posted 06-26-2005 10:35 PM               

According to this book, he was Big Al throughout training and more or less ignored the geology lessons while mostly refusing to study lunar maps.

Consequently, he wasted priceless time on the lunar surface wandering around looking for objectives because he simply did not know where he was.

Is this true? If it is, why wasn't Shepard disciplined during training, especially since Gordon Cooper's reputed lax ways as Apollo 10 backup were the rationale for getting Shepard the flight? Or, why wasn't he blasted after biting the big one? It seems blowing a Moon mission out of ego is worse than landing 250 miles long in a bum capsule but completing your objectives.

Has Gen. McDivitt (or any of the other astronauts opposed to Shepard grabbing a lunar mission immediately after returning to flight status) ever commented?

posted 06-27-2005 09:37 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Henry Heatherbank:
What was the book?

---

Pages 156, 157 and 160 detail Shepard's shortcomings and the problems they caused for scientific investigation.

It went beyond sour grapes. Apparently Shepard regarded science work as "Mickey Mouse."

His inability to reach the summit of Cone Crater (taking valuable time and missing by 60 feet) was directly due to his outright refusal to study lunar maps. Not only was a major objective missed, other science was left undone because of the time wasted on account of Shepard's ego. Because Shepard didn't train, he and Ed Mitchell stumbled around aimlessly on the lunar surface.

Page 160 has the following quote: "...but as for the scientific data, the scientists regarded Apollo 14 as the low point of the entire program."

Apparently Shepard saw the lunar program as nothing more than a scheme to get him on the Moon.

Science may have been a fig leaf for Apollo, but it's what the taxpayers expected astronauts to do. Jim Lovell was prepared. Dave Scott, John Young and Gene Cernan, with their respective crews, all did yeoman work on the lunar surface. Al Shepard hit golf balls.

posted 06-27-2005 10:00 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Henry Heatherbank:
Equally some say big Al was the right man for the moment in getting the moon missions back on track after Apollo 13.

---

posted 06-27-2005 10:07 AM               

Had Shepard not grabbed that seat, Cooper would have commanded 13. His Mercury and Gemini flights showed he had competence and cool in emergency situations. I speculate Col. Cooper and his crew would have survived the flight.

Only in Shepard's mind was he essential after Apollo 13. Jim Lovell would have done a piloting job equal to or better than Shepard's had he flown Apollo 14 as originally planned.

Lovell was enthusiastic about the science, as evidenced by his mission motto "Ex Luna Scientia". He was a highly motivated and extremely competent veteran astronaut who would have turned in a textbook piloting performance.

Big Al's ego precluded him from going as LMP for Jim McDivitt. I doubt if Gen. McDivitt, said to be thoughtful and concientious, would have brooked any training nonsense from Shepard.

So, if the observations in "Apollo" are correct, we got a sub-standard performance from Shepard, a man who had no problem whatsoever pointing out the lapses of others.

posted 06-27-2005 11:30 AM               

My own reading of the relevant sections of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and the technical debrief would seem to suggest that neither Shepard or Mitchell were inept at lunar geography but rather had difficulty with identifying their exact location based on minor landmarks (a problem that was also encountered early in the later missions and was greatly compensated/corrected for by the help of the LRV's navigation system).

The Apollo 14 crew completed all their lunar surface objectives per the Mission Report. As such, I wouldn't expect any discipline or criticism of Shepard, as has been suggested.

As for Cooper, I think it may be naive to suggest that Slayton and/or Shepard made the call to replace him with single authority. We're not privy to a great many of the discussions and details that took place behind closed doors, so while its easy to assign the decision to ego, my feeling is that it was much more complicated than that.

posted 06-27-2005 11:40 AM               

Did Alan Shepard have an ego? Sure, please identify someone involved in Mercury, Gemini or Apollo who didn't. For that matter, please find someone who has ever landed a plane on an aircraft carrier who lacks an ego.

