Skip to content

General Tom Stafford (Former Astronaut, NASA)

Published on Mon, 13 May 2019 10:00:22 +0000

A true space exploration legend tells us what it was like to orbit the moon and why he's never stopped wanting to fly higher.

Synopsis

In this special episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent travels to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where he and senior writer James Stacey sit down with General Tom Stafford, a legendary figure in the U.S. space program. General Stafford's remarkable career includes flying two Gemini missions, Apollo 10, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. He achieved numerous firsts, including performing the first rendezvous in space during Gemini 6, and later became the fastest man ever during Apollo 10's lunar mission. Beyond his astronaut career, he served as U.S. Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Research Development and Acquisition, where he initiated all stealth programs including the F-117A and B-2 bomber, and developed the advanced cruise missile.

The conversation explores General Stafford's journey from his selection as one of nine astronauts in 1962, through his rigorous training and groundbreaking missions, to his instrumental role in developing technology like live color television broadcasts from space during Apollo 10. He discusses the Apollo-Soyuz mission's impact on U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War, which ultimately led him to adopt two Russian orphan boys fifteen years ago. The General shares his perspectives on modern commercial space travel, expressing concerns about inexperienced companies and safety protocols. He also recounts his long relationship with Omega, from wearing Speedmaster watches on all his missions to serving on the company's board and writing the specifications for the X-33 watch. Throughout the interview, General Stafford emphasizes the importance of tenacity and attitude, sharing the wisdom that "it's your attitude, not your aptitude, that will take you to the highest altitude of your career and your life."

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown All right, what you're about to hear is one of the cooler hours of my journalistic career. Last Thursday at the crack of dawn, I hopped into an Uber, drove through the quiet, early morning streets of New York City, and boarded a flight for Orlando, Florida. My ultimate destination, the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Omega was hosting three days of programming, and Hodinki senior writer James Stacey was already on the ground there snapping photos and hopefully working on his tan. But last minute, Omega was able to arrange something pretty special for us that made a day trip down to Florida a total no-brainer for me. Less than two hours after wheels down, I found myself sitting across a table from General Tom Stafford. If you're somehow unfamiliar with the General, suffice it to say he's a US space program legend. A few quick CV items, he flew two Gemini missions, Apollo 10 and Apollo-Syouz. He has way too many firsts to his name for me to mention them here, but we'll get into all of that in our conversation. And, this being Hodinki Radio, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that he's also been on the board of Omega since the early 80s and led development of products like the X33. The man is as real deal as he gets and exceedingly humble, despite the fact that calling him a genuine American hero is likely an understatement. It was such a privilege to spend some time with him. Now, you're not going to hear a ton of James or me in this one, as we both kind of just wanted to soak in everything General Stafford had to share. It's better that way, I promise. I'm your host Stephen Pulverant, and this is Hodinky R Thank you so much for joining us. Really good to see
Unknown you. Well, more than glad to it's great to be here. Always good to see the Omega team out of Switzerland.
Unknown Yeah. So we're here at the Kennedy Space Center and we're we're celebrating fifty years of the of the moon landing. Uh but But before the moon landing could happen, some other things had to happen, including your mission, Apollo 10. And I think that's a good place to start start this interview. I'm gonna get right into it because I'm I'm
Unknown Well besides Apollo ten, we had to demonstrate we could do a rendezvous to go to the moon. Right. That was the way. And I did that on Gemini 6. I flew the first rendezvous- in space, so four ten. We ended three more different rendezvous on nine. Be an early phase rendezvous. It would be on the moon. Okay. Of course we had a demonstrate rendezvous, which I did
Unknown . And we were chatting about, you know, where where does a conversation with you with you start? You know, and and I kept coming back to I I wanted to start with asking what might seem like a very basic question, but you go through Gemini, you go through the early stages of Apollo 10, and you get to the moon. What does that feel like
Unknown ? Every mission was different. It built on the steps or the shoulders of the last one. I was very fortunate. I just thank God I was there in the pioneering days of the space program. Every mission was a new mission. It was great to fly on great challenge to do it right
Unknown . And you you said every mission was a new mission. Yeah. What was it like to know every time you were you were doing something that that was that was the first time. You were doing something that had had never been done before and you you had to kind of figure it out as you did it.
