on our hands in the water, and I felt that they were going to adjust and these findings were going to level off.
That has indeed proven to be the case following a 14-day flight and we are very happy about it.
The second problem involves the calcium response in that we have noted on the two long duration flights - the four and the eight - that there was some increased mobilisation of calcium, the pulling of calcium from the bones and thus, probably having to leave the body.
The X-ray evidence however shows that the amount of density as measured by X-ray in a particular bone - the heel bone - has the loss shown in that density is not as great following the 14-day flight as it was following eight days of flight.
Now, we're interested in this because if you mobilise a lot of calcium, pull it out of the bone, put it into the bloodstream, it's excreted through the kidney, you may indeed have some kidney stones.
Secondly, you could conceivably on very, very long flights lose enough calcium to where you would have difficulty with the bones themselves.
Now, we do not expect this because I think that even a small amount of exercise done on this flight was enough to probably reverse this trend and that's a very interesting finding for us.
The third finding is what we've seen in blood volume changes.
We've had some decrease in the total blood volume, both the liquid and the and thecellular portion of the blood, the red cells.
The red cells, of course, are our oxygen carriers and we're violently interested in what happens to them.
We've seen this loss in our bed rest studies and the amount of plasma volume, the total blood volume itself was actually maintained on the 14-day flight by a readjustment - we feel they increased their liquid portion of the blood to make up for the loss of the cellular portion.
LUTYENS: So, on the whole, the results of the Borman-Lovell flight, they're now very encouraging from your point of view? I think they are extremely encouraging.
We still have one one other problem we didn't mention here is sleep.
I did not sleep as well as Jim did.
He I envied him many times when I'd look over and find him snoring away peacefully.
I slept at times when I got really tired, but it was mostly a fitting type of sleep where you just rather catnapped and would sleep for maybe an hour, two hours and then wake up and look around and then go back to sleep.
Some of this is the command pilot syndrome, we call it, where just because you're the commander of the ship you tend to worry about whether things are going to be working all right and you want to continually wake up and cycle all your gauges and switches and make sure everything's still all right and your quantities are all right, and Frank did that repeatedly during the mission.
We've seen this on every one of the flights with command pilots.
LUTYENS: You did try to keep an earthbound schedule in spite of the day and the night going past you over there.
That's correct.
Yes, I hate to admit this, but we didn't use Greenwich Mean Time on our flight, we used Houston time because we tried to stay acclimated to the schedule that we were living on before we took off.
And when the time came at 10pm at night, we put window shades over our windows and went to sleep and we slept for ten hours or we remained covered up for ten hours and then at eight o'clock in the morning or whenever - it was seven o'clock in the morning - we'd uncover the windows and go to work.
What about this business of the Russian astronauts losing their orientation and having to cut short their flight, did you have any trouble with that? No, I'm glad you asked that, because we we were questioned about this and many of the peopleadvertised that we had been disorientated.
You see, every night when we went to sleep, we closed our windows up completely.
Now, during the evening, the spacecraft would vent either oxygen or perhaps some water through the water boiler, and this venting, of course, causes a reaction that would induce a tumble in the spacecraft.
LUTYENS: Yes.
And we'd wake up in the morning, sometimes finding that we were tumbling on the order of seven to eight degrees per second.
LUTYENS: Now, wait a minute.
That means you go once around in how many minutes? Well, let's see, seven or eight degrees per second.
There's 360 degrees in a circle, so that would be about 40 seconds.
It's about one revolution per minute.
LUTYENS: Yes.
So, you'd see that it was rather a swift tumble rate and the interesting fact is that when the windows were covered, we had no sensation that we were tumbling.
We were in our own little world with our own set of coordinate systems and as far as we were concerned we were inertially stabilised.
As soon as we'd open the windows, we could establish the fact that we were tumbling by seeing the horizon, the stars and the Earth go by.
I think we've had no psychological aberrations of any sort on any of our missions.
This is really quite remarkable, I think it's equally as remarkable as the physiologic findings that we've seen.
LUTYENS: What do you think is the limiting factor on how long man can stay in space? I think probably at the present state of development, the limiting factor will be the mechanical aspect of the vehicles that we can put in space.
I Jim and I didn't find any reason to believe that if we had the proper .
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tools and the proper accommodations that we couldn't have stayed up there for six months or as long as we were required to.
- What sort of things? - Well, like a bed, that would have been very nice to have a place to stretch out and sleep.
It would have been nice to have some diversionary activities for your off-duty hours.
The same type of things that you'd expect a person to have if he was isolated at the South Pole for a period of three months he needs in space.
Would it be right then that all these experiments that have been designed on the assumption that living in space is something totally different from living on Earth, that these experiments are unnecessary? Well, they may They may I don't think we can say they are unnecessary, I think we You had a very good point there.
I think they were developed and designed to probe with the assumption that it was entirely different, that it was a wonderful, new, hostile environment, as the trite phrase goes.
But I think we're finding that man is very adaptable, and that in reality, if you provide him with the normal comforts that he expects on Earth, he can function as well on zero-G as he can on Earth.
What kind of a medical kit does an astronaut take with him? Well, we have carried on the Gemini programme this kit and this is some eye drops, we have some of the common, ordinary medicines that you use - aspirins, some tablets for motion sickness, Dexedrine for fatigue an antibiotic and our old friend, the Band-Aid.
In addition, for medication that has to be injected, we have for motion sickness and for pain, some devices such as these.
They look like this would before it's fired.
You pull this firing pin out and I'll put this one back in so it won't stay armed.
Once it's armed, you then just touch it against the side of the thigh, like this, and that pressure is enough to cause this needle to fire.
As you see here, this one's been fired.
The needle would fire through the suit, into the thigh and inject the material all in one motion.
