Talking Books Two

Apollo Pilot: The Memoir of Astronaut Donn Eisele. Edited by Francis French.

I've read an awful lot of biographies and autobiographies from the early manned space programme but none of them were quite like this one.

Eisele died before he could revise or publish his memoirs and they only came to light a few years ago despite being first penned in the 1970s and boy are they frank.

Eisele flew on Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, and it wasn't an entirely happy mission. This was partly due to illness and partly down to the temperament of the commander causing issues with those left on the ground - almost to the point of mutiny.

Even though ultimately the mission was a success it was never highly respected and none of the crew flew in space again and Eisele is not backwards in coming forwards in saying exactly what he thought about all of the treatment the crew suffered, nor does he spare his tongue when giving his thoughts on his commander.

Eisele also talks frankly about the behaviour of the astronauts when they were away from home, which has been alluded to before but never in quite such frank terms!

This book is interesting as it was put together by French from notes that Eisele left and I imagine that he had to also be respectful of Eisele's remaining family (sadly his second wife passed away before publiciation) but even so this is a book that fills in the details gleaned from histories of the era but never mentioned in the official autobiographies and biographies.

It probably won't appeal too much to people who aren't intimate with the players from the Cape at this time but I loved the background colour this gave.

Failure really wasn't an option

Space Lectures' Spring 2016 Event: General Tom Stafford.

Months and months ago the brilliant Space Lectures team in Pontefract announced that their guest in April 2016 would be a moon walker. In the autumn it was revealed that the guest was in fact Gene Cernan - the last man to have walked on the moon.  Mr Norfolkbookworm and I had booked seats long before the name was announced and were looking forward to our next trip up north.

On the Wednesday before the event I checked twitter on my lunch break to read that Captain Cernan was unwell and unable to travel.  One tweet later I saw that the team had managed the incredible...

With just 2 days before the first event they had secured another Gemini/Apollo era astronaut to travel from the USA to talk to us - General Tom Stafford.  These gentlemen are all in their eighties at least so this was incredible reading.

If I am brutally honest I was more excited to meet/hear General Stafford that I was Captain Cernan. There is a new film out all about the latter and after previous visits to the Kennedy Space Center where he was prominently featured on lots of the films I felt I knew more about him but General Stafford was more of an unknown.

When we got to Pontefract we heard that the woes with this event had continued as Stafford's plane had been delayed due to bad weather and he's made the Friday event with only an hour or so to spare. shades of Apollo 13 or what?

The compere (one day I will catch his name!) explained this, read a message from Capt. Cernan and then explained the format of the event.  We were going to see a film about Gen. Stafford's career, he'd talk for a little while, there would be a break, a raffle, an auction and then a q&a before the signing session.

Again it didn't quite go that way but this time very much in our favour. We watched the film and then Gen. Stafford talked about his four missions and subsequent career for an hour and forty spellbinding minutes!

Much to Mr Norfolkbookworm's delight much of the talk covered the often over looked Gemini program with much emphasis on how important these flights were. Having read a lot about the manned space program from this era I have come to appreciate this but it was nice to hear Gen. Stafford admit that without these flights (and all that was learnt on them) there is no way that the Apollo missions would have succeeded, especially within the time frame laid down by President Kennedy.

After the insights into Gemini 6A and 9A we then heard about Apollo 10 - the flight that did everything Apollo 11 did *except* land on the moon. Interestingly he didn't seem at all bothered that he wasn't a moon-walker, I wonder if the thrill of flying and testing new things was enough?

Gen. Stafford also flew on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, this was another overlooked mission that saw the Soviets and the Americans meet, dock and visit each others spaceships while on orbit.  Again this is a mission that fascinates me, not least because I have had the chance to meet Stafford's opposite Alexei Leonov.

Unlike many of the early astronauts Gen. Stafford continued his military and NASA career after leaving the astronaut corps and his subsequent postings remind you that the early space pioneers really were military men. I did find it interesting to hear about this side of Stafford and it reminded me that the space program only came about because of the Cold War.

It wasn't all serious stuff however, Stafford has a wicked sense of humour, and wasn't afraid to show it even when well behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s.  I'm not sure I'd have the courage even now to set off fireworks anywhere near the UK police let alone the Soviet ones, 4th of July or not!