Unknown Well you were looking for it with great anticipation. Because you'd train for it, you'd worked at it
Unknown . Yeah, the the training is something I think doesn't maybe get talked about enough. And and you know, from the time you were signed up for the space program until your first flight was about three years, right? Right. What were those three years like knowing that you were training to eventually make it into space? Well, you put in a lot of work
Unknown and oftentimes the 40-hour weeks of vacation. And I was the backup pilot for the first Gemini mission, Gemini 3. Then turned around this prime crew on Gemini 6 that did the first rendezvous in space
Unknown . And so you're selected in 1962? Right. What was your life like then and what made you want to apply for the space program? Well, I always w
Unknown anted to go higher and faster. And so when Kennedy said to go to the moon, that was in 61, I said, that's for me, but they had the Mercury seven astronauts there. And so they finally said, we're gonna have a s a selection for the next group. Twenty two hundred applied and they selected nine. So I was one of the nine selected. What was the application process like? Well, you filled out forms and you had a series of interviews and they looked at your background, your exper
Unknown ience, and what you'd done. Coming up in the Air Force and then moving into being a t a test pilot, is is there with with that's obviously going to help that kind of application process. Well, you had to be a test pilot. It just to be able to apply you had to be a test pilot? Well uh before you get
Unknown that before you could even be accepted into the test pilot school for the training, it took nine months. You had to have a good experience flying. And that's that and that's not not just getting out of pilot training. You had out of pilot training in several years of of uh having challenging
Unknown And o over the span of your career you would have flown some how how many planes do you figure you aircraft and helicopters, only about eight helicopters, about 15 And anything stand out as a fa is a silly question to ask if you like are there some you look back on and you'd like to have another go? Well I love the F sixteen
Unknown . Because that a side stick controller was just like a spacecraft. Sure. Had great performance. It was the first fly-by-wire operational aircraft we had. It was the first aircraft that was unstable longitudinally. Every aircraft has to be designed, you know, for commercial anything, to have stability longitudinally. In other words, you pull up, don't do anything it'll go down. Well the sixteen you pull up it'll go like that. But the fly by wire. So the the you know the wings of an aircraft lifts the weight of an aircraft plus the download on the tail to get there. So when you move the center of gravity back to make it unstable, the wingless w less of the weight of the airplane. And the tail lift. So yeah, the wing lifting, the tail lifting. You can turn that thing on a dime
Unknown . So that instability lends itself to better agility as long as you know what you're doing at the controls? Oh yeah. Oh wow. Okay. Okay
Unknown . Do you do you remember the first time you flew one? Because it sounds like that was a very different thing
Unknown . As Commanding General of the Flight Test Center. And the YF, the prototype sixteen, was there. So I was the thirteenth test pilot to ever have my hands on the controls of the F-16.
Unknown Wow. Wow. And would you say that this is a a left field question for you, but would you say you have a a normal relationship with risk? Or with risk? With the c idea of risk, with the idea that things are kind of dangerous Or or did you really did you really like something like a plane that was kind of twitchy but agile or or I w
Unknown anted um technically and like always look at the lat
Unknown est. You like being out right on the kind of on that edge, whether that it was the edge of space or the or the edge of uh the speed of sound or something like that. Okay
Unknown . I read somewhere that when you applied to the space program, you also were looking at going to business school. Is that is that true? Is that what the plan was before the application process for the space program?