Dr Berry, what happens if you have a medical emergency in space, say an astronaut gets an appendicitis? Well, we have thought very seriously of and are still doing some final planning as to whether we will go to doing prophylactic appendectomies, where we will require the crews for long missions to have had an appendectomy prior to the mission.
As soon as an astronaut needs to go outside his capsule, he faces a whole new set of problems.
First, his suit has to be modified, both to protect him against the glare and heat from the sun's rays and also to stop it ballooning out into a kind of rigid straitjacket when it becomes exposed to the total vacuum of space.
Then, if he is not be permanently tied to the spacecraft by an umbilical lifeline, he will need to carry on his back his own portable life-support system.
If he is going to work near the capsule in free space, he will need portable jets to manoeuvre and he will need special tools to do even the simplest job.
If you try and unscrew a bolt under zero gravity, you won't turn the bolt, you will turn yourself.
When it comes to living on the moon, the problems get even more severe.
In the daytime, you will probably need water-cooled underwear, yet by night, when the ground cools to a couple of hundred degrees below zero, you'll need specially insulated boots just so that his body heat won't drain away through the soles of his feet.
Mr Radnofsky, what extra problems will you have with suit design when the astronaut wants to go outside the capsule? NARRATOR: 'Matthew Radnofsky, spacesuit designer.
' We have to define how he is going outside.
If he were going outside on an umbilical, as White did in a suit very similar to this one, no changes would have to be made in this suit.
It has all the requirements for protecting the man in space.
However, in the event that the man were to go outside on a completely self-contained portable life-support system, then some changes would have to be made.
LUTYENS: He would have to have a pack on his back? He would have to have a pack on his back and the pack would have to containerdevices, chemicals, for instance, to remove carbon dioxide.
It would have to have a heat exchanger.
It would have to have self-contained communications.
It would have to have a fan or blower system to forcibly pressurise the suit.
NARRATOR: 'Running concurrently with the Gemini missions 'is the Apollo programme, 'basic objective to land men on the moon in 1969.
'Flight director, John Hodge.
' Well, we launch from Cape Kennedy, of course, with the Saturn V vehicle, into a parking orbit.
This is just an ordinary orbit, the same as we have been doing to date.
The three men will be in the vehicle.
We will go one, two or three revolutions and then we will increase the velocity to escape velocity to go to the moon.
We then are in this transfer phase between the Earth and the moon.
When we get to the moon, we will reduce the velocity in order to go into orbit around the moon with the two vehicles, that's the lunar excursion module and the command module.
We will go around the moon for two or three revolutions and then the lunar excursion module will separate and land on the front surface of the moon with two men in it and we will leave one man in the command module.
Following several hours of exploration, the lunar excursion module will then liftoff from the surface of the moon to rendezvous with the command and service module.
The two men will go back into the command module, we will leave the lunar excursion module there and the command module will come back to Earth.
Probably up to five in the Apollo programme NARRATOR: 'Astronaut Walter Cunningham 'in the Apollo command capsule.
' - LUTYENS: Now, three men will go.
- That's right.
What will their particular roles be? Well, it isn't really completely spelled out now, but we will have three men in the command module and their duties essentially will consist of Probably the seat that you are lying in will be a spacecraft commander.
What he is called is not yet determined, but he will be probably in overall charge of the crew.
His job will be associated primarily with flying.
The seat that's missing would contain probably the man whose job would be to do all the navigation, among other things.
One of his primary jobs would be to get down here to the lower equipment bay and at the navigation station and make navigation sightings and do all of our telescope work, sextant and telescope work.
The seat over here on the right, because of the arrangement of the instrument panel, we have most of the systems management functions sitting on the right, so we have fuel cells for electric power, you have environmental control system, the main communications system switches All of those functions are tried to be located over here, so you kind of have a systems engineer, a navigator and a spacecraft commander.
Now, could you describe the steps by which you prepare to descend to the moon's surface? Very briefly, it consists of After you have inserted into a lunar orbit, 60 to 80 nautical miles above the surface, two men will climb into the lunar excursion module through this tunnel.
We will After launch, we will have reoriented our spacecraft and reconfigured it so that the lunar excursion module is now up at the top end.
Two men will climb in, they will check out the vehicle.
If everything is fine, they will separate from the command module.
They will then make a burn on the descent engine, transfer into an elliptical orbit, above the lunar surface, of about 50,000 feet.
After making at least one revolution like this, probably, they will then make a descent burn down to about 300 or 400 feet above the lunar surface.
LUTYENS: Will you be disappointed if you are the guy left in this module? HE LAUGHS You are right, I will be disappointed if I'm left in this module.
On the other hand, there will be some consolation in having made the first lunar trip at any rate and there will be a lot of time to name the craters on the backside of the moon.
You know, Cunningham Number One, Cunningham Number Two THEY LAUGH What will it be like? - What will it be like?! - Let's have a guess.
I think we need somebody with a little ESP as far as what it'll be like, but I think we've got a pretty good notion of what the surface will or could be like from the Russian pictures that we saw very recently.
Are you confident that it will bear the weight of the landing? If I wasn't confident, I wouldn't be here making the trip.
Did you, personally, ever believe in this dust theory, that the moon was covered with a thick layer of dust? It's not what we think of as dust here on the Earth and I have always felt like we have a lot of small particles near the surface of the moon, but I've also kind of intuitively felt like it would support structure.
It will be a lunar day, or in the sunshine side of the moon, when we land.
LUTYENS: How will the lack of atmosphere affect the appearance of things? CUNNINGHAM: I would imagine that, on the original landing, there will be some kind of a problem with depth perception.
You don't have anything to scale it to.
If you have seen some of the studies that they've done on the photometric function for the moon and showing how shadows work, it isn't quite as expected here.
