For
many people, 1967 was the “Summer of Love.” For me, a high school sophomore, it
was the summer of the Moon. Even though most people who considered flying in
space at that time were living in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco,
a small number were actually doing it from Cape Canaveral. When the US screamed
Telstar into orbit to compete with Russia’s Sputnik, my imagination was
captured and I became infatuated with Space.
Alan
Shepard, John Glenn and Walter Schirra, all daring astronauts of the Mercury
team, were still my heroes when I moved from a small town in Pennsylvania to
Hillsdale, New Jersey, a bedroom suburb of New York City. That move introduced
me to the urban-planning invention of the 1950s, the cul-du-sac. Mine had nine
homes on it and housed an eclectic collection of personalities and exotic
backgrounds: a former New York Yankee first baseman, Moose Skowron, a Norwegian
ski jumper, a man working on NASA’s satellite tracking systems in Spain, an
international importer, a professional jazz guitarist who had played with the
big bands of the 1940s, his wife, a professional commercial jingles singer most
known for her rendition of the “Winston Tastes Good” [like a cigarette should]
song, and the late Dr. Paul Gast, a professor of geology at Columbia
University. Dr. Gast would turn out to have the most influence on my future. As
we moved in, Moose moved out and, within a couple of weeks, the good doctor
moved in.
My
older brother, Phil, and I babysat for Dr. Gast’s three small children. When
bottle-washing jobs turned up at the laboratory that he supervised, we were
both offered summer jobs. Surrounded by international scientists, I was
in heaven working at the Lamont Geological Observatory on the Palisades in New
York, a key research facility of the Earth Institute of Columbia University.
That summer, one of their quests was to prepare a contamination-free lab to
handle the moon samples, assuming that men actually walked on the moon’s
surface. By 1967, the space race gap had narrowed between Russia (then the
USSR) and the United States. NASA was preparing for moon rocks even
though the astronauts had not yet attempted their first space walk or a
rendezvous either in earth orbit or lunar orbit, very necessary techniques they
would have to master before attempting to land on the moon.
Although
the scientists at Lamont were preparing for the unknown, basically, the objects
would be just rocks. The technique Dr. Gast developed for dating rocks,
particularly extraterrestrial ones, was to use a gigantic, Peabody-Sherman
“wayback” type of machine. Technically it was a rubidium-strontium uranium-lead
radiometer but to me, it was “the wayback.”
The
machine filled a sizable room. A beam of electrons was shot at a metal filament
to measure the isotope ratio of these elements extracted from the samples.
Since radioactive isotopes have known rates of decay, this data could determine
the age of the rocks. Back then, the common form of dating anything was
Carbon-14. For moon rocks, the rubidium-strontium uranium-lead method was the
“gold” standard. * My job was to make the tiny metal band filaments. I had to
keep up with all the filaments that Dr. Gast burned through, melting samples
with a light beam way before Darth Vader and Luke dueled with light sabers.
Dr. Gast's lab room minus the wayback, 48 years later.
The wayback stood where the cartons line the wall.
Dr.
Gast was a cranial, soft-spoken man but he was absent-minded like a professor.
Most days he ate the sandwiches his wife packed as soon as he got to the lab
because he frequently forgot about lunch. When it rained, it was a nightmare
for me because Lamont Observatory was actually a campus with outlying buildings
of seismology, oceanography, a library, a cafeteria, a machine shop and a core
samples storage warehouse spread out over 170 acres of treed, hilly terrain. On
a busy day, Dr. Gast might visit all of the buildings and leave umbrellas,
raincoats and probably a sample or two along the way. It became a scavenger
hunt for me to retrieve them, usually in the pouring rain.
One
morning I was shocked to find him standing in the midst of hundreds of metal
and glass parts with the wayback machine nowhere to be seen. That pile of parts
was the wayback. He explained how he took it apart once a year to
clean and since he designed and built it there was no manual. Not to worry, the
plans were all in his head. A week later I was leaving for the lab in the
morning and my brother and I spotted Dr. Gast in his driveway with his head
under his car’s hood. We asked him what was wrong and he said that he had no
idea why his car wouldn’t start. But the man was brilliant; his brilliance just
didn’t apply to internal combustion machines.