Unknown We didn't know when they were going to select more astronauts. I said the Air Force does great things technically, but where they're lacking is in management. So instead of just griping about it, I want to do something positive. So the Air Force had two slots every year at Harvard Business School. So I applied and received one of the slots. And also I was in the then in the process of starting, you know, for the astronaut group. And they didn't, they said it's gonna be delayed. We don't know when, so I left Edwards, went to Harvard. I was there for three days when I got a call from Dick Slate that wanted to join the corps. I said absolutely, so I was the first dropout
Unknown of my class. Okay. You're doing pretty pretty all right for a Harvard dropout. It would probably been boring. Compared to what I've done what my life has been. Yeah, yeah. I think that's that's fair to say. I think most lives uh seem seem relatively. Would it would have been a lot harder to become the fastest man ever. Yeah, that's true. That's very, very true. You know, one one of the things I wanted to make sure we touch on is is part of doing things first also means then helping other people get to that next stage and helping communicate what that first was like. And I know you were instrumental in the the early missions in things like making sure that the camera equipment was good enough to broadcast good images back and and really communicating what space travel was all about. Why was that so important to you? Well
Unknown I'd flown two missions to space, Gemini six, Gemini nine. And you know, sp the Earth from sp there was so beautiful. But all we could do is take these Hasselblad steel photos. We had a 16 millimeter movie camera. Take a little strip of it. But I said, why can't we have a TV, color TV? So I did that at the same time as a backup commander for the first Apollo flight. Turned around through ten. As soon as I got off the first apollo fly, I really got into ten. I said, what was the plans for color TV? He said, we have plans for um, well, to have it here in three years. I said baloney. I said a lot of other things I will not repeat it. And so I put together a skunkworks team and we developed it in four months. And uh so the first time you saw live color TV from space was Apollo ten. And I remember also had some and and so uh the that it was really unique and you know you move out real fast and we left the earth and um we sh we turned on a TV the first time when I turned around and docked with the lunar module. And you could actually see the lunar module was a fragile vehicle. had this uh thin aluminum cover over all the insulation on the top. Hit the probe, you could see it shake. You could actually see the rivets, is that type of definition. And um but you gotta think out of the box how we we did this. And uh so at the at the end of the day we were really feeling high because things had gone good and earth was getting smaller, it was about the size of a basketball. And everybody was just raving about it in Michigan trouble. But he said the American public was really enthaled of them. I said, look, before we went to bed that night and put up those went to went to sleep, not to bed, but in the put up the aluminum window shades. I said, say, why don't you call the president of the British Flat Earth Society and tell them that he's wrong? And you can see it right here on Live Color TV, the earth is round. So I went to sleep. Next morning wake up. They're they read the morning news back, you know. They say the world is really a amazed the color T V coming back and all this and what's going on. Then about the second or third item, they said the message from the president of the British Flat Earth Society in London. He said yes, he saw Colonel Stafford's beautiful pictures of the earth. It is round, but it's a flat disk
Unknown . He came right back at you. Wow. You know, you t you touched on it there that the the American public was was enthralled, and I think it's hard for us maybe to understand today just how important space exploration was then and how much it meant to the country. W was that something y you were thinking about, you know, kind of in in the day to day, or was it something that you kind of had to acknowledge and then set aside so that you could do your job. W
Unknown ell that uh I wanted to share the beauty of space with all the people. Also it showed how great America was. Really, if you look at it, it's kind of a projection of soft power. Ye
Unknown ah. Which is interesting because then you were part of Apollo-Soyuz, which was about kind of partnership, I guess, and about uh maybe softening relationships with with the Soviets. What made that mission different? And not just technically, but sort of emotionally and and in terms of its its goals than the other missions. Well,
Unknown it was um I guess um All my missions were different in a way. But as far as training, that was the hardest because I had to learn the Russian language. And with my Oklahoma accent, I used to get muscle cramps in my cheeks, tongue, ch But um it was uh it probably affected my life more than any was um um getting to go to the Soviet Union to hike the Cold War and then afterwards once we started that was the basis of the shuttle mirror program how we once we started back and you know, because I thought we'd have something with the shuttle and Sayus and work that but then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and relationship got real cold and everything. So things but once we started working, the administration and because of my say vast knowledge of the Soviet space program. Now the Russian space program when the the Soviet Union dissolved so that we'd work together was based uh on Apollo Soyuz and how we'd apply it to the space shuttle. So I was going back and forth to Russia all the time. And then International Space Station. So from that always had two daughters from my first marriage. I always wanted a boy and so he said I want to adopt a Russian boy, I started. My wife says, no, you need two boys. And so she's right. So I called my buddy Lyanov. He says, Tom, no problem. So anyway, 15 years ago I adopted two Russian orphan boys. So it changed my life forever
Unknown . That's amazing. And and you think that all came out of Apollo Soyuz? Oh yeah. It must have been strange to be somebody who who is was seen during the height of the Cold War simultaneously as a national hero, as as you know, a great American, but at the same time have this sort of understanding and not necessarily sympathy, but but a real emotional connection to the Soviet Union. That that must have been a strange sort of line to be on both sides of it
Unknown . For the mission Apollo Sayus. Because they they really had their cosmonauts up on a pedestal big time. And uh so I was accepted as one of them
Unknown . After participating in that, was it strange coming home in the height of the Cold War and seeing kind of how how most people here viewed the Soviet Union and you kind of had this other perspective?
