[APPLAUSE] - Good evening, and welcome
to the Vice Admiral Donald D. Engen Flight Jacket Night. My name is Elizabeth
Wilson and I'm the new director of the
National Air and Space Society and the Wall of Honor. And I wanted to take
this opportunity to thank all of the National
Air and Space Society members here in the audience
tonight because it is through your
continued support, with your membership
contributions and Wall of Honor donations that make
it possible for the museum to provide such an incredible
program like the one you're going to see tonight. So I wanted to say thank you. And without further
ado, I'm going to introduce the director of
the museum, General Jack Dailey, to introduce captain Bean. So thank you. [APPLAUSE] - Well, thank you, Liz. And good evening,
ladies and gentlemen. You're going to hear the
society members thank a lot tonight because they're
the ones who have made this evening possible. But since Liz has
arrived and taken over as the director of
development along with development
associate Rachel Young, they've made significant
administrative and operational improvements in the National
Air and Space Society. The Society is growing
larger and more involved. And it's a pleasure to see so
many members here this evening and to thank you
for your support. It's an honor to host
the Vice Admiral Donald D. Engen Flight Jacket Night. This annual program presents
exceptional speakers who exemplify our mission. Here at the museum, we
commemorate the history of flight, educate
and inspire people about the science and
technology of aviation and space exploration. Tonight's speaker
truly fits the spirit of our mission in, not
one, but two major ways. As the lunar module pilot
of Apollo 12 in 1969, Captain Alan Bean made
history as the fourth man to walk on the moon. Since 1981, he's devoted
himself to recording history and educating and
inspiring people by painting his
memories of Apollo. Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary
of the launch of Apollo 12, the sixth human mission
in the Apollo program and the second to
land on the moon. The 40th anniversary of Apollo
11, which took place in July, along with this event
tonight inspired us to create an exhibit titled
Alan Bean, Painting Apollo, First Artist On Another World. The exhibition is the largest
display of Alan Bean's works to date, and we are
pleased to host the show. Throughout the
exhibition, works of art are complemented by extensive
documentation as well as artifacts from our collection. The blending of
art and technology provides museum visitors
with a different perspective as well as the opportunity to
stretch their imaginations. Since his retirement,
Captain Bean has devoted himself
full-time to painting. As an artist, he
conveys experiences that no one before or since has
expressed through this medium. Here's a brief
video that captured the highlight of Captain
Bean's career as an astronaut. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] [MUSIC PLAYING] - We choose to go to
the moon in this decade and the other things, not
because they are easy, but because they are hard,
because that goal will serve to organize and measure the
best of our energies and skills because that challenge is one
that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling
to postpone, and one we intend to
win and the others too. - The fourth man to
set foot on the moon. - Ignition sequence start,
6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. All engines running. Commit. Lift off. - Spacecraft Commander of
the second Skylab mission. During his illustrious career
as an aeronautical engineer, naval aviator, test
pilot, and astronaut, Alan Bean has been
instrumental in establishing 11 World Records in
aeronautics and space. Captain Bean has reached
unparalleled heights, not only in Aeronautics, but
also in television, film, education, and the visual arts. His artwork has been featured
on national and international television. He has received honorary
doctorate degrees from Texas Wesleyan College
and the University of Akron. And he has flown over 25
types of military aircraft. In all of Captain
Bean's endeavors, he has demonstrated a profound
dedication to teamwork, a focus on working towards
well-defined goals, and an understanding of the
importance of taking risks. Through these principles,
he has proven that we truly can expand the
boundaries of what we, as individual human
beings, can accomplish. Captain Bean is living proof
that through sustained effort and extraordinary
dedication, human beings can go wherever we dream. [MUSIC INTENSIFIES] [END PLAYBACK] - It is now my great honor
to introduce Captain Alan Bean, accomplished
pilot, celebrated Apollo astronaut, and a truly
unique and magnificently gifted artist. Captain Bean. [APPLAUSE] - Thank you, Jack. Thank you. Hello, fellow earthlings. [LAUGHTER] Hello, fellow people of Earth. Hello, fellow humans. Nice to be with you. Wonderful to be with
you in paradise. Wonderful to be with you
in the Garden of Eden. And I'll talk a little
bit more about that later. But I was so glad to be invited
here, Jack, to this event tonight. One of the primary reasons
is that it gave me a chance to wear this flight
jacket whose been sitting in the closet
for quite a while. I had to dust it off and
look at it and put it on and it brought back
some great memories. I see many in the audience
have flight jackets like this. I looked at it,
brought back memories. Here's the one from Apollo
12, Conrad, Gordon, and Bean. I think about those
guys all the time. I was down in Cape
Kennedy last weekend because we had our 40th
anniversary down there and saw Dick Gordon down there. And we talked and had a program. And of course, Pete Conrad
was killed about 10 years ago, a little over 10 years ago. So we missed him
and he wasn't there. We thought about him and
brought him back in memory. And I'm thinking of showing
you some of that tonight. We'll have to take a
vote in a few minutes whether we want
to see it or not. But I think you will,
but we'll find out. So that bring back-- and
then here, from Skylab, I spent 59 days in
the Skylab, 260 miles above the Earth, just exactly
like the one downstairs. And it brought back
nice memories there. Bean, Garriott, and Lousma. Owen Garriott, a
great scientist. His son was the
one that flew last. Paid $30 million
or something like that to go up on a Russian Soyuz
and be in the Space Station. So his son, who talked
on TV quite a bit, I can remember watching
him and thinking he talks just like his dad. He had some of the phrases. Garriot, Owen Garriott, was
a very brilliant scientist. I was so glad he
was on our mission because we were studying
the sun and other things and he was so much better at it. Jack Lousma, a marine, we
have to have a marine with us. And so that was wonderful
and got to see them last week and we had a chance to talk. So I'm glad to put this on. It brings back some
great memories. Glad to be here tonight. I've been looking forward
to it for a number of weeks because I knew I was going
to be among kindred spirits. I'd go out and speak. First of all, I live
in Houston, Texas now. I stayed there after
the program because I needed to be where I could go
look at the details of a lunar module or a command module
or a spacesuit or a backpack or whatever because
I had to paint them. And the things you need
to know to paint something are a lot different than
you need to operate them. So I had to stay there. And it turned out to
be a good decision. I've been there. My wife, Leslie, and I live
there with our one Lhasa dog, Lhasa Apso named Puff Woof. Very important in our life. At one time, we had eight dogs. And that sounds crazy and
I think it was crazy too, but we had one dog and then
we got another, one female and male, thinking we could-- nature would not
possibly outsmart us. Well, how wrong we were. And we ended up with 8. And so we love them and
gradually as time has gone by, well, we have one
of the litter left. So we're there now. I'm usually there, painting. I will be returning
home Sunday and I'll be painting all the
rest of the year. I don't leave again. Usually, I go away
every couple of weeks to give a speech somewhere. And so there's a variety
of people I talk with. I talked to some Merrill
Lynch financial advisors two weeks ago. And so when I was
talking with them, I was wondering if what
I was talking about would be a very good
interest to them because I don't know
many financial advisors. I probably should know
more, but I didn't and I felt like tonight was
different, that things I was interested and
thought were fun and amusing or whatever else, that you
would too because all of us are, as I said, kindred spirits. We care about aviation. It means a lot to us. We think about it. We celebrate what
we've been able to do in that field in the world. And over the last 100
years, it's unbelievable what has happened in aviation. So I'm glad to be
with you here tonight. Now, we got to take a vote. Normally, when I talk,
my speech is about-- I'm a lecture tonight,
I realize that, so it's usually about an hour. I like that's about
the most to go. However, last week, Dick Gordon
and I came up with some videos that we thought would
be a good celebration for the 40th anniversary. And after looking at the
videos and after hearing some of the
responses, I thought, you know, I think
the audience here would like to see the video. But it's going to make-- [APPLAUSE] OK? All right, OK, I
wanted to know now because it's going to
make us run about five or 10 minutes longer. It might cut out a little
to the Q&A. All right, OK, we're going to do-- I want it. I think you're going to like it. I hope you do. I want you to
remember that what I say this evening
is designed and has on my mind to remind us all
how great human beings can be. One of the things I am
going to talk tonight several other things about
