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Astronaut Charlie Duke: Memories of Apollo 16
By Scott Harrup | June 6, 2008
The following remarks are edited from Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke’s January 21 interview with Today’s Pentecostal Evangel. Duke and Apollo 16 mission commander John Young spent three days on the moon in April 1972. The story of that mission, and of Charlie and Dotty Duke’s spiritual journey, is featured in the Evangel’s June 15 Father’s Day Edition.
At the landing site …
The geography is really the beauty of it. We landed facing the west. The sun was behind us in the eastern sky equivalent to early morning, Earth day. To the left of us about three or four miles away, there was a series of mountains. One we were going to explore we called Stone Mountain. It had a slope to the west that came up and flattened out and disappeared off to the east. That was really spectacular.
To the northwest, South Ray Crater was real bright reflectively. To the west of us there was just rolling terrain. You could see the sharpness of the lunar horizon and the blackness of space. Then to the right of us, to the north, among a group of mountains we called the Smoky Mountains, was a big crater we were to visit called North Ray Crater.
The character of the surface was a very fine-grained powder, like talc. But it has good bearing strength, so when you step on it, it doesn’t sink in but just an inch or two. And it’s unspoiled. You sense the… not the loneliness of the moon, because it’s not lonely because you’re in communication with your fellow astronaut and with Mission Control, so it’s not like you’re in a remote part of the universe. It was a sense of belonging; it wasn’t like isolation. It hits you that nobody has ever been here before.
We’ve got an experiments package we’ve got to deploy. We’ve got a car we can drive and ride in and go explore, the Lunar Rover. It was a lot of fun. I was not the driver. I was the navigator. So I sat on the passenger side. The control for the car was between the seats, so either of us could drive it. But we had trained so that John would drive and I would navigate. We had a set of maps that showed the planned view of our landing area where we wanted to go to do our experiments. I would navigate us from Point A to Point B, the traverse, we called it.
The brilliant reflective surface of the moon is mostly gray in color. And then just the blackness of space, which had no reflectivity at all. It just was empty. Since it was so bright from the lunar surface, you look up and you don’t see the stars. The stars are not visible. And the blackness is there because there’s no atmosphere on the moon. It’s a vacuum. Without any atmosphere you don’t get any color to the sky. It’s just black.
You could see the Earth. From the central highlands of the moon, the Earth was directly overhead and it was, to my recollection, mostly white while we were there because it had a lot of cloud cover. You could see the polar ice caps, and then some blue, a lot of white. Hardly ever could you make out a piece of land, at least not from the lunar distance. So that was really spectacular.
But if you look up, you’re looking into the top of your helmet. So, it’s like being in a big fishbowl that’s opaque on the top. So we didn’t get to see the Earth much, except by leaning backwards and holding onto something, bending your suit backwards to see the Earth. But it was really spectacular. It was just hung up there in the blackness of space.
An encounter with orange juice …
Well, it wasn’t a close encounter, but it was a messy encounter. Our moon walks were from seven to eight hours in duration. During Apollo 15, the first mission to do these long moon walks, they got dehydrated. So it was wise to have some liquid. So we had something like a hot water bottle that would Velcro to the inside of your suit. A valve on the left side came up inside your helmet and was basically set right next to your cheek at the left side of your mouth. So to drink this liquid out of the bottle on the surface, you’d just reach over and grab the tip of the valve. Pulling it to the right opened the valve and then you could suck out the liquid.
We decided we’d have orange juice, because it not only rehydrates you but it also gives you some energy. Our plan was, after landing, to power down and go outside and explore right away. So, [during orbit as we were preparing to land] we were all suited up with a hot water bottle full of orange juice inside. As we were getting ready to land we had a problem in the other spacecraft that required a six-hour delay. My bag had a leaky valve. It seemed like every time I’d breathe I would compress the liquid in the bag. In weightlessness the liquid just floats all around the bag, so when you breathe, the liquid at the top next to the valve came out. Just a little drop or two at a time. It would come out and break loose from the valve and float around inside the helmet, which was very frustrating. It hit on the visor and would get it all messy. It would hit on your nose and creep up your nose. And you try to suck it all in, and it wouldn’t work.
After about four or five hours I had a mess inside my helmet. We got concerned it might plug up my communication microphone or get sucked into the environmental control system. I took off my helmet and was able to clean up the stuff off my face and clean out the helmet. It was real sticky. Orange juice gets real sticky when it starts to evaporate. It was a big mess. I had to plug the valve.
Physical challenges of working in a space suit …
The suit is a hard workout. You don’t have to be Superman, but you feel the workout in the suit. It’s very difficult to bend. In fact, it was almost impossible to bend at the waist in one-sixth gravity. When you pressurize the suit, it takes on a set shape. You can stick your hands in the gloves, but to squeeze the gloves when you pick up a hammer or pick up an experiment you’ve got to apply pressure to the glove to squeeze it and hold that pressure. It’s like squeezing a rubber ball for five or six hours. You began to feel some fatigue and cramping, and you’re wrestling with the shoulders and trying to move the suit to help you.
A lot of that was practice, and you ended up doing it in pretty good shape. But fighting the pressure in the suit was a workout. It’s like a low-level workout at the gym for six or seven hours. The only real rest we had was when we were driving the rover and could sit down. You didn’t have much grasping to do.
Once you got back inside after the EVA [Extravehicular Activity], you had some blood bruises in your fingers, the tips of your fingers. You were really tired in your forearm from just gripping. And so you were exhausted. After our first EVA we had a rest period, and boy we slept like babies. We took our suits off and put up some hammocks.
Inside the Lunar Module …
The Lunar Module’s not very big. Some eight feet across, I think. Maybe not that much. I strung my hammock from right to left to the sides of the spacecraft. I was almost 6 feet tall and I could just fit in. John had his strung fore and aft. Behind us there was an opening where the ascent engine cover was, and above that there was a little volume. So he could hook onto the back wall with his hammock and then he hooked onto the sides of the instrument panel at the front. So we were sort of like a cross, separated by two or three feet.
In one-sixth gravity, even though you didn’t have any seats, you never got tired of standing. You could lean back against a piece of equipment. We were good housekeepers. When we took off our suits we stowed them in the back over the ascent engine cover. That left John room above for his hammock. So we felt like we had plenty of room.
Current ministry …
God has seasons, I think, for us. He led [wife] Dotty and me into seasons of ministry and to understanding the power of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. He used people and His Word to teach us. It has been an amazing walk with the Lord. Our ministry is more of what I’d call evangelistic now — to go tell a story about what God has done in our lives. Occasionally, we get a chance to pray for healings, but mostly it’s to groups that need to understand the gospel and what God can do for you in your life. That seems to be where God has us focused now. For how long, I don’t know. But we told Him, “Lord, we’re not going to send out newsletters or ask for speaking engagements. If You want us to continue speaking, You’ve got to send in the invitations.”
Topics: History |
December 12th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Thank you for sharing your story. My husband and I watched Ron Howard’s documentary “In the Shadow of the Moon” and were impressed that Charlie Duke had dedicated his life to Jesus; that the trip to the moon had given him a Christlike humility rather than worldly pride. He is a great role model. We have 2 sons ourselves, and look to great examples like this to encourage our sons to be spiritual men.
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
I have followed the space program for most of my life. I loved the documentary In The Shadow Of The Moon. I have a question. What did you guys do to clean those dirty space suits for the ride home? I am so pleased to learn that Charlie Duke has dedicated his life to Jesus. Thanks again for all that you very brave men have contributed to our great country!