Because the air in the spacecraft slowly circulated, we didn’t have to worry too much about losing a bag. Eventually my food would drift by and I’d grab it out of the air, cut the top off, and eat the contents. I started to imagine if we all stayed completely still the bags might drift around the inside of the spacecraft in a perfect oval. I could picture lying in my couch, plucking bags out of the air as they marched past in perfect procession, then releasing empty bags back into the air current. At the end of our meal, I could hold up a net and all of our trash would neatly float inside. It would have been fun to watch, like something out of Disney’s Fantasia. The reality was more chaotic, but no less fun.
There was nothing to clean up after the meal. We simply folded the bags inward, then stowed them inside a trash bag. No washing up meant more time for other tasks.
Karl Henize, who had been so much help readying me for the mission, called up and asked, “How’s the view up there?”
I looked out of the window at the shrinking Earth. Even though I could see the curved horizon, from orbit Earth had seemed mostly flat. Now we were far enough away that Earth looked like an enormous sphere. It looked phenomenal. I could see oceans, clouds, and familiar landmasses. The clouds were piercingly bright as they reflected the sun, much brighter than how we see the moon from Earth. And the oceans were a deep, seemingly bottomless blue. The brightness and intensity is something photos cannot capture.
Although our planet is thousands of miles across, the atmosphere is only fifty miles thick. It is one thing to read that but quite another, believe me, to see it with your own eyes. The horizon was paper thin. There seemed to be nothing that separated the surface from the deep blackness of space. Earth looked very vulnerable, in a way I had never understood before.
There were times I could see North America, glimpse the outline of Florida, and in my mind’s eye I could zoom in to Galveston and Houston, even right down to the street where I lived. But it was all in my imagination. It felt weird to be so far away, and not be able to distinguish anything clearly. It all blurred into one landmass.
“It is fantastic, Karl,” I replied wistfully. “You ought to be here, man.”
“I’m eating my heart out,” Karl responded, and I knew he meant it.
Fourteen hours into the mission, we wished mission control a good night and prepared for sleep. We were already out of our spacesuits, which we’d carefully stowed under the couches with their arms and legs folded in. One tear in those suits and the moon walks were canceled, so we treated them with reverence. Our lives depended on them.
It hadn’t been easy taking the suits off in the spacecraft while we floated around, but we helped each other and managed the task without brushing against any switches. We still had on our long johns, and if we wished, we could wear cloth flight suits, too. Without the spacesuits it felt cool inside the spacecraft, so we each had a sleeping bag. We placed metal shades over the windows to block out the glare of sunlight. Jim took his sleeping bag under the couches while Dave and I stayed above. I tied my bag between two spacecraft struts, floated inside, and drifted off to sleep.
My stomach knotted and my arms flailed. I was falling from a great height. In terror, I snapped awake. Just a dream. I was okay. I fell asleep again, only to snap awake once more. What was going on?
The sleeping bag zipper only came up to my neck. I didn’t need a pillow in space, so my head and neck were totally unsupported. As I slept, I moved a little. My confused inner ear told me that I must be falling and jolted me awake. I wasn’t adapted to weightlessness yet. I unzipped my sleeping bag a little and stuck my head inside, where my shoulder had been. Now snugly cradled, I drifted off into a deeper sleep.
I woke up many hours later with a painful backache. What had I done to myself? By stuffing myself in my sleeping bag, had I hurt myself? I looked over at Dave, who was already awake, and asked him. “No, that’s normal,” he said with a little smile. “Your spine stretches in space, and your back hurts at first. Guess I forgot to tell you that.”
I didn’t have time to ponder Dave’s humor. It would be another busy day. While we slept, engineers on the ground continued to troubleshoot the faulty switch problem, and Dick Gordon headed to a simulator to test procedures for an engine burn. We started discussing the day’s plans with Houston over the radio. They wanted us to try a test burn, to confirm what they thought was wrong. They read up the instructions to us, which we carefully wrote down. It now took about a second for our radio signals to get back to Earth, even at the speed of light, and the delay on the radio was noticeable. Boy, we were far from home.
Joe Allen was serving that morning as CapCom, the astronaut communicating with us from Houston. He started to read a pompous message from President Nixon. If Nixon hadn’t been slashing NASA’s budget that same year, I may have given his words some more consideration. And if I had to suffer through them, then so do you.
“Apollo 15 is safely on its way to the moon—and Man is on his way to another step across the threshold of the heavens. Man has always viewed the heavens with humility, but he has viewed them as well with curiosity and with courage; and these defied natural law, drawing Man beyond gravity, beyond his fears, and into his dreams, and on to his destiny …”
There couldn’t have been a better time for us to have a minor communications glitch. Sadly, it was brief, and Joe soon continued wading through the president’s message. There was no escape.
“… The flight of Apollo 15 is the most ambitious exploration yet undertaken in space. Even as it reflects Man’s restless quest for his future, so it also re-enacts another of the deeper rituals of his bones, not only the compulsion of the inner spirit to know where we are going, but the primal need in Man’s blood to know from what we have come. We hope, by this journey, to know better the origins of Earth, the moon, and other planets. We hope to understand something more of the mysteries of God’s great work. And, in this seeking, we hope to understand more of Man himself. To the men of Apollo 15, for all men, I say Godspeed.”
Godspeed, Mr. President. True, this was the most ambitious space exploration mission ever. But now I could get back to my relentless quest to ease my backache and take a piss. No, there was more. A message from Vice President Spiro Agnew. Thankfully, his greeting was short, personal, and ended with best wishes for a successful mission. Much better—thanks, Spiro.
Back to work. Mission control had some more troubleshooting suggestions. We pushed on the instrument panel to see if the instrument light would come back on and help them understand where the short was located. No luck. So we then tapped on the faulty switch, and the light blinked on. Good—the problem was in that switch alone.
Joe also passed up some helpful advice from Dick Gordon, who’d finished a test procedure in the simulator. I would manipulate the circuit breakers to ensure the engine could not light accidentally, then burn the engine for just over half a second.
We were a little more than halfway to the moon when it lit. We felt a brief jolt of acceleration, and loose items floating in the cabin jerked downward. The burn worked perfectly and even gave us the exact little boost of speed we’d needed from our canceled midcourse correction. “Al Worden always did have a very fine touch on the circuit breakers,” Joe radioed after the successful firing. “Yes, sir,” Dave responded. “We call him nimble finger up here.” That got me laughing.