what I learned as an astronaut in the 18 years I
was there at NASA. I'll tell you the number one
thing and maybe two and three. And so you might
say to yourself, hey, I knew that already. Well, maybe you did
or didn't, but I'm going to try to
share that with you tonight because
that's all I know. I know space and I know art. So I'm going to talk about
space, trip to the moon, and talk about my art then
a little bit, not very long. But we'll do it. And we'll have to keep
in mind now that I'm directing this that way
because we, as human beings, in this corner of the
universe, we are the dreamers. We are the doers. Maybe there's some people out
there around those other stars. My guess is, probably. I don't think they've
ever been here. Now, maybe they have. I don't have any
special information. But if anybody is
going to do things in our part of the
universe, whether it's build this museum better,
develop a new way to power cars so we don't depend on fuel,
it's got to be people like us. And so I'm going to
direct my thoughts there. One of the things that I
have noticed over the years, working with the people
in the space program, 400,000 dedicated individuals,
is 400,000 people that are dedicated and who
want to achieve a goal can do this thing. That's not even the
population of Washington DC. It's just hard to get all these
individuals generally flying in the right direction. We did in Apollo. That was one of the great
leadership accomplishments. So I'll tell you what,
let's take a look. Let me get to my
little controller here. Every impossible dream-- and it
was an impossible dream for us to go to the moon back in 1963
when I became an astronaut. They took me as an astronaut
because I could fly airplanes, I could get along
with other people. I was not the
smartest guy around, but I was smart enough to
learn what they had to teach. And so they said let's
take Bean and we'll try to teach him
to fly spaceships. OK, I came there and
I thought, you know, I've never achieved an
impossible dream in my life and I'm just a pilot. But if they will
teach me to fly, I can probably fire a spaceship,
at least they think so. So I came there and
here is the airplane I'm flying T-38s at time. And up in the left hand corner
is the Johnson Space Center where we lived for
18 years and worked with all these individuals. And I can remember when I first
came there, any new job we know there's bad news and good news. OK? The bad news first. I knew we didn't have the
technology to get to the moon. Some of the materials we had,
like the visor, we had glass. It wouldn't stand the
heat if you happened to face the sun going
up to 250 degrees, if you turned away and
looked down at a rock and start going down to -200,
we didn't have materials. Later, they invented lexan that
could take that kind of a load. But we didn't have these
materials, rocket engines, that sort of thing. OK, that's one
piece of bad news. But the big piece of bad news
as far as I was concerned, was when I was in the audience
and some guy was up here, a woman was like this,
talking, I would say, that person isn't
any smarter than me. And believe me, that
was scary because I knew I couldn't figure out
so much about a moon mission. I knew from my college
calculus, knowing that the moon goes
around the Earth at like 2,200 miles an hour. And the Earth and
the moon go around at the sun at 66,000
miles an hour. I had no chance in the
world of figuring out which way to point the rocket. Fortunately, I didn't have to. But that was just the
tip of the iceberg. I didn't know how
to build a rocket. I didn't know any
of these things. And I said, these other people
aren't any smarter than I am. I thought I was going to
be surrounded by geniuses. Maybe I ran into
one or two geniuses. But in general, everyone
was pretty much like me. Some a little bit smarter,
Buzz Aldrin, for example. Some a little bit dumber. I won't mention any of them. [LAUGHTER] But in general, they
were people just like us. One of the things
I learned at NASA is every single human being is
so much better than they know. I would say that
there are-- probably nobody in this room-- that's a
broad statement-- or just a few in this room has any idea what
they could do with concentrated effort for five years,
definitely concentrated effort for 10 or 15. We just can't know those things. We don't know those things. We can't seem to learn them. Everyone in this room can
do more with your life than you ever guessed. And every team can
do more as a team. And I'll talk about
that a little bit more. That's one of the
things I learned. And so I got there
and I said, OK, we'll try to figure out
a way to do that. And the good news-- I told you the bad news. The good news was those
of us there believed that we didn't have to
be anything special, we didn't have to be super
smart to achieve this impossible dream. That was the good news because
we dug in, got our attitudes on right, and quit saying, I
don't know if I can do this, and started saying,
how do we do this? This is important. Attitude is so important. OK, here's one of the
things-- let's reverse where I went to
one of the things that we had to do,
for example, was I had to learn how to
use a space spacesuit, how to walk around on the moon. And it's 1.6 gravity. How do you practice that? We tried it underwater. It didn't work too good. We tried it on
some incline planes where there were some
cables holding us. Didn't work too good. We got in the Zero-G
airplane and didn't push over quite to zero G but to 160. It worked pretty good. All these worked pretty good. But this was a
device I remember. I was the first
one to try it out. It was around and
they said, we're going to pick up
560, your weight, and then you can
walk around and we'll measure you, the BTUs
you're putting out, how much water you're
using, all those things. We thought it was a good idea. We had padded the suit. They started lifting
that suit up. And I can remember
as they lifted it up, I thought, uh-oh, we haven't
padded this thing quite right. And I like to say to myself
that I was the first guy to get a space-age wedgie. So anyway, we put the thing
back down and I got out and we talked about it. And then we had to be willing to
fail, use our best intelligence and fail, and then try again. We did. Two days later, I
get in with new pads. Still didn't work. We even tried filling
the suit with water, hoping that I would float. Well, you don't
float standing up. You go to the bottom. Well, that's what I did there. We canned that idea. But eventually, we got it
to work as good as it would. It wasn't perfect,
but all those things I just described where we tried
to learn to do these things, none of them were
perfect but altogether, they worked well enough. And when I got to the moon
and got out walking around, felt very comfortable. Felt like sort of the
combination of these things. So training is never perfect. One of the things we
were learning then was how to train
for spaceflight. One of the reasons that we've
had such great good fortune repairing the Hubble telescope
and building the Space Station is the fact, we learned
how to train to do this. We do it mostly underwater now. You've seen the results. We would never have
been able to do that 10 years earlier because we
didn't know how to prepare. So they came to us
and they said, look, we're going to teach
you what you need to know to explore the surface. We said, no problem. No problem. We know. They said, well, what
do you think it is? Well, we'll get out. We'll grab a few rocks,
put them in a box. We'll take a few pictures. We'll put up the flag, talk
to the president, come home. They said, yeah, that's
what we thought you thought. But if you're going to be an
explorer, the rocks you've got to pick up, they've
got to be the right ones and you've got to have
a reason for that. And the observations you make,
once you've taken a photograph, they've got to be key and not
forget the ones that aren't. We said, well, wait a minute. It sounds like
something geologists do. And they said, yeah, we're
going to make you geologists. And we said, we're
not geologists. We don't care about rocks. We don't like dirt. We are airplane pilots. We like machines. They said, OK, but if you
want to be an explorer, you are going to have
to change your attitude. Now, it's been my
discovery that's the tough part of life,
changing your attitude when you don't want to. And so it took us a couple of
days to finally say, you know, they're right. If we want to be
explorers, we are going to have to learn
what explorers do because we don't know it. We're just pilots. So we began to go
to class in geology. We began to go to labs
just like college students. We were doing-- had instructors
come in from colleges all over the place, went on
field trips to Hawaii, to anywhere else that the
scientists thought there were rocks and surface morphology-- I didn't know the meaning
of that word then-- were like the moon. We didn't know for sure, but
that was their best guess. So once we quit saying we
don't want to be geologists, and began to say I guess
we need to learn how, how are we going to
learn this in time? Then it worked out real well. So we did become
pretty good geologists. Here's more of a
lesser final exam. Pete Conrad, that's the guy I'm
going to fly to the moon with. He's flown twice before. A great astronaut. One of the lucky
parts of my life, one of the great
blessings of my life was getting teamed
up with this guy. One, he was a natural astronaut. He was a natural pilot. He was all those
things that you-- I dreamed that I could be. That's what he was. And not only that, which
is different than almost any other astronaut, he wanted
to help you get to be good. And so he took me
under his wing. And I didn't know much. I hadn't flown before. Dick Gordon, the third man of
the crew I'll introduced later, he had flown one
