Apollo astronauts reminisce, look ahead
Forty years ago this month the first manned Apollo mission blasted off, paving the way for future Apollo flights that put man on the moon by 1969.
The Apollo 7 mission, piloted by astronauts Walter Cunningham, Walter "Wally" Schirra and Donn Eisele, took off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Oct. 11, 1968, then orbited Earth for 11 days before returning safely. As NASA's elite gathered last week at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas to honor Cunningham, the mission's last surviving member, many recalled the glory and dangers of the Apollo flights, and agreed space exploration is still a risky venture that will never come cheap.
"We are not going back to the moon and we're not going to go to Mars unless NASA's budget increases significantly," said Cunningham, 76.
Seated at a panel with Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, Apollo 8's Bill Anders, Alan Bean of Apollo 12, retired NASA flight director Gene Kranz, former Apollo spacecraft manager John Healey, and NASA administrator Michael Griffin, Cunningham insisted the future of space travel depends on a willingness to accept extraordinary risks.
"The secret of our success is going to be found in the attitude that prevailed at the time, and how we all thought about what we were doing," he said. "Those involved ... understood there was frequently a human price to pay for progress."
Griffin awarded Cunningham, Schirra, who died in 2007 and Eisele, who died in 1987, with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the space agency's highest award.
Armstrong, who became the first man to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, stressed how Apollo 7 got the program back on track after Apollo 1 burned on the launch pad in 1967, killing three astronauts.
"All the flights that followed were dependent on the Apollo 7 crew doing their job brilliantly," he said, "and they delivered ... making it possible for the Apollo goals we achieved by the end of the decade."
Apollo missions put 12 men on the moon between 1969 and 1972. But space exploration funds were cut after Apollo 17, the final moon visit in December 1972, and no one has explored the moon since. NASA's Constellation program hopes to return astronauts to the moon by 2020, and then go on to Mars.
Armstrong thought the moon would likely be teeming with explorers by now.
"I did think we might have had substantially more Americans on the surface than we have, actually, " said Armstrong. "I'd kind of hoped we would set up permanent bases - several Antarctic kind of exploration bases. I still think that might be true with the Constellation program, but based on past history, I wouldn't be willing to bet money on it."
Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon, said they shouldn't get discouraged when some say it costs too much to return to the moon.
"We've got to still persist . . . in getting the way paved," he said. "So when the culture decides it's a good time to go to the moon, or Mars, we're ready."
A lack of money, Griffin said, has always dictated the pace of NASA's progress. After investing $25 billion, NASA was ordered by Congress to halt production in 1972, after Apollo 17.
"We spent 80 percent of that money developing capabilities that human beings had never seen before," he said. "We spent less than 20 percent using what we had built and then we threw it all away."
What NASA lost, he noted, was the capability to return to the moon in a way without having to again spend huge sums of money.
"That's the kind of short sightedness I hope we don't do again," he said.