July 3, 2025 • 29 mins
This week we honor an American hero who walked and drove a car on the moon.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Go ahead. When made of stars, made them stars, made sizes.
When made of stars, you could be from high they
would New Mexicomus.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Where a stars? When we are made of stars.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
Cruising from Columbus State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Morning Shawn, Good morning Wes. It's very good to be
here today.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
This is our third of July episode of Mat of Stars.
We mentioned this just for the purposes a couple of episodes.
The fact that I am as this is like dropping
as the kids say, you drop it on the podcast,
and as it's been released, I'm Overseas.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I'm in Australia.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
We're recording this a little bit early, so this is
kind of my chance since when Independence Day rolls around,
I will be in a country that does have the
fourth of July. But doesn't have Independence Day, so while
I'll be celebrating on the inside, this is my chance
to celebrate it a little bit early here while I'm
still stateside. So that's what we're doing. And we thought,
what a great opportunity to celebrate a like a legendary
(01:52):
American hero here right before Independence Day.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Exactly. It's a star spangled tribute to to one of
our favorite astronauts in NASA's very storied history of creating
unbelievable astronauts making great achievements. And today we're going to
be talking about General David R.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Scott, and we have a few reasons, I mean Independence
Day and celebrating him as an American hero. This is
following up last week's show where we put our interview
from you know, more than a decade ago with Al Warden,
who flew with Dave Scott. So we're kind of doing
a little back to back. I don't want to I
(02:35):
don't want to discount the hero of Al Warden as well.
But as we get into this conversation about Dave Scott
and you guys have something that we'll be talking about
at the end that's going on, and anybody who's been
listening to meta stars here lately knows that you guys
have something special going on compliments of the Scott family,
(02:56):
But we just really wanted to take some time to
talk about this career of this American hero.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, so let's just be clear about both Dave Scott
and Al Warden. They were true bona fide American heroes
before they ever joined the space program. Both of these
guys were United States Air Force aviators, fighter pilots, test pilots,
(03:24):
and that's how they were selected into the Astronaut Corps.
So once again, they served their country nobly and with
great skill before they were ever selected for America's space program.
And then oh yeah, by the way, they also went
to the Moon. So that's that's a thing right there. Right,
So Dave and Al and their friend Jim Irwin all
(03:46):
went to the Moon together on A fifteen.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
So you're saying they're just as much astronauts as Katy
Perry and Gail King, Is that what you're saying. I mean,
at least I don't know that the I don't know
that the Katy Perry jokes will get old. They just
seem like they'll always survive on't they They're like cockroaches.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
They're always gonna be hear, not to derail this very
noble show. But the funniest thing that you reminded me
of was that she was taking selfies rather than looking
out the window when they only have six minutes in space.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
That when you pointed that out to me, you pretty
much cracked my nut there.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
I was.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I was kind of supporting Katy Perry until you pointed
that out and I actually went and looked and it
was like, oh, yeah, she really was doing that.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Yeah, because you know, you have this vantage point that
very few people have had the opportunity to have in
in all of our lifetimes collectively, and you're looking at.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
The camera part of your phone.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
So you know, that's that's what was important, right, I.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Mean, I don't think I don't think that Dave Scott
and Jim Irwin took any selfies. Now, they did take
pictures of each other. I don't know if that counts.
They didn't have a selfie stick, so they shot picked
of each other saluting the flag on the moon. I mean,
I don't know, you know, but that was that was
kind of a NASA requirement. I mean, I think and
(05:06):
that's a differences to ask them, Hey, make sure you
take some pictures saluting the flag. We were on the move.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Photos needed to be taken documenting what they were doing.
I think there were plenty of cameras rolling for Katy
Perry at that particular juncture of things. But anyway, so, yes,
already heroes to begin with.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
And yeah, yeah, A graduate of the United States Military
Academy at West Point, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and the University of Michigan, aeronautical engineer, air
Force test pilot. That's David R. Scott, and so all
of those things. Accomplished a great career of military service
(05:47):
before being selected into the third group of astronauts in
nineteen sixty three. So he wasn't one of the original
Mercury seven astronauts. It wasn't part of the second round either,
but did join in nineteen sixty three in that third
round when America was preparing to battle Russia in the
Space Race. We were already battling Russia in the space Race,
(06:07):
but preparing to actually take the steps to go to
the Moon, and so Dave Scott got to participate in
some very historic firsts for the American space program and
help propel our Apollo program to the service of the
Moon in a very amazing and interesting way.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
So let's jump ahead to Gemini eight nineteen sixty six.
He is part of this two person crew and the
other member of that crew you might have heard of.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, he's got some name recognition, just.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
A little bit. He's not the guy that you cheated
and won the Tour de France several times, but similar name.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They might be cousins. I don't know, Yeah, it could be.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
The difference is one of them is still seen as
an American hero.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
So yeah, all apologies to Neil anyway. So Dave Scott
first flew to space in March March sixteenth of nineteen
sixty six as a member of that two person crew.
West just described. That's the Gemini program. Gemini is the Twins.