flight with Pete. And he tried to help me
be as good an astronaut as I could be. So that's Pete Conrad. Now, I want to show
you a clip here. It's about six or
seven minutes long. But it's vintage Pete Conrad. And say to yourself
when you're watching it, would I like to go to
the moon with this guy? Does this guy have
anything to teach me? OK, run that clip. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] - And you got to
realize, at that point in time, nobody was
talking about going to the moon or anything. This was the first crack
at man going into space. So then we went into this
Mercury selection process, which consisted of a week
at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New
Mexico, followed by a week at
Wright-Patterson where they had been doing work on
along these lines and stress testing and so forth. But you also got to realize
nobody had been there and nobody knew what
they were talking about. They were just sort
of doing things to collect data and see if
you could withstand heat and could you withstand sound
and vibration and so forth? And so at the Lovelace
Clinic, they-- I spent seven days,
I think it was. And our physical exams ran
over eight hours a day. Sometimes we'd have to
go back in the evening. As you can imagine,
seven days of that, they really kind of examined
us pretty well from one end to the other. Yeah, and I got out of
it all right, you know, I didn't make it in
Project Mercury and I-- it may have been my
attitude or something because I thought that-- you know, I was an
engineering test pilot, I'm curious by nature. And as we got into
some of these tests that they were doing,
which were rather weird and never been
done to me before, well, I kind of like to know
why it was they were doing it. They kind of treated
me like I either, one, didn't have the
intelligence to understand what it was they were
doing, or more than likely, the attitude I took
was they weren't sure what they were getting anyhow. So I kind of needled them
a little bit about it and then I guess maybe you
might say I had bad attitude. Well, there was one guy who
had a neat little machine and I thought it
was interesting. I wanted to know what it
was he was trying to get at, where they put two
electrodes on your elbow and then they stuck a
hypodermic needle in your hand. And this hypodermic needle
right here and the muscle went off with a wire out of it
that went to an oscilloscope. And then they
turned the juice on. And it was low voltage
but it was 60 cycle AC and some voltage and they were
putting a shock in your nerves. And it made your hand
cycle at 60 cycles. You lost control of your hand. I mean, you just sat there
and fluttered open and closed. And this guy's
adjusting his dials and watching all this on
the oscilloscope scope and taking pictures. Rather painful, obviously. You've got this needle
in here and a guy shooting electrical
juice in your arm. And I was curious. I wanted to know
why he was doing it. And he wouldn't tell me. And I finally got mad at
the head honcho one day and I told him,
hey, they weren't looking for test pilots. They were looking for
a bunch of guinea pigs. And they didn't give us credit
for having any intelligence. So progressed on out
to Wright-Patterson that's where we
ran into the head shrinks he had I
don't think they knew what it was
they were looking for and I sort of took
everything they were doing with a grain of salt. Because I was convinced that
they were collecting data for the sake of
collected data and they and really all of the
things they were doing weren't going to add
up to telling you whether some guy was qualified
for space flight or not the most ridiculous test
was one of these tests at Wright-Patterson where
they took bucket of ice water and they made you stick
your feet in this bucket ice water for five minutes. Now, that may or may not
sound like a good deal, and some guys got to keep their
feet in there for five minutes, but other people
can't stand the pain. And theoretically, you
get over the pain level and then you get
to the numb stage and you could keep them
in there for 15 minutes. But I never could get past
about 2 and 1/2 minutes. And it just got so painful
in my knees, I had to quit, which I didn't mind
flunking the test, except I kept asking
them what it was they were trying to prove. And nobody could tell
me what flying in space had to do with sticking your
feet to bucket ice water. I couldn't understand that. I had a lot of problems
with those guys there. And I've always had the feeling
that they woke me up medically, psychologically and adapted long
duration space flight because I gave them a hard time. And then they had this-- they had another
standard shrink test. They got nine-- they got
10 cards, about 8 by 10. Nine of them have
pictures on them. And they're terrible pictures. I mean, they're morbid pictures. They're scenes. And you look at these
pictures and you're supposed to tell this guy-- you're supposed to tell this
guy what you see in this scene. And I remember this one
typical, sort of guy just looked like he
was starving to death. His ribs are sticking
out his clothes, they were all moth
eaten, and he's plowing a field that
obviously hadn't had drop of rain for a
year, with a mule that looks like it's
starving to death, with one of these old
hand-driven plows. And there's a tree that hardly
has any leaves left around it. And there's this poor
woman, obviously his wife, emaciated-looking,
except she's obviously 8 and 1/2 months pregnant. She's sitting there looking
like death warmed over. And so obviously, they want you
to tell some more of the tale. And I said, look at this guy. He's out plowing the field. He loves the work and
he's got his animal. And he loves that woman
who's looking forward to having her 13th child and
can't wait and everything. And I just couldn't
help pull their leg. And that shrink was
not buying all this, obviously, but he's
taking his notes. And then finally, we get all
the way down to the 10th card, and it's a blank card. And he says, now I'm going
to hand you this blank card and I want you look at it
and you visualize a story and tell me. And I said, thank you
very much, doctor. He handed it to me upside down. And that did it, I
was pissed with him. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] - Well, that's the guy I
got to go to the moon with. And I said I feel blessed
about it to this day. I think of Pete every
single day, and Dick, what a great astronaut he was
and what a great mentor he was. I'll tell you a little
bit more about that later. But here's our crew,
Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, who'd flown once with
Pete and then me. And they needed someone to
stay in the command module at that time that
had experience. And so Dick Gordon was the
second senior guy in the crew, so that was his job and so
even though I was the new guy, I really got the plum and got
to go to the moon with Pete. Hopefully, he could
keep me out of trouble. So that was the plan. There we are. At that time, Chevrolet
said, you know, these guys are getting their pictures
in the paper all the time. Maybe if we loaned
them some cars, they would get the cars
in the picture too. Now, we thought that
was a good deal, so they'd come with-- new
models came out I think it's about this time of year. I don't even remember. But they'd come up and they'd
say, well, Al, what kind of car do you want this year? Because you didn't own them. It was like you
were an executive and you drove it for a year
and they paid insurance. It was a good deal, boy. Wish it was still going on. But anyway, they did. I'd say, well, I had a
red Corvette last year. And you know, when you're
training to go to the moon and you're a pilot,
Corvettes look pretty good. And so I said, well, I
had a red one last year. I think I'll take a blue
one this year or something. And they also then
would go to my wife and say, what kind
of car do you want? Well, she had always
wanted a yellow convertible in high school. So one year, she got a yellow
convertible and next year she got a green station wagon. It was great. It was wonderful. But anyhow, here we are when
we got assigned as a crew. We got our cars all
painted the same. And we were-- I have the best
job in the world, I thought. And training every
day in the simulators to go to the moon, trying
to figure out how to do it. So it was wonderful. And working with
Pete and Dick was one of the super good
blessings of the whole thing. Well, we were all training
to fly the first mission because we didn't
know whether we would get to the Sea of Tranquility
the first attempt, which was July with Apollo 11,
or they wouldn't make it. Even Neil Armstrong
felt like he had a 90% chance of
getting back alive, but he only had a 50%
chance of actually making the landing successfully. So that was kind of
how I felt about it. There weren't any
facts about this is how you feel from doing
these kind of jobs for a while. So we didn't know. So we're all
training to do that. So off they go. Here's Apollo 11 in July. As we know, off they went. And lo and behold,
there's Buzz on the moon. I remember watching him. It was amazing to me because
he lived right behind my house, you know? And my daughter, who's here
tonight, and my son, Clay, they used to go over there. He had a swimming
pool, we didn't. We'd go over there and swim. And all of a sudden, here's
Buzz Aldrin on the moon. Neil Armstrong was
my office mate. He and I-- was here and
he had an office there and same secretary. And so just seeing those
guys running around up there was just-- I could hardly believe it. Here's a painting of mine. This is one I did for Al
Neuharth, the founder of USA Today newspapers, and it
was for his office over across the Potomac
there in Arlington. And when the kind of curve
building was the USA building, I went over there and
measured his office and built that painting using