Unknown Well, you can't be naive. The Russian people are great people, but don't confuse that with the political situation
Unknown . Aaron Powell I'm interested just in terms of if you look back on all of your numerous successes across your life, outside of being obvious an exceedingly talented pilot, uh do you think there are any specific personality traits that that led you down that path, whether it's tenacity or or maybe just boredom status quo or right there
Unknown . Tenacity. You know, I've given quite a few speeches, graduation speeches, and you know, I get a lot of requests, but uh I don't do that. But I heard it from a good friend and said in life, it's your attitude, not your aptitude, that will take you to the highest altitude of your career and your life. So it's tonight it's your attitude to do the best you can. And keep going. And you keep at it. Just keep at it like a bulldog.
Unknown I wonder kind of along along those lines. I love that. What in your life outside of the space program are you most proud of
Unknown ? Well, see uh uh only aly if not many people know about it. My last job I was the U.S. Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Research Development and Acquisition. I was the one that started all the stealth programs in the Air Force. I started the 117A. I wrote the specs for the stealth bomber one afternoon in a hotel room in Chicago. Started the stealth bomber. And that helped bring down the Soviet Union. Because it goes back to Apollo and the Manhattan Project, we developed the first atomic bomb in a couple of years. And the Soviets had a tremendous air defense set up. And suddenly when unveiled the advanced technology bomber of the B-2, you know, I said, oh my God, all these really probably a trillion dollars equivalent in those days. They had thousands of interceptors, they had surface to air missiles, air-to-air missiles. It's just unbelievable what they. But then if they couldn't see anything, it's all over. And then I developed the advanced cruise missile. Ever look it up, AGM, write it down, AGM 12, capital AGM-129. It was a cruise, super stealth cruise missile. B-52 could carry twelve under the wings and you if you wanted to modify the bombay carry four more carry sixteen. You could launch it over London and it go past Moscow two thousand miles. And it had a nuclear warhead that had uh nine times the power of Hiroshima. So you could launch it over London and take out Moscow and nobody would ever see it. The Brits, the French, the Germans, east and West and nobody'd see it. Belly Russia. Nobody'd see it. I I think one of the And also I started the roadmap for the F-22
Unknown . I I think one of the things that you that sets you apart is you understand both soft and hard power in a way that very few people do. Most people kind of have a mind for one or for the other. Um how how do you think about those two things working together or working separately? W
Unknown ell you can have different objectives, nice and objectives, but you can still have cooperation. Yeah, well we're five years late and we're still relying on the Russians. So we've relied on the Russians since the summer of 2011. Soon be the summer of 2000 for eight years. The only way up or down. And also after the Columbia accident for two years, the only way up or down. So it's ten years. We have relied completely on the Russians. Up and down
Unknown . Yeah, that that that's something I I w I thought we would talk about it later, but let's let's do it now is I wanna get your thoughts on commercial space travel. You know, and i when you were at the heart of the space program, it was it was a national effort. It was heavily patriotic. It had economic and political goals, but it also had sort of um uh emotional goals as well to kind of raise the spirit of of the country. Now what do you think about these commercial entities, typically headed by you know kind of multi-uh billionaire kind of like captains of industry? Uh what what do you think about that? Well
Unknown , first of all, they have no experience. They've never built anything like this before. So what gives them the expertise? NASA has all the the sam safety criteria, the engineering, the integration, all this. And these people have nothing. Now they'll hire former NASA people, all this. But look at the track record. We're five years late. And Mr. Musk has had three explosions now. And you I won't go into a lot of technical details, but those got carbon carbon helium rack tanks inside of oxygen, that's an explosive mixture. And one blew up on the pad here in first September 2016. And NASA would never let anybody put an ounce after Apollo thirteen we learned don't ever have carbon and oxygen. Oh really we've had two experiences. Apollo one where the crew got burned up. Yeah. Inside of a spark, a little spark. See it you can see a spark. That's four to six thousand degrees. And uh you have oxygen and materials with carbon, you're off and running. How was gaseous oxygen? Then on Apollo 13, we had two oxygen tanks in a service module