The eighth mission was the first of the Gemini missions
to take human beings to orbit. Neil Armstrong was who
(07:27):
accompanied David Scott on that mission. Now here's what was
going to happen. The goal of the Gemini eight mission
was for them to perform the first ever docking of
two spacecraft in orbit. That's the important part of the
story Gemini eight was. The mission involved two spacecraft. One
(07:49):
was the actual capsule that the astronauts were in, the
Gemini capsule. The other one was an Aegina spacecraft, which
was basically a robot ship or a drone ship. Their
mission was to go up, fly to space, find that
drone ship in orbit, catch up to it, which already
required some pretty interesting flying, and then when they got
(08:09):
near to it, they had to perform a series of
maneuvers to dock those two vehicles together. Friends, no one
had ever docked two vehicles together in orbit. This would
be the first time that a human spacecraft would dock
with another spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. And then
(08:29):
the rest of the mission was going to be that
Dave Scott would pop out and do a spacewalk after
the team had performed some maneuvers of the joined spacecraft,
then they would undock and come back home. All right,
So that's the setup. Here comes the pitch. Shortly after
they performed their successful docking of the two vehicles, something
went wrong. Something started to happen that was unexpected, and
(08:52):
they started having a malfunction of one of what they
call the maneuvering thrusters, the little rockets attached to the
side of the vehicle that can spin the vehicle around
into different orientations. So one of those controls thrusters just
started firing. It was stuck in the on position, and
this began to at first roll the vehicles, the joined vehicles,
(09:15):
and then because it was kind of an asymmetric force,
it began to tumble the two vehicles. So now you
have a three axis tumbling motion of those two vehicles,
something that is not only very dangerous, but it's also
very hard to recover from. And so now these astronauts
are in trouble. So the other part of the unfortunate
(09:35):
timing was it happened in a period of time where
they were going around the backside of the Earth and
they were out of communication with the United States of
America at that time. Now, we didn't have a satellite
network for them to continue to be able to continue
broadcasting communications back to the ground, so they were in
a radio quiet zone and could not speak with a
(09:58):
ground team back in Houston. So they didn't know exactly
what the telemetry was, so they weren't exactly sure what
was wrong. So here's what they decided to do, hey,
we got to get out of here. We got to
undocked from this jem, from this Agena vehicle because it's
causing us to have some big problems. So they undocked
their capsule from that robot ship, and it was at
that moment that they realized that the thruster that was
(10:21):
stuck was not one of the orbiting maneuver or orbital
maneuvering thrusters on the robot ship. It was actually on
their own capsule. And because they had undocked from the Agena,
they suddenly had a lot less mass, so that thruster
was more effective, and it was causing them to spin
while it was misfiring in a dangerous tumble. Their rotation
(10:44):
rate at the tumble increased to two hundred and ninety
six degrees per second, which is almost a complete rotation
every second thousand and one thousand, two thousand and three.
Imagine that you're spinning around at that kind of rate.
At that rate, these two astronauts began to have tunnel vision.
(11:05):
They knew that what was imminent was a blackout. They
could not black out because in this tumble, because if
they did and that rocket that thruster kept firing, that
blackout would be fatal, and so they had to act fast. So,
in this extremely stressful circumstance, that guy Neil Armstrong, the
(11:25):
commander of this mission, reached up and powered down the
control thruster system and just shut it off. And what
he realized he needed to do, based on training but
also based on his great pilot instincts, was to fire
up a secondary set of thrusters that would be the
re entry thruster system. Now here's the thing about the
(11:47):
re entry thrusters. They're not necessarily made to control the
vehicle and get it out of big tumbles. They're made
to come back and go through the atmosphere. And they
still have to do that. So they have to preserve
enough fuel in those re entry thrusters in order to
make it back through the atmosphere. This is a tough situation, Wes.
(12:08):
They were up against it. The next thirty minutes was
a wild ride because it took them a half an
hour of battling Neil Armstrong using the re entry thruster
system instead of the maneuvering thrusters trying to get control
of this vehicle. And there was an episode of the
(12:31):
PBS program called Nova where Dave Scott would later say
this about Neil Armstrong. Quote, the guy was brilliant. He
knew the system so well, he found the solution, he
activated the solution, and under extreme circumstances, it was my
lucky day to be flying with him. Unquote. That's Dave
(12:52):
Scott commenting on the flying acumen of Neil Armstrong, one
of America's greatest pilots but also astronauts.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And it's it's interesting too.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
And you know, we're we're talking about Dave Scott and
on today's show, but we're really just sort of celebrating
the space program in general, and obviously Neil Armstrong is
such a huge part of that. But as being the guy,
I mean, being the guy who was the name, the face,
(13:26):
everything associated with, you know, the first foot on the moon.
Also knowing and we're not really getting into this particular story,
but what he had to do just to save the
mission of them being able to return home when they
landed on the moon. Armstrong was known for these quick decisions,
(13:47):
his ability to make these quick decisions and make the
right quick decision. That's the other anybody can make a
quick decision, right, You got to make the right quick
decision in these moments and to hear and know those
words from Dave Scott about just saying it was as
lucky today to be flying with Armstrong and you can
understand that.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, So it was no accident that Neil Armstrong was
chosen to be the first human being to set foot
on the surface of the Moon. And this Gemini eight
moment and that episode played a large part in it
because NASA got to see in a real emergency situation,
how Neil would be able to handle himself and how
(14:28):
you would be able to handle the vehicle. And this
was one of three different moments where Neil Armstrong saved
his own life as well as the life of other astronauts.
One on Gemini eight that we just described. Another time
when he was flying a simulation of the Lunar Lander
out in the desert and that thing started to go
(14:50):
awry and he was able to eject and get him off,
get himself off safely. And then on the Apollo eleven
landing itself, he started to come down in a place.