engineering information so that when he said
at his desk, it would be as if his desk was
that far from the wall actually from Neil and Buzz
putting up the flag. So when he sat there as he
looked at Neil and Buzz, that's how they
would have looked if his desk had
been on the moon, at the same distance, same
way with the lunar module. So that was a
painting that I did. I'll say more about
it, but that's why I left the space program,
is I looked around the office. I was training. I'd flown Skylab after
that, been the backup on the Russian mission. And then I looked around. I was training as a
shuttle commander. I loved the job,
I liked doing it, but I looked around
and said, you know, there's a lot of
young men and women that can do this job as
good as I can or better. But I'm the only
one of the 12 guys that cared anything about art. It was my hobby. And I said, maybe if I could
learn to paint well enough, I could do something that
wouldn't get done otherwise. I could tell stories. I could show pictures that
weren't in-- some of which are-- weren't in the Hasselblad photos
or weren't in the 16 millimeter photos. So it was a big decision. That's why I left. I said that's my duty. I've been given this great
gift of being part of Apollo and I need to leave
here and do this job. NASA has never missed
me a single day. And I have enjoyed
being an artist. It's different, but I've
liked it just as much. And I hope that when
I'm gone someday, that these paintings
stick around as one of the great
accomplishments of human beings this landing of
Neil on the moon is the same order of magnitude--
maybe more or less, I don't even know-- as Magellan
going around the Earth. The same thing is
Columbus coming over here. This moment in history,
which us taxpayers paid for, is one of the great
moments in history. A couple of years
from now, they're going to remember
the 20th century as unleashing the
atom and human beings leaving the Earth and
landing on another body. So that's why I left. That's what I do. I'll say a little
bit more about that, but that's kind of
the way it went. They come back to Earth. We're celebrating and loving it. They come over to us
and they say, hey. We say to them,
we're ready to go. We thought we were going
to Sea of Tranquility. They said, well, you're
not going back there. NASA's job by Congress is
to advance the technology of space, our ability in space. Well, what do you want us to do? Well, we're going to
send you to a place on the moon in the
ocean of storms where that Surveyor spacecraft
landed 33 months earlier. We said, OK, we can do that. They said, however, we do know,
because of tracking not because of flying, but tracking
and mission control and all that, we are landed maybe
four miles away from where we wanted Neil to land. We're not sure even yet. It's either there and
then from tracking and then from
their own computer, it said there is
4 miles different. And then when they tracked
them from the Columbia, Mike Collins, it was
a different spot. We don't know where he went. We can't do that. In future missions. We've got to land
near crevasses, big craters, mountains, we've
got to make a pinpoint landing. So you guys are charged with
mission control and Grumman and MIT to figure out
how to make this landing. Well, we said, wait a minute. You mean we've been working for
eight years to make a landing. The minute we make it,
two months later we're going to do a lot better? Notice the attitude. We all had it. We said, we can't do that. We did the best we could. We've been working on this
thing full-time, everybody. Oh, you can do it. We're going to give
you four months. This is where
leadership comes in. We didn't know-- I was a
young man then 39 or so, I thought I knew a
lot, but I didn't know how great teams could be. I did not know how
great humans could be, how much more we could
do than we thought. So they came to us. It took us a couple
of days to quit saying, we can't do
this, and start saying, how are we going to do this? And we started working
with mission control, we started working--
and just like you said, because our leaders felt
that we could do this. They knew that they had a
team of people here, mission control, there's astronauts
and a manufacturing area to build a space. We could do this. So we started working. OK, after a month, we
tried a number of things. None of them worked. The best ideas we
had didn't work because we got in the
simulator and tried them and we didn't land any better. Then we sat down-- all this is kind of
iterative-- we came up with some other good ideas,
mostly from mission control, mostly from the
orbital mechanics guys. Not from us so much. But another month passes. We still can't land any better. Finally, some guy at the back
of the room in a meeting I was in, he said, look,
we can't land there because we can't track you and
know where you are when you come out from behind the moon. We're going to have
to arrange this so that the Earth is
turned, time your landing so the Earth is turned
and we can track you with two deep space antennas. There's three on Earth,
Goldstone, California, and Australia, and Spain. We've got to make it time
so that two of those. We're going to make an
Australian Goldstone. They'll track you then
they'll take that information and doppler it. Then we'll uplink
that to your computer and make a correction
from where we thought you were when you came out
from behind the moon to where we know you are now. Boy, the room erupted
into, we can't do that. We don't have any way to bring
in two pieces of data, says mission control. We can't do. We can only bring in one. And also, mission
control said, we don't know how to doppler stuff. We don't have that equipment. And not only that,
even if we did, we'd have to convert
that information to an uplink of some
kind, and we can't do it. And meanwhile, we're talking,
we don't want them uplinking us because you're talking
about uplinking when our engine's
burning for the descent. And we're afraid that if
you put in a strange bit, we could crash into the moon or
go off and never be seen again. So we all didn't like this idea. However, like most good ideas,
after we thought about it a few days, we said, you know,
it's the best idea we've got. Let's try it. And our leadership once again
said, OK, mission control, you can't get two pieces of data
from different antennas? Go fix it. Get it. Change your capability
till it'll do that. You can't get doppler? Get some new computers
and make it work. In other words, I know
you can't do it now or we'd have done it earlier. Do it now, OK? It's like, well,
maybe we can do it. They came to us and
they said, look, you don't want
them uplinking you when your engine is
burning for a descent. We understand. But you get together with
them and figure out a way so you don't have a problem. You'd have a problem today. MIT, who said, by the
way, we made the software so nobody could uplink it
because it was too dangerous. You go back and change it
and make it so you can do it. And you guys get together and
find a way to make it work. OK, we did. And I can remember, as
we went to the moon, we-- by the way in the
simulations, the last month, we were landing pretty
close to where we planned, where they wanted
us to because we had to be within walking
distance of this Surveyor if we were going to
cut parts off of it. Anyhow, we targeted. We said, OK, where
should we target to? Let's target to the middle of
that crater, Surveyor crater, 656 feet in diameter. We're going to
target to the middle because we're not going
to be perfect, I know, and that way, we're
close enough so that we can fly in that
direction and land near it and then get over
there and do the job. That was the strategy. OK, that was the thinking about
how we're going to do this. And I can remember, that
was the number one thought that Pete and I had when we were
getting into the lunar module, can mission control get this
real data, not in simulations, but get it and put it in our
computer and make it work? So what I've got now
is a little video of-- just a minute, let me
think for a second. Let me think of where I
wanted to put this in. No, I can't, I'm not
going to put this in yet. I have to be careful. I've never done this,
put these in the middle. And it doesn't go there. Let's go back to where we were. Let's go back to where we were. OK, so we trained so that
when we went over Surveyor, we could cut off the camera. That's me on the left
holding the camera. Pete's on the right. He's going to cut it
off with bolt cutters. That's the plan, if
we can land there. Now, let me tell you my-- I know I'm talking a little bit
long before we get to the moon, but I think you'll like it. There are Pete and
m working together. I'm going to tell you
now the number one thing I learned in 18 years
as an astronaut. OK, Pete Conrad and I are there. We have just finished making
a landing in the simulator. And they took about
20 minutes to recycle using mission control
and other places. They're recycling. I'm talking to Pete
and I'm thinking, you know, I'm
standing right here on this side of
the lunar module, he's standing over there. And I'm saying, Pete,
you know that briefing we had this morning? That guy, mission specialist,
I said, he knows his stuff. But I said, he just
doesn't think like we do. He's got a convoluted
way of explaining things. You know, I just don't think
he ought to be on our team. I don't think he's
a good team member. And so I look over at Pete
and I think he's going to say, you're right, Bean. Let's see if we
can change him out with somebody else who
thinks more like we do. And I'm looking over there and
he says, well, Beano, maybe it's you that's not
the good team member. All right? Think about if your boss
said to you, well, Bill, you're not a good team member. How would that make you feel? I felt the same way. I was shocked. And I thought, my-- gee, I wish there
