Apollo Astronaut Harrison Schmitt FINALLY REVEALS What We Got Wrong About the Moon

[00:00:00]Thank [applause] you.

[00:00:05]>> [applause] >> Thank you very much. Today we're going to take a very quick rapid trip to the moon uh on the back of Apollo 17.

[00:00:15]Uh for some of you, here's a little lunar souvenir.

[00:00:21]We'll see if we can get it a little farther out there.

[00:00:25]How about this bunch over here?

[00:00:27]Let me try better.

[00:00:29]There you go.

[00:00:30]This uh this trip will uh culminate in some thoughts about Mars.

[00:00:38]Uh and but uh first of all let me just uh thank the uh Starmus team uh Garret and everyone for the opportunity to be with you today.

[00:00:51]Uh and I just I want to congratulate all of you. This is a remarkable assemblage of people who have come here for really a remarkable opportunity in Trondheim.

[00:01:02]Uh the uh Apollo 17 mission uh began uh with a uh visit to Norway.

[00:01:15]In some sense, this uh my experience as a geologist in Western Norway and Sunnmøre uh gave me a uh a little additional shall we say leg up on my competition to become a scientist astronaut.

[00:01:29]Uh and this valley uh you might say in Western Norway is not unlike the valley that I explored on the moon.

[00:01:38]Uh that's a stretch, but it's a it's fun to make those kind of stretches.

[00:01:42]The uh uh the uh This picture just symbolizes really what was accomplished by Apollo.

[00:01:53]Uh in the area of science uh the behind me on the uh, this picture is the South Massif of the Valley of Taurus-Littrow.

[00:02:02]Uh, and uh, represents what we learned through the exploration of the moon. Uh, principally what we learned about the early history of the Earth. Uh, time when life was forming. Uh, replicating life forms were forming on this planet.

[00:02:16]Uh, the astronaut there uh, symbolizes the technology leap that was made in order to accomplish uh, these missions. Uh, that uh, young Americans as well as their colleagues from uh, many countries of the world accomplished this as free uh, young men mostly as but uh, women as well. Uh, and free to think and to move forward ideas that were necessary to accomplish such a challenge. And then of course above the flag is the Earth. Uh, that uh, as I indicated represents a great deal of the knowledge that we gained as a result of our exploration of the moon.

[00:02:57]Uh, the Valley of Taurus-Littrow that you just saw a moment ago is a valley deeper than the Grand Canyon of the uh, Colorado River in the United States.

[00:03:07]Uh, that mountain in the center of the picture there, the South Massif is 2100 m high above the valley floor. Of course it before that valley filled with lava it was even higher. Uh, the mountains on the other side of the valley go to 1600 m. So it's really a remarkable uh, place to be. Uh, the length of the valley that's shown in this picture is about 50 km just to give you an idea uh, of that.

[00:03:33]Uh, the uh, whoops, wrong button as usual.

[00:03:37]Need a checklist.

[00:03:39]Uh, now the enabling technology for going to the moon uh, it was the Saturn V moon rocket.

[00:03:48]Shown here on the left. That rocket uh 6.8 million lbs uh fully fueled, but the uh three of the five big engines in the first stage developed a total of 7.5 million lbs of thrust. And believe me, that's quite a ride.

[00:04:05]Uh when those five engines are going, the vibration is as if you were driving down a railroad track at about 30 mph.

[00:04:12]It uh really was quite remarkable. And we reached about 4.5 Gs uh at our maximum uh launch acceleration.

[00:04:20]The uh the building in the uh on the right is the uh what's called the vehicle assembly building. And if you get some idea of its scale by in the lower right, there's a big fire engine uh just sitting there. And uh really uh gives you an idea of just how big these objects were. The rocket itself was well over 100 m long long. And if you go to any of the three uh NASA's manned spacecraft centers uh in southern United States, you will have a chance to walk under some of these rockets. And I strongly recommend that just to get an ideal idea of the scale. This is during our launch.

[00:04:59]Uh it uh very slow acceleration. It took 14 seconds for the rocket to clear that uh launch tower that you see there. The uh And And if you look closely on the left of the rocket, there is a uh uh there are some bright spots.