He recognized that they were coming down in a place
that was not going to be suitable for landing. He
overrode the computer controls grabbed manual control and flew that
vehicle safely to an unplanned location where he was able
(15:14):
to put the vehicle down safely on the surface of
the Moon without landing in a boulder field and tipping
over where they would have no chance to get back
off the surface. So Neil Armstrong again, as you said,
we're celebrating Dave, but we concur with Dave that he
was lucky that day to be flying with Neil Armstrong,
because Neil is just one of the greatest astronaut pilots
(15:36):
in the history of humanity, quite honestly, but certainly in
the National Aerononyx in Space administration.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Let's jump ahead about three years to sixty nine and
Apollo nine.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
So Apollo nine, think about this now, think about this,
Dave and Neil were tied together historically because of Gemini eight.
Now we're in the fire final countdown of being able
to get to the Moon before John F. Kennedy's deadline
of the end of that decade of the nineteen sixties. Right,
(16:09):
it is nineteen sixty nine. We have to hurry. We
got to go. So but there was a lot of
things that we hadn't tried yet that we're going to
be necessary to dock and land on the surface of
the Moon. So it on March third of nineteen sixty nine,
David Scott, along with James mcdivott, who was the commander
of Apollo nine, and Rusty Schweikert, launched a space on
(16:32):
Apollo nine to go into Earth orbit. But they spent
some very important time there testing everything that would need
to be done by the Apollo eleven crew in the
orbit around the Moon, and there were all kinds of
first There were things they just hadn't tested yet. So
think about this, friends, It's March of nineteen sixty nine.
(16:54):
The Apollo eleven mission went in July, just four months
and thirteen days later, so this is like cramming for
the exam right on Apollo nine, it was the first
time that both the Command module and the commanded Service Module,
which is the spacecraft that stayed in orbit around the Moon,
(17:17):
and the Lunar Module, which is the spidery looking vehicle
that went down and landed on the surface. That was
the first time that those two had been flown together
with a crew on board. Was in March on Apollo nine.
Another first was it was the first time that they
had docked the two vehicles. The first manned docking of
(17:38):
an Apollo spacecraft happened on Apollo nine in March ahead
of the July trip to the Moon. The first time
that the propulsion system for the Service module had ever
been fired and maneuvered, the first time that an undocking.
If you docked the two vehicles, you gotta undock them
to come back home. The first time they ever undocked,
(18:00):
and the first manned Lunar Module and Command Service module docking.
The first time we ever docked the two vehicles that
were going to be necessary in lunar orbit and going
down to the lunar surface. We had to dock those
two vehicles. It was the first time. It was March
of sixty nine. Apollo eleven went in July of sixty nine,
(18:23):
So without the Apollo nine mission with Dave Scott on board,
Neil Armstrong would not have been flying to the service
of the Moon in July. It had anything major gone
wrong on the Apollo nine mission, they would not have
been poised to successfully go to the Moon before the
(18:45):
decade was out. Just like Kennedy had said, really it
was a very very important mission and David Scott got
to help pave the way for Neil Armstrong to then
become the first human being to ever set foot on
the service of the Moon.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I'm after a quick break.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
We're going to jump ahead to Apollo fifteen and there
we'll have Dave Scott with Al Warden. We'll do that next,
(19:24):
all right. Last week's show, we talked we had our
interview with al Warden from more than a decade ago
when he came to Columbus, another hero in our series
here as we get closer to Independence Day, and Dave
Scott and al Warden flew together Apollo fifteen and there
also was a.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Car on board. Yeah. So, first of all, if you're
if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't heard
the al Warden interview, al Warden, in addition to being
a fantastic pilot and a great astronaut, was just a
whole human being. He was very very funny, very witty,
kind of gritty. We really enjoyed talking with al Warden,
(20:08):
and we really enjoyed Al's visit here to the co
Cola Space Science Center. And yes, he accompanied David Scott
along with James Irwin on the Apollo fifteen landing. Which
was the first ever landing on the Moon to have
a car on board. The Lunar Roving Vehicle, the LRV.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
We called it the moon rover, I think is how
I grew up knowing it, the moon buggy. It was
sometimes called, I remember the phrase, the moon buggy. That
thing looks like a moon buggy. Anyway, So the.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Lunar the Lunar roving vehicle was driven for the first
time on the surface of the Moon by the Apollo
fifteen crew, and specifically by David Scott. David Scott became
the first person in history to ever drive a car
on the surface of another world during the summer of
nineteen seventy one and the Apollo fifteen mission, of which
(21:02):
he was the commander. All Right, so here's what happened.
They were flying to the Moon. Their destination was the
Hadleyrial region of the Moon. If you don't know that
much about lunar geography, Hadley Ril is right near the
Apennine Mountain range. In other words, this was the most
(21:22):
dangerous landing location yet for any of the Apollo missions.
And we've heard earlier in this podcast, even the Apollo eleven,
which was supposed to be a fairly, fairly flat, straightforward
place to land ended up being a little bit dicey
as they came back in, and Neil Armstrong had to
make some quick last minute decisions about where to put
(21:42):
the vehicle down. Well, also on the Apollo fifteen mission,
they had to be very very careful in this rocky
and treacherous environment about where they were going to actually
land the vehicle, but they did get it down safely.