were another space program I could join because
obviously this one doesn't care anything about me,
it doesn't appreciate me. Thank God there wasn't
another space program. Anyway, I said, I sure do. He says, you don't even
know the first rule of being a good team member. I said, sure, I do. He said, what is it? I said, well, you've got
to be loyal to the leader. He said, that's not it. You've got to stay
focused on the goal. That's not it. I don't even remember. I was so embarrassed
and mad about this, I couldn't even hardly think. And I said, well,
I guess I don't. What is it? He said, first of all, it's
going to take 400,000 of us to get to the moon, and it
can't be 400,000 Al Beans. I said, I know that. He says, well, it can't be
400,000 Pete Conrads either. I said, well, OK, OK. He said, we need
400,000 people that are as dedicated we are but
think about things differently than we do. I said, well, OK. I said, what's that got to do-- what the first--
what's the first rule of being a good team member? He said, you've got to find
a way to care and admire the other members of your team. I said, you're crazy. I said, we were in this
meeting this morning. I said, maybe there were 50
people there, 10% or 15%, they speak up. I know who they are. I admire them. I think they're really sharp. OK, another maybe 50% or
60%, they don't say much. They're in there, I don't
even know their names. And I said there's 5%
in every doggone meeting that I don't admire and
I definitely-- they're the people that
bring up these things at the end of the
meeting, have nothing to do with what we've
been talking about. It's some issue that they
should have brought it up 30 minutes ago and now the
meeting is going to go along and I don't admire them. He said, that's your problem. You don't admire all
the members of the team. Well, I didn't believe
him and I was insulted. And we had strained
relations for several days. But I knew he was a lot smarter
about these things than I was. And I began to think about the
astronauts in the office that were smarter than I
was at least in getting their ideas implemented and
got along with people better. And I began to think. One of them that hits my mind,
Jim McDivitt from Apollo 9. Great astronaut. And I can remember
at meetings when I'd be thinking, let's get
out of here, it's 4 o'clock. He'd be talking with great
respect and new names to these guys that or
gals that would bring up these issues at the end. And I began to think, you
know, maybe Pete is right. Maybe this is a problem
I've got and didn't know it. So I began to try to change. It's hard to change. It's hard to
change, particularly something like this. But I began to try. And I found out, I tried
to learn their names. I tried to find
a way to admire-- and if I didn't admire some
guy and couldn't find a way, I'd take him to lunch. And I found out, if
I took him to lunch, then I got to know
him and I admired him because everyone was
dedicated and everyone was thinking this way. Now, that sounds
funny that would be the most important thing
I learned in 18 years, there but I'll tell you
this, I use that every single day of my life. If I'm home and I'm brushing
my teeth and I say to myself, Leslie didn't take that
package to the post office this morning. I'll say to myself, I'm not
being respectful of my number one teammate. And I quit thinking
about it right then and I say, boy, she made
a great meal last night. So you have to find
a way, in my opinion, to be selective and pick out
the things that are good. My daughter is up there. She and I get along great. I respect her. Everything, same with grandkids. They're not perfect,
but in my mind, they are perfect because I think
about what's great about them. And I don't think about
any other thoughts that I might have. Let's go on. It has nothing to
do with nothing. OK, here we are. We're getting ready to launch. It's November the 14th,
tomorrow, 40 years ago. We're standing right
here, ready to go. We're loaded in there. Let's run this
video of the launch. Remember, we got hit by
lightning at about 36 seconds. And nobody had ever
imagined that spacecrafts would get hit by lightning. We'd never practiced it. We didn't know
anything about it. This was a whole new ball game. We launched into this
weather, I think, a lot because if
you delayed too long and it definitely
would be weather. You had to cycle a whole
month because everything was key to the lighting
at the landing site. Also, the president was there. So that was another
thing that forced it, kind of like in challenger
if you remember. OK, so go ahead, let's
run this little clip. You'll hear Dick and
Pete mostly here. I narrated a little bit. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] [LOUD BLAST] - Pete Conrad reports the
[INAUDIBLE] program is in. Solid clear. I think of the whole program and
this thing to get really going. - We launched Apollo 12. And about 30 seconds,
didn't mention, we got hit by lightning. And you never practice that. I wouldn't imagine that could
happen when you're in space. And it lit up more
caution and warning lights have ever been on any
space flight before since. I mean, there wasn't
nothing close to this. And they all came on. Pete started reading them off. And he read them
through, light up and particularly he
didn't have a good read on the electrical system. - I don't know
what happened here. We had everything in
the world drop out. I'm about sure we
got hit by lightning. [READING COMMANDS] - [INAUDIBLE]
spacecraft, but luckily, the booster wasn't affected. So the big Saturn V kept pushing
and getting us up higher. And I thought we
might have to abort, but there was no
reason to rush into it because we were
gaining altitude, which was a sacred condition. - The curious thing
about it is Dick, who normally gives me good advice. He leaned over, he
read a few lights. And I'm thinking, maybe
he'll tell me what to do. He didn't tell me
a doggone thing. He went back and started
talking to Pete now. So I was sitting there,
still not knowing what to do. Fortunately, the ground had a
good idea of what had happened. They observed it and they
made some suggestions. [RADIO COMMUNICATIONS] - We've had a couple of
cardiac arrests down here, too. Pete. - 41. No, I heard you. - That's it. That's it. - You get three good shots. Bang, bang, bang, four left. You know and the
first thing is you're headed towards the instrument
panel and the next thing you know you're rocketed
back in your seat and then throws the instrument
panel back in the seat. Does that about 3 times,
3 quick cycles and debris is flying on one outside. And if you happen to be
looking up, you'll see-- you'll see the flash and
the explosive as it goes off and pieces, and bits go
out in every direction. And that's kind of interesting
gets your attention. [LAUGHTER] - That's what it looks
like leaving the Earth and it looked to me
like, we weren't leaving but the Earth was going away. And like I told
you the velocities of the Earth and the
Moon and all that, I knew that we were
going to be gone 10 days. And so I knew that the
computers in mission control had to know where we
then fired ourselves. When we came out behind the
moon to a point in space, the Earth was going
to be 10 days later. So if we didn't have
mission control and all those individuals there
that could do this job, we would not be able
to get back to Earth. So it was a team
operation, you had to have faith in
those individuals, you had to believe that
they would do their job. Now, most of the
paintings from-- images from now, are
paintings from mine. I told you why I left
the space program. This is what the Earth
looked like as we went down to land up there, just coming
over the horizon is Australia. We saw there it was and then
down in the dark is California. So in fact, we had those
two sites tracking us and in fact they did do what
they were supposed to do, uplinked to our computer, we
let them in, did the check and when they inserted, we
inserted into the computer. I felt the Rockets
on the outside that held our attitude, fire
and it put us in a new attitude. So it made a correction and
let's go along with the landing and see how the rest
of the landing went. Go ahead. - Anybody for C64. - OK. - Kind of cheap look out there. I think It'd be my crater. Maybe. I'm not sure. I'm going through seven. - I went from the
computer system of numbers, which you can
look through some marks on the window with and see
where if we didn't touch it, where it was actually
going to land. He looked through the window
and we ran right in the center. So we're just
going to target it. - There it is. There it is. [INAUDIBLE] Got right down
the middle of the road. - I'm standing 42 degrees, Pete. - Excited, right. - Look out there,
I can't believe it. Amazing. Fantastic. 42 degrees. Slide it in. - Coming down at about 99 feet
a second, you're looking good. [INAUDIBLE] - Over 140 degrees. They'll be fantastic. I can't believe-- - Getting to land that's-- - 36 degrees. - Shortest flight
time in the world but one more, 30 seconds
or less whatever it was he had on the stick. That's the only time of year
and I really did have to fly it. But [INAUDIBLE] we're supposed
to land was not suitable. It had big boulders and we gad
to fly a little bit further around. - Oh you're really
moving around. - Come on down, Pete. - OK. - 10% fuel when it's coming
down to three, come on down. Now on 80 feet. 9% you're looking good. And get them done before long. 96 feet coming down, slow
down the descent rate. 82, 80 feet coming down
and 4 you're looking good. 50 feet coming down,
let's put it back. 40 coming down, in two. Looking good, like that. Coming down in 2. They got plenty of gas,
plenty of gas, dude. Hang in there. - 30 seconds. - Coming down in two. He's got it made. Come on, in there. 24 feet. - Contact live. - Roger, copy contact. [BEEP SOUND] - Nice job, by Pete Conrad. I knew that if anybody could