At
that time, Americans had as much of an idea of what we would find on the moon
as Dr. Gast had about what was under his car’s hood. NASA was worried about a
lot of unknowns. The moon’s surface could be 50 feet of accumulated rock dust
and the lunar excursion module might sink out of sight on landing. There was
also one side of the moon that always faced away from earth. In 1967, the lunar
orbital flights would confirm that the dark side is made up of the same
material as the side that we see all the time. No secret Russian space
stations, no little alien men, and no green cheese. When you’re a high school
teenager you have no idea if adults are kidding or just plain stupid. They were
not all kidding about expecting green cheese to be there. The lunar orbiter
passed around the dark side of the moon and destroyed a lot of myths. The
reality was just more rocks.
What
if those rocks were some weird form of radioactive matter, like a kryptonite
for Earthlings? Or maybe those rocks were able to carry some disease that had
wiped out a lunar population and atmosphere billions of years ago. When the
first astronauts who walked on the moon surface returned to earth they were
quarantined for several days. Just in case, Dr. Gast was setting up a white
room in the geochemistry building for studying the rocks. It had an airlock
with positive pressure (air blows out when you open the door instead of being
sucked in, along with dust particles). The room also had a sticky doormat that
took any residue off the special white slippers they wore, and everything in
the room was white. I got in there a few times that summer and if I had put
down a blank piece of white paper anywhere, I swore it would have become
invisible.
The entrance to the Geophysics building as it appears today.
Several
times during that summer I was asked to collect the dusty filter from the white
room’s air vent system and the dust was melted down onto a filament for the
wayback machine. A light beam blast later, it would be analyzed to see how
clean they could make the room. Special preparations were made for these
once-in-a-lifetime rocks. For scientists, and especially geologists, this was
their Super Bowl. With mortars and pestles, they were poised and could not wait
to get their hands on these rocks so they could weigh, crush, examine them
under a microscope or blast them with light beams from the wayback machine. Dr.
Gast even had a say in developing the bags and tools the astronauts would carry
to collect these nuggets.
Watching
these scientists working happily each day at the lab, I realized that I might
never have this much fun in my lifetime again. I wanted to be a scientist so
much that I ignored all my low trig scores and hung in for three semesters in
college as a physics engineering major until I read the handwriting written on
the blackboard wall, mostly in undecipherable Greek letters and equations, and
switched my major.
The door to the Moon sample room, today.
One
day, Dr. Gast called me into his Spartan office and gave me a special errand. I
was to go to the Oceanography building and make high quality copies of several
8” x 10” black and white glossy photographs. I was to keep them in the manila
envelope until I got there, copy them, and put them immediately back in the
envelope and show no one. He handed me an envelope and I was off. When I got to
the copy machine nobody was around. Good, no questions. I had been sent to make
copies several times before so my presence in the building was not unusual. I
took the photos out and one look and I was stunned. The first shot was the
earth rise taken from the moon, depicted in dazzling brilliance, clearly
captured as the lunar orbiter emerged from the dark side of the moon. The
rest of the photos were crater close-ups. I was to learn years later that Dr.
Gast was determining where the oldest rocks were likely to be and that would
determine where to try the first landing.
Being
a teenager, I made a separate copy for myself, folded them and stuffed them in
my jeans pocket. The next day those two pictures were on the front page of the
New York Times.
Forty-three
years later, I still love space and astronomy. The moon still has a special
fascination for me. Buzz Aldrin will look up at the moon and wistfully remind
himself that the peak of his personal career was forty-one years ago when he
walked on that distant surface. I will look at that same moon and remember when
I pilfered those pictures, worked in the moon sample room and welded filaments
for Dr. Gast’s wayback machine.