For instance, it isn't always sure that thewhat side of a crater that you would expect to be dark is the one that's dark.
One of the earliest returns, scientifically, from the trip, will be the geological specimens which we pick up.
LUTYENS: But what will the temperature be? CUNNINGHAM: I have indicated that we will land on the sunny side and the temperature will be pretty close to 100 degrees centigrade.
RADNOFSKY: And as a result, we will have to provide him with additional thermal protection, for instance the soles of his feet will have to have insulation on them.
LUTYENS: Are you worried about him tearing a part of the suit on a rough piece of rock, - a sharp rock? - Yes, yes, this is important and it's one of theer inadequacies, if you will, of a soft suit.
However, the suit is quite strong.
We have layers of felt, nylon felt, inside here, between the layers and before the actual pressure garment portion is reached, which should stop most, if not all, cutting edges likely to be encountered.
LUTYENS: Who will control the countdown for the return take off? I am I am sure we will have some kind of time hacks or time synchronisation with the Manned Space Flight Network here on Earth, but we will be conducting our own countdown.
That's fairly interesting, when you consider it takes thousands of people - I was going to say.
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and weeks and weeks here on the surface and - Good luck to you! - We have 20 minutes and two men to hit an on-time liftoff.
LUTYENS: Now, once you are selected, who controls your training? Do you have a choice of how you train? Well, yes, the general training is programmed here at NASA by a training division.
Once a crew is formed for a specific mission, the command pilot that's in charge of the crew is responsible for the flight readiness of that crew and he sets the training.
If, for instance, on Gemini VII, if I felt we needed more simulator time, I scheduled more simulator time.
If I felt we needed more trips to the planetarium, I arranged more trips to the planetarium.
Of course, this is all done in conjunction with the other crew members.
They'd come and say, "Well, Frank, I think we ought to do this "or we ought to that," and we'd get together and then we'd decide on what we needed to do.
We had trained for our flight for two years and the simulation in the control modes, the simulation in the physical sensations that people can produce here on Earth is fantastic, - very accurate.
- For example? Well, for example, we had flown launches, I suppose, 200 times, with noise, vibrations and even a minor amount of G onset and then, of course, we have the scourge of all the astronauts, a centrifuge, where we would experience the accelerations that are common during launch and re-entering and which It's a very cumbersome machine, but nevertheless it's effective and you don't go into any part of the flight not knowing what to expect.
The discipline is primarily self-discipline.
For instance, there was no rigid requirement for physical training, but all of us know that if we don't stay in shape, if we are not in tiptop condition, then we are not going to be selected for a flight.
I think a nonconformist probably would not get to the first base.
LUTYENS: I see.
Now Or should I say the first wicket? I don't know.
I'm not sure! It's not so much feeling a special race apart, I feel like I am living very, very fully and, as a matter of fact, speaking very personally, for the first time in my life, I really feel like I am doing something that I was cut out for.
I have never felt more comfortable in a job in my life.
LUTYENS: Can we come to re-entry? What preparations do you have to make for it? Well, the main preparation that we had, of course, was making sure that all the equipment and all the waste materials were properly stowed because you do build up a severe acceleration during re-entry and we didn't want anything flying around.
Probably the most critical phase of the whole mission would be hitting the 40-mile re-entry quarter on return to Earth.
At the supercircular velocity, 36,000 feet per second, which we will be returning at, you will have to be within a 40-mile quarter above the Earth's surface - in order to be captured.
- Otherwise? Well, if you are too far outside of that, and I believe it extends roughly between about 70 nautical miles and 110 nautical miles, if you are above that, using full downlift on our vehicle, you still cannot be captured and you would skip out on what - would really be a long journey.
- And that would be - goodbye Cunningham? - Probably.
And if you went a little bit too far, you can't keep the vehicle from exceeding its heat and G-load limitations.
When you look at the nose of the spacecraft, it looks like an inferno because the reaction jets are firing up there to keep the spacecraft stabilised and then thethe, er, phenolic material from the heat shield is boiling off and coming back over the windows and impinging on the nose of the spacecraft so in the front of you looks like the very holocaust.
And when you realise that your parachute's up there, you begin to wonder just how much heat it will take.
I think the first time you can really relax comfortably is when you've got three parachutes blossomed out above you on landing.
BORMAN: Fortunately, the sea was calm, or the Navy described it as calm.
I didn't think it was too calm, there were about three-foot waves, which I'm from Arizona and that was a pretty heavy sea.
LUTYENS: What's your answer to this criticism that it's just one big waste of money to send a man to the moon in the first place? BORMAN: Well, I think that there are many people that feel this way.
I do think, though, that it is more than sending a man to the moon, I think that this technological base that we are developing is absolutely essential.
When you expose a programme to the depths that our programme has been exposed, you runyou run several risks.
For instance, any failure is magnified because several million people are watching it and pressure is much is on to a greater extent because, when we say we are going to launch a flight for two weeks before we take off and then we expose the launch, the preparations, everything, to the television, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed.
I think it's wonderful.
CROWD CHEERS HORNS BLARE And I also hope that the people in this country are mature enough that when we do lose our first crews that they'll accept this as part of the business.
CROWD CHEERS HORNS BLARE
For this collection, Prof Alice Roberts has selected a range of programmes to celebrate Horizon's 50th anniversary.
More Horizon programmes and other BBC Four Collections are available on BBC iPlayer.
RADIO: 'America's number one car from the number one dealer' IGNITION STARTS UP '.
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Davis Chevrolet, '3555 Old Spanish Trail - 'the easiest place to get to in Houston.
' ASTRONAUT: We all live in the community of suburban America here, not in barracks, but in individual little private homes.
I feel just like a father that lives in suburbia who's trying to raise two boys and I'm away from home more than I'd like to be.