do that job, he could do it. Neil could do it. He could do it. And it turned out
the training we had, allowed every landing
to be successful, we had in the struts of
the lunar module out there kind of honeycomb, so you
could land hard and crush the honeycomb not a single
landing crushed any honeycomb. Because everybody was skilled
enough to make these landings. So they picked the
right people to do the job Pete was wonderful
pilot and did it well. - Here I am, my first step. Now when I became an astronaut,
after a year of training they gave me a
little silver pin. That was a star, like
three rays on it. Like a shooting star
with an orbit around it. And I wore it on
my lapel of my coat and so I had that in that
left pocket there on my thigh. And the first thing I did
after I got my balance, was go over to the
crater right behind it. So that's where
surveyor is, we think we couldn't see it when we
land it, was still in the dark. And the first thing I did
was take that little pin. This is a painting of
me, throwing the pin. You can see it up there,
the star in the rays. And through that, as far as
I could towards surveyor. Now when I'm looking
at the moon at night, it's-- particularly
when it's a full moon. I look up there and
I find the equator, depending on what time of night
where the equator is, I find it and I look over about
30 degrees West. Now that crater can't
even be seen as too small with the greatest
telescopes on Earth, but I think about that thing. And I think about that
little pin up there and I think without
any atmosphere up there it's just as shiny
as the day I threw it. And I think it's going to be
up there for billions of years just as shiny, until
some tourist goes up there someday picks it and
brings it up back to Earth. Now when you fly above 50 miles,
you become a flight astronaut. And so you get a gold
pin just like that. And this is the one I'm
wearing here, right now. And I had it in
another pocket and I can remember as I pulled
that silver one out, I double check that I wasn't
throwing my gold away. [LAUGHTER] - But these are stories that I-- here I am running
along the moon. Someday, they'll hold
the Olympics up there, now they won't do it
in suits like this, they'll have it in big domes. We could take up a dome that's
almost this big, right now. Inflatable dome and pressurize
it, someday maybe 10, 50, 60,100-- I don't even know, no
one knows the future. They'll take a dome
up there, connect them in as big as the Super Dome. When they do, someday, they'll
have the Olympics up there. And if I'd told these
people in 776 which BC, that was the first Olympics. That someday, they would have
Olympics across the ocean, and they would have
them in Rio de Janeiro, or maybe have them in Denver,
or China, or something, they would didn't know
anything about that. That time they just thought, the
world was a very little place, so we tend to think that too. But someday, it's going to
be fun when they do that. Running marathons
won't be that big a deal, because it's easy
to go for a long time when you weigh less. But high jump and
pole vault they are going to be unbelievable, fun. And I can remember
running along and I had to look down,
because I couldn't afford to turn my ankle
on a rock like that or step in a crater, which were
all around little and big ones. And you never got
close to a crater, like in the background
there, because these things are three and a half
billion years old. And you have no idea
whether you would have to get one
inch from the edge before it would slip
away or 10 feet. But if it ever did, and
you slip down in there, you'd be there forever. So we didn't get close
to it on Apollo 16, they visited the deepest
crater that we would visit in the Apollo program. And the people on
Earth were trying to get John Young to
go over and look in. And I was laughing to myself,
and when he got back I said, What'd you do? You didn't go over and look in. He said, I wasn't
about to go over near the edge of that crater. And he said, don't the
bottom of all craters look pretty much the same? [LAUGHTER] I said, Yeah. I wasn't going
over there either. - Here I am carrying
out experiments, Alsip. It was a nuclear power plant. We set out up there and in six
experiments, magnetometers, seismometers, all that stuff. You probably got
to sit here, Jack. Somewhere in the museum. But we deployed those and
still could be powered, it's been turned off because
the data is repetitive, but it's still up there
it could be powered. Could work, because the half
life is 79 years or something, I've forgotten, but whatever. It is-- here I am
the reason, I'm sure Pete's showing me where
to lay it out, I get home. And I see this in
the supermarket. [LAUGHTER] There's a picture
of me with that same thing, except they put this bones here. Now to show what people
in tabloids know, they say dinosaur bones. Well that's not a
dinosaur, that's a whale. You can see the spine
and you can see the junk. But I guess the guy that
wrote this up didn't know it. Well we didn't see that, OK? We wanted to. All of us wanted to discover
ancient civilizations, we didn't just want to
find dirt and rocks. Who does? And so Pete and I talked
about that before we went, we said I'll tell
you what, let's do. Let's take an arrowhead
and we'll take it up there. And we'll throw it at
our feet and then we'll take this camera we've got and
we'll talk to mission control, look at that mound over there,
blah, blah, blah, say something geologic, you know. And then we'll do like
this, and then we'll talk about that, whatever
it is over there. And then we figured
about two months later, from CapCom you say,
point that at your feet. That people geologists want
you to point at your feet. There's something down there. Now Thank God, we didn't do it. [LAUGHTER] Because it was a great idea,
but I'll tell you this. Scientist, most of them
don't have a sense of humor, about something like that. Thank goodness we didn't. [LAUGHS] Anyway, here we are. We got over to
Surveyor, we cut off that scoop, we cut
off the camera. We did everything
that we were supposed to, approach some other parts. So, we did get there. Did you see? The leaders at NASA
knew we could do this even though we didn't
know we were good enough. They knew the teams were good
enough, to figure this out even though nobody could
do it, four months before. They said, you guys
can figure this out. That's leadership,
that's leadership. - Al Shepard, hitting
that golf ball. I can remember when he did
it, I was in mission control. And I thought, why
is he doing that? Why isn't he
collecting more rocks? He's wasting time
hitting a golf ball. That's what I thought
then, because that's kind of how I thought at the time. Well after he did that, I
thought about it a while and I thought you
know, human beings aren't just about
collecting data. They're about having
fun, doing something. So I went to Pete I
said, why didn't we do something like that? Why didn't we hit a golf ball? We never thought about it? He said, well, we
don't play golf. I said, OK. We don't play golf, we could
have thought of something. What could we do? He said, well, we
like to watch football and I thought, boy if we had
taken a football up there and put the TV on it and
he had thrown me a pass and I-- no telling where
it would have gone. And I'd have caught it, and
then I'd kicked it back to-- they would have played it at
every halftime in the Super Bowl. Because it would be so great
an idea, well we didn't. But as an artist
[LAUGHTER] there's a painting called, if we
could do it all over again and the title is, are you
ready for some football. And so before I
did this painting, I made sure that with
a pressurized glove you could throw an NFL
football and we did. And then here I
am running across, no telling where that ball--
football is going to go, but it would have
been a great idea. Just didn't think of it. A mural that I did there in
Houston Space Center, Houston of Neil Armstrong. We were competing
with the Russians, we didn't want their
flag to be on the moon. We wanted to be
first, we were so glad that we got there
first and of course, they never got-- their efforts
weren't as good as our efforts, it's that simple. Their big rocket was even
larger than the Saturn V, had failures after launch,
killed a lot of people, ours didn't. We were able with our technology
to get to the moon and back. - Now I'm going to talk about
my paintings for a few minutes. Let me see what time it is, Oh. I've got to hurry. These are how I do a painting. I can't go back to the
moon and post people and get them in the right
lighting and things like that. And if I were doing Western
paintings or something or I was even Van
Gogh, I post people. I'd post the Postman
or something like that and see how the
lighting was in paint. So what I have to
do is build models, I build these little
models and now the story I'm getting
ready to tell here is Pete and I were on the moon. I was backing up
taking a picture and fell back, hitting
your rock in the dirt and so, I could get
up and roll over. It took energy, he came
over and picked me up. The first time he picked
me up, he jerked me up and I bumped, he bumped,
I bumped into him and nearly knocked him over. So he said, OK. Next time I fell down, because
you did from time to time, he came over and he put out
one finger and he did like that and he lifted me up
that way, so that's the story I'm telling here. So here's the model. Here's the texture I put in the
panel beforehand using my moon boots, you can see there. I use the hammer I had on
the moon, I brought it back and I'd loaned it to the
Air and Space Museum. Matter of fact in my
will, it goes back to you. But I'm using it now
to make this texture. So here's some
texture I made, that's a hammer I had on the moon. I wasn't supposed