A
more recent reminder was a newspaper report that many of the moon rocks
presented as good will gifts to each US state and 135 foreign countries have
been misplaced. These samples, so rare and
important at the time, have now been lost. Apparently, they have become almost
like forgotten items in a governmental garage sale. The last count tallied 94
countries and nearly 18 states missing theirs. Some are suspected of having
been sold on the black market for up to half a million dollars.
A
determined effort is being made by some University of Phoenix grad students to
locate the missing rocks and from time to time there will be reports of a shard
found here and there. I am saddened when I consider that such an effort was
made back in 1967 to make sure these rocks were collected, quarantined and
studied and now these rocks are missing. I wonder how something of such rare
value can be tossed aside like those cheap rock collections sold at tourist
traps or in museum gift shops.
The
astronauts of Apollo 17 who personally carried those gift samples to us
governors and the heads of foreign governments don’t remember presenting every
one of them. Understandably, their mission became a blur in the redundant
presentations spread out over a three-month goodwill tour but I would like to
think if an astronaut had pressed one of those samples into my hand that I’d
remember it for the rest of my life.
People
generally assume that certain historical objects must be owned by the US
government but over the years many objects have found their way into private
collections. Malcolm Forbes displayed many historical objects from his private
collection in a small museum in his magazine’s headquarters on 5th
Avenue near 12th Street in Manhattan. For instance, Forbes has one
of the four signed copies of the Japanese surrender, signed on the deck of the
USS Missouri at the end of World War II. Forbes also has Abraham Lincoln’s
stove pipe hat and opera glasses from the night of his assassination. Thrown in
for dramatic effect was the sleeve that the doctors cut off Lincoln’s coat when
they were trying to find the source of his wounds. In the basement of Ford’s
theatre in Washington, other objects are displayed from that historic night,
among them, the frock coat Lincoln wore, minus the left arm coat sleeve.
Strange objects find their way into private collections.
Forbes
had another room in his museum dedicated to objects, which once had importance
at the time of their presentation that now, had been rendered so meaningless
that many could not even be identified with their presenter or receiver.
Bronzed paddles, Tiffany silver replicas of buildings, mounted antler hooves
with ambiguous inscriptions, all have since lost their meaning having probably
resided in the darkness of a closet, forgotten for decades. Apparently, many of
these moon rocks have met the same fate or found their way into private
collections. Illegally, too, since they were presented to official government
representatives.
At
the time, these rocks must have been extraordinarily cherished. That astronaut
who walked on the moon just gave me a piece of a rock he found there. I am
amazed and blown away with the opportunity that I have to be in this place and
time to personally receive this piece of history. I will remember this moment
forever. As an impressionable teenager, the “space race” enthralled me,
impressing on me that I was living in an extraordinary time. Somehow we lost
that sense of awe from the 60s, swept away in the high tide of information,
technology and myth busting.
Admittedly,
these “Goodwill Rocks” are tiny, the size of a pinhead, but unlike Forbes’
trinkets, these grams from another world are mounted on a plaque that carries a
narrative of the presentation and a small replica of the recipients’ flag.
The rock is in a plastic bubble next to the date of the presentation. I
admit that all these years later, as a people we have become blasé about technology because it’s an integral part
of our daily lives. Today, the work of all those vacuum tubes in Dr. Gast’s
wayback could be easily done by a hand-held calculator. I’ve learned that the
typical graphing calculator used today in most high schools could duplicate all
of the electronic functions in the Apollo command module.
Things
were so different then. I clearly remember riding across the Lamont campus on a
brilliant morning that summer in an open jeep from World War II driven by Jack
Diamond, another rock-studying scientist, when the Doors’ “Light My Fire” came
on the radio. He grinned, and said, “Those are very suggestive lyrics.” It was
a very different time. A time and rocks forever lost.