You got the feeling that given half a chance General Stafford would have talked quite happily for another hour or two and to be honest I'd have sat there rapt. I think the thing I will remember the most from this talk is Stafford's humour, self-deprecation and his obvious deep friendship with Alexei Leonov - all delivered in Oklahomski!

After the talk over ran it was decided to skip the q&a in favour of starting the signing, I was a little disappointed as I had two questions I would have liked to ask but I'd not have cut his talk short just to ask them!

There was still a raffle and I won a new book - oral histories from all sorts of people involved in the space program - and General Stafford kindly signed both a copy of his autobiography for us and my rocket.

I say this every time we go to a Space Lectures event but this really was the best yet and I feel really lucky that the team managed the impossible and got a true legend to come at such short notice but as this event finished with this clip from the International Space Station
 https://twitter.com/Space_Lectures/status/719170286076211206 all I can do is look forward to the autumn with growing excitement!

Update to an earlier space blog

I am so pleased to find that there are people out there who don't be come quite so awestruck as me in the presence of space legends!

The second lecture that Jim Lovell gave on 1st November (that is the one we didn't attend) was recorded by an audience member and is online to view.  If you have 60 or so minutes to spare and are interested in why we travel to Pontefract for essentially just an hour's talk now you can see...

I hope I have this much energy and enthusiasm at 47 let alone 87...

To find out more about forthcoming Space Lecture events you can find them on twitter @space_lectures, on Facebook and at their dedicated webpage.

Meeting another space legend and personal hero.

Capt. James Lovell lecture, Pontefract. October 2015.

Mr Norfolkbookworm and I made the cross country trip back to Pontefract recently as the chance to listen to astronaut Jim Lovell was far too good to miss.

Now 87 Captain Lovell spoke for an hour about his four space missions (two Gemini, two Apollo), then took part in a question and answer session and then signed an autograph for everyone in the audience.  Amazing stamina and proving he really is made of the Right Stuff.

Although famous for being the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission it was great to hear Lovell speak about all three of his missions with equal weight.  I often find that the Gemini missions are overlooked and they were in fact some of the most exciting and important missions carried out as it was during these that the techniques needed for getting to the moon, and back, were trialed and perfected.

I always intend to take notes at these talks so I can write them up more fully afterwards but each time I just become totally star struck in the theatre and fail to do so.  Lovell's anecdotes about one little bit of his Apollo 13 story stuck however:

Lovell had been to the moon before, in Apollo 8 when he was one of the first three humans to ever see the dark side of the moon - the beautiful Earthrise image comes from this mission, his colleagues on Apollo 13 had not.  This meant that despite all of the peril they were in at the time Haise and Sweigart did forget everything to gaze at  the moon and Earth and had to be reminded that if they didn't pay attention to the mission requirements they wouldn't get home to show off their photos.

After the talk and a live narration of some film footage of the Apollo 13 mission came the q&a. This was hosted by Professor Brian Cox and I confess to being a little sceptical about this, I did wonder if it would become either all about Cox, or dominated by Cox's own questions.  Neither happened and Cox skilfully managed to work equally start struck audience questions into simple forms for Lovell to answer and also insisted that the young people in the audience got to talk to Lovell too.  Afterwards when it came to the signing session he disappeared from sight and the event was totally about Lovell. I am cursing myself as it was only after the session that I thought of a question!

I am now really excited to hear that Cox will be back at the next event (April 2016 - Gene Cernan) to do the same - our tickets are already booked!

Also if anyone was wondering about the accuracy of the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13 apparently there are only minor liberties taken with true story and Lovell thinks it is a good film.

Pontefract - we have a problem

Fred Haise (Space Lectures), Pontefract. October 2014.

Thanks to the world of Twitter letting me know about Space Lectures we are recently back from our third jaunt cross-country to Pontefract to meet another legend.

This time we were meeting Fred Haise who I think is probably the unluckiest man in the Apollo astronaut corps.  Haise should have been the 6th man to set foot on the moon but instead was on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission.  Having escaped the threat of measles which saw his crew mate Mattingley bumped from the mission all looked to be going well.