to bring it back, so I get back and I hand it
to the guy there and I said, what's this / I
said, well it's-- I brought it back. He says, well you're
not supposed to. I said, well I didn't have it on
my checklist to leave it there. He said, well you can keep it. So I kept it and I knew
it didn't belong to me, it belongs to America. So-- but I'm using it now
for a good cause, I think. I wanted to have moon
dust in my paintings, but I didn't have any moon dust. I thought they'd give
us a rock, but when they made a list of
people that deserved little pieces of the moon-- moon rocks, it was so
long that they wouldn't have-- had any rocks left. And people like Wernher
Von Braun or others were a lot more
instrumental and important in making a successful
moon landing and we were. We got to do it and
had the fun of it, but we weren't the key
individuals, not at all. So anyway, they didn't
give any of them away. And so I'm sitting in
my studio thinking, I wish I had moon dust. I look over at the
wall and they had given me, the flag from my suit,
the patch, Apollo 12 the NASA like these, on the suit. So I'm looking at
them and I'm thinking, they gave me the
ones from Skylab too. And I'm looking and
comparing those with Skylab and I'm saying, Skylab looks
clean, these look dirty. I think, I better clean them
up maybe I'll wash them. And then I thought,
they're dirty all right but they're dirty with moon
dust from the ocean of storms. I do, in fact, have
moon dust if I'm willing to cut up these
patches and so I thought, you know I'm devoting the
rest of my life to doing this. So I should make these as
great as I can make them. So you can see, I cut off the
American Flag and part NASA at that time. Now the red stripes
are all gone, up to the blue of the
stars and down like that. So I'm just hoping I
can make them last, as long as I'm doing the job. But that's where they
come from-- here you are. You see how they're
put in the paintings. So that we can find them. So every one of the paintings,
there's the final painting. It's titled, He Ain't
Heavy He's My Brother. That's a fact boy
and so there we are. And if we looked
around, we could find those it's in the museum here. When you go in and look at it. If you do, look in
the corners, I've tried to put one in
a corner, there's some on my left leg and right
leg there you'll see them. Because they have sharp edges,
where I cut them with scissors. Whereas everything else
is pretty well rounded. This book I'll be
signing tonight. If we can get out of here. [LAUGHTER] - Just like launching from
Earth except very quiet. And the fact, it's so
quiet and you can't hear. You don't know if the
engine is working right, like you do in your car you're
driving along, you can hear it and if it changed tune
you might worry about it. I can remember
looking at my watch and thinking we had six
minutes and three seconds, but we had no idea what
was going on down there. We didn't have a gauge,
because we couldn't do anything about it anyway. So we're lift off
and I'm looking and I say something
like this to Pete and I'm also comparing my
watch with the timer three minutes, three minutes
and six seconds to go. Wonder how the
engine is doing, we didn't know we were wondering
about the engine, of course. And so finally it's six minutes
and three seconds it shut down. And I can remember
it that moment, I felt like we
would get back home. But when we stopped
on the moon, it's like stopping in the middle
of a desert in your car and you stay there for 33
hours and then you get in and you think, I hope
this thing starts. [LAUGHTER] Because if it
doesn't, it's Pete Conrad said to me, if it
doesn't start, we're going to be the first permanent
monument on the moon to the US Space program. And I looked at him and he said,
does that make you feel better? [LAUGHTER] Anyway, here's what
we came back in. That's what the
Earth looks like. From the moon and
from around the moon, it's the most beautiful
thing you can see. Everything else is
a star or the moon is one gray ball of different
light and dark grays and it's the most
beautiful thing. I believe myself, I'm
not a religious person, but I have read the Bible
and know the stories. And the stories from the Bible
came, usually by word of mouth till people learn to write. And I think then the Garden
of Eden, that was supposedly given to us, humans. Was as they thought was the
Tigris-Euphrates River Valley area. That's because that's the
golden Crescent, that's where everybody was in--
that's their whole world. So they said that's
the Garden of Eden. My belief is, this Earth
is the Garden of Eden. We are living in the
Garden of Eden right now, we are living in paradise. I will tell you this, I have
not complained about the weather one time since I've been home. I've not complained about
people, traffic, lines at the post office. I am so glad to be on this
planet and have people like you around and have animals like our
dog, I told you about Buffalo. It's great, it's not-- we don't
know of that anywhere else in the universe. Maybe it's out there,
I think it probably is around these distant
stars somewhere on planets. But we're not there, we're here. We are blessed to be on that
wonderful, beautiful place. - Now let me show
you what it was like for entry, that Gordon
will be narrating this, because he flew it. Go ahead please. - As far as I'm concerned
the most spectacular part of the mission
that I experienced was the reentry and landing. I mean that is
spectacular coming back in at 36,000 feet per second,
25,000 miles an hour in and you are hauling the
mail across the surface of the Earth. I remember this
spectacular green and ice-- time pattern 20, 30,
40, 50 miles long. I don't know how
long that thing was. We Looked down at the
islands in the South Pacific, they were going by so
fast it was unbelievable. And the dynamics of it is so
rapid you hit the atmosphere and 8 minutes later the
parachutes are open so it's a very, very rapid event. [MUSIC PLAYING] Reports. Sonic boom a short time ago in
Houston and the blind Airbus has a visual contact. - OK. This might be a good time
if we have time, Jack. I don't know. Do a little Q&A.
What's your thinking? - Let's take just a couple of
questions and go to your last two-- - OK. Good I have two more slides. And that's good. - OK. All right. Who has a question? Yes, right here. - How do you feel about the
discovery of [INAUDIBLE]?? - How do you feel
about the discovery of quantities of water on the
moon that was announced today? - I'm happy about it. But I think it's not even
important at the moment. The thing that's holding
up space exploration is money and what is
occurring in this country. I believe from talking
to individuals, is people are in favor
of space exploration, but they really don't
want to pay for it. Because there's
other things that are in their minds
higher priority and it's hard to argue about,
Iraq and in Afghanistan, the cost and these other
things are all economy. So that is the problem. So we can discover hundreds
times more water up there, doesn't mean a
thing at the moment. We've got to discover
a way to get some money to go back, to exploit this. So I'm glad it happened but it's
almost like, gee whiz so what? - Yeah. [APPLAUSE] OK. Over here on the side. [COUGHS] We've talked about
falling in the possibility of damaging the spacesuit. Was there any kind of a
sealant that you had with it-- where you can repair it,
should that be required? - No, we-- Good question. We thought about all
that and even evaluated some materials and sealants
and we decided two things. One, with that light gravity
when you fall you don't really hit like you do on Earth. When I would start
backwards falling, sometimes I could
actually turn around and run under my center
of gravity and not fall. Or if I did fall, I
fell kind of gently and it was not enough that
I thought it would ever puncture the suit. The pressure suit is blue and
underneath that white cover, so you had like a
protector there. It was there for meteoroids, in
case they came in and hit you, but it protected you
from everything else. When I would fall forward
or go-- these gloves had some kind of metallic,
called armor line on the front. But when I would fall forward,
I would just catch myself gently and I could do like
that and push up. So things are
happening more slowly in that one sixth
gravity, didn't turn out to be a problem. The way we solved
it in the event you did get a hole was on
the top of our backpack, was a thing called
oxygen purge system. And if your suit
pressure started to drop, it would give you and fill a
hole, maybe the size of a pea-- that occurred in your
suit for 20 minutes. And so you had to
be able to get back in to the LEM and re-pressurize. If that occurred to-- of
course, it never occurred. But we did all these
things by statistics, because we knew the size of
particles flying around here that was the big risk
the micrometeorites that might punch you. So because it did hit the suits
and visors from time to time but they were too small. So it was done on
the statistics, so that you had a 0.9997
chance of nothing going wrong. So it was very well done. And turned out to
be good, someday something like that
will happen and they're going to have to get
back in their Rover or whatever else they've got out
there in time before their suit deflates, so that's
the approach we used. Seemed to work. - Thank you. - Do you have advise? - Learn what they're
teaching you there. Even if you don't like
it, because you're need-- going to need it. Teachers know you need these
things later, you don't know, I didn't know. First thing I did
after getting my wings, was enroll in English
in night school. Because I didn't like English
in high school and college and I realized, I
needed to learn it. So you need to do that, then you