Landmark
events indelibly mark our memories and we recall years later where we were when
the impression was made. I was in seventh grade when our principal, tears
streaming down her face, burst into our classroom and stunned us with the news
that President Kennedy had been shot. Six years later, by the time Neil
Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins had been strapped into their Apollo
command module that Friday in July, 1969, I had probably finished tossing the
last items in the family station wagon for the trip to a Maine beach house for
the week. There were a number of parallels.
My
brother met his future wife in college as a sophomore and his fiancé's parents
had a charming but Spartan cottage on a small peninsula on the southern coast
of Maine near Kennebunkport, called Biddeford Pool. The oceanfront structure
was separated from the surf by about 100 yards of tall, waving dune grass and
walking that deserted, pristine shore line was both therapeutic and cathartic.
I was either too young or had too few issues to take full advantage of the cathartic
properties but a walk for a mile or two in either direction while only meeting
a handful of people allowed plenty of time for thinking.
I
remember working at my summer job in the golf course club house and seeing the
Apollo rocket lift off and then the boss barking at us to get back to work.
While the astronauts were starting their 60 orbits and 240,000-mile journey to
the moon, I was working my last day before going home, sleeping, and putting
the finishing touches on the vacation packing.
To
get to Maine was a process of deciding what to take without overloading the
family Chevy; all five of us and our stuff had to fit, allowing for our comfort
over an 8-hour drive. We were traveling into the unknown; we had never before
stayed in a tiny Maine beach house.
The
journey was smooth but cramped and we were delighted by the sight of the cute
red cottage and the chance to stretch our legs, the drive made longer by the
excitement of anticipation. The entrance door opened into the tiniest of foyers
and immediately into the galley kitchen with a counter open to a small dining
room that transitioned into a Lilliputian living room, a fireplace anchoring
the far end. On one side of the knotty pine-paneled room was a large window
that displayed the ocean and dunes as a neatly detailed picture. On the small
table, just to the side of the window, a tiny black and white television set
with rabbit ear antennae stared back at us. I didn't recall ever seeing TV sets
that small but we were on vacation in Maine so network programming wasn't the
foremost thing on our minds.
Sparse
technology in either the kitchen or the bathroom would be more of a problem. I
recall being relieved because I knew that this rustic retreat at least had
something to view the lunar landing, not sure what exactly that viewing would
be.
At
some point, that Maine television was finally turned on and after seeing the
reassuring TV spokesman, Walter Cronkite, at his table explaining things with a
collection of plastic models, we settled back for what we thought would be an
exciting evening of watching men finally walk on the moon.
Nobody
had told us until Walter confided that we would not "see" the landing
and that once the craft touched down, the astronauts would sleep for six hours
before actually getting out and walking around. We thought that this would be
just like Flash Gordon. The rocket touches down, they turn off the engine, open
the door, scramble down the ladder, and with space guns pointing in several
directions, they take a look around.
What
we really got was different by huge measures. On the screen was this gray
drawing of nothing, really, sometimes a vague shot of the Lunar Excursion
Module (LM) with its spidery legs and other times dotted flight lines showing
where they came from. These shadowy drawings were presented with a soundtrack
of the radio transmissions from Houston to the LM, now descending to the lunar
surface from 60 nautical miles above. For all we knew, these crude clever
artworks were probably gray on color TV sets and why in the world do you use
nautical miles in space?
The transmission went exactly like this:
CC:
That's affirmative.
LMP:
Like - AGS to PGNS align. Over.
CC:
Say again?
LMP:
Like an AGS to PGNS align. Over
.
CC:
Roger. We're standing by for it.
LMP: ...quantity...
CC: Eagle, Houston. You are STAY for T2.
Over.
CC: Correction, you're - -
LMP: Roger. STAY for T2. We thank you.
CC: Roger, Sir.
CC: Tranquility Base, Houston. We recommend you
exit P12. Over.
CDR: Hey, Houston, that may have seemed like a
very long final phase. The AUTO targeting was taking us right into a
football-field size - football-field sized crater, with a large number of big
boulders and rocks for about... one or two crater diameters around it, and it required
a ... in P66 and flying manually over the rock field to find a reasonably good
area.