Except after launch an engine behaved oddly and shut down (just in the nick of time as it nearly came off which would have caused many more - fatal - problems). After spending some time orbiting earth while the ground crew assessed the impact of the engine loss Apollo 13 was good to go to the moon.  Then 200 000 miles away from the earth, when the oxygen/hydrogen tanks were stirred there was an explosion which ultimately ended the mission to the moon and turned Apollo 13 into the tense tale of three men who had to hope nothing else went wrong so they could get home safely, and the ultimate irony - to do this they had to fly right around the moon!

Obviously as Fred Haise was talking to us this was a success but his bad luck didn't end there. After being the back up commander for Apollo 16 he was then due to command Apollo 19 - a mission that was scrapped due to funding cuts.

Fighting back from a serious plane crash (resulting in burns to 65% of his body) Haise returned to flight status and flew space shuttle Enterprise on 5 test flights in the earth's atmosphere but left the astronaut corps before the shuttle programme finally got to orbit.

Haise covered all of this in his talk and though out was, like the other astronauts we've seen in Pontefract, humble, amusing and very quick to praise the other 400 000 people involved in the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo missions who we rarely hear about.

I'm afraid that I just spend these talks star struck and don't remember huge details of them but there are fuller accounts on Collect Space and I have no doubt that blogger Space Kate will have a post up soon - she was name checked in the lecture by Haise as his first career choice was as a journalist and Kate was taking copious notes during the talk.

This time - for the first time - we also went to the dinner on Friday night and while Fred Haise only spoke for a few moments at this there was much more time to get an autograph and share a few words with him than the popular lectures allow.  Being outbid on two auction items and not winning either raffle were slight downers!

The two things I really will take away from this weekend:

1. Fred Haise holding a door in the hotel open for me (okay I had my hands full but I felt I should be laying down my coat for him to walk on a la Sir Walter Raleigh rather than him holding a door for me)
2. Fred Haise's look of total emotion as the lecture theatre of c.450 people gave him a standing ovation at the end of the event.

Oh and the blog title?  The school where the events are held had several tech failures during the talk, not least Fred Haise's headset microphone failing necessitating one of the Space Lecture's organisers having to remove it.  This was connected to Fred Haise's belt and it did look very funny from the audience, caused Haise to smile hugely and also for hecklers to call out that Haise needed to check it was only the microphone removed and not a wallet. I guess you had to be there....

We'll be heading back to Pontefract in April 2015 when the guest will be the first woman to pilot, and then to command, the space shuttle Cmdr Eileen Collins.  This news really made my inner feminist very happy :)

Out of this world in Pontefract (again)

An afternoon with an astronaut.

In better weather than last autumn Mr Norfolkbookworm and I once more made the cross country trip to Pontefract for the very special treat of listening to one of the Apollo era astronauts.

This time the guest speaker was T K (Ken) Mattingly and although not a moon-walker his story is just as interesting - if not more so!  Mattingly was scheduled to fly as the Command Module Pilot on Apollo 13 but (luckily?) due to his potential exposure to measles was bumped from the flight at the 11th hour.  Much of his talk was about how the behind the scenes teams worked to safely return the crew of Apollo 13 to earth and it was fabulous to hear all about the team work and seat-of-the-pants decisions that allowed this to happen.

Mattingly did get to fly to the moon on Apollo 16 two years later but this mission too was not without incident and even though I knew that this mission was a success I was still on the edge of my seat with suspense as Mattingly talked us through the problems.

I've always had as much, if not more, admiration for the Command Module Pilot as he was the guy left alone in lunar orbit while the other two landed.  Not only was he left solo - often out of contact with mission control, but should anything have happened on the moon's surface he would have been the one to have to come back alone, never knowing exactly what had happened to his crew mates.

As ever I could have sat for hours listening to Mattingly's stories but sadly there was no time to hear about his space walk conducted between the Earth and the moon or about his early shuttle test flights. I was hoping to ask him about the former in the q&a but I wasn't chosen this time but the other questions did give more insight into NASA at the time.

My favourite bit? Hard to pick. I'm torn between the stunned laughter as Mattingly described watching Earthrise from the moon as an erotic experience and his comments that while Gary Sinise did a good job of portraying him on screen he really didn't sulk enough!

After the talk however there was a chance to actually meet and speak briefly with Mattingly as he signed one of my most treasured possessions:

The dates for the next talk have been announced, but not the guest, but I already can't wait and I can't thank Space Lectures enough for organizing these events. See you in November!