Space Walker: a conversation with astronaut Dick Gordon

In 2007, I began a series of long format, informal conversations with astronauts spanning Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. Among those I interviewed were Vance Brand, Dick Gordon, Jim Lovell (via email) and George “Pinky” Nelson (in person).

Astronaut Richard F. Gordon Jr. and I spoke via telephone for almost two hours. I was grateful for the generosity of his time and candid nature of his words. The phone call started with a brief chat with Gordon's wife Linda. Then, he and I exchanged pleasantries and talked about the newspaper article that would be created as a result of our conversation.

The transcript below is abridged. A few pauses and off-topic exchanges not relevant to spaceflight have been omitted. My questions and his answers are unedited and in the original context.

RW: Can you tell me a little bit about your youth, growing up around Seattle?

Gordon: It was pretty simple in reality. I was born in Seattle. I don’t remember much of it as a youth. My great grandparents were homesteaded by President Grover Cleveland after immigrating in the 1800s. I was born in October of 1929 and couple of weeks later I caused a crash and my father lost his job with family members in the produce business. Then the family moved to Kingston. Those are my first memories. I still have two friends that I grew up with in the neighborhood since all three of were four or five years old. We’ve been friends for the better part of 70 years, which I think, is somewhat unique. I stayed in Kingston through High School. I went to North Kitsap and graduated from there in 1947. We’re having our 60th reunion on the 6th of September this year, which I plan to attend. After graduating North Kitsap, I went to the University of Washington for four years and during the Korean War in 1951, after I was finished with school, I was obligated by Uncle Sam to spend some time in the military. I joined the Navy in order to learn how to fly and I guess, as the saying goes, the rest is history.

RW: When you started in naval aviation what were you flying at first?

Gordon: My first airplane was the SNJ. It was a little prop airplane that the Air Force called the T-6. Those of us in the Navy with the letters SNJ called it “super Navy jet.” It was far from that (laughter). That was the first airplane that I flew when I started flying in 1952.

RW: When did you move into jet fighters?

Gordon: Um, let’s see… that was very shortly after I got my wings. I went back to all-weather flight school in Corpus Cristi and then after a couple months there, I was assigned to a jet-transitional squadron in Kingsville, Texas where the first jet airplane I flew was the T-33, as the Navy calls it, and even the single seat F-80. I remained in jet aviation for the rest of my career.

RW: When was your start with the space program?

Gordon: I was selected in… I missed the second selection I’m sorry to say but I was selected the next time around in third selection group in October of 1963. I reported in and started working with NASA at the Johnson Spaceflight Center, which in those days was called MSC, Manned Spacecraft Center in January 1964. I would spend eight years there and retired in 1972.

RW: I was doing some reading about Gemini 11 that you were able to do two space walks, one was a tethered space walk and the other one was where you stood in the open doorway and was taking photographs mostly?

Gordon: Yeah, that was the second EVA, which was successful. We called it the stand up EVA, which I was actually standing and hanging out the hatch of the spacecraft. During that period of time, Pete Conrad and I, during a lull in activity, both fell asleep cruising over the Atlantic. But the first EVA was totally different. It was not very successful—in some regards it was, but I was unable to complete the assigned task. Basically, because we hadn’t really learned how to use that environment. Sure, we’d been out there with Ed White in Gemini 4 and Vernon, Mike Collins in Gemini 9 and 10.

RW: Now when you went out, I know Ed White had a positioning gun that he was using, but I don’t recall if you had anything to maneuver with, did you?

Gordon: That was still one of those tasks that I didn’t get to perform, but Ed didn’t have any work to do and he made it look too easy. That gave us a false sense of security because we soon learned that you can’t do work outside the space craft until you have a tether kind of system. I mean a tether that hooks you to the spacecraft. We’ve since learned to do some free flying, if you will. But if you’re going to do some work out there, you need something to keep you at the workstation instead of your hands. You need your hands to do work and if you use one of them to hold you in place or hold you in position, it’s very difficult to tie your shoelaces with one hand. I equate that with the tasks that were scheduled to be performed. Hey, failure could very well be our best teacher. We failed in some of those aspects and later on we learned that you need tethers, you need something to keep you at your workstation and in position. Look at the great successes we’re having today with EVA. One of the best ones I can illustrate to you is the flight with Story Musgrave. He was the leader in the EVAs with Hubble telescope repair missions. Those were a great illustration of how far we’ve come not only in EVA but also in training. After my flight, Gemini 11, we learned that our training wasn’t very good. So we adopted the water tank that’s been used in training ever since. You can better get a feel for the timelines and things that you can do during the EVA. It’s a very, very valuable training tool.

RW: I was going to ask, even though the neutral buoyancy training began after your mission, were you able to go through the training?

Gordon: Yes. Shortly after the mission, we’re all scratching our heads wondering what can we do and the director of Johnson Spacecraft Center, Dr. Robert Gillruth, actually came up with that idea. Those of us in EVA training were involved with the development of the techniques which in turn just a couple months later were successfully performed on Gemini 12.