They dropped that car out from underneath the lunar lander,
and they drove it around for over seventeen miles on
(22:04):
the lunar surface, which that doesn't sound that doesn't sound
like very far to you. Remember that they don't have roads, friends, right,
you're just driving this vehicle over the rough terrain of
the Moon. They managed to cover seventeen miles. And because
two factors happened on this mission. Number One, the astronauts
(22:27):
themselves had been trained by actual field geologists, so they
had more geological training than any Apollo crew to that
point in history. And because they had the lunar roving
vehicle and could have a much broader range, they brought
back a fantastic sample of lunar geology. They brought back
(22:49):
over one hundred and seventy pounds of lunar rocks and
soil samples, and that included a very very famous rock
now which is known as the Genesis Rock. They were
a because of their training to identify that this sample
was a little bit different than the copious amount of
lava rocks that were laying around on the surface of
(23:09):
the Moon. This piece was actually a piece of a
North a Site rock that was considered to be part
of the Moon's primordial crust. In other words, it's like, hey,
that's not lava rock, that's something different. Well that they
were able to recognize that thanks to the geological training
that they had attained before they had gone up to
(23:31):
the Moon, and so they were able to identify that
it ended up being a four billion year old lunar
rock part of the original Moon's surface. They brought that
back home because they had a car to get there,
and because they had done all that geological training. So
a lot of times, the Paul fifteen is referred to
(23:51):
as the first real science mission to the Moon. The
other missions were making sure we could get there, and
yes they did do some science, and yes they important discoveries,
but this was the first full on science mission done
on the surface of the Moon with a high level
of training, deployment of many scientific instruments, including panoramic cameras,
(24:12):
gamma ray spectrometers, mapping cameras, and something called something called
the LRR, which was a mirror that they have reflected
laser light from to measure very accurately the surface of
the Moon it's distance from the Earth. So they fired
a laser from the Earth at the mirror. The laser
(24:32):
light returns back to Earth off the mirror, and they
know exactly how far away the Moon is. That mirror
is still up there and functioning today. We still use
it to do ranging to make sure we understand how
far away the Moon is all the time, so which
is very interesting. Right, So this was a pioneering mission,
all kinds of very interesting geological accomplishments for that crew,
(24:55):
and they really helped influence the future of space missions
because they proved that a rover, a wheeled vehicle could
work on the surface of another planet.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
All right, we're recording this early. We mentioned at the
start of the show that this is our show for
the third of July Independence Day, but we're recording this
much closer to June sixth, which was the ninety third
birthday for Dave Scott, Worth mentioning on that as well.
So let's talk about post space career for Dave Scott.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, Dave Scott one of only four Apollo astronauts still
with us as of the recording of this show, and
we're very very thankful that he's still in very pretty
good health and hanging out. His brother Tom just flew
down there to have the birthday with him last week,
so really excited for them that they got to get together.
Dave's career after being an astronaut, he still served in
(25:52):
the Air Force, retiring from the Air Force in nineteen
seventy five. He also served as NASA's director for the
Dryden Flight Research Center out there at Edwards Air Force
Base in California, from April of nineteen seventy five through
October of nineteen seventy seven. Dave Scott was awarded many honors,
(26:12):
including two NASA Distinguished Service Medals, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal,
two Air Force Distinguished Service Medals, the Air Force Distinguished
Flying Cross, and the Air Force Association's David C. Shilling
Trophy for Outstanding Pilots, and so he was also a
fellow of the American Astronautical Society and the Society of
(26:34):
Experimental Test Pilots. So these are all accomplishments of Dave Scott.
In twenty twenty four, Dave Scott was promoted to the
rank of brigadier general for his meritorious service to the
United States of America. And of course that's an honorary
promotion that he received just last year. We're very proud
of him for all of these accomplishments. We're proud of
(26:54):
our association with Dave, his brother Tom, and the exhibit
that we get to put on both here at Space
Science Center and just down the street at the bo
Bartlett Center for the Arts here at Columbus State University.
From now until August the second, you're gonna be able
to go down to bo Bartlett and see this great
(27:16):
exhibit of images taken by Dave and of Dave that
we're actually in Dave's collection. So this is directly from
the David Scott collection through his brother Tom, donated to
us here at Columbus State University at the Coca Cola
Space Science Center for the preservation and exhibit of these
important pieces of American memorabilia, and there are just so
(27:39):
many of them we don't have room to put them
all up in our gallery simultaneously. So we're collaborating with
our friends at the bo Bartlett Center here at Columbus
State University. They have that on display in their art
gallery again now until August the second. They are open
on Tuesday through Saturday from eleven am to four pm,
and you can actually book a guided tour if you
(28:00):
would like to have that. What you have to do
is you have to you have to call the folks
down there at the bow Bartlett Center. Their number is
seven oh six five zero seven eight four three two.
That's seven oh six five zero seven eight four three two.
Or you can email them at bo Bartlett Center at
(28:20):
Columbustate University dot edu. Bo Bartlett Center at Columbustate University
dot edu. If you wonder how to spell it, just
just google it. You'll find it out there. Check it out.
You can send them an email at that location and
they will if you have a group of people that
want to come down and see it simultaneously, they will
book a tour for you and you can have a
special custom tour of these amazing artifacts down at the
(28:44):
bo Bartlett Center.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Sean and I.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Thank you for listening, and we will do this.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Again next week.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Go ahead. When made of stars, made them stars, made sizes.