[00:05:17]Uh those are big chunks of ice that are coming off the rocket as a result of condensation of the moisture in the Florida atmosphere on the cold uh sides of of the rocket where the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen uh were stored. Uh we had uh stayed on the launch pad an extra 2 hours and 40 minutes because of some confusion between the launch computer and the people in launch uh in the launch uh control center. The launch control center, of course, was right. Human beings are right. We heard about robots earlier. And uh human human beings usually make the right decision. They did in this case.

[00:05:55]The computer just didn't know they'd made the right decision.

[00:05:58]Uh the uh spacecraft that we used are shown here. The uh command and service module uh in the upper right uh it was provided us transportation to and from the moon.

[00:06:10]And then the lunar module Challenger down in the lower right is what we worked with on the moon itself.

[00:06:18]Uh in the process of getting there in 3 and 1/2 days, I had the chance to take this uh picture. It's become known as the blue marble picture. Still the most requested photograph from the NASA archives as I understand it.

[00:06:32]Uh gives you a nearly full Earth, not quite. Mediterranean at the top, Antarctica and South Pole at the bottom.

[00:06:39]But some beautiful weather patterns that I enjoyed observing and and uh documenting on the way to the moon for uh 3 and 1/2 days uh as an amateur meteorologist, like so many in Norway are.

[00:06:52]Uh it uh uh not only amateur, professional.

[00:06:55]You've had some uh remarkable meteorological history in your scientific professions.

[00:07:01]Uh if you look very carefully up at the upper right, there's actually a cyclone, a hurricane going ashore on the subcontinent of India.

[00:07:09]And those of you you know about the intertropical convergence zone will recognize that going along the equator.

[00:07:16]Uh now our place of landing on the moon is shown by this arrow. It's uh that deep valley that I've already shown you a picture of.

[00:07:26]Is located in a ring of mountains that surround a 740 km diameter basin called Cyrillus T. Thatis.

[00:07:35]Uh and for reference of where Neil Armstrong landed as the first man on the moon, I was number 12.

[00:07:41]Uh we were about 600 km north east of that landing site.

[00:07:49]The uh Uh, and back to the uh valley itself, uh this picture was taken on the orbit of the moon of when we were in the uh challenger uh just prior to landing and the other spacecraft that you see there in the middle of the picture is uh uh the command module Ron Evans uh the command module pilot was all alone at this point but was doing a very important job of sighting on landmarks in the uh landing area that we then tied to the center of mass of the moon uh based on uh previous uh uh photogrammetric uh analysis uh of the lunar orbiter uh photography taken many years before and that uh enabled us to uh actually land almost exactly where we planned to land before we left the earth.

[00:08:45]That's uh shows the land that arrow shows the landing site actually between a couple uh large craters.

[00:08:52]The uh Now, this picture actually was not one taken by the Apollo mission. It's taken by a spacecraft that is currently in orbit around the moon, the lunar reconnaissance orbiter spacecraft very high resolution uh if you look very carefully you can see our rover tracks up there. Uh that mean and those rover tires were only about this wide and that uh uh so it gives you an idea of about a 20 to 30 cm uh resolution for that uh photography. Now, my uh tracks uh wandering around there to the left of the descent stage of the challenger that's now still on the moon uh is uh uh wandering around a bit. I was searching for a place to deploy a set of scientific experiments called the Apollo lunar surface science package.

[00:09:43]And I can see that I missed a couple good places and finally ended up about 180 m from the spacecraft. That was a little bit farther than we had originally planned. But nevertheless, we we did deploy the the science package and it operated for about 7 years after we left.

[00:10:03]This uh uh illustrates how much more information we now have about the moon and as I'll mention later but even indeed about Mars than we had before the Apollo program.

[00:10:17]And so going back is at least from that respect is going to be easier than it was during Apollo. Still very risky and very complex.

[00:10:27]My first view out the right-hand window of the lunar module is shown here.

[00:10:32]Looking over a very typical lunar surface.