RW: As far as the feel of being underwater in a spacesuit versus the feel of being in space, is it an accurate simulation?

Gordon: Well, not really. Zero G is Zero G and you’re still in one G when you’re in a water tank. But you could be neutrally buoyed and if you don’t use the water as an environment in which you can swim by moving your arms, if you don’t do that it’s a fairly accurate replication. It’s not totally accurate but it does give you the essential training that you need to perform the EVAs as we do today. They’re obviously still using the water tank for training. That’s the best device we have. You put that equipment in and you sink in the water immersion facility (WIF) and you use the mock-up hardware that replicates the tasks that you’ll have to perform during flight.

RW: Some of the other things you were able to do on Gemini 11 set a lot of precedents, you set the space altitude record and you were able to successfully dock with another spacecraft on first orbit. I have always wondered, was it constantly in your mind that the Gemini flights were gearing up for the Apollo moon missions?

Gordon: Oh absolutely. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Gemini, we wouldn’t have been able to do Apollo the way that we did. Everything we needed to learn to perform the mission of Apollo got done during the Gemini Program. For example, long duration flights up to 14 days, we learned how to rendezvous which was essential because lunar orbit rendezvous was chosen as the technique for the Apollo program. In fact, the M=1, the rendezvous in first orbit was in essence the technique that was utilized around the moon. When we first started doing rendezvous, we’d take five orbits, six orbits or whatever. We couldn’t afford that luxury around the moon because the life span of the assent stage of the lunar module was something like nine hours. So, we couldn’t afford to spend a lot of time adjusting orbits and those kinds of things as we had during the learning process in Gemini. Plus, the fact that we learned a little bit about EVA and metabolic rates that the human body exhibits or exerts during strenuous activity. Life support systems for the lunar surface activity were basically learned on Gemini. Those experiences were applied to the design of pressure suits and backpacks for Apollo.

RW: I read through the mission transcript, when you were doing the first EVA during Gemini 11 and it seems like there was a problem with you overheating?

Gordon: Yeah, most definitely. It was our fault probably. Probably mostly mine, that we were so efficient in getting ready to perform the EVA that we were sitting in the Gemini spacecraft without the hatch being open a revolution early. I had a great deal of difficulty in trying to put on the visor, the gold visor to my helmet. While pressurizing the suit, I could barely raise my arms up to my helmet and I had used a great deal of energy just trying to do that. What I should have done is that I should have just forgotten about it, because one side was attached and I should have just not exerted that kind of energy. So when I first got out, I was behind the power curve and as things happen, it escalated. I got extremely tired, exhausted and (had) a lot of perspiration. The chest pack, which is what we had at the time, got a supply of oxygen from the spacecraft itself through an umbilical cord wasn’t enough to dissipate the BTU’s I was generating, which was pretty high (laughs).

RW: There was no air conditioning system in your spacesuit?

Gordon: No, not at all. As a matter of fact, all the oxygen was supplied through the umbilical.

RW: Is that where the concept of wearing the backpack with all systems built-in came into play later?

Gordon: Actually in Gemini there was two missions that were designed to use the backpack. One backpack, the early one, managed to be flown on Gemini 8 with Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott. Everybody knows that Gemini 8 had a thruster problem and they had to terminate the mission early. So, that backpack was not used. The difficulties with EVAs in 9, 10 and 11… when 9 was supposed to use a backpack that had an attitude control thruster system and a translation system using compressed gasses but Gene Cernan never got to because of the difficulties with his EVA. Then it was rescheduled for Gemini 12 and because of the problems with Gemini 10 and 11 that was scrubbed. But that was the first mission we used tethered restraint systems to perform work. It was a really successful EVA for doing work.

RW: That was one heck of a learning curve.

Gordon: That’s what manned space flight is and it continues to be so.

RW: I think the cornerstones that were laid out by Gemini were well played out in the Apollo Missions.

Gordon: As I stated before, we would not have been able to perform Apollo without the experience and learning that we had from Gemini. It couldn’t have been done.

RW: Speaking of your Apollo experience, you had quite a different mission on Apollo 12. As the command module pilot again you were with Pete Conrad. That must have been kind of comforting to go on a second mission him.

Gordon: We were friends and roommates in the Navy before either one of us go into the space program. If you’ve never had the opportunity to work with some one for many, many years the comfort level increases and really goes up. It’s kind unique to have that relationship where you can communicate without speaking. And, I say that after long periods of being able to work with Pete that the external stimuli we both reacted to in the same manner or, if not, we knew how each other was going to react. That’s a comforting feeling when you’re flying with somebody like that. That was one of the great things about Gemini 11 and Apollo 12 when we added Alan Bean to the crew. It was the first all-Navy flight crew in Apollo.

RW: When you launched for Apollo 12, there was the famous lightning strike that struck the rocket upon lift-off. How concerned were you about that?