Did office politics play a role in Shepard's selection? Hell yes, indeed, he recommended himself for Apollo 13. Then again, but for office politics Dick Gordon most likely would have commanded the final lunar mission, not Gene Cernan. I would suspect that it also played a role in many of the crew members who commanders selected for their crews, or even the selection of other mission commanders.

Did Shepard steal the mission from Gordo? By most accounts no. As indicated in his back-up role for Gemini 12, Gordo's work ethic seemed to have rubbed certain people in management the wrong way.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Duke Of URL:
Jim Lovell would have done a piloting job equal to or better than Shepard's had he flown Apollo 14 as originally planned.

---

quote:

---

His inability to reach the summit of Cone Crater (taking valuable time and missing by 60 feet) was directly due to his outright refusal to study lunar maps.

---

quote:

---

Because Shepard didn't train, he and Ed Mitchell stumbled around aimlessly on the lunar surface."

---

As to whether anyone else has commented on the selection, Jim McDivitt politely declined to address the issue during his interview for the oral history project. Noting that both men were deceased, he declined to comment on Al or Deke as managers. He did explain that at the time of Apollo 10, George Low approached him and asked him, McDivitt, to become the next Apollo Project Manager (replacing Low). McDivitt notes that this put him in the position of weighing a choice between commanding Apollo 13 (suggesting that Cooper had lost the opportunity to command anyway) or becoming the next project manager. McDivitt continues that although being the first man on the Moon was important to him (and he notes that the success of his own mission ruled out that possibility), being the 2rd or 3rd was not that important to him.

Hidden within the post appears to be a very legitimate criticism of the preparation for and performance of the Apollo 14 crew during their EVAs. Such comments, with a little more articulation, would be valid. It appears the crew undervalued the science of the mission, undertrained for certain aspects of the EVAs (despite a fair amount of training), erred in their labeling of some samples and failed to meet some other checklist requirements.

posted 06-27-2005 11:57 AM               

Reaching the rim of Cone Crater was a major objective; the crew failed to do so because of Shepard's inability to recognize landmarks "minor" or not and his failure was due to poor attention during training - according to Mr. Reynolds in "Apollo".

As far as Mission Reports, would NASA take a black eye by flunking a mission comanded by Al Shepard at such a critical time? Had Apollos 18 and 19 been cancelled yet? Was funding for Skylab still pending?

I've learned through experience that organizations, NASA included, cover their rear ends first and foremost. With the possibility of actual geologists landing on the Moon, would the much-derided science faction at NASA raise a public stink under the circumstances? It's easy to believe the Mission Report would, as the song says, accentuate the positive.

Weren't Slayton and Shepard pretty well in absolute control of crew selection at that point? Maybe that question is for another thread.

posted 06-27-2005 12:04 PM               

And excusing "office politics" when billions are being spent is, well, inexcusable.

"Return to flight" didn't mean "give Big Al a thrill." Science was a MAJOR objective, even if not the sole purpose, and it was overlooked by the crew commander. As a consequence, objectives weren't met on a multi-billion dollar mission. Not from equipment failure, but from the failure of the man in charge, Al Shepard, or so I read.

It sort of peeves me, since there were a finite (and very small) number of Moon landings and I helped everybody else in America pay for that seemingly wasted mission. This is all predicated on the book being accurate, and this was the point of the thread. Was Reynolds' book accurate or wasn't it? Wally Schirra wrote the forward. You'd think he'd avoid any unjust criticism of his friend Al Shepard.

posted 06-27-2005 12:22 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Duke Of URL:
Reaching the rim of Cone Crater was a major objective

---

...the crew failed to do so because of Shepard's inability to recognize landmarks "minor" or not and his failure was due to poor attention during training - according to Mr. Reynolds in "Apollo".

(We also must consider the source: "Apollo" is not meant as a text book for historians to study; it is a coffee-table, very nicely illustrated public introduction to the moon landings.)

quote:

---

As far as Mission Reports, would NASA take a black eye by flunking a mission comanded by Al Shepard at such a critical time?

---

posted 06-27-2005 12:26 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
I believe if crew training was an issue, it would have been discussed in the post-flight technical briefings as other issues and problems were addressed.

