38 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
NASA(^3)^The men who flew to the
moon reflect on legacies,
comfort and loneliness.
WALTER CUNNINGHAM
APOLLO 7, OCTOBER 1968
INTERVIEWED IN JULY 2018; NOW AGE 87ON DEALING WITH THE PRESSURES
“The general public at large was excited and kind of filled with
a tenseness over the fact that the [previous manned mission]
had been a fatal accident. But we never expected that; of course,
I’m sure that the prior crew did not,
either. But we spent that 21 months
getting about 1,060 changes in the
spacecraft. Our crew was responsible
for some of them, the engineers were
responsible for most of them, and
we’re all working together looking
forward to getting back on schedule
and landing a man on the moon
before the decade was out, because
that was the goal. We were also still
in a race with the Russians.
“It’s interesting. We got into orbit,
and we had a lot of objectives to
accomplish because there were a lot
of tests up there. But there was also kind of a sense of relief. We
were away from all the engineers and all the ground controllers,
and they couldn’t talk to us very often. We just started going to
work on the things we could.”ON THE IMPORTANCE
OF EXPLORING
“I think that the education of
our society at large should be
focusing more and more on
asking real questions about
pushing our whole society out
farther and farther. We’ve spent
a whole lot of time making
things more efficient, which is
pretty good, but we don’t teach
people that you’ve got to be
willing to stick your neck out to
get someplace in the universe
or in the world.”T O T H E MOON AND BACK
APOLLO,
IN THEIR OWN
WORDS
Being an astronaut isn’t easy:
grueling physical training,
punishing mental workouts,
willpower pushed to the limits.
Plus, of course, the risks —
there’s no guarantee of safe
return. “If you want to get in this
business,” says Apollo astronaut
Jim Lovell, “you better be
optimistic.”
The 32 men assigned to fly
in the Apollo program faced
unprecedented challenges, but
they also got to do something no
one else has ever done. We spoke
to some of them to find out what
it was like.
— BILL ANDREWS; INTERVIEWS BY ERIC
BETZ, DAVID J. EICHER, ALISON KLESMAN,
COREY S. POWELL AND RICHARD TALCOTTQuotes have been edited for length and clarity.