ROCKET THRUSTERS ROAR If a person would imagine themselves in a small motorboat tied to a dock, with perhaps a 10hp motor running half speed and then someone cuts a string It's a rather smooth acceleration and then, of course, as you go on, the size of the motor changes from 10hp to 20 and then in about two minutes you can imagine yourself at the back end of a steam engine or a diesel locomotive And after that area, well, everything got quiet and you felt like you were on the end of a needle that was threading its way up towards the heavens.
Well, the view was spectacular.
I was particularly impressed by the view over North Africa, round themouth of the Nile where you could see the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, all up into the Dead Sea and the Holy Land and the, uh It was very, very interesting to sit back and see this whole panorama below you, it was quite interesting.
During the daytime we were unable to see the stars, this was This confounds the scientists, but perhaps it was due to light scattering on our windows, or perhaps it was due to the earth-light reflection, we were unable to see the stars in the daytime.
INTERVIEWER: But when you get to the moon, you WILL be able to see the stars in daylight, they say.
ASTRONAUT: We hope so, we hope so.
And the reason we hope so, of course, is that our navigation depends upon seeing the stars, so INTERVIEWER: Yes.
NARRATOR: 'David Lutyens, Horizon reporter.
' That voice you heard was Colonel Frank Borman - astronaut, commander on the flight of Gemini VII.
You probably remember that on that flight, Borman and Lovell set a new endurance record for space flight of 14 days or thereabouts.
What sort of men do this job of being an astronaut? What's it feel like to live and work 100 miles above the Earth? I know that most of us wouldn't care even to sit in this seat for two weeks without being able to get up and stretch.
And in a minute, Borman will be talking about what it needs to keep a man alive in space, how even the simplest operations become really quite complicated.
How you eat a weightless meal and drink a weightless drink because even in orbit, of course, you can't keep water still in a cup.
And the view out through the porthole here, as the capsule begins its flaming re-entry into the atmosphere.
Also, what is the medical evidence as to how well humans can adapt to these extraordinary and new conditions? You may know that they recorded Borman's heartbeat continuously through his flight, they also monitored his brainwaves on two nights to see how well he was sleeping.
How do you sleep when the sun rises and sets 16 times each day? Well, this is the Gemini spacecraft, it's virtually identical to Borman's.
I'm sitting in Borman's seat.
Over here is the co-pilot's seat.
Well, as you see, things are rather cramped and to complete the impression, I'm going to close this hatch.
Now, to manoeuvre.
This is the primary control, this is the so-called attitude control lever, it's comparable to a stick on an aircraft.
If I move it this way, I make the spacecraft pitch - nose up, nose down.
This produces a roll, this a yaw - that's like that.
On an aircraft the rudder pedals do that.
I can see what I'm doing on this attitude indicator, which shows me the tilt of the spacecraft relative to the Earth's horizon or indeed, to another spacecraft if I'm trying to rendezvous.
Now, to apply a larger thrust and, for instance, change orbits, I would use this thrust control.
This gives me forward thrust, backward, left, right, up, down and I can see what I'm doing on this space-age speedometer here, this gives me the change in velocity that I'm producing.
And I would, in fact, use both these controls in conjunction, using the readout from the computer, the on-board computer.
Now, a few other controls.
Here's the button, for instance, which separates the spacecraft at the end of the launch from the booster.
At the end of the flight, in preparation for re-entry, here's the button that fires the retrorocket.
And when we're coming down towards the ocean, here are the two buttons for the high altitude drogue and the big parachute.
And finally, here's the control that we hope we never have to use, the abort lever.
Pushing it there shuts off the booster, and the whole way fires the entire capsule free from the booster using the retrorocket.
Now, if something went wrong lower down or on the launch pad, we'd use a different system, this would simply eject the seats alone out of the capsule and there's a ring I would pull down here between my legs.
The life-support system is below us and behind us, this pressurises the cabin at about a third of an atmosphere.
Pure oxygen recirculates, it takes out the carbon dioxide, keeps the moisture right and so on, and we We have a hose here, which circulates oxygen through our suits and attaches to the front of the spacesuit here.
Then there's Everywhere, as you can see, there's storage compartments.
That's very important to keep things stored tidily away.
If you leave them out, of course, they just float free in zero gravity.
All in all, it's not exactly the kind of place you'd choose to spend a two-week vacation.
Well, I think that people can project the problem if they imagine living two weeks in the front seat of a Volkswagen.
NARRATOR: 'Colonel Frank Borman, Gemini astronaut.
' What about weightlessness, does it give you a great sense of exhilaration? I'm afraid I almost am a A little anti-psychologist because they always try to project these great and wonderful things and I think it was actually a relativelynormal experience.
LUTYENS: It's amazing how adaptable the human being is.
Yes, it is, and I don't think that the people are quite prepared to accept this.
On this question of being cramped, were you in your spacesuits the whole time? No, this was one of the very fortunate parts of our flight, we were able to take our spacesuits off.
At first we took 'em off in series.
Jim would take it off for a while and then I'd leave mine on and then vice versa, and finally, after three days, we got permission to take 'em off at the same time, so we completed the flight in our underwear.
LUTYENS: Was that a very great relief? It was a tremendous relief, and the post-flight reports indicate that we came down in better physical shape than many of the other ones and I attribute a great deal of this to the fact that we were able to fly without pressure suits.
I think if the layman could imagine himself being inside an inner tube, continually, you'd get some idea of the the cumbersomeness and the stiflingness of the pressure suit.
The cooling was in spots, it would be hot and cool, and it really is not a function of any particular pressure suit because we had a special one designed for us that was a fine one, it was up to the very best and the state-of-the-art.
LUTYENS: What happens if you get an itch, can you do anything about it in your suit? If you get an itch, you can scratch.