---

How was the subject of crew performance handled on Aurora 7 and Apollo 7? Criticism of both flights has been made, but how do the mission reports read?

posted 06-27-2005 12:46 PM               

Mitchell - "Yeah, and as you can tell, we {Shepard & Mitchell} had a disagreement... We have different interpretations... We were really having trouble, on that terrain, figuring out where the heck we were. We knew where we were within a hundred meters, but not the micro-navigation that those characters (the geologists) wanted us to do. It was frustrating. We wasted time. And that continued. That's what slowed us down the whole rest of this thing, trying to be a little more precise about where the heck we were. In retrospect, it would have been much better, frankly, had we worked basically on time and let us select our own sites, looking for interesting things. Plan on two or three stops on the way up there. Let us select them. And take pans that let them, afterwards, find out exactly where we stopped. But they tried to prejudge and send us to where they thought they were going to find something. And us trying to find it. We ended up wasting a lot of time."]

[Jones - "In thinking about the J-missions, those crews had a lot more flexibility. That sounds like that might have been a result of your experiences."]

[Mitchell - "It could very well have been. But there's no question, we tried much too hard to satisfy getting to where the geologists said they wanted us to be. And it proved to be an inefficient and a very difficult and odious thing to try to do. We could have done a lot more work had we had the flexibility where we could just pick and choose. Because we were darn well trained. We knew what we were looking for. With that flexibility, I think we would have done a lot better."]

posted 06-27-2005 01:04 PM            

• Al Shepard was always seen as being first in rotation, and once the operation cleared up his ear issues because he had stuck with the program, he was bound to get the earliest Apollo mission he could. That effectively would have been Apollo 13, and his name was put forward for it, but NASA senior management rejected it and gave him Apollo 14 instead. Jim Lovell shifted up from 14 to 13.

• Al Shepard initially asked for Jim McDivitt to be on his crew as Command Module Pilot.

• Gordon Cooper had never really forgiven Al Shepard for doing his best to try and steal the last Mercury flight off Cooper. Shepard was his back-up, and despite the fact he was already showing signs of his Meniere's but was keeping it quiet, was the only one of the original group who told Walt Williams that Cooper should be taken off the mission after Cooper's flat-hatting jet ride very near the mission day. The others stood up for Cooper to still get the flight.

• Shepard did leave some film canisters behind on the moon which he had put down to take his golf swing and forgot to pick them back up again.

• Shepard and Mitchell did disagree at times as to where they were during their traverses. One account I read indicates Mitchell frequently tried to get Shepard to follow him as he thought he had a better idea where they were.

• Apollo 11 and 12 landed in fairly flat areas. Apollo 14 landed in a more undulating area where they discovered that the problems with perspective and shadows on the moon caused them great difficulty in judging distances and terrain. They learned from this in later flights. The later flights also had the Lunar Rover which had some simple guidance system which better helped pinpoint their position. No such benefit on 14.

• Shepard and Mitchell slept very poorly while on the surface which may have contributed to performance (they were worried because the LM had landed on an angle and they constantly had the impression it was shifting).

posted 06-27-2005 03:13 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by quantumleap:
Al Shepard... was the only one of the original group who told Walt Williams that Cooper should be taken off the mission after Cooper's flat-hatting jet ride very near the mission day. The others stood up for Cooper to still get the flight.

---

posted 06-27-2005 04:00 PM               

the micronavigation that those characters (the geologists) wanted us to do. It was frustrating. We wasted time. And that continued. That's what slowed us down the whole rest of this thing, trying to be a little more precise about where the heck we were.

Maybe some of the difficulties with "micronavigation" came from not paying much attention in training? Again, would Al Shepard's junior on a crew slack off on something Big Al felt was important? Huh-uh.