When made of stars, you could be from high they
would New Mexicomus.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Where a stars? When we are made of stars.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
Cruising from Columbus State Universities, Coca Cola Space Science Center.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Morning Shawn, Good morning Wes. It's very good to be
here today.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
This is our third of July episode of Mat of Stars.
We mentioned this just for the purposes a couple of episodes.
The fact that I am as this is like dropping
as the kids say, you drop it on the podcast,
and as it's been released, I'm Overseas.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I'm in Australia.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
We're recording this a little bit early, so this is
kind of my chance since when Independence Day rolls around,
I will be in a country that does have the
fourth of July. But doesn't have Independence Day, so while
I'll be celebrating on the inside, this is my chance
to celebrate it a little bit early here while I'm
still stateside. So that's what we're doing. And we thought,
what a great opportunity to celebrate a like a legendary
(01:52):
American hero here right before Independence Day.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Exactly. It's a star spangled tribute to to one of
our favorite astronauts in NASA's very storied history of creating
unbelievable astronauts making great achievements. And today we're going to
be talking about General David R.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Scott, and we have a few reasons, I mean Independence
Day and celebrating him as an American hero. This is
following up last week's show where we put our interview
from you know, more than a decade ago with Al Warden,
who flew with Dave Scott. So we're kind of doing
a little back to back. I don't want to I
(02:35):
don't want to discount the hero of Al Warden as well.
But as we get into this conversation about Dave Scott
and you guys have something that we'll be talking about
at the end that's going on, and anybody who's been
listening to meta stars here lately knows that you guys
have something special going on compliments of the Scott family,
(02:56):
But we just really wanted to take some time to
talk about this career of this American hero.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, so let's just be clear about both Dave Scott
and Al Warden. They were true bona fide American heroes
before they ever joined the space program. Both of these
guys were United States Air Force aviators, fighter pilots, test pilots,
(03:24):
and that's how they were selected into the Astronaut Corps.
So once again, they served their country nobly and with
great skill before they were ever selected for America's space program.
And then oh yeah, by the way, they also went
to the Moon. So that's that's a thing right there. Right,
So Dave and Al and their friend Jim Irwin all
(03:46):
went to the Moon together on A fifteen.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
So you're saying they're just as much astronauts as Katy
Perry and Gail King, Is that what you're saying. I mean,
at least I don't know that the I don't know
that the Katy Perry jokes will get old. They just
seem like they'll always survive on't they They're like cockroaches.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
They're always gonna be hear, not to derail this very
noble show. But the funniest thing that you reminded me
of was that she was taking selfies rather than looking
out the window when they only have six minutes in space.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
That when you pointed that out to me, you pretty
much cracked my nut there.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
I was.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I was kind of supporting Katy Perry until you pointed
that out and I actually went and looked and it
was like, oh, yeah, she really was doing that.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
Yeah, because you know, you have this vantage point that
very few people have had the opportunity to have in
in all of our lifetimes collectively, and you're looking at.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
The camera part of your phone.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
So you know, that's that's what was important, right, I.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Mean, I don't think I don't think that Dave Scott
and Jim Irwin took any selfies. Now, they did take
pictures of each other. I don't know if that counts.
They didn't have a selfie stick, so they shot picked
of each other saluting the flag on the moon. I mean,
I don't know, you know, but that was that was
kind of a NASA requirement. I mean, I think and
(05:06):
that's a differences to ask them, Hey, make sure you
take some pictures saluting the flag. We were on the move.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Photos needed to be taken documenting what they were doing.
I think there were plenty of cameras rolling for Katy
Perry at that particular juncture of things. But anyway, so, yes,
already heroes to begin with.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
And yeah, yeah, A graduate of the United States Military
Academy at West Point, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and the University of Michigan, aeronautical engineer, air
Force test pilot. That's David R. Scott, and so all
of those things. Accomplished a great career of military service
(05:47):
before being selected into the third group of astronauts in
nineteen sixty three. So he wasn't one of the original
Mercury seven astronauts. It wasn't part of the second round either,
but did join in nineteen sixty three in that third
round when America was preparing to battle Russia in the
Space Race. We were already battling Russia in the space Race,
(06:07):
but preparing to actually take the steps to go to
the Moon, and so Dave Scott got to participate in
some very historic firsts for the American space program and
help propel our Apollo program to the service of the
Moon in a very amazing and interesting way.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
So let's jump ahead to Gemini eight nineteen sixty six.
He is part of this two person crew and the
other member of that crew you might have heard of.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, he's got some name recognition, just.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
A little bit. He's not the guy that you cheated
and won the Tour de France several times, but similar name.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They might be cousins. I don't know, Yeah, it could be.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
The difference is one of them is still seen as
an American hero.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
So yeah, all apologies to Neil anyway. So Dave Scott
first flew to space in March March sixteenth of nineteen
sixty six as a member of that two person crew.
West just described. That's the Gemini program. Gemini is the Twins.