CC: Roger. We copy. It was beautiful from here,
Tranquility. Over.
LMP: We'll get to the details of what's around
here, but it looks like a collection of just about every variety of shape,
angularity, granularity, about every variety of rock you could find. The
colors - Well, it varies pretty much depending on how you're
looking relative to the zero-phase point. There doesn't appear to be too much
of a general color at all. However, it looks as though some of the rocks and
boulders, of which there are quite a few in the near area, it looks as though
they're going to have some interesting colors to them. Over.
CC: Roger. Copy. Sounds good to us,
Tranquility. We'll let you press on through the simulated countdown, and we'll
talk to you later. Over.
CDR: Roger.
The techno-geek speech was exciting. We were
listening to conversations that we had no idea what was being said and, in that
moment, wrapped up in probably the most dramatic exploration experience since
Columbus clanked ashore wearing equipment as heavy as these astronauts. This
was about as exhilarating as it could get. In comparison, none of the networks
were there on San Salvador Island in the Caribbean to interview Columbus and he
had no ability to twitter anyone so we'll be left guessing as to what really
happened.
That
touchdown was stunning and exciting, a lot like few other moments that just we
supposed couldn't be happening, similar to beating the Russian hockey team in
1980 with Al Michaels screaming into the microphone.
Back
on the moon, our guys assured us that there were no little green men and no
evidence of any green cheese anywhere; we were staring out at what was called
"magnificent desolation" and the endless expanses of gray, with dots
of distant craters and boulders was fascinating, especially to all those viewers
who thought a trip to a Maine beach was a big deal. This was heady stuff. The
next day 60 percent of the world news coverage concerned the landing.
The
first day, we were treated to cartoon pictures and plastic models juggled by
Cronkite, a bit like Andy playing with Woody and Buzz Lightyear and we were
entranced. The promise of more than that type of viewing brought us back the
next day when the astronauts would actually leave the vehicle on the first
ever, Extra Vehicular Activity- EVA. They took hours to get dressed, longer
than your high school prom date, but Armstrong eventually made it down the
ladder to plant his paw print and we were riveted, watching all this unfold.
The
first descriptions satisfied years of pent-up curiosity and at about the 28th
gray rock being described probably 30 percent of that world audience went back
to the killing and famines and whatever the particular horror the day was and
rest of us continued be frozen in front of the tube.
I
imagined that people were sitting in front of their sets like it was fourth
down and inches, yelling at the coach to go for it; just pick up the damn
rocks. What if something weird like a solar flare up or that
monster-in-the-sand's fin could be seen? They would have had to scramble back
up the ladder, get back in the LM, blast off and get out of there with having
anything to bring back.
That
weekend, I walked the extremely wide expanses of the beach, trying to wrap my
mind around what had just happened, looking for different shades of sea glass
and shells, occasionally popping them into a pocket, eventually discarding the
first pretty ones for even more pretty ones. I had some ideas in back of my
head what I would do with them when I got back to New Jersey but they
were rather vague plans, easily discarded a day after returning from vacation,
when my attention was recaptured by the daily routine of working and living day
to day. Eventually those highly- regarded-at-the-time objects would be
located in a forgotten part of the rock garden. Where those shells were forty
years later, I couldn't tell you. That was another parallel I had with Neil and
Buzz.
________________________________________________________
*Strontium
determination made by the mass spectrometric isotope dilution method” – a more
technical reference to the special method developed by Dr. Gast describing the
technique of identifying isotopes.
Note: Dr. Gast
later ascended into NASA heaven in Houston as he assumed leadership of the
geo-science management of the Manned Spacecraft Center in preparation for the
Apollo Mission as chief scientist of the Apollo Lunar Science Staff.
The Forbes Museum on 5th and 13th Street has been downsized since 2010. It was full of amazing items. For some reason, they chose to take some of the most fascinating items out of the museum, as of this post in May, 2015.