need to look and see what kind of astronauts we're taking. A look at the background
of the most recent selected group and that one before, some
people are like me, pilots. OK. If you want to go that
route, there's one way. You look at the others, they're
probably taking astronomers, they're probably
taking meteorologists, they're taking doctors
things like that look and see what NASA's needs. It's like applying
any job, you have to see what that
organization needs by looking at what they're
doing, who they're taking and try to fit in. In other words, if
you suddenly says, I'm going to be the
greatest banker in the world and they'll take me,
they're not going to. Because we're not doing
anything with banking on the moon for a
long, long, long time. [LAUGHTER] So you need to find out who they
took, the last two selections, and who they take
next time and see if you want to direct yourself. So big commitment. This is competitive. So other people feel like you
and they're busy doing that. You've got to say, am I
willing to work hard enough? Am I willing to sacrifice
present day happiness? Not happiness but fun, for
the long range gathering in my dream so I don't know. - And another thing about that
is, if you apply and don't get selected. Don't give up. Because there are
many people who are in the Astronaut Corps
today, who had applied four or five times to get in. So persistency is an
important feature I think of. - You're right. And I applied the
group to greet-- that came in and
they didn't take me. And they didn't say why,
they just phoned me and said, we decided not to take you. Now that doesn't mean whether
they might look at you again or they might say we'll
never look at that guy again. But you don't know. And so I had a choice
right then to say, am I going to just
go pout or am I going to try to get qualified
even though they may not take me or even look
at me ever again, I made the second choice. So I began to study
everything I could. I studied IQ, books and things. I raised my IQ, 10 points. Now you can't really
do that, I know. But-- but if you
read those books, it'll tell you things you
can raise it for numbers, so this life is persistence
more than anything else. Don't you dare, Jack. - You've got to be
good, but you've got to be able to persist. - Anybody on this,
right up here. [INAUDIBLE] - Of the Earth-- - The color of the Earth. You were asking about the green,
as opposed to the blue or-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] - Green yellow, the moon. Look at the edge of it, looking
over when we look at the Earth. - That's right. When I left NASA, I was
mostly-- had the heart of a scientist astronaut. And so when I painted
the moon then, like some of my early paintings,
I didn't point them out. I painted it fairly
gray and then after a number of years
of being an artist, I began to be able to use
my artist's license more. And so I might make it
greenish gray or violet gray or something that
was more beautiful. 28 years ago, I'm more of an
artist now than an astronaut. So when I did that
painting, I decided how I thought the moon
would look and look the warmest in that
sunlight and I said, I'm going to make it yellow. Because that's a good
color for the moon, even though it's gray. Even though if you took
a photograph, it's gray. It still has a
warm look and then I want to make it more
beautiful just like Monet did, then it really was. So I put some complementary
colors, violets in there and some greens and reds
and others as much as I can. To still make it look like the
moon, but even more beautiful. So I'm an artist now,
that's what artists do. I used to be an
engineer scientist, scientists do it the other way. - The thing about these
programs that makes it tough is that they actually
have to come to an end. And we're going to have to
cut off but we do have-- - Two more-- - So we'll cut off the Q&A now
and then go to the closing. And then we'll have some
instructions for you at the end. - All right, good. Thank you, Jack. Thanks for helping. It was nice of Jack
to come up here. I asked him to do that because
I don't hear very well. He hears better
than I do and I was afraid we'd be up here
trying to get everyone to say it two or three times. - So anyway, let me
take a look here. So we're halfway between
the Earth and the moon. And Pete and Dick and I
are looking out the window and Pete says, hey,
there's the moon over there it's getting smaller,
there's the Earth down there it's getting bigger, there's
all these stars out there we can see them. But even people on Earth
with the very best cameras, the very best telescopes, they
cannot see our command module, we are of course--
we're littler than that. We are so small
in this universe, that we're smaller to the
universe than humans-- are smaller to the universe
than grains of sand already on Earth. And I thought, they're
right, we are small. We can see the universe,
the universe can't see us. So I go onto the
couch that night and float into my
little sleeping bag, and I'm saying to myself,
there's something wrong it's true but there's something
wrong with thinking that way. So I get up the
next day and I say let's look out the window again,
we're looking out the window. And I said, OK. Big Dick and Pete. That moon, we know
where it's limited to be 10 years from now, exactly
by gravity and velocity. We know exactly where
it's going to be if we had the computer program. - OK. There's the Earth. We know where it's going to
be, 100 years from now, 1,000. It's limited because
of gravity, velocity, we know where it's going to be. Every single one of those stars
that we can see out there, if we had the right
computer program we know where it's limited
to be 10,000 years from now. The only thing in
the universe we don't know what it's going to
be, even 10 years from now, are human beings like us. We may be small,
but as far as we know we have been given the
greatest gift in the universe and that gift is
the only limits that are placed on us, any
of us here, are the ones we place on ourselves. This is a great gift, most
people don't think about it. Most people are
wasting this gift, most people don't
realize that they-- even though we look around
there's a lot of people here. You get out on the street,
there's a lot of people, look at TV, or look at a
football game or something and a lot of people. - I can tell you
right now, there's not a single person there
that's like you, not a single person
there is like me. There's never been a person
like me on this Earth, there's never been a person
like you on this Earth. There's never will be a person
like you on this Earth period. That's it, maybe your kids
look like you a little bit, but they're not like
you, you know that. You got one shot
here, you're here. You've got a song
to sing, maybe. Maybe you don't. Got a song to sing,
you better sing it. Because if you don't,
it's never been heard before I'll guarantee you that. Think about Elton
John for example, did anybody write and sing
like he did so far or Elvis? I can't remember it. Do you think anybody will? No. And it's the same
way with all of us, maybe we can't entertain people
like that, but we are special. But we've got to find a way to
make that specialness count, I think that's the number
one job that all of us have in our life. What is my song? How am I going to sing it? That is the number
one job for all of us. We got to leave here, I
told you earlier no one is giving you a test, tell what
you can do in your lifetime. We've got to find a way to
be as wonderful as we can be. - I love to talk about Apollo,
it reminds us what's great, what's the best in human beings,
what's best in each of us. I told you earlier, we weren't
special, we weren't geniuses. I'm not the smartest guy in this
room, I'll guarantee you that. But if you will be willing to
work hard and try hard and be willing to fail. And then try again, persistence
like Jack was talking about. You can do it. This is wonderful. - I did this painting for people
that visited the Astronaut-- Astronaut Hall of Fame. Because I was saying, all of us
can reach out if we're willing and grab our very own
star whatever it is. And I'd like to make more one
more comment about this jacket. These jackets,
these flight jackets are not like other garments
in your closet or my closet either. These are sacred garments
that we spent our lives, an effort to earn. They bring back great memory. I've got a Navy one too and
when I look at it, put it on, it takes me back to the time
I was a young pilot in VA 44, flying F9fH and I look
at the patch there of the Hornet on
there and I think about the people I knew there,
just like I think about-- Oh and Garrett and
Jack Lousma here and look at this-- these are
spiritual garments that we've earned. And so I say, keep your flight
jacket, wear it, look at it, think back, we go on. I'm 77. I'm not going to
be here forever. But my jacket will be and I'm
going to be looking at it, and thinking about
it, and thinking about the time I had
to earn those wings and thinking about how
proud I was when I got this. - Thank you for having
me here tonight, put this on and think
about this thing. Let me leave you
with three wishes. When did I sail, light to that
path, dreams to that heart. Thank you very
much for having me. [APPLAUSE] - You got one thing
wrong tonight. You really are special. This is a magnificent evening,
and we can't thank you enough, and we look forward
to the opportunity to be out there with you
in the milestones gallery. Captain Bean will be
at the visitor's desk. He'll be signing
books only tonight. He can't personalize
them because of the time and the
number of people involved. But can you please leave
via the exit up here, we have one of them
blocked, as you may have noticed to your left. We'll meet you
down in milestones. He'll be available for
autographs at that time. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]