Our suit was very light and we could get right through, feel it.
It was actually a very thin layer of rubber covered by one thin layer of nylon and that was it.
Now, what about eating? We ate food that was freeze-dried and we had to reconstitute it by adding water.
It came in plastic bags and we squirted about 3oz of water in, mushed it up and then ate it, much as you would a tube of toothpaste.
This metal bag contains the meal which Borman and Lovell ate in the middle of their 13th day in space and in my inexpert way, I'm going to show you what was involved in eating that meal using the fork and the knife which is available to them in their capsule.
I genuinely don't know what's inside this bag, it's going to be quite exciting to find out.
Of course .
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all the food is freeze-dried, that's to say it's had all the water taken out of it and before it can be eaten, you have to add water in a way which I'm going to show you in a minute.
Now, let's see what goodies we've got in here.
Don't forget, of course, that this package wouldn't sit here so peacefully if we were up in zero-G, it'd be in danger of floating away at any point.
Now, here's There are two of everything, of course.
Here are two pieces of fruit cake.
Here are a couple of towels, I guess for washing up after the meal.
This says, "Orange grapefruit drink.
" This says, "Apricot pudding.
" Maybe we'll come to the meat course in a minute.
The astronauts do dictate their diet to some extent.
It says, "Tuna salad.
" I guess this is a second tuna salad and a second apricot pudding.
The main trouble we had with the food was that I guess the people didn't realise that we were going to operate on a regular day and try to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.
So, the meals weren't prepared that way and several times we had shrimp cocktail and peas for breakfast, and so on.
Now, let me try to show you what's involved in having this drink of orange grapefruit.
First, let me get some of these other delicacies out of the way.
What I have to do now is to introduce some water into this dehydrated .
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fruit mix, which is easier said than done, but I guess up in space you have all day to do this kind of thing.
This is the water gun, which I insert I don't know if you can see, I'm trying to insert this into this valve, there it is.
And I will now introduce water.
On the newer makes of guns there's a meter which tells me exactly how much water I'm introducing.
This is very important since each astronaut, of course, has got to keep his intake of water carefully controlled.
I can also take a drink of water direct from this gun if I want to.
Now, notice how this is a one-way valve, no water can get out that way.
This is to stop droplets of water getting loose and floating around in the capsule.
I'm mixing this up now.
I must say, it looks rather good.
And Next, I've got to open this end in order to withdraw the tube through which I'm going to drink the stuff.
The other solid parts of the diet are hydrated in the same way as this.
Again, I'm having difficulty getting this tube open.
Um Incidentally, this actual meal was up with Borman on the flight and apparently they didn't eat it.
I guess they were getting very near the end and they just didn't feel like it.
Now I'm going to drink this.
Now, I should, of course, finish this, but I'm not going to right here.
The next thing I would do would be to disinfect what was left using this bactericidal pill here, I'd cut this out of its little pocket, put it in, and then squeeze the pill around inside, roll up the package and now I have to store it carefully because, of course, over 14 days' space flight we get a lot of these packages and the stowage problem is a severe one.
Here is the wastebasket, as it were.
Now for an after-lunch clean-up with this impregnated towel.
This is part of an astronaut's personal hygiene.
Um It's very refreshing, incidentally.
They also do have a toothbrush and they have here some special chewing gum, which prevents the plaque forming on their teeth.
They don't as yet shave in space, though a good deal of attention is being given to this because, of course, whiskers are just as dangerous as anything else.
If they float around in the capsule they could get into equipment, into instruments, they could even be inhaled by the astronauts.
But, of course, with only 14 days, it's not a major problem yet.
Now, after-dinner exercises would be done with something like this.
Strictly, this part where my left hand is, should go around my foot and I would pull up against it, but you can see that you can do quite a bit of exercise with this and that keeps the muscles in trim.
Here's the piece of equipment that an astronaut uses if he wants to urinate.
He attaches it to himself - at this point having opened his spacesuit - opens this valve Remember that the whole thing will be weightless all the time .
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and allows the urine to pass into this bag here.
And he closes the valve.
He may take a specimen of his urine back to Earth by using this device here, but ignoring that, to get rid of the urine, he attaches this nozzle here to a hose which passes to the wall of the spacecraft, opens this valve and the valve in the wall of the spacecraft, and immediately the vacuum of space will suck the urine out and, as it's put, vented.
Human faeces are collected in much the same way, but they are not vented to the outside, instead, the astronaut adds a germicidal pill into the bag and stores it with the other waste until the end of the trip.
Incidentally and perhaps paradoxically, the astronauts report that the venting of urine produces a coloured rainbow plume of crystals, which is one of the most beautiful sights in space.
RADIO: '.
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29 '9.
29 south' LUTYENS: 'During each flight, 'it's very necessary to monitor the astronauts' 'essential body functions from the ground - 'lungs, heart, blood pressure, brain and so on.
'At the medical centre in Houston, 'I'm having the various electrical sensors applied to me.
'For instance, these sensors monitor respiration sounds.
'This tiny microphone on the arm acts as a stethoscope.
'It goes under the usual inflatable cuff '.
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which is pumped up by the astronaut 'and his blood pressure is measured in the usual way.
'Normally, there are four head sensors monitoring brain activity, 'but I'd need to have my head shaved to apply all of them.
'Signals from all these sensors go to signal conditioners, 'about the size of cigarette lighters, 'carried in these pockets in the astronauts' underwear.
'Their responses are passed to this bio-plug, 'which in turn is connected to the telemetry system in the spacecraft.
'From there, via the radio link to ground control.
' RADIO: 'And then when the actual times were recorded' NARRATOR: 'Dr Charles Berry, Gemini medical chief.
' LUTYENS: What are the main physiological problems that you've uncovered so far? Well, there are three principal problems.