I'm not aware of Shepard directly asking Williams to pull Cooper from MA-9, but it's plain he didn't do much to discourage the idea. Shepard was a flat-hatter of renown but felt hitting the afterburner when outside - and below the level - of Walt Williams' office window was a bit outre. It gave him an opening, and he did his best to exploit it. Ruthless? Of course. Evil? Nope.

posted 06-27-2005 04:06 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Duke Of URL:
I was reading a book that was critical of Al Shepard's performance on Apollo 14.

...in retrospect, has anybody (excepting Gordon Cooper) lamented, publicly or privately, the fact Al Shepard commanded Apollo 14?

---

To answer your basic questions, we need to know more about the mission objectives, the training benchmarks for the mission, and the actual mission results. And the consequences.

The Mission Objectives

What were these? Which astronauts were responsible for which roles while on the lunar surface. Mitchell's views must be given a great deal of weight here. And Duke is right to note that Shepard was in command.

Training:

In training for any mission, the astronauts had tremendous latitude. Some were more equal than others, too. The diligent, earnest types took on strenuous physical conditioning, additional reading, and extra hours in the simulator.

Others merely upped their hours in the simulator -- where they had first dibs -- focusing on one job and one job only: The flying (and the flying machine). Get her up, bring her back -- everybody gets out alive.

I think Shepard fell into the latter camp -- it's a mindset, frankly, he came by honestly, with his marvelous Navy training, and may have found a natural home in the hardcore circles at NASA that privately derided science and its folderol, which they felt foisted on them from the outside, by outsiders.

Speaking of training, who writes that the crew "undertrained" (cited upthread)? Was it written in the passive voice? Was this from a postflight report? Although euphemistic and soft-pedaled, this strikes me as a critical comment. Again, where does it occur?

Mission achievements

What were these? Duke quotes Reynolds's criticism. Rob describes Reynolds's book as a coffee table account. Are there other creditable accounts? We know Al Shepard achieved some personal goals, notably a unforgettable photo op with a golf club. How much planning did the golf club require? Could Al have better spent this time reading lunar geology textbooks?

Does anyone have a timeline on Shepard's appearances in charity golf tournaments at the time?

Finally, if I recall correctly, in 1971 the U.S. had a half-million men in Southeast Asia, causing bruising appropriations committee hearings on military and NASA funding. One congressman angrily brandished a photo of Al's famous lunar golf swing. Navy pilots at the time were trying their best to survive in the air over Vietnam (get 'er up, bring 'er back -- everybody gets out alive), while Al, perhaps, was taking the boys' game an in-joke too far.

posted 06-27-2005 04:40 PM               

Gordon Swann [leader of the Apollo 14 field geology investigation] wasn't surprised though, that he {Shepard] and Mitchell were having trouble navigating. He knew well from Conrad and Bean's experience that it was one thing to see a feature on an orbital photo and another to recognize it standing on the moon, with no obvious topographic clues. The solution was training. Swann had offered to brief Shepard and Mitchell on how to spot landmarks and they had invited him to the Cape a few weeks before launch. But when Swann met with them in the crew quarters they seemed unconcerned. 'We'll have the maps,' they told him. 'And you guys will be in the back room, telling us where to go.'

posted 06-27-2005 04:48 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by KC Stoever:
When was funding cut for the later Apollo missions? I think the angry congressman and a war, and the photo may have played a role.

---

posted 06-27-2005 05:20 PM               

'We'll have the maps,' they told him. 'And you guys will be in the back room, telling us where to go.'

posted 06-27-2005 05:46 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by KC Stoever:
Does anyone have a timeline on Shepard's appearances in charity golf tournaments at the time?

---

I believe he became a fixture after his NASA career, but read in "Light This Candle" he was reluctant to capitalize on his astronaut status.

Norman Mailer, foil of Tom Wolfe, compared what Shepard did to hitting a golf ball in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

posted 06-27-2005 05:54 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by WAWalsh:
Andrew Chaikin raises the possibility that Shepard would have put Antares down on the Moon if MC had not corrected the computer problem and given the accounts of the man, I do not doubt it."