The eighth mission was the first of the Gemini missions
to take human beings to orbit. Neil Armstrong was who
(07:27):
accompanied David Scott on that mission. Now here's what was
going to happen. The goal of the Gemini eight mission
was for them to perform the first ever docking of
two spacecraft in orbit. That's the important part of the
story Gemini eight was. The mission involved two spacecraft. One
(07:49):
was the actual capsule that the astronauts were in, the
Gemini capsule. The other one was an Aegina spacecraft, which
was basically a robot ship or a drone ship. Their
mission was to go up, fly to space, find that
drone ship in orbit, catch up to it, which already
required some pretty interesting flying, and then when they got
(08:09):
near to it, they had to perform a series of
maneuvers to dock those two vehicles together. Friends, no one
had ever docked two vehicles together in orbit. This would
be the first time that a human spacecraft would dock
with another spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. And then
(08:29):
the rest of the mission was going to be that
Dave Scott would pop out and do a spacewalk after
the team had performed some maneuvers of the joined spacecraft,
then they would undock and come back home. All right,
So that's the setup. Here comes the pitch. Shortly after
they performed their successful docking of the two vehicles, something
went wrong. Something started to happen that was unexpected, and
(08:52):
they started having a malfunction of one of what they
call the maneuvering thrusters, the little rockets attached to the
side of the vehicle that can spin the vehicle around
into different orientations. So one of those controls thrusters just
started firing. It was stuck in the on position, and
this began to at first roll the vehicles, the joined vehicles,
(09:15):
and then because it was kind of an asymmetric force,
it began to tumble the two vehicles. So now you
have a three axis tumbling motion of those two vehicles,
something that is not only very dangerous, but it's also
very hard to recover from. And so now these astronauts
are in trouble. So the other part of the unfortunate
(09:35):
timing was it happened in a period of time where
they were going around the backside of the Earth and
they were out of communication with the United States of
America at that time. Now, we didn't have a satellite
network for them to continue to be able to continue
broadcasting communications back to the ground, so they were in
a radio quiet zone and could not speak with a
(09:58):
ground team back in Houston. So they didn't know exactly
what the telemetry was, so they weren't exactly sure what
was wrong. So here's what they decided to do, hey,
we got to get out of here. We got to
undocked from this jem, from this Agena vehicle because it's
causing us to have some big problems. So they undocked
their capsule from that robot ship, and it was at
that moment that they realized that the thruster that was
(10:21):
stuck was not one of the orbiting maneuver or orbital
maneuvering thrusters on the robot ship. It was actually on
their own capsule. And because they had undocked from the Agena,
they suddenly had a lot less mass, so that thruster
was more effective, and it was causing them to spin
while it was misfiring in a dangerous tumble. Their rotation
(10:44):
rate at the tumble increased to two hundred and ninety
six degrees per second, which is almost a complete rotation
every second thousand and one thousand, two thousand and three.
Imagine that you're spinning around at that kind of rate.
At that rate, these two astronauts began to have tunnel vision.
(11:05):
They knew that what was imminent was a blackout. They
could not black out because in this tumble, because if
they did and that rocket that thruster kept firing, that
blackout would be fatal, and so they had to act fast. So,
in this extremely stressful circumstance, that guy Neil Armstrong, the
(11:25):
commander of this mission, reached up and powered down the
control thruster system and just shut it off. And what
he realized he needed to do, based on training but
also based on his great pilot instincts, was to fire
up a secondary set of thrusters that would be the
re entry thruster system. Now here's the thing about the
(11:47):
re entry thrusters. They're not necessarily made to control the
vehicle and get it out of big tumbles. They're made
to come back and go through the atmosphere. And they
still have to do that. So they have to preserve
enough fuel in those re entry thrusters in order to
make it back through the atmosphere. This is a tough situation, Wes.
(12:08):
They were up against it. The next thirty minutes was
a wild ride because it took them a half an
hour of battling Neil Armstrong using the re entry thruster
system instead of the maneuvering thrusters trying to get control
of this vehicle. And there was an episode of the
(12:31):
PBS program called Nova where Dave Scott would later say
this about Neil Armstrong. Quote, the guy was brilliant. He
knew the system so well, he found the solution, he
activated the solution, and under extreme circumstances, it was my
lucky day to be flying with him. Unquote. That's Dave
(12:52):
Scott commenting on the flying acumen of Neil Armstrong, one
of America's greatest pilots but also astronauts.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And it's it's interesting too.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
And you know, we're we're talking about Dave Scott and
on today's show, but we're really just sort of celebrating
the space program in general, and obviously Neil Armstrong is
such a huge part of that. But as being the guy,
I mean, being the guy who was the name, the face,
(13:26):
everything associated with, you know, the first foot on the moon.
Also knowing and we're not really getting into this particular story,
but what he had to do just to save the
mission of them being able to return home when they
landed on the moon. Armstrong was known for these quick decisions,
(13:47):
his ability to make these quick decisions and make the
right quick decision. That's the other anybody can make a
quick decision, right, You got to make the right quick
decision in these moments and to hear and know those
words from Dave Scott about just saying it was as
lucky today to be flying with Armstrong and you can
understand that.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, So it was no accident that Neil Armstrong was
chosen to be the first human being to set foot
on the surface of the Moon. And this Gemini eight
moment and that episode played a large part in it
because NASA got to see in a real emergency situation,
how Neil would be able to handle himself and how
(14:28):
you would be able to handle the vehicle. And this
was one of three different moments where Neil Armstrong saved
his own life as well as the life of other astronauts.
One on Gemini eight that we just described. Another time
when he was flying a simulation of the Lunar Lander
out in the desert and that thing started to go
(14:50):
awry and he was able to eject and get him off,
get himself off safely. And then on the Apollo eleven
landing itself, he started to come down in a place.
