Michigan Alumni: Al Worden - A U-M Alumni Exclusive Interview (by AlumniAssociationUM)
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Michigan Alumni: Al Worden - A U-M Alumni Exclusive Interview (by AlumniAssociationUM)

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Remembering Apollo 15 launched this Day in 1971 - Dave Scott, Jim Irvin and Al Worden heading for the lunar highlands atĀ the Hadley Rille-Apennines region.Ā It was the first of the āJ missions," long stays on the Moon, with a greater focus on scienceĀ and also the first mission on which the Lunar Roving Vehicle was used.
T. K. Mattingly - some stuff you may not have known.
Above picture from the State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame. Puts my attempt to shame lol.
Thomas āKenā Mattingly was born in Chicago Illinois, on the 17th of March 1936. Mattingly's father worked for an airline, so Thomas grew up with a love of aircraft and flight. As a child he used to build ā...every model airplane that I could find...ā out of Tinkertoys. At age ten, Mattingly started to read about the moon.
Ken Mattingly was selected for Astronaut training in 1966. He was originally schedule to be the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 13, but after being exposed to German Measles, he was bumped from this flight.
A bird in the hand is worth two in space... After finding out he was going to be command module pilot for Apollo 16, Mattingly knew there was a chance he could be re-rostered to actually go down the moon's surface on Apollo 18. So he had a conversation with Deke. ā... I'd sure like to go down to the surface.ā Mattingly said. āWell, Iāll give you your choice, but I would always take a bird in the hand.ā Deke replied. Mattingly decided, of course, to follow Deke's advice. I think it's sad that 18 was scrapped ā and then kicked when it was down by Brian Miller (rolls eyes) ā when they had all the stuff ready.
Back when he was one of the space programs bachelor's he was described by one his dates as āso shy and quiet he's hard to get to know... He's so sincere, thoughtful, and considerate he would make an ideal husband.ā
T. K Mattingly was awarded a moon rock, because well, he earned it.
Sources
Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Mattingly
Charles Postell & Lee Holley āKen Mattingly: Bachelor in Spaceā The Free Lance-Star - 1970
JSC Interviews - http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/MattinglyTK/MattinglyTK_11-6-01.htm
moonandback.com
Astronaut T.K. Mattingly Honored with Ambassador of Exploration Award (by NASAtelevision)
Ken Mattingly talks a little about his moon rock as he is given his award. Then there is some archive footage of Mattingly on the Apollo 16 mission and his mission on Discovery.
I love this picture of the original Apollo 13 crew during water egress training - theyāre having a lot of fun, and it looks like a sitcom promo photo.
Feel in a mood to post more Mattingly stuff.

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More photos of Ken Mattingly and Jack Swigert at a postflight party in Swigertās apartment, April 1970.
Jack Swigertās mother talks with Ken Mattingly, at a post-Apollo 13 gathering in her sonās apartment. Jack had replaced Mattingly on Apollo 13 after Mattingly was exposed to the measles.
This photo melts my heart into tiny pieces.
A collage I made of the Apollo 17 launch. Picture of Saturn V from NASA, obviously.
"Left: ESCAPE. Lunar module pilot Stuart Roosa prepares to descend from a cab which would carry the Apollo 14 crew down from the 320-foot launching tower at Kennedy Space Center in the event of an emergency just before blast-off.
"Right: RECOVERY. Astronaut Stuart Roosa checks a training spacecraft aboard the NASA ship Retriever. The spacecraft with the astronauts aboard is put into the water to train the crewmen in getting out of the craft safely and keeping it from sinking after splashdown."