The first involves the response of the heart and blood vessels to the zero-G state, and we've measured this through the three long duration flights and we have seen that there is a if you will, a relaxation of the reflexes in the lower extremities, lower portions of the body, which reduces the amount of blood flow back to the heart so that you have inadequate amount of blood to circulate.
If the heart was having to work harder following eight days of flights than it was following four days, and harder following four days than it was following three orbits - as the first Gemini flight - if you projected this information ahead, you would feel that you might be into some serious difficulty following a 14-day flight.
I didn't feel this, I didn't feel that we were going to have unconscious astronauts on our hands in the water, and I felt that they were going to adjust and these findings were going to level off.
That has indeed proven to be the case following a 14-day flight and we are very happy about it.
The second problem involves the calcium response in that we have noted on the two long duration flights - the four and the eight - that there was some increased mobilisation of calcium, the pulling of calcium from the bones and thus, probably having to leave the body.
The X-ray evidence however shows that the amount of density as measured by X-ray in a particular bone - the heel bone - has the loss shown in that density is not as great following the 14-day flight as it was following eight days of flight.
Now, we're interested in this because if you mobilise a lot of calcium, pull it out of the bone, put it into the bloodstream, it's excreted through the kidney, you may indeed have some kidney stones.
Secondly, you could conceivably on very, very long flights lose enough calcium to where you would have difficulty with the bones themselves.
Now, we do not expect this because I think that even a small amount of exercise done on this flight was enough to probably reverse this trend and that's a very interesting finding for us.
The third finding is what we've seen in blood volume changes.
We've had some decrease in the total blood volume, both the liquid and the and thecellular portion of the blood, the red cells.
The red cells, of course, are our oxygen carriers and we're violently interested in what happens to them.
We've seen this loss in our bed rest studies and the amount of plasma volume, the total blood volume itself was actually maintained on the 14-day flight by a readjustment - we feel they increased their liquid portion of the blood to make up for the loss of the cellular portion.
LUTYENS: So, on the whole, the results of the Borman-Lovell flight, they're now very encouraging from your point of view? I think they are extremely encouraging.
We still have one one other problem we didn't mention here is sleep.
I did not sleep as well as Jim did.
He I envied him many times when I'd look over and find him snoring away peacefully.
I slept at times when I got really tired, but it was mostly a fitting type of sleep where you just rather catnapped and would sleep for maybe an hour, two hours and then wake up and look around and then go back to sleep.
Some of this is the command pilot syndrome, we call it, where just because you're the commander of the ship you tend to worry about whether things are going to be working all right and you want to continually wake up and cycle all your gauges and switches and make sure everything's still all right and your quantities are all right, and Frank did that repeatedly during the mission.
We've seen this on every one of the flights with command pilots.
LUTYENS: You did try to keep an earthbound schedule in spite of the day and the night going past you over there.
That's correct.
Yes, I hate to admit this, but we didn't use Greenwich Mean Time on our flight, we used Houston time because we tried to stay acclimated to the schedule that we were living on before we took off.
And when the time came at 10pm at night, we put window shades over our windows and went to sleep and we slept for ten hours or we remained covered up for ten hours and then at eight o'clock in the morning or whenever - it was seven o'clock in the morning - we'd uncover the windows and go to work.
What about this business of the Russian astronauts losing their orientation and having to cut short their flight, did you have any trouble with that? No, I'm glad you asked that, because we we were questioned about this and many of the peopleadvertised that we had been disorientated.
You see, every night when we went to sleep, we closed our windows up completely.
Now, during the evening, the spacecraft would vent either oxygen or perhaps some water through the water boiler, and this venting, of course, causes a reaction that would induce a tumble in the spacecraft.
LUTYENS: Yes.
And we'd wake up in the morning, sometimes finding that we were tumbling on the order of seven to eight degrees per second.
LUTYENS: Now, wait a minute.
That means you go once around in how many minutes? Well, let's see, seven or eight degrees per second.
There's 360 degrees in a circle, so that would be about 40 seconds.
It's about one revolution per minute.
LUTYENS: Yes.
So, you'd see that it was rather a swift tumble rate and the interesting fact is that when the windows were covered, we had no sensation that we were tumbling.
We were in our own little world with our own set of coordinate systems and as far as we were concerned we were inertially stabilised.
As soon as we'd open the windows, we could establish the fact that we were tumbling by seeing the horizon, the stars and the Earth go by.
I think we've had no psychological aberrations of any sort on any of our missions.
This is really quite remarkable, I think it's equally as remarkable as the physiologic findings that we've seen.
LUTYENS: What do you think is the limiting factor on how long man can stay in space? I think probably at the present state of development, the limiting factor will be the mechanical aspect of the vehicles that we can put in space.
I Jim and I didn't find any reason to believe that if we had the proper .
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tools and the proper accommodations that we couldn't have stayed up there for six months or as long as we were required to.
- What sort of things? - Well, like a bed, that would have been very nice to have a place to stretch out and sleep.
It would have been nice to have some diversionary activities for your off-duty hours.
The same type of things that you'd expect a person to have if he was isolated at the South Pole for a period of three months he needs in space.
Would it be right then that all these experiments that have been designed on the assumption that living in space is something totally different from living on Earth, that these experiments are unnecessary? Well, they may They may I don't think we can say they are unnecessary, I think we You had a very good point there.
I think they were developed and designed to probe with the assumption that it was entirely different, that it was a wonderful, new, hostile environment, as the trite phrase goes.
But I think we're finding that man is very adaptable, and that in reality, if you provide him with the normal comforts that he expects on Earth, he can function as well on zero-G as he can on Earth.