that uh provided oxygen and and then also two other things had hydrogen for the fuel cells that made water and white the prime thing was electricity byproduct was water. And when a pot of there they had double walled inconel steel and a little spark in there. Touched off was uh it was a phenolic that a lot which has a lot of carbon in it. And Teflon wiring instrumentation had carbon in it, had spark. And you've seen pictures of Apollo 13? Those incon L steel tanks, double walled, just was disintegrated and it blew out a core of the service module. And so here Musk has all has all these carb these tanks, these called composite overwrap pressure vessels with carbon. The shuttle, we had a lots more oxygen than he has. We had zero carbon in it. So that's commercial for you. I call it subsidized. Subsidized
Unknown . Okay. Do you think Do you think then that the real way forward is going to eventually come back to NASA? No do you think that's lack of political will, lack of interest, economic forces, something else? Well,
Unknown look. Mr. Musk helped Mr. Obama get elected. So it was a big push during that time for commercial and particularly his. Yeah. There's a lot of things for commercial space, as far as weather satellites, communication satellites, you know, things like this. That's fine. But human space flight and exploration, those are big bucks. And uh you just saw he blew up his spacecraft out here on the Cape. There's nothing left. Had there been a crew around there, there wouldn't be nothing left of the crew. That's commercial space
Unknown . And for human space travel, do you think we should and do you think we will go back to the moon anytime soon? W
Unknown ell, the Vice President and House President Bush uh Trump has requested money to try to be back on the moon by 2024. That's five and a half years from now. It's gonna be a real push. When we made Kennedy's goal, we had to start from scratch. You have a lot of things built and technology knowledge built. I don't know that we have the supply chains leading in, but also look what he had. He had the famous von Braun and his group had all this experience. You had probably the greatest program manager in the world, the man would put manage the B-52. He put the thousand-minute man in the ground. Name was General Sam Phillips and he managed the Apollo program. You don't have that today. You got some honest, good, hardworking people. They don't have the
Unknown experience. Looking back at uh at Apollo 10. I I'd love to hear you walk me through what it was like to fly the lunar module so close to the surface at such an an an incredible speed. Yeah, well it's interesting
Unknown . The speed around Earth orbit, seventeen thousand four hundred feet per second or meters is about eight thousand meters per second or feet per second, 25,600 feet per second. Round the moon. I thought I was gonna stall out because I got in the lunar orbit. It goes so slow. You're doing 3,700 miles an hour or 5,500 feet per second. But when they got lower, they see the lunar surface down to the we're down to nine miles and these boulders, these boulders are bigger than these uh dome stadiums you see around, like the Georgia Dome or the Acid Dome, Houston. And just winging by? Huh? Just go flying by? Well, it's going slow. craters and it'd be up on the rim, some of the down there. I've never seen anything like that before. Obviously the earth had the same thing, but the over the billions of years the wind, the water it's eroded, it's all gone. Yeah. Well it's you had three modes, just like the Gemini or like the Powell Command and Service Modge. You had pulse mode where you just' bell a millisecond or a couple of millisecond, just a little pop, pop, pop. That'd save you fuel. Or you had rate command the more you just deflect the stick, the more the faster it goes or you add direction, just boom, it could accelerate
Unknown . And the idea with something like that is to hold a certain orientation while while or we're doing local horizontal
Unknown . You gotta pitch down all the time because you're gonna see if you didn't have a if you didn't pitch down, you go around a see this body. Hundred and eighty degrees you'd be going this way. So you got around the earth, you go around the earth in about ninety minutes. Three hundred and sixty degrees, ninety into three sixty is four, right? You got to pitch down four degrees a minute. Around the moon, the orbit's two hours, one hundred and twenty minutes. Hundred and twenty to three sixty is three
Unknown . So you pitch down three degrees a minute. And that keeps you oriented against the the the shape of the moon. The that keeps you oriented for the circular flight flight around the moon
Unknown . Okay. Do you remember the feeling di first of all, did you know when you flew Apollo soyuz that that would be your last space Oh sure. You knew. Oh yeah. D do you remember that feeling you know, after logging over over five hundred hours what it felt like to say, okay, I'm I'm entering Earth's orbit and I'm I'm not coming back out here.