[00:10:36]Almost all the astronauts saw pretty much the same kind of scene at this point. Scattered boulders that are on top of a of a layer of debris produced by meteor impact. A layer of debris that we call the lunar regolith.

[00:10:52]You don't need to remember that. There won't be a quiz.

[00:10:56]The the object in the foreground is one of 16 small restartable rockets.

[00:11:03]Attitude control thrusters. That we use indeed to control the orientation of our spacecraft while flying in in lunar orbit and during the landing process.

[00:11:15]Those thrusters had about 50 lb thrust.

[00:11:19]In contrast to the 1.5 million lb thrust of the engines of the first stage of the Saturn V. So you can see the kind of technology spectrum that was required in propulsion in order to accomplish the lunar landings.

[00:11:35]Uh a couple days later after two of our EVAs or excursions outside the spacecraft, this roughly the same picture shows how much that uh area was disturbed uh by our activities. And that and those of you How many of you want to go to the moon or to Mars someday? Just raise your Just show show of hand. Ooh, we got a crew here.

[00:11:58]Uh at least one, maybe more. The uh Well, that's great, but on the moon, you're going to end in in some places on Mars, you're going to have this problem of stabilizing surfaces if you're going to be using them uh regularly. Uh and they're go There are There are engineering ways to do that. It's just one of those engineering tasks that you're as some of you will have to uh accomplish in order to be there or or even settle the moon. I You know, I'm one of these people who thinks you can live there. There are plenty of resources and uh and it's probably the best way to prepare to go to Mars, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment. Now, in order to explore the moon at least for 3 days, this is what we needed to have.

[00:12:38]Uh we needed to have a place to live between our excursions, and that's the lunar module Challenger. Uh and and it also was our uh stored in the in the descent stage, the lower half of that. It stored our oxygen, water, and other things that we needed to uh live there.

[00:12:57]Uh the uh lunar rover uh beneath the flag, uh was our transportation. We actually drove that as much as 7 km away from the lunar module, a total of some 32 km for the uh 3 days that we were there.

[00:13:14]Uh the uh yours truly standing there is really another spacecraft with in combination with the space suit. That uh suit literally is a spacecraft. It uh has It has uh environmental control. It had oxygen, of course. We could scrub that oxygen CO2 out of that oxygen.

[00:13:35]And uh uh and it provided protection, thermal protection alike. Uh but still, with all of that, we needed to have a cooling system that would allow you to work for 8 hours pressurized in that suit. And that cooling system was provided by water-cooled underwear. And I know my Norwegian friends in the audience know what long-handled underwear is. Uh and we had that, but it was sewn into that underwear were interconnected tubes of uh that uh through which cold water could be supplied.

[00:14:07]It was [clears throat] absolutely essential. Uh it's was an enabling technology as important for lunar exploration as a Saturn V itself.

[00:14:17]Now, this is picture is not to illustrate how uh much things have changed on my face.

[00:14:24]Uh but But to illustrate the suit again, a little closer up. The the blue uh ports that you see on that suit are entry ports.

[00:14:35]Everything that goes in into the blue ports uh went into the suit. Uh there's communication port, there's oxygen, water, and the light. The red port two ports are where oxygen would come out.

[00:14:48]Uh there only two of those because uh we only needed to bring out the oxygen in order to scrub the CO2 out of it. The uh the extra red port was for emergency oxygen uh venting in case we ever had to do that.

[00:15:03]I been back on the moon. Uh that suit you see now in use, this was a collection of what we called a rake sample. It was actually a sieve sample in order to get a large number of of uh centimeter sized or larger uh fragments out of that uh debris layer or regolith.

[00:15:22]Uh, now my weight and the suit and backpack weight totaled about 370 lb.

[00:15:31]Uh, on Earth. On the moon, you divide that by six in order to get what the weight was.

[00:15:37]Mass didn't change, of course, but the weight changed. And so at 61 lb or so, it was very easy to move around. Uh, the I could use a cross-country skiing technique, actually, to move uh, rapidly across significant distances. Just a little bit of a toe push and glide over the surface of the moon. Uh, and uh, you could accelerate rapidly and go quite uh, significant distances without using an awful lot of energy. Where did I learn to cross-country ski?