Gordon: Well, as a crew we weren’t concerned at all. That was somebody else’s problem (laughs). We were ready to go. We wanted to go and if we hadn’t gone it would have been a whole ‘nother month we’d have to wait. The weather was kind of bad but we were ready to go. But, it was someone else’s call at the cape that was responsible to decide whether or not we would go. They made the right one but no more will we launch in that kind of weather.

RW: What were the mission objectives for Apollo 12?

Gordon: One big one was precision landing. That had to be learned. Apollo 11, of course, landed on the moon. There are some idiots that don’t think so, but really, they did. But, we didn’t know where they landed. It turned out hey were some 20 kilometers beyond their intended landing site. That was intentional because Neil didn’t like his intended landing site because of the amount of boulders he perceived to hazardous to land on. He just expanded the trajectory and landed further down range. We couldn’t tolerate that for future missions that were in the planning stages because we were landing alongside deep ravines, hills and alongside of mountains. So we had to learn how to land in a precise manner. As far as navigational techniques were concerned we had to learn to control that. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to land at these more exotic spots.

RW: Part of your duties during the mission was to help map the moon for future landing sites, correct?

Gordon: That’s correct. Plus, I claim my navigation helped them land alongside Surveyor Crater. Of course there’s some dispute about that, but none the less, I claim it (laughs).

RW: How did it feel during the time that you were by yourself, orbiting the moon while Conrad and Bean landed?

Gordon: That was great. I answer that somewhat facetiously, but not entirely. If you had known Pete Conrad and Alan Bean you would have been damn glad to get rid of them for awhile (laughs). That was 42 hours that I was alone in the command module and I had it all to myself. I didn’t have to answer to anybody except mission control when I was in radio contact. But, I had plenty to do. There wasn’t much time to sit and think about the solitude of being alone. Hey, most fighter pilots like to be alone.

RW: What was the view like?

Gordon: It’s different for different missions. If you land further east on the moon you have more of the earth reflected and the further west you have much less of it. When you’re at lunar distances, the earth goes through phases similar as the moon does for us here on earth. It takes on a different perspective. It’s one that all of us appreciate what the earth really looks like. I’ve often said, and other people have stolen my line, but we’ve been asked what we discovered when we went to the moon, the answer is, we discovered the earth. That kind of summarizes the beauty, awesomeness and fragility of the delicate planet that we live on. When you get back and you time to reflect upon it, it has a different significance.

RW: Do you think the media interest in the space program since Apollo has waned?

Gordon: I don’t think it’s the media so much as the fact that we Americans are a strange breed. Once we accomplish something, we go on to different things. I think the media reflects the interests of the public. I think the next big spike not only will be the return to the lunar surface but the really big - that will generate a tremendous interest in space - will be a manned mission to mars… which will happen one day. I think that all of us that were involved in Apollo wish that we would continue. As a matter of fact, personally I wish it had because I would have probably been the crew commander on Apollo 18. That being said, I just think it’s inevitable that we go back to the moon and go to mars. We have the technology and the capability but I step back and I reflect upon it maybe a little differently. You’ve got to take a look a political leadership, which is not the same as it was in the 1960s. You have to look at the economics and what it will take. Do we do that as one country? If you look at our political situation we tend to be losing our sovereignty. It may be a world community that takes on a Martian mission somewhat like the international space station. All of these things have to be thrown in the pot, stir the pot and see what comes up. Those things will be done.

RW: I was going to ask what you thought about the “new space race” and how international agencies are working together in space, but I think you’ve already covered that.

Gordon: Well, Rick, I think there’s a lot to that. You know, even cooperating like that there’s problems to overcome. You’ve got language problems and you have cultural problems. Not that they can’t be overcome but you have to deal with them. Right now the United States better get their act together because China, Japan and many other countries are finally having the capability to access the wonderful environment of space. If we don’t get our act together as a nation, we going to be left behind and the United States can’t afford that.

RW: How do you feel about private industries now moving into space?

Gordon: Come on in, the water’s fine (laughs). Those things are being done because there’s a profit to be made. If there’s no profit to be made, these endeavors will not happen.

RW: I think we’re overdue for a new generation that’s inspired to take up the challenge of space exploration. What do you feel about the future of NASA’s space programs?

Gordon: Once the ISS is completed and done and the STS orbiter is retired and we’re relying on the Russians to get us to and from the space station, the whole complexion of the United States space program changes. There’s going to be a hiatus for awhile. There’s going to be some time before the Orion project starts flying. So be it.

RW: I think part of the problem is that the new generation may be uninspired.

Gordon: Well, we don’t challenge them enough. We protect them. Life is competition and if we don’t allow them to compete they’re going to be sorely placed when we send them out into the world.

RW: I have to agree with you. We had eight valedictorians for our high school graduation here in Stanwood last school year because it was too difficult to narrow the honor down to one youth.

Gordon: There are winners and losers and sometimes winners have to be losers, too. It’s mixed bag. If you don’t allow them to compete they’re going to be real disappointed when they end up in the real world. I can not believe there were eight valedictorians. That defies the definition of a valedictorian.

All images credit: NASA Archives or US NAVY