What kind of a medical kit does an astronaut take with him? Well, we have carried on the Gemini programme this kit and this is some eye drops, we have some of the common, ordinary medicines that you use - aspirins, some tablets for motion sickness, Dexedrine for fatigue an antibiotic and our old friend, the Band-Aid.
In addition, for medication that has to be injected, we have for motion sickness and for pain, some devices such as these.
They look like this would before it's fired.
You pull this firing pin out and I'll put this one back in so it won't stay armed.
Once it's armed, you then just touch it against the side of the thigh, like this, and that pressure is enough to cause this needle to fire.
As you see here, this one's been fired.
The needle would fire through the suit, into the thigh and inject the material all in one motion.
Dr Berry, what happens if you have a medical emergency in space, say an astronaut gets an appendicitis? Well, we have thought very seriously of and are still doing some final planning as to whether we will go to doing prophylactic appendectomies, where we will require the crews for long missions to have had an appendectomy prior to the mission.
As soon as an astronaut needs to go outside his capsule, he faces a whole new set of problems.
First, his suit has to be modified, both to protect him against the glare and heat from the sun's rays and also to stop it ballooning out into a kind of rigid straitjacket when it becomes exposed to the total vacuum of space.
Then, if he is not be permanently tied to the spacecraft by an umbilical lifeline, he will need to carry on his back his own portable life-support system.
If he is going to work near the capsule in free space, he will need portable jets to manoeuvre and he will need special tools to do even the simplest job.
If you try and unscrew a bolt under zero gravity, you won't turn the bolt, you will turn yourself.
When it comes to living on the moon, the problems get even more severe.
In the daytime, you will probably need water-cooled underwear, yet by night, when the ground cools to a couple of hundred degrees below zero, you'll need specially insulated boots just so that his body heat won't drain away through the soles of his feet.
Mr Radnofsky, what extra problems will you have with suit design when the astronaut wants to go outside the capsule? NARRATOR: 'Matthew Radnofsky, spacesuit designer.
' We have to define how he is going outside.
If he were going outside on an umbilical, as White did in a suit very similar to this one, no changes would have to be made in this suit.
It has all the requirements for protecting the man in space.
However, in the event that the man were to go outside on a completely self-contained portable life-support system, then some changes would have to be made.
LUTYENS: He would have to have a pack on his back? He would have to have a pack on his back and the pack would have to containerdevices, chemicals, for instance, to remove carbon dioxide.
It would have to have a heat exchanger.
It would have to have self-contained communications.
It would have to have a fan or blower system to forcibly pressurise the suit.
NARRATOR: 'Running concurrently with the Gemini missions 'is the Apollo programme, 'basic objective to land men on the moon in 1969.
'Flight director, John Hodge.
' Well, we launch from Cape Kennedy, of course, with the Saturn V vehicle, into a parking orbit.
This is just an ordinary orbit, the same as we have been doing to date.
The three men will be in the vehicle.
We will go one, two or three revolutions and then we will increase the velocity to escape velocity to go to the moon.
We then are in this transfer phase between the Earth and the moon.
When we get to the moon, we will reduce the velocity in order to go into orbit around the moon with the two vehicles, that's the lunar excursion module and the command module.
We will go around the moon for two or three revolutions and then the lunar excursion module will separate and land on the front surface of the moon with two men in it and we will leave one man in the command module.
Following several hours of exploration, the lunar excursion module will then liftoff from the surface of the moon to rendezvous with the command and service module.
The two men will go back into the command module, we will leave the lunar excursion module there and the command module will come back to Earth.
Probably up to five in the Apollo programme NARRATOR: 'Astronaut Walter Cunningham 'in the Apollo command capsule.
' - LUTYENS: Now, three men will go.
- That's right.
What will their particular roles be? Well, it isn't really completely spelled out now, but we will have three men in the command module and their duties essentially will consist of Probably the seat that you are lying in will be a spacecraft commander.
What he is called is not yet determined, but he will be probably in overall charge of the crew.
His job will be associated primarily with flying.
The seat that's missing would contain probably the man whose job would be to do all the navigation, among other things.
One of his primary jobs would be to get down here to the lower equipment bay and at the navigation station and make navigation sightings and do all of our telescope work, sextant and telescope work.
The seat over here on the right, because of the arrangement of the instrument panel, we have most of the systems management functions sitting on the right, so we have fuel cells for electric power, you have environmental control system, the main communications system switches All of those functions are tried to be located over here, so you kind of have a systems engineer, a navigator and a spacecraft commander.
Now, could you describe the steps by which you prepare to descend to the moon's surface? Very briefly, it consists of After you have inserted into a lunar orbit, 60 to 80 nautical miles above the surface, two men will climb into the lunar excursion module through this tunnel.
We will After launch, we will have reoriented our spacecraft and reconfigured it so that the lunar excursion module is now up at the top end.
Two men will climb in, they will check out the vehicle.
If everything is fine, they will separate from the command module.
They will then make a burn on the descent engine, transfer into an elliptical orbit, above the lunar surface, of about 50,000 feet.
After making at least one revolution like this, probably, they will then make a descent burn down to about 300 or 400 feet above the lunar surface.
LUTYENS: Will you be disappointed if you are the guy left in this module? HE LAUGHS You are right, I will be disappointed if I'm left in this module.
On the other hand, there will be some consolation in having made the first lunar trip at any rate and there will be a lot of time to name the craters on the backside of the moon.
You know, Cunningham Number One, Cunningham Number Two THEY LAUGH What will it be like? - What will it be like?! - Let's have a guess.
I think we need somebody with a little ESP as far as what it'll be like, but I think we've got a pretty good notion of what the surface will or could be like from the Russian pictures that we saw very recently.
Are you confident that it will bear the weight of the landing? If I wasn't confident, I wouldn't be here making the trip.