Unknown The only thing I was thinking about in Earth orbit is turning around and picking up a docket module, like I did the lunar module. I had to pick that up so I could go dock with them
Unknown . That's what I was thinking about. I was no, no, none of that. That that gets to something that I I think is interesting, which is that, you know, for people like James and myself who who have have not done this, uh there's so much romance around it. But when you're it sounds like when when you're actually up there, like you you A have a job to do. There B are tons of safety concerns, tons of safety concerns, and you really have to stay, stay focused. And I wonder at what point does being up in space, if it ever does, start to feel routine or normal? Does it ever start to just feel like another another day at at work
Unknown ? Well, it may up on the space station, I think so. What do you say? Three, four, five, six? Yeah, uh that that could be somewhat. But what I did the whole way
Unknown . And with with Gemini six, did the simulations and the training really prepare you for what it was gonna be like? Sure did. Yeah. Like even even just kind of mentally to know, well, I'm now that far away from like I guess you would have flown very high in all sorts of test planes, but the Gemini's in the world space is good. Where you could read every book, you could sit in the simulator, you could do all that, but there's a certain point where like the last few flitches uh switches are fired and you're going. And I just wonder how how disparate the two are
Unknown well the fundamentals of flying. The same. Your operating systems, you got the stick here, you got the throttle here. A lot of it is the same. A lot of it is
Unknown uh and the experience is the same. Is there anything that surprised you? Does the ship move around more than you expect? Is it louder or quieter than maybe you would have guessed it to be? Like on launch or maybe re-entry, something like that? Well, it'
Unknown s you when you go through maximum dynamic pressure, you go supersonic. It screams and howls and it's quiet after that. You're supersonic out there. And reentry it's you just pull a bunch of cheese just like you when the Jiminy did going out. The real hot ride was Jiminy. See the big Saturn I flew to the moon was 11 minutes in the orbit. The small Saturn I flew, like the one you see out here. Two-stage, I did Apollo Soyuz, that's 10 minutes to orbit. The Gemini Titan, like you can see the Gemini Titan. I was in orbit in five minutes and thirty-five seconds. That's um flattened. See you. What we had was a nine megaton warrant. You know how b nine megatons that big is? I have no scale for what nine megatons be. Okay. Nine megatons means nine million tons. Right. A ton is two thousand pounds. So nine million times two thousand is eighteen billion. So that's eighteen billion pounds of TNT.
Unknown Okay. How does how does five and a half minutes compare to a shuttle? The what? The shuttle was
Unknown eight minutes and twenty seconds. Okay. What it did, it it kept throttling back. You never got over three G's in a shuttle. See in Gemini, we got up to nearly six G's in the first stage, a stage and a big fireball, because you fired the second stage before the a millisecond or so before the bolts blew, because they wanted to be sure you got that thing out of there. And there's holes. You can see it out there in that fairing around the held the first and second stage. So the fire went out through there. In fact, it blew that part away. And you were gone. So you go about six G's, shh, stop, fireball, through it. And then in that second stage, you got up to eight Gs. And then you went from eight G's to zero G in a tenth of a second by
Unknown That's wild. And at that point you look out the window. Huh? At that point you look out the window. I was looking out the window all the time. What what are you thinking? Cross-checking this. At that point but like does that experience line up with what you were thinking about the night before when you went to bed? Mm-hmm. No. Or is it just grander in a way that it's hard to do? No, I
Unknown was just No, I was going on a fly to see how a hard time getting the first time the uh that the Gina rocket blew up target October of 65. So they had an idea of putting seven would be a long duration mission. Take six off the pad, put a transpawner and oz at seven, launch seven, real fast. The Air Force never done it for us, so they'd try. Get us on the pad and launch in nine days after that. And we'd rendezvous in four orbits with seven. Well we got all squared away in T minus three seconds the engine went off and started to shake round and roll and exactly at T zero it shut out. And we had the lift-off signal. And a fire broke out. So that's when I was, if I forgot a hot mic, I was quoted saying, ah, shucks.
