The following is an excerpt from Wes Oleszewski's book "Growing up with Spaceflight, Apollo Part Two" It is protected by copyright 2015 Wes Oleszewski, no part may be reused without the author's permission- publication here does not imply such permission.
APOLLO 16
THANK GOODNESS THE RODEO IS IN TOWN
Coasting toward the Moon, Apollo 16 was, again,
making it look easy. Those of us on the earth saw very little of the transit
between the Earth and the Moon as the big networks simply did not find it worth
their time on the evening news. Still, the mission continued to unfold in my
favor as each critical event just fell right into place on my calendar. Lunar
orbit was entered on Wednesday, April 19th and the lunar landing was
scheduled to take place on Thursday afternoon at 3:41 Eastern time with the
first EVA scheduled to begin that same day at 7:19 in the evening. The second
EVA was scheduled to start at 5:44 Friday Evening and the final EVA was set for
Saturday evening at 5:17 followed by lunar liftoff at 4:34 Sunday afternoon. An issue with the CSM TVC would cause a delay in the PDI, and reshuffle the EVA schedule. Yet, this all worked for me because my folks would give me Thursday off of school
for the landing and the rest of the events fell into a good place for me for
one big reason... the rodeo was in town!
Okay, so you may be asking yourself, “Rodeo? In
mid-Michigan? How the heck does that fit into Apollo 16?” The fact is that I
have about zero interest in rodeos or anything associated with them and the
same was true in April of 1972. My parents, however, at that time both worked
at the newly opened Saginaw Civic Center and the rodeo coming to town was a
huge event for the arena. Mom and Dad were going to be completely occupied from
early in the morning until late in the evening working at the Civic Center from
Wednesday until Sunday. Mom worked the commissary and Dad huckstered programs-
they made a good deal of extra money over and above Dad’s full-time job as a
railroad engineer for the C&O. The best part was that on Saturday and
Sunday, they were taking my brother and sister with them. They would both get
cowboy hats, and I would get Apollo 16! So it was that on Friday April 21, 1972
the scheduled first EVA for Apollo 16 was mine alone at home to enjoy and tape record.
In order to make up for the power used in the near
six hour delay prior to PDI, the crew had been directed by Mission Control to
execute an extensive power-down. Following that, the orders were for the
astronauts to go to sleep. The entire lunar activity schedule was being
re-written on the spot and the first EVA was now set to begin 11:30 am, Eastern
time the following morning rather than taking place at 7:19 pm this evening as
originally planned. Of course, the delay meant that the 7:19 time had already
passed- so the first EVA’s start time was already moot. That rescheduling struck
gold with me- now I had a reason to stay home from school on Friday too!
I did not even have to work at convincing my
parents to give me the day off. As they dragged themselves in from working at
the Civic Center, I simply told them that the EVA had been rescheduled to
tomorrow morning. Mom simply yawned and said,
“Have fun on the Moon dear.”
APOLLO 16:
NOTHING COULD BE WORSE THAN A SPACE-BUFF THAT IS
STUCK WATCHING SOAP OPERAS AND GAME SHOWS
Friday morning arrived and with my brother and
sister gone to school and my folks gone to the Civic Center, I had the whole
day by myself with nothing but continuous coverage of Apollo 16’s lunar EVAs on
the TV… or so I thought.
NBC started their coverage at noon, but by then
both astronauts were already on the surface and working after having popped the
hatch at 11:47 am Sheridan Park time. There was no news coverage of John
Young’s first step onto the lunar surface nine minutes later due to a failure
in the LEM’s high-gain antenna. Without that antenna, no television could be transmitted,
so no TV equated to no TV ratings and thus no TV interest from the network news
producers. Young’s first words as he became the ninth human to set foot on the
Moon and looked around were,
“There you are, our mysterious and unknown
Descartes Highland plains. Apollo 16 is gonna change your image.”
Instead of Young’s historic first steps onto the lunar surface, what we here on earth got was a 60 second blurb of Roy Neil telling us
that Young was on the surface and Duke was still “…inside the cabin…” In fact,
listening carefully to the tape, Duke’s voice can be heard in the background
telling Houston that he is, “…makin’ little footprints here…” which were some
of his first words on the surface, thus Charlie Duke was also walking on the
Moon at that moment. Roy Neil announced that TV pictures would be had as soon
as the lunar rover was set up and its camera was turned on; that would be
accomplished, “…in about an hour.”
“Okay,” I reasoned, “a break in coverage due to a
high-gain antenna failure, I can see that.”
What I did not know was that the networks had
decided to do away with the “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of the lunar EVAs,
similar to that given to political conventions. So instead of being able to
watch the moonwalks in an eight-hour marathon, as had been the case with Apollo
15, now we would get short segments inserted into regular programming. For
daytime TV addicts it was probably a huge annoyance, for space-buffs it was a
huge disappointment and another example of the networks turning their backs on
Apollo and the peaceful advancement of human civilization in favor of game
shows and soap operas.
Just before one o’clock the camera on the rover
was activated and the networks cut into “Let’s make a Deal” “As the World Turns”
and “Three On A Match” to show us the men walking on the lunar surface. Young
and Duke were loading up the rover and obviously enjoying every moment of it.
The pictures from the lunar surface were amazingly clear due to a new image
enhancement process that NASA had contracted prior to the mission.
“Beautiful!” Both astronauts exclaimed.
“This country needs that Shuttle mighty bad,” Young
added, “you’ll see.”
At that moment, John Young had no idea that he
would command the first Shuttle mission nearly a decade later as well as the
ninth mission two- and one-half years after that. Likewise, CAPCOM Tony England
would go on to fly on the 19th Shuttle mission STS-51F as a mission
specialist.
I spent the rest of the day busily spinning the rotary dial, switching between the three channels on our TV set, 5, 12 and 25, in the hope of being able to catch some coverage whenever whatever network saw fit to present it. Bringing out my black and white portable TV helped as I could leave it set on one channel and scan the other two with the big set. Still, it made for an aggravating afternoon- the worst part of which was having to watch the dribble that was being broadcast between the segments of EVA coverage. Nothing could be worse than a space-buff being stuck watching soap operas and game shows while a lunar EVA is in progress. Since the birth of humanity people have dreamed of walking upon the Moon and now, when it is finally happening, we got to watch soap operas.
I turned the sound off and began reciting my own
dialogue to the shows,
“Doctor, he has a hangnail.”
“Quick, prep him for surgery, we’ll have to remove
his gonads.”
“But Doctor…”
“Don’t argue with me nurse, I’ve had six months of
medical ROTC.”
The details of the EVAs I've saved in my book, "Growing up with Spaceflight- Apollo Part Two" which you can get on Amazon or get autographed at www.authorwes.com
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