Did you, personally, ever believe in this dust theory, that the moon was covered with a thick layer of dust? It's not what we think of as dust here on the Earth and I have always felt like we have a lot of small particles near the surface of the moon, but I've also kind of intuitively felt like it would support structure.
It will be a lunar day, or in the sunshine side of the moon, when we land.
LUTYENS: How will the lack of atmosphere affect the appearance of things? CUNNINGHAM: I would imagine that, on the original landing, there will be some kind of a problem with depth perception.
You don't have anything to scale it to.
If you have seen some of the studies that they've done on the photometric function for the moon and showing how shadows work, it isn't quite as expected here.
For instance, it isn't always sure that thewhat side of a crater that you would expect to be dark is the one that's dark.
One of the earliest returns, scientifically, from the trip, will be the geological specimens which we pick up.
LUTYENS: But what will the temperature be? CUNNINGHAM: I have indicated that we will land on the sunny side and the temperature will be pretty close to 100 degrees centigrade.
RADNOFSKY: And as a result, we will have to provide him with additional thermal protection, for instance the soles of his feet will have to have insulation on them.
LUTYENS: Are you worried about him tearing a part of the suit on a rough piece of rock, - a sharp rock? - Yes, yes, this is important and it's one of theer inadequacies, if you will, of a soft suit.
However, the suit is quite strong.
We have layers of felt, nylon felt, inside here, between the layers and before the actual pressure garment portion is reached, which should stop most, if not all, cutting edges likely to be encountered.
LUTYENS: Who will control the countdown for the return take off? I am I am sure we will have some kind of time hacks or time synchronisation with the Manned Space Flight Network here on Earth, but we will be conducting our own countdown.
That's fairly interesting, when you consider it takes thousands of people - I was going to say.
- .
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and weeks and weeks here on the surface and - Good luck to you! - We have 20 minutes and two men to hit an on-time liftoff.
LUTYENS: Now, once you are selected, who controls your training? Do you have a choice of how you train? Well, yes, the general training is programmed here at NASA by a training division.
Once a crew is formed for a specific mission, the command pilot that's in charge of the crew is responsible for the flight readiness of that crew and he sets the training.
If, for instance, on Gemini VII, if I felt we needed more simulator time, I scheduled more simulator time.
If I felt we needed more trips to the planetarium, I arranged more trips to the planetarium.
Of course, this is all done in conjunction with the other crew members.
They'd come and say, "Well, Frank, I think we ought to do this "or we ought to that," and we'd get together and then we'd decide on what we needed to do.
We had trained for our flight for two years and the simulation in the control modes, the simulation in the physical sensations that people can produce here on Earth is fantastic, - very accurate.
- For example? Well, for example, we had flown launches, I suppose, 200 times, with noise, vibrations and even a minor amount of G onset and then, of course, we have the scourge of all the astronauts, a centrifuge, where we would experience the accelerations that are common during launch and re-entering and which It's a very cumbersome machine, but nevertheless it's effective and you don't go into any part of the flight not knowing what to expect.
The discipline is primarily self-discipline.
For instance, there was no rigid requirement for physical training, but all of us know that if we don't stay in shape, if we are not in tiptop condition, then we are not going to be selected for a flight.
I think a nonconformist probably would not get to the first base.
LUTYENS: I see.
Now Or should I say the first wicket? I don't know.
I'm not sure! It's not so much feeling a special race apart, I feel like I am living very, very fully and, as a matter of fact, speaking very personally, for the first time in my life, I really feel like I am doing something that I was cut out for.
I have never felt more comfortable in a job in my life.
LUTYENS: Can we come to re-entry? What preparations do you have to make for it? Well, the main preparation that we had, of course, was making sure that all the equipment and all the waste materials were properly stowed because you do build up a severe acceleration during re-entry and we didn't want anything flying around.
Probably the most critical phase of the whole mission would be hitting the 40-mile re-entry quarter on return to Earth.
At the supercircular velocity, 36,000 feet per second, which we will be returning at, you will have to be within a 40-mile quarter above the Earth's surface - in order to be captured.
- Otherwise? Well, if you are too far outside of that, and I believe it extends roughly between about 70 nautical miles and 110 nautical miles, if you are above that, using full downlift on our vehicle, you still cannot be captured and you would skip out on what - would really be a long journey.
- And that would be - goodbye Cunningham? - Probably.
And if you went a little bit too far, you can't keep the vehicle from exceeding its heat and G-load limitations.
When you look at the nose of the spacecraft, it looks like an inferno because the reaction jets are firing up there to keep the spacecraft stabilised and then thethe, er, phenolic material from the heat shield is boiling off and coming back over the windows and impinging on the nose of the spacecraft so in the front of you looks like the very holocaust.
And when you realise that your parachute's up there, you begin to wonder just how much heat it will take.
I think the first time you can really relax comfortably is when you've got three parachutes blossomed out above you on landing.
BORMAN: Fortunately, the sea was calm, or the Navy described it as calm.
I didn't think it was too calm, there were about three-foot waves, which I'm from Arizona and that was a pretty heavy sea.
LUTYENS: What's your answer to this criticism that it's just one big waste of money to send a man to the moon in the first place? BORMAN: Well, I think that there are many people that feel this way.
I do think, though, that it is more than sending a man to the moon, I think that this technological base that we are developing is absolutely essential.
When you expose a programme to the depths that our programme has been exposed, you runyou run several risks.
For instance, any failure is magnified because several million people are watching it and pressure is much is on to a greater extent because, when we say we are going to launch a flight for two weeks before we take off and then we expose the launch, the preparations, everything, to the television, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed.
I think it's wonderful.
CROWD CHEERS HORNS BLARE And I also hope that the people in this country are mature enough that when we do lose our first crews that they'll accept this as part of the business.
CROWD CHEERS HORNS BLARE