Unknown W one thing I wanna I wanna make sure we talk about is is your relationship with with Omega. You know, I think everybody knows that you you wore um speedmasters when you were flying. Yeah. That I think is is a story most people people know about. Um I I I do think it's worth worth asking. I'm sure you've been asked before, but when you were flying, you know, we're still in in an era of of analog controls. Are you using that watch constantly? Yeah. Yeah
Unknown . Were you as as a pilot? I had one omega on Gemini 6, Gemini 9. On Apollo 10, Apollo Soyuz, I had two omegas. I had one on mission elapsed time. Mission elapsed time is what determines everything, the whole flight plan, everything. And also I wonder what time it was in Houston. So I had mission elapsed time here on my left wrist, Houston time on my right wrist. That'
Unknown s so awesome. Yeah, I mean absolutely is. That is so cool. What what are a few examples of the sorts of things you would be using the chronograph to time while on a mission? Probably. What are a few examples of things you would use the chronograph to timer for. Particularly maneuvers. Which are all all time based. Huh
Unknown ? How long the burn would be, you mean? Well depends. Sometimes it might be ten seconds around the longest was when I broke into orbit around the moon, that was six minutes.
Unknown Yeah. And beyond, you know, wearing wearing the watches while flying, you then ended up developing a a close relationship with Omega. You ended up on on the board of Omega. Um when when did that all start and how did you get interested and and involved? I Well, I knew the Om
Unknown ega repair is a close friend of mine in Houston. And also I got to know all just by circumstance, the head of R D of Omega. He's the one that invented the quartz watch, Dr. Hans Vidman. Just passed away recently. And he was a great person. And so all that. And so I got to know 'em and and also Omega was at the time in the US a family out of New York had got the distributorship for the whole US back in the thirties. Okay. And and it it made a lot of money, but also it kind of let it go down. And Omega said, we're taking it back. And 80. So they at the same time I got out of the Air Force, retired early. My first wife was had some health problems. Turned down the opportunity for a four-star probably in eighteen months, two years. And because I was having a bowl. Then you know all these stealth things and go on. Yeah. I had a budget of about forty billion. And I was doing all of money to work with. Yeah. So and And I knew all the captains of industry and so they came, um told me when I got out, they wanted me to take over as non-executive chairman of the U.S. Omega, which I did. And then I went on the board of the Swiss company. Then the Swiss watch industry all went to pieces. In 8081, when the Japanese and Hong Kong came out, and then they re-exam, so I went off the board there, still, so I'm still on the border of the holding company, called the Swatch Group US. Yep. And that has Omega T Solado. Right.
Unknown Coming from the Air Force, what was it like to then have this whole other kind of of business challenge? You know, I would imagine look, I I'd
Unknown manage so many billions of dollars. And uh and also uh as an astronaut I'd made so many speeches and been on a public speaking circuit. So it was It was great. And Omega is a real quality top-notch thing, and that's the only
Unknown thing I wanted to be associated with. Yeah. Yeah, and you were you were really instrumental in the development of the X-33 as well. I wrote the specs for the X thirty three, just like I wrote the specs for the B two bower. What got you thinking? Sure. And Apol
Unknown lo and Gemini were uh we had five pounds per square inch pressure we flew with pure oxygen and out in space. And so you gotta have a real rugged watch. And that's what the professional speedmaster is. But the shuttle had sea level pressure, you know, twenty-one oxygen, seventy eight, seventy-nine nitrogen. And so you didn't need to have such a rugged watch. And um for insight, and a professional speed master's been the only one ever qualified to go outside. And but then we started getting inside a somboard and they wanted to mess around with things instead of having a computer. They like these Cassios, G shocks. You could take a ballpoint pen and mess around with them. So I said, hey, I could and I was I said we gotta update, we gotta get m modernized. So I went down and spent about a three days in Houston, talked to all the astronauts, the veterans and a few of the guys coming up with new f people. What was your like? It's obviously you need analog, you need the people think just look boom. Yeah w you can see a a digital sign like that, but just kind of a snapshot, you know. You can see a hands better. But you still need digital and certain things. So we need analog, we need digital, we need countdown as well as count up. And also, you're always run behind time. So we need an alarm. And then also at night you need a light. So I wrote all these specs up, sent them over to the switch. Ernst Tompke was the head of uh Omega R D