---

posted 06-27-2005 06:41 PM               

Right now, as I listen to this, I feel an enormous sense of frustration, just like I did then. It was terribly, terribly frustrating; coming up over that ridge that we were going up, and thinking, finally, that was it; and it wasn't - suddenly recognizing that, really, you just don't know where the hell you are. You know you're close. You can't be very far away. You know you got to quit and go back. It was probably one of the most frustrating periods I've ever experienced. There's no feeling of being lost. I mean, the LM is there; we can get back to the LM. It's not reaching and looking down into that bloody crater. It's terribly frustrating.

If we'd gotten to the point where we'd been willing to do away with the rest of the traverse (that is, do their work at the Cone rim and then proceed directly back to the LM without stopping), we could have made the rim all right. But I personally wasn't willing to do that. I felt that gathering more samples was the better of the two choices.

I went to Amazon to check out the reviews of "Apollo" and found historian and occasional cS poster Dwayne Day's opinion of interest in regards to placing this book within some context of accurate reporting. Highlights of what Day writes:

What none of the reviews so far have mentioned is that this is essentially a book aimed at children. That should be obvious from Reynolds' previous books, all of which have been Star Wars books with lots of illustrations and two of which are "pocket" books less than 30 pages long...

There are also errors that indicate that Reynolds got most of his information from other books and not original research -- and that he did not get anyone to fact-check his work. Some of the mistakes are not merely minor errors, but serious distortions of what happened. Take, for instance, the claim that it was a Disney space film that led President Eisenhower to start the scientific satellite program (pgs. 30-33). There is absolutely no evidence that Eisenhower even watched that program or requested a copy for the White House...

There are numerous other mistakes and omissions, but one gets the sense that the author was not about to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

posted 06-27-2005 10:31 PM            

He says of the geological training that "Shepard did not approach this education seriously, and whatever greater interest Mitchell may have had was subordinated to his commander's attitude."

However, when it comes to the lunar surface exploration, he tends to side with Shepard over Mitchell. In summary, he says that Mitchell's urge to find the crater rim should have lost out to Shepard's wish to stop and sample more. Because of the rush back to the LM, Wilhelms says "we have less than 1kg of rock... from what is in my opinion the most important single point reached by astronauts on the moon. A good job of documented sampling, complete with meaningful descriptions of outcrops too large to sample, should have nailed down Fra Mauro. This did not happen." He quotes Mitchell saying after the mission that there was only time to have "grabbed, photographed, and ran," and this meant that "the mislocations were disastrous."

posted 06-27-2005 10:37 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by WAWalsh:
...reading Reynolds against what others have said or written, I do not put much credence in his take on Apollo 14. It appears that he went about two steps too far in his extrapolation of others and seems to want to gain a little glory at the expense of a deceased astronaut.

---

However you stated your belief Al Shepard would have violated mission rules and just about other kinds of rules to get to the Moon. I think that ego let him ignore the science aspect out of a belief that Big Al could do it all any time and any place.

You keep mentioning Adm. Shepard is deceased. I'm sorry he is. But keeping on because he "isn't here to defend himself" is a pretty fatuous argument.

First and foremost, I can't imagine Al Shepard would have given two dead flies about my opinion. (Even I don't for the most part).

Second this is a (an?) historical question. When one of these gets asked there's a fair chance at least some of the principles have had their frames stashed, no?

posted 06-27-2005 10:50 PM               

The disaster of having "undertrained" astronauts (as a result of the commander's frank lack of interest) in an area as interesting as Fra Mauro was compounded by time lost as a SHP tried to figure out where the heck he was.

Further, his LMP's interest in the mission's science - which was there, primary or not - was undermined by Shepard.

So, this isn't a hack job on a Dead Guy. It's a harsh question about the performance of a (an?) historical figure involved in the pursuit that brought his fame. As such it's legit.

If I got disrespectful, I apologize. I got a little hot thinking of the Bogarting that happened and wondering how many people got the idea that Apollo was just a stunt from antics like these. Maybe even enough to keep us from going back to the Moon for nearly 50 years.

posted 06-27-2005 11:15 PM               

As far as I know Mitchell's experiments took place in flight to and from the Moon, not on the surface.

posted 06-28-2005 12:12 AM               

And although I have been rather hard on Shepard, the transcripts -- reality as opposed to impression -- reveal that he did understand the geologic issues.