He recognized that they were coming down in a place
that was not going to be suitable for landing. He
overrode the computer controls grabbed manual control and flew that
vehicle safely to an unplanned location where he was able
(15:14):
to put the vehicle down safely on the surface of
the Moon without landing in a boulder field and tipping
over where they would have no chance to get back
off the surface. So Neil Armstrong again, as you said,
we're celebrating Dave, but we concur with Dave that he
was lucky that day to be flying with Neil Armstrong,
because Neil is just one of the greatest astronaut pilots
(15:36):
in the history of humanity, quite honestly, but certainly in
the National Aerononyx in Space administration.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Let's jump ahead about three years to sixty nine and
Apollo nine.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
So Apollo nine, think about this now, think about this,
Dave and Neil were tied together historically because of Gemini eight.
Now we're in the fire final countdown of being able
to get to the Moon before John F. Kennedy's deadline
of the end of that decade of the nineteen sixties. Right,
(16:09):
it is nineteen sixty nine. We have to hurry. We
got to go. So but there was a lot of
things that we hadn't tried yet that we're going to
be necessary to dock and land on the surface of
the Moon. So it on March third of nineteen sixty nine,
David Scott, along with James mcdivott, who was the commander
of Apollo nine, and Rusty Schweikert, launched a space on
(16:32):
Apollo nine to go into Earth orbit. But they spent
some very important time there testing everything that would need
to be done by the Apollo eleven crew in the
orbit around the Moon, and there were all kinds of
first There were things they just hadn't tested yet. So
think about this, friends, It's March of nineteen sixty nine.
(16:54):
The Apollo eleven mission went in July, just four months
and thirteen days later, so this is like cramming for
the exam right on Apollo nine, it was the first
time that both the Command module and the commanded Service Module,
which is the spacecraft that stayed in orbit around the Moon,
(17:17):
and the Lunar Module, which is the spidery looking vehicle
that went down and landed on the surface. That was
the first time that those two had been flown together
with a crew on board. Was in March on Apollo nine.
Another first was it was the first time that they
had docked the two vehicles. The first manned docking of
(17:38):
an Apollo spacecraft happened on Apollo nine in March ahead
of the July trip to the Moon. The first time
that the propulsion system for the Service module had ever
been fired and maneuvered, the first time that an undocking.
If you docked the two vehicles, you gotta undock them
to come back home. The first time they ever undocked,
(18:00):
and the first manned Lunar Module and Command Service module docking.
The first time we ever docked the two vehicles that
were going to be necessary in lunar orbit and going
down to the lunar surface. We had to dock those
two vehicles. It was the first time. It was March
of sixty nine. Apollo eleven went in July of sixty nine,
(18:23):
So without the Apollo nine mission with Dave Scott on board,
Neil Armstrong would not have been flying to the service
of the Moon in July. It had anything major gone
wrong on the Apollo nine mission, they would not have
been poised to successfully go to the Moon before the
(18:45):
decade was out. Just like Kennedy had said, really it
was a very very important mission and David Scott got
to help pave the way for Neil Armstrong to then
become the first human being to ever set foot on
the service of the Moon.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I'm after a quick break.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
We're going to jump ahead to Apollo fifteen and there
we'll have Dave Scott with Al Warden. We'll do that next,
(19:24):
all right. Last week's show, we talked we had our
interview with al Warden from more than a decade ago
when he came to Columbus, another hero in our series
here as we get closer to Independence Day, and Dave
Scott and al Warden flew together Apollo fifteen and there
also was a.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Car on board. Yeah. So, first of all, if you're
if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't heard
the al Warden interview, al Warden, in addition to being
a fantastic pilot and a great astronaut, was just a
whole human being. He was very very funny, very witty,
kind of gritty. We really enjoyed talking with al Warden,
(20:08):
and we really enjoyed Al's visit here to the co
Cola Space Science Center. And yes, he accompanied David Scott
along with James Irwin on the Apollo fifteen landing. Which
was the first ever landing on the Moon to have
a car on board. The Lunar Roving Vehicle, the LRV.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
We called it the moon rover, I think is how
I grew up knowing it, the moon buggy. It was
sometimes called, I remember the phrase, the moon buggy. That
thing looks like a moon buggy. Anyway, So the.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Lunar the Lunar roving vehicle was driven for the first
time on the surface of the Moon by the Apollo
fifteen crew, and specifically by David Scott. David Scott became
the first person in history to ever drive a car
on the surface of another world during the summer of
nineteen seventy one and the Apollo fifteen mission, of which
(21:02):
he was the commander. All Right, so here's what happened.
They were flying to the Moon. Their destination was the
Hadleyrial region of the Moon. If you don't know that
much about lunar geography, Hadley Ril is right near the
Apennine Mountain range. In other words, this was the most
(21:22):
dangerous landing location yet for any of the Apollo missions.
And we've heard earlier in this podcast, even the Apollo eleven,
which was supposed to be a fairly, fairly flat, straightforward
place to land ended up being a little bit dicey
as they came back in, and Neil Armstrong had to
make some quick last minute decisions about where to put
(21:42):
the vehicle down. Well, also on the Apollo fifteen mission,
they had to be very very careful in this rocky
and treacherous environment about where they were going to actually
land the vehicle, but they did get it down safely.