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āEverybodyās focussed on those who land on the moon but their function is to pick up a rock."
Al Worden is one of only five living men who has been even more remote and out of contact than the more celebrated astronauts who walked on the Moon. Really interesting interview with him about his work and whether or not he was really lonely up thereā¦
Hereās the interview as foundĀ hereĀ
Seven men in the history of humanity stand apart from the rest of us. These are theĀ ApolloĀ command module pilots who spent time alone in orbit around the Moon, while their colleagues walked on the lunar surface. When they were on the far side of the Moon, these astronauts were completely out of contact, and further from Earth, than anyone had ever been before. Or has ever been since.
Only five of these people are still alive and, when I meet him,Ā Apollo 15 command module pilot Al WordenĀ still looks every bit the veteran astronaut. Even in the unlikely surroundings of a crowded restaurant in Yorkshire, in northern England, this former test pilot stands out ā an alpha male holding court, surrounded by a group of admirers eagerly hanging on his every word.
Worden flew to the Moon in July 1971, alongside commander Dave Scott and lunar module pilot Jim Irwin. During his time alone on the command module he entered the record books as the āmost isolated human being" everĀ - at times his companions being 3,600km (2,235 miles) away on the lunar surface.
Like the other Apollo astronauts Iāve met Worden would rather talk about the mission and its achievements, than himself. As the first of the so-called āJā class missions,Ā Apollo 15Ā is widely accepted as the most scientifically rigorous of the Apollo programme. Nevertheless, as we sit down in a quiet corner of the hotel bar, with proposals out there for a return to the Moon and missions to Mars, Iām keen to learn about the human experience of being so far from home:
Do you feel that command module pilots get overlooked by history ā you had what was perceived as the less glamorous job?
Itās kind of funny, everybodyās focussed on those who land on the Moon but their function is to pick up a rock. Theyāre just out gathering rocks and they bring all those rocks back and they get analysed. In terms of the science, you gather a lot more science from lunar orbit than you can on the surface. I photographed, for example, about 25% of the lunar surface ā the first time that had been done. I mapped about that same amount. Thatās a lot of data to come back. In fact, I guess theyāre still looking at it.
Iām interested in what was going through your mind as the lunar lander separated from the command module and you see it getting smaller and smaller in the window as it passes out of sight and descends towards the Moon. What goes through your mind when thatās happening?
First off, you wish them luck: āI hope you land okay!ā The second thought is: āgee Iām glad theyāve gone because Iāve got this place all to myself.ā And so I had three wonderful days in a spacecraft all by myself.
Wasnāt it lonely?
Thereās a thing about being alone and thereās a thing about being lonely, and theyāre two different things. I was alone but I was not lonely. My background was as a fighter pilot in the airforce, then as a test pilot ā and that was mostly in fighter airplanes ā so I was very used to being by myself. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didnāt have to talk to Dave and Jim any more, except once they came around [when the orbiting command module was above the landing site) and I said āhiā. On the backside of the Moon, I didnāt even have to talk to Houston and that was the best part of the flight.Ā
You were a quarter of a million miles away from home though.
Yes, youāre a long way away but the thing that most impressed me about being in lunar orbit ā particularly the times when I was by myself ā was that every time I came round the backside of the Moon, I got to a window where I could watch the Earthrise and that was phenomenal. And in addition to that, I got to look at the universe out there with a very different perspective and a very different way than anyone had before.
What I found was that the number of stars was just so immense. In fact I couldnāt pick up individual stars, it was like a sheet of light. I found that fascinating because it changed my ideas about how we think about the Universe.
There are billions of stars out there ā the Milky Way galaxy that weāre in contains billions of stars, not just a few. And there are billions of galaxies out there. So what does that tell you about the Universe? That tells you we just donāt think big enough. To my mind thatās the whole purpose of the space programme, to figure out what thatās all about.
Did that not make you feel even smaller and even more alone?
Oh yeah, you want to feel insignificant? Go behind the Moon sometime. Thatāll make you really feel that youāre nothing!
Iām intrigued that you said you preferred being out of contact with Houston, why was that?
I didnāt need someone yammering in my ear. I had a lot of work to do. I had a lot of things I was trying to accomplish. I kind of say that in a joking way, because if anything serious were to come up then Iād certainly want them to contact me. But if everything was going well, I didnāt need to talk to them and I could concentrate on the science I was doing.
How busy were you? I imagine a lot of your thinking about the Earth and the Universe was done after the mission?
Thatās a funny thing, when youāre out there observing all this and doing all this remote sensing, and the photographing and the-this and the-that, you donāt really have time to think much about it. You put it in a memory bank and when you get back that you think about all that. I worked 20 hours a day and Iād get three or four hours of sleep a night. So you really donāt have the luxury of the time to sit and look out of the window and think āoh gosh I can ponder on the universe out there and philosophise about whatās there.ā
What about music ā what was your mix tape for the Moon?
We had little cassette players that we could use during the flight. I was, and still am, an absolute Beatles fan and I love their music. I also carried some Elton John, some John Denver and the Blue Danube Waltz [from the movie 2001, a Space Odyssey].
You are one of only seven people who have been isolated, in orbit around the Moon [the others are the command module pilots of Apollo 10, 11, 12, 14, 16 and 17 and only Apollo 15, 16 and 17 pilots spent three days alone in lunar orbit]. Are there lessons that astronauts in the future can learn, if and when we return to the Moon or go onto Mars?
I think there probably are, although we all had different experiences. The lesson I got was donāt get too friendly with your crew. With the long periods of time you spend with the other two, I found that I was more tuned to doing the job I had to do than I was with interfacing with them. We really worked well together professionally but we were not particularly great friends and I think that was a benefit.
How does that work then? Itās hardly a nine to five job when you can go home at the end of the today, away from your work colleagues?
Thatās why you need to maintain a distance between people. If you get to a point in a flight where itās time to take a rest, not do anything for a while, you need to be comfortable that you can enjoy the solitude without having to feel you have to talk to everybody.
I guess we all expect you to be chums, are you saying thatās not necessarily the case?
Apollo 12 they were always buddies ā Pete Conrad treated his crew like brothers. If you saw one, you saw all three because they were always together. We were the opposite of that, we trained together but we didnāt socialise a lot together and I think that made us a more effective crew.
Your colleagues Dave Scott and Jim Irwin left footprints on the Moon ā which will be there for millions of years. Will you have left anything behind as a memorial to your mission? Your urine maybe?
It could be, we actually made urine dumps when we were in lunar orbit. What we had to do was weād open the valve and flush it all out, then make a trajectory change so we got out of the way. It could still be there. However, the Moon doesnāt have enough gravity to retain particles in orbit ā thatās why thereās no atmosphere. I suspect anything weāve dumped has disappeared by now ā my guess is thereās nothing left.
(via davecornthwaite)
My sketch of Al Worden.
That's always in the back of your head -- you never really think you're quite ready.... You just train the best you can, pile it in. And one day you say, We're gonna go.... I'm as ready as I'll ever be. -- Al Worden. Apollo 15
Quote taken from "Voices from the Moon" by Andrew Chaikin, Photo take from NASAs Apollo 15 Map and Image Library.
Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the U.S. Apollo Program and the second to land on the Moon. Its crew members were Commander Pete Conrad, Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean, and Command Module Pilot Richard Gordon.
Fact 1: During suit-up, a sandwich was put into Conradās pocket.
Fact 2:ā¦
Future Plans
Woops!
Just realized I haven't explained yet why I've started on Gordon without talking about Swigert. Well, this is because I'm planning to do a kind of feature on 13. I haven't forgotten him.

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Astro Chat with Gemini & Apollo Astronaut Richard Gordon, Part 1 (by AstronautScholars)
A cute family moment with the Evanses. This from the same guy who before takeoff of Apollo 17, tried to kiss his wife Jan goodbye through his space helmet. Let's face it, Ron was just a old romantic.
Jon looks a bit squashed though.