It bears repeating, lunar geological surveying was in its infancy and it was something that faced a huge limiting factor -- lack of time. Wilhelms himself seems to have had problems with the way science was initially conveyed to the crews. Discussing his scheduled briefing of the Apollo 14 crew, he writes:

My turn came at the Cape on 10 June, when I was supposed to summarize the geology of the Moon with an emphasis on basins. I am afraid by that time I was too cynical about the value of such briefings to generate much enthusiasm in either myself or the crew. The academic side of lunar geology was not what was needed at this point.

posted 06-28-2005 12:56 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Duke Of URL:
However you stated your belief Al Shepard would have violated mission rules and just about other kinds of rules to get to the Moon.

---

Having been part of a program that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get the crew there, having already traveled the 240,000 miles, having worked out two substantial problems already and having a visual identification of the approach route for the landing site (not to mention the years of serving as a test pilot, the years of carrier landings, the training programs for Apollo 14, etc.), I cannot imagine Alan Shepard or any other commander of an Apollo mission aborting a landing on the surface of the Moon because he was not getting the proper information on his altitude from radar. It might not have been the best decision or the right decision or the decision that the rules dictated, but it is not a decision that would remotely surprise me.

If someone could put the question to the five living lunar commanders what they would do in a similar situation (including Jim Lovell for the moment), I would be curious what their candid responses would be. While ego and a delight in bending the rules might play a small role, the key factor in making the decision would be the desire to complete the mission and each pilot's absolute confidence in their ability to meet that goal.

quote:

---

I think that ego let him ignore the science aspect out of a belief that Big Al could do it all any time and any place.

---

Your hang-up on the six iron shot is perplexing (not to mention your omission of Ed Mitchell's javelin throw at about the same time). It was a two minute event at the conclusion of a four+ hour EVA.

It differs very little from what a number of other astronauts did to briefly add their own touch to the experience from Pete and Al looking for the timer to take their shot together on the Moon to Dave Scott dropping a hammer and feather.

posted 06-28-2005 06:52 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by WAWalsh:
Using the golf shot as a means to denounce the program, while ignoring all the information gathered on the flight and the other Apollo missions, is the equivalent of attacking the Gemini program due to a simple corned beef sandwich.

---

What would have happened if Big Al had kept going and been as inept at judging altitude as he was at identifying landmarks? What would the effect have been on Apollo in particular and manned space flight in general?

posted 06-28-2005 08:36 AM            

I doubt even Big Al would have taken that risk if the landing radar hadn't locked on in time. And as much as people revere Big Al for claiming that he would have landed regardless, isn't the question this: what would Deke, Big Al and Kraft (all senior managers) have thought if another landing mission CDR had pulled the same stunt? I'll bet they would have been mightily unimpressed.

posted 06-28-2005 09:34 AM               

The facts were that because of the Abort Light problem, we were in Manual Abort mode. It is true that abort rules required the landing radar to be operational before or by pitchover (high key). Without landing radar it was a mission rules abort. But in manual abort mode, each step in the procedure was executed manually, and the first step was to pitch forward into the approach and landing attitude. Had that happened, we would have observed the landing site and Cone Crater exactly where they supposed to be. We were exactly on track, and the landing radar, when it finally activated, did not change our state vector at all. There was no doubt, then or now, that we would have proceeded to land. It wasn't even discussed. And also, as there were no tall mountains near our site and trajectory, the entire issue on Apollo 14 was more academic than real, which would not have been the case on later flights into higher terrain.

posted 06-28-2005 09:51 AM            

The sheer curiosity of Mitchell's question, and indeed the need to have asked it all, coupled with Big Al's answer, in my mind at least, point to the issue being far more complicated than Mitchell has subsequently remembered on his website.

posted 06-28-2005 09:59 AM               

Neither of those exchanges took place at all. They are just part of the myth.