Unknown then. I was just gonna say I I remember the uh with the X thirty three the first time I I got a chance to play around with one, the alarm was incredibly loud. Uh yeah because
Unknown uh the space shuttle had more noise in the circular than the the Apollo did. We needed 85 decibels. So we made a double titanium back
Unknown . Yeah, it has those it has like a ported kind of circular opening on the sides of the case like on the flank of the case back. Yeah, well you have a really a double
Unknown back with opening on the sides so it resonates and let the noise out. Absol
Unknown utely. And then it also I believe that was though you that watch also had total mission time, like a uh a separate chronograph that would log the total elapse time of the mission. Yeah. That was a pretty cool feature too. Less useful maybe on Earth, but uh definitely a neat a neat call out to its uh actual design. Yeah
Unknown . What why do you think it is that the Speedmaster Professional, the Moonwatch, why do you think it still is such a powerful symbol for so many people
Unknown well it's it's a great functional watch. Yeah, you gotta wind it every day. But uh I guess it's that's appealing you see everybody trying other competition trying to copy the design with the the two push buttons on it and I don't know but uh I think the association with Apollo is still one of the best selling watches around
Unknown . But yeah, absolutely. I think probably half the people in our office own them in some variation. But uh one thing you mentioned was was in the development of the X thirty three was going to Houston and talking to veteran astronauts as well as as current astronauts. How tight is the astronaut community? What is that community
Unknown like well yeah we just some real close friends like I was very close to Wally Shirah flew and Gene Cern, he was my co-pilot twice, Dick Slayton. I was close to Al Shepard. And then it's just like when you have friends, you always have some close friends and less friends. Yeah
Unknown . I mean, I I would imagine you get asked literally every day, no matter where you go, you get asked what it what it was like to be to be in space, what it was like to go to the moon. Do you find that it's it's hard to fully articulate what that experience was like for people. Do you think it's something that people who haven't done it can't actually understand? Or do you think it's something that we can't explain it, but it takes a long time. Yeah. Have there been other experiences in your life that you you would compare to those experiences? Nothing? No
Unknown . Now in flying some of the well I've had some emergencies in flying. I've had some emergencies in space. But it's all my previous background is lying. And that's why you we flew T thirty eights all the time. To keep you flying, you gotta be on top of things
Unknown . Are there any you know, I th there there are some famous stories of of speed masters being used in tough tough situations, I would say. Apollo 1
Unknown 3 is the main one. Right. We were so close on electrical power. We were in that lunar module. We had a drifting dream. And um then every so we'd track 'em for six or eight hours from the earth. And we had an optical sight like this across here as a docking. It's called a COAS. And uh we'd tell them to align that on the limb of the earth and then for at a certain time when you're a good omega watch and for so many minutes and seconds thrust that decent stage to pull us back. But that was the first thing, see, that was the first um moon lunar mission that was non-free return. See, eight, ten, eleven, twelve. It was all free return. We didn't do anything and go around the moon and right back to the earth within a few feet per second, maybe. But we got more and more weight on it. So we went non-free return, and it takes less fuel to burn into lunar orbit. The problem is if you don't burn into lunar orbit, adios, you're gone. Forever. And the first thing was to get them back in the Earth-Moon system.
Unknown Interesting. I I know we're we're running short on on time, but there was one last question I wanted to make sure we got um and it's a bit of a cliche but i think it's worth asking is um if you could go back and tell yourself one thing the night before your first Gemini mission, what would you go back and tell yourself? Well, I brushed up on a
Unknown simulator the day before. Well, I was relaxed. I'd gone through the checklist
Unknown . You think you were in a good a good spot. Oh yeah. Good. Good. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. This is an unbelievable treat. I know, James. Thank you very much. James and I have been looking forward to this. So thank you so much and enjoy the celebration tonight. It's uh very very well-earned. This week's episode was recorded on-ites at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it was produced and edited by Grayson Corjonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show, it really does make a difference. Thank you, and we'll see you next week.