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    When We Landed on the Moon: A Memoir
    When We Landed on the Moon: A Memoir
    When We Landed on the Moon: A Memoir
    Ebook65 pages40 minutes

    When We Landed on the Moon: A Memoir

    By David Dvorkin

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    About this ebook

    In September 1967, I started working at NASA in Houston, at what was then called the Manned Spacecraft Center. I worked on Apollo missions. In November 1971, I left NASA and moved to Denver to work on the Viking Mars lander project at Martin Marietta Corporation.

    By the time I left NASA, Apollo was winding down. Manned spaceflight beyond Earth orbit was dying. There would be no lunar bases or missions to Mars. In a mere four years, the future had died. Fifty years later, I still can’t shake the sadness.

    Of course the “We” in the title of this book is not literal. Only the handful of men who have actually been on the moon can talk about “when we landed on the moon” and mean it literally. I’m using “we” in a general sense, to refer to all of the 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo Project, to all of America, and to the entire human race.

    As the plaque on the side of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module descent stage, which still stands on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility, proclaims: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."

    This is the story of my part in Apollo.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Dvorkin
    Release dateJul 15, 2019
    ISBN9780463416884
    When We Landed on the Moon: A Memoir
    Author

    David Dvorkin

    David Dvorkin was born in 1943 in England. His family moved to South Africa after World War Two and then to the United States when David was a teenager. After attending college in Indiana, he worked in Houston at NASA on the Apollo program and then in Denver as an aerospace engineer, software developer, and technical writer. He and his wife, Leonore, have lived in Denver since 1971.David has published a number of science fiction, horror, and mystery novels. He has also coauthored two science fiction novels with his son, Daniel. For details, as well as quite a bit of non-fiction reading material, please see David and Leonore’s Web site, http://www.dvorkin.com.

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      Book preview

      When We Landed on the Moon - David Dvorkin

      Fiction

      The Arm and Flanagan

      Budspy

      Business Secrets from the Stars

      The Cavaradossi Killings

      Central Heat

      The Children of Shiny Mountain

      Children of the Undead

      Damon the Caiman

      Dawn Crescent (with Daniel Dvorkin)

      Earthmen and Other Aliens

      The Green God

      Pit Planet

      The Prisoner of the Blood series

      Insatiable

      Unquenchable

      The Seekers

      Slit

      Star Trek novels

      The Trellisane Confrontation

      Time Trap

      The Captains' Honor (with Daniel Dvorkin)

      Time and the Soldier

      Time for Sherlock Holmes

      Ursus

      Non–Fiction

      At Home with Solar Energy

      The Dead Hand of Mrs. Stifle

      Dust Net

      Once a Jew, Always a Jew?

      Self-Publishing Tools, Tips, and Techniques

      The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed

      Contents

      Introduction

      Initialisms

      Apollo 8: Earthrise

      Apollo 9

      Apollo 11: When We Landed on the Moon

      Stress Relief

      It Was All a Hoax

      Apollo 15

      When We Turned Away

      Fifty Years Later

      About the Author

      Introduction

      I started working at NASA in Houston, at what was then called the Manned Spacecraft Center, in September 1967.

      The Apollo 1 fire had happened in February 1967, bringing much of the work on the Apollo Project to a halt. When I arrived in Houston in September, NASA had been given permission to push ahead full steam. I was told that the mood during the preceding months had been despondent and discouraged, but what I saw in September was growing enthusiasm and energy.

      The plan at the time was for a crowded schedule of launches, ideally one every other month, so that NASA could fulfill the pledge made by John F. Kennedy in 1961: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.

      For the most part at NASA, I worked on Apollo missions, although I also did some work on the Viking Mars lander program and some very early work on the Shuttle’s landing navigation system. I had been devouring science fiction since boyhood and daydreamed about writing it as well. I wanted to travel in space. Now I was as close to actually doing that as it was possible for a non–astronaut to do. I was living in a science–fictional future.

      Four years later, in November 1971, after Apollo 15, I left NASA and moved to Denver to work on the Viking Mars lander project at Martin Marietta Corporation.

      My wife and I liked Houston as a city, but we hated the climate and were tired of wondering if the next hurricane would hit us. At least as great a factor was my perception that Apollo was winding down and my job would probably evaporate. Manned spaceflight beyond Earth orbit was dying. There would be no lunar bases or missions to Mars.

      In a mere four years, the future had died. Fifty years later, I still can’t shake the sadness.

      Memory is a tricky thing. Oh, yes, I remember the foolish things I did and said throughout my life, and I still cringe at those memories; those are the things I wish I could forget. Personal events stand out brightly from the dimness of the past, memories of deep importance to me, but so much has faded away. How I wish that I could remember everything from my NASA days in great detail! Instead, some parts are distinct, but others have blurred together.

      I have to add that the blur is due to more than the passage of time. Back then, I was a newlywed, I was dealing with some serious personal emotional stresses, we had a newborn and then a toddler in the house, and at the same time, I was working on my master's in mathematics at the University of Houston. I was extremely short on sleep and a zombie for much of those four years.

      I hope that inaccurate memory hasn’t caused me to misrepresent anything or to commit egregious errors. I have a dread of unintentionally claiming credit for the work of others, and I especially hope that faulty memory hasn’t caused me to do that in this book. I hope that any errors are minor and that the essence is correct.

      Why did I write this memoir? Why did someone who

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