[00:16:06]He- here in Norway.

[00:16:08]In 1950 winter of 1957-1958.

[00:16:11]So, that was a very useful application of that learning.

[00:16:15]The uh, >> [clears throat] >> uh, we had only one significant problem.

[00:16:21]Uh, mechanical problem while we were on the moon, and that was with the fender.

[00:16:26]For some reason, Apollo commanders, not me, Apollo commanders learned how to break fenders.

[00:16:34]Uh, in this case, a hammer was hooked underneath the fender and it just flipped it right off. Those were very important. They were dust flaps. They were They prevented the dust uh, that followed the wheel up from being a forward rooster tail. And uh, and very important, cuz otherwise, you everything got very dusty. That's one reason why the pictures you see, at least for Apollo 17, show a very dusty suit, is that we had to deal with that for about uh, the first excursion.

[00:17:00]Uh, at at the start of the second excursion, we repaired that fender, thanks to uh, suggestions made by our friends down in mission control center that worked all night to come up with this fix.

[00:17:11]And uh, they are they're they're unneeded photographs that we taped together with you guessed it, the gray duct tape that's every holding the world together now, I guess.

[00:17:22]And and then clamped it on with some unneeded light clamps that we had. And it it served us very well for the rest of the the mission.

[00:17:31]Uh one of the major scientific sites that we had was Shorty Crater where I discovered [clears throat] the volcanic ash that became known as the orange soil. And you see the orange some of the distribution of that orange in this picture site greatly enhanced in order that you could see it.

[00:17:47]Uh that ash turned out to be rich in volatile elements as well as water. And about a few years ago, we discovered there was water in that material. And so somewhere deep in the moon, there's this reservoir of volatiles. And that has a very very important implications for trying to understand the origins of the moon.

[00:18:08]Uh that uh in fact it makes the the idea of a giant impact producing the moon, giant impact on the earth, a little less tenable because uh of uh some some questions that the presence of those volatiles raise. That's a different subject.

[00:18:25]Uh the uh just to give you an idea a perspective of how big the valley looked and how small the astronauts look when they're working in it, uh this picture tends to do that taken uh looking towards the South Massif again, that 2100 m high uh mountain.

[00:18:44]And uh uh one of the major exploration areas that we had was this boulder uh a boulder at station six, yours truly there for scale on the left. Uh and this boulder had rolled about a kilometer and a half down the mountain, uh the North Massif. Those slopes were about 26° and had bounced along down the mountain.

[00:19:06]And the reason we know that, it left its track behind it. And we know uh pretty close uh when that happened about uh 21 million years ago, but it provided us an opportunity to sample what was up on the mountain just by going to boulders at the base of the mountain.

[00:19:25]So that turned out to be a very good geological technique for our mission and for any future missions where you're in mountainous terrain, you'll have a chance to know where these boulders came from.

[00:19:39]That arrow now points to where the lunar module is located.

[00:19:43]Again, there's that little white area around it. That's caused by the descent engines winnowing away the darker fine-grained material that gives the lunar surface a slightly darker color. When you winnow that away, the the larger fragments then become quite more bright and therefore more visible.

[00:20:06]Just another shot of that boulder from a different perspective. It was highly vesicular. There's a maybe a geologist or two in the crowd that knows what that means. It means that the rock was full of holes.

[00:20:18]And those holes also represent an original concentration of volatile material. We still don't know what that material was. It probably was hydrogen, maybe carbon monoxide, but it left no alteration trace around the walls of the vesicle. So we're we're just not sure, but but the large impacts that produced these boulders, these are what we call impact melt breccias.

[00:20:42]Those large impacts like Serenitatis, the impact that formed Serenitatis, did indeed produce some volatile material themselves and and left these holes in the rock.

[00:20:56]Now, I'm I This picture was taken after three very vigorous excursions on the moon. I think I look a little bit tired in that picture. Uh, not and understandably, the suit certainly looks tired.