They dropped that car out from underneath the lunar lander,
and they drove it around for over seventeen miles on
(22:04):
the lunar surface, which that doesn't sound that doesn't sound
like very far to you. Remember that they don't have roads, friends, right,
you're just driving this vehicle over the rough terrain of
the Moon. They managed to cover seventeen miles. And because
two factors happened on this mission. Number One, the astronauts
(22:27):
themselves had been trained by actual field geologists, so they
had more geological training than any Apollo crew to that
point in history. And because they had the lunar roving
vehicle and could have a much broader range, they brought
back a fantastic sample of lunar geology. They brought back
(22:49):
over one hundred and seventy pounds of lunar rocks and
soil samples, and that included a very very famous rock
now which is known as the Genesis Rock. They were
a because of their training to identify that this sample
was a little bit different than the copious amount of
lava rocks that were laying around on the surface of
(23:09):
the Moon. This piece was actually a piece of a
North a Site rock that was considered to be part
of the Moon's primordial crust. In other words, it's like, hey,
that's not lava rock, that's something different. Well that they
were able to recognize that thanks to the geological training
that they had attained before they had gone up to
(23:31):
the Moon, and so they were able to identify that
it ended up being a four billion year old lunar
rock part of the original Moon's surface. They brought that
back home because they had a car to get there,
and because they had done all that geological training. So
a lot of times, the Paul fifteen is referred to
(23:51):
as the first real science mission to the Moon. The
other missions were making sure we could get there, and
yes they did do some science, and yes they important discoveries,
but this was the first full on science mission done
on the surface of the Moon with a high level
of training, deployment of many scientific instruments, including panoramic cameras,
(24:12):
gamma ray spectrometers, mapping cameras, and something called something called
the LRR, which was a mirror that they have reflected
laser light from to measure very accurately the surface of
the Moon it's distance from the Earth. So they fired
a laser from the Earth at the mirror. The laser
(24:32):
light returns back to Earth off the mirror, and they
know exactly how far away the Moon is. That mirror
is still up there and functioning today. We still use
it to do ranging to make sure we understand how
far away the Moon is all the time, so which
is very interesting. Right, So this was a pioneering mission,
all kinds of very interesting geological accomplishments for that crew,
(24:55):
and they really helped influence the future of space missions
because they proved that a rover, a wheeled vehicle could
work on the surface of another planet.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
All right, we're recording this early. We mentioned at the
start of the show that this is our show for
the third of July Independence Day, but we're recording this
much closer to June sixth, which was the ninety third
birthday for Dave Scott, Worth mentioning on that as well.
So let's talk about post space career for Dave Scott.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Yeah, Dave Scott one of only four Apollo astronauts still
with us as of the recording of this show, and
we're very very thankful that he's still in very pretty
good health and hanging out. His brother Tom just flew
down there to have the birthday with him last week,
so really excited for them that they got to get together.
Dave's career after being an astronaut, he still served in
(25:52):
the Air Force, retiring from the Air Force in nineteen
seventy five. He also served as NASA's director for the
Dryden Flight Research Center out there at Edwards Air Force
Base in California, from April of nineteen seventy five through
October of nineteen seventy seven. Dave Scott was awarded many honors,
(26:12):
including two NASA Distinguished Service Medals, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal,
two Air Force Distinguished Service Medals, the Air Force Distinguished
Flying Cross, and the Air Force Association's David C. Shilling
Trophy for Outstanding Pilots, and so he was also a
fellow of the American Astronautical Society and the Society of
(26:34):
Experimental Test Pilots. So these are all accomplishments of Dave Scott.
In twenty twenty four, Dave Scott was promoted to the
rank of brigadier general for his meritorious service to the
United States of America. And of course that's an honorary
promotion that he received just last year. We're very proud
of him for all of these accomplishments. We're proud of
(26:54):
our association with Dave, his brother Tom, and the exhibit
that we get to put on both here at Space
Science Center and just down the street at the bo
Bartlett Center for the Arts here at Columbus State University.
From now until August the second, you're gonna be able
to go down to bo Bartlett and see this great
(27:16):
exhibit of images taken by Dave and of Dave that
we're actually in Dave's collection. So this is directly from
the David Scott collection through his brother Tom, donated to
us here at Columbus State University at the Coca Cola
Space Science Center for the preservation and exhibit of these
important pieces of American memorabilia, and there are just so
(27:39):
many of them we don't have room to put them
all up in our gallery simultaneously. So we're collaborating with
our friends at the bo Bartlett Center here at Columbus
State University. They have that on display in their art
gallery again now until August the second. They are open
on Tuesday through Saturday from eleven am to four pm,
and you can actually book a guided tour if you
(28:00):
would like to have that. What you have to do
is you have to you have to call the folks
down there at the bow Bartlett Center. Their number is
seven oh six five zero seven eight four three two.
That's seven oh six five zero seven eight four three two.
Or you can email them at bo Bartlett Center at
(28:20):
Columbustate University dot edu. Bo Bartlett Center at Columbustate University
dot edu. If you wonder how to spell it, just
just google it. You'll find it out there. Check it out.
You can send them an email at that location and
they will if you have a group of people that
want to come down and see it simultaneously, they will
book a tour for you and you can have a
special custom tour of these amazing artifacts down at the
(28:44):
bo Bartlett Center.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Sean and I.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Thank you for listening, and we will do this.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Again next week.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
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