[00:21:11]Uh, got very dirty. And if you see that suit in the Smithsonian, uh, sometime, uh, it will still be dirty. It uh, the half of that debris layer that you see in these other pictures is composed of of small fragments less than 100 microns in diameter. So, it's extremely fine dust. And there are some questions about and I think they can be solved primarily by engineering solutions, uh, but questions about how to keep that dust out of future lunar habitats or settlement buildings.

[00:21:46]Uh, this is a more typical picture for uh, being in the lunar module itself, uh, standing around in your underwear.

[00:21:54]This is a diff- We actually this was what we called NASA has to have a a name that nobody else understands, a constant wear garment. [clears throat] And I keep having to look that up because I think of it as a CWG, right?

[00:22:08]>> [laughter] >> There. Now, uh, departure from the moon was vigorous, but not nearly as vigorous as departure from the Earth because again, you only had to work against 1/6 gravity.

[00:22:21]The, uh, uh, uh, this picture was not taken by yours truly. Um, the commander tried to get me to go out and get a really good picture of liftoff. Uh, I I decided [clears throat] to decline, maybe thinking already of a future political career.

[00:22:39]Uh, that, uh, uh, uh, though uh, only about a half a G acceleration at this point, the picture was taken by the television camera that we had mounted on our lunar rover and really provided I I outstanding coverage of the mission.

[00:22:56]Unfortunately, the tapes that were produced off those images deteriorated over time and we do not have the primary information. These are what are called kinescope recording that we have today.

[00:23:10]Although there've been some some very successful efforts at enhancing those images and so we really got more information than we thought at first.

[00:23:20]The uh the command the upper stage, the ascent stage of the lunar module Challenger is shown there uh just after rendezvous with Ron Evans again in the command module and we soon after this docked and were transferred the samples, 250 lb of of lunar rocks, a wide variety of different kinds of rocks and a couple days later we left the moon and came home.

[00:23:50]Uh the last view I had of the Earth from the moon really was this one, a crescent Earth rising over the moon as we left it.

[00:24:01]Uh and uh 3 days later we were we had entered the Earth's atmosphere, uh slowed down by that atmosphere. Uh it's been a Thank God the Earth has an atmosphere, right? Uh because it really helps in dissipating that energy.

[00:24:16]The three chutes looked very good at as they deployed at about uh 10,000 ft and we splashed down then in the Pacific Ocean not far from the island of Samoa.

[00:24:28]Uh the Navy SEALs were in the water almost instantly from their nearby helicopter and the carrier Ticonderoga and we were being lifted up into the uh uh helicopter and then on the ship were greeted by not only the crew but a number of politicians who somehow or another tend to show up for events of this kind.

[00:24:55]And the uh Uh again I show you a picture of the Saturn V because it is it is the type of enabling technology that one is going to have to have not only to return to the moon but also eventually to prepare to go to Mars. And that question then comes of what how does the moon sit in the context of Mars? And it is very important. It's only 3 days away versus months away uh for Mars even if we get interplanetary propulsion through fusion or some other system. It requires similar deep space operational discipline, requires a similar deep space technological capability. You can go to the moon, the energy to get to Mars is is quite is very similar. Geopolitically important in its own right as many nations realize. Space resource rich, maybe the one of the most important things is to go to Mars, you need consumables, you need water for radiation protection, and the moon has all of those things for you. And a private government partnership is feasible primarily because of the energy resources that exist in the lunar regolith. Won't [clears throat] go into detail, but the light isotope of helium that's there from the sun is a nearly ideal fuel for fusion clean fusion power in the future.

[00:26:19]It's 1/6 gravity versus 3/8 gravity. We need to learn whether 1/6 gravity triggers readaptation in the human in human physiology. We don't know that. I think it does, just got feeling that I have, but nevertheless we need to document that.

[00:26:36]Important new science while preparing to go to Mars, terrestrial energy resource I've already mentioned the helium-3.

[00:26:43]And so before Mars crew has a parting view of the Earth such as I had and late months later is greeted by a Martian sunrise, maybe it's time to take another walk on the moon.

[00:26:56]And with that, I think I have to stop since my time is up. It took a little longer than I thought. I wanted to take some questions, but we also want to hear from George Smoot in very short order. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:27:10]>> [applause]