Apollo astronaut geology training and simulation

From The Space Library

by Donald A. Beattie

In April, 1963, NASA and the USGS reached agreement to start a geological training program for the astronauts. Ellington Air Force Base, a few miles west of the proposed location for the main Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) campus (under construction at the time, now named the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center), and home of the NASA astronaut air force, was selected as the site for the USGS office. Dale Jackson, an ex-marine, was chosen by Gene Shoemaker to lead this effort in the belief that his background would allow him to mesh successfully with the astronauts who were all military pilots and, up until that time, not perceived to be very enthusiastic about studying geology in view of their other pressing duties.

Jackson devised classroom and field-work courses in basic geologic principles, mineralogy, and petrology. With the Astronaut Office’s approval, the syllabus agreed to called for 58 hours of classroom lectures and four field trips. The 58 hours of “geology” training were part of an overall classroom syllabus of 239 hours designed to prepare the astronauts for the upcoming Gemini flights.

As the geology training was unrelated to the Gemini flights, the primary concern of the astronauts at that time, it would not have real value until, or if, they were selected for an Apollo mission. Thus it was not universally embraced, especially by some of the original seven and second and third astronaut classes. Eventually, however, it became accepted as an essential box to be checked off if one hoped to be selected for a Moon mission. It was anticipated that after crews were selected for the lunar landing missions five additional series of follow-on lectures and field trips would be scheduled.

Post-Apollo mission simulations begin - Apollo training increases

In March, 1964, Shoemaker agreed to support post-Apollo training and simulations at the newly established Branch of Astrogeology in Flagstaff, Arizona. Shoemaker had selected this location based on the many nearby geological formations analogous to those that could be observed on the Moon. Meteor Crater, a one hour drive to the east, was the best preserved terrestrial impact crater and would be studied by all the Apollo astronauts. The open, surrounding area (some of it was on Indian reservations) would permit simulation of 14 day lunar stay-times when it was anticipated the astronauts would have some type of vehicle with which they would be able to explore and map large areas of the Moon. With funding from the Advanced Manned Missions office we were able to quickly obtain the equipment and facilities to begin to understand how such missions could be carried out. Shoemaker’s staff grew rapidly to undertake these simulations.

At an early simulation at Bend Oregon in August, 1964, conducted by MSC staff, several complications arose. It became known that an astronaut was involved resulting in a large public attendance including many from the media. At these types of simulations, when many new things would be tried for the first time, there were bound to be problems. And, at Bend, there were a few, all duly reported the next day by the media. Walt Cunningham, who conducted the test in an early model pressure suit, reported his annoyance about how the problems were reported. As a result, It was recommended that future simulations be done at Flagstaff where we were beginning to set up good simulation facilities and where attendance could be better controlled.

There was an additional motivation in recommending Flagstaff for future simulations, it was to legitimize the role that the USGS was playing in post-Apollo simulations and thus put the USGS in a position to more strongly influence what would be done for Apollo. A memo was sent to George Mueller recommending that Flagstaff be the future site for training and simulations. The Office of Space Medicine also sided with these observations and recommended establishing policies to guide future simulations including that astronauts “not be used as test subjects” unless they would make some unique contribution. Mueller forwarded these instructions to MSC and USGS staff at Flagstaff became the primary coordinators to schedule and oversee future geology training and simulation.

In September, 1965, I participated in one of the astronaut training trips to Medicine Lake, California, a site located near several small, complex volcanic features. The training, extending over three days, was for "student" astronauts Gene Cernan, Russell “Rusty” Schweickart and Roger Chaffee. By this time, based on Mueller’s edict, astronaut training trips were very well organized by the USGS. Each one included one or more prominent geologists who would lecture and teach the astronauts the importance and subtleties of the locations selected, and their potential similarities to lunar features. The time and location of these trips were closely held and the media were seldom present.

To appreciate the logistics required for one of these trips, the assembled training team consisted of ten people. Aaron Waters, a noted geologist, led the team and was responsible to deliver the lectures and coordinate the trip itinerary. He was supported by nine other “helpers,” three USGS camp hands, two USGS geologists, two MSC geologists, and two MSC photographers. Any activity that astronauts participated in was always well documented by photographs. In addition, Dick Allenby and I were invited from NASA Headquarters so the total, including the astronauts, was 14 (Cernan was unable to attend because of a hurricane warning in Houston). We slept in one or two-man tents and were up at the crack of dawn in order to complete each day’s tightly scheduled activities. Breakfast was served around a campfire because the early morning hours were already chilly. Lunch was a simple box lunch and dinner, prepared by a USGS cook, was back at the campsite. During the day we drove to lecture points in USGS vehicles.

Training for Apollo missions expands

Geological field training for the astronauts became more and more realistic and intensive as the date for the first landing loomed closer. By 1966 all the astronauts had participated at some level in both classroom and field training. The first three astronaut selection groups had the most extensive training. Since no one knew who would ultimately be selected as the crews for the landing missions, we tried to have all the astronauts at as high a level of competence as possible in their geological training within the constraint of time available. Many noted geologists volunteered their time to assist in the training; some stayed on to become members of the Apollo Field Geology Team and worked with the astronauts until the last mission, Apollo 17, was safely home. Lee Silver, Dick Jahns, Aaron Waters, Dallas Peck, and Bill Muehlberger come immediately to mind as several of the volunteers who devoted a significant fraction of their professional careers to these efforts. Many others made important contributions to astronaut training including geologists on the staff at MSC and Flagstaff.

The Pinacate volcanic fields in Sonora, Mexico, just over the border from Arizona, became one of the favorite training sites, and most of the astronauts made a visit at one time or another. It includes an interesting set of volcanic craters formed by the explosive release of superheated, underground water; craters of this type have their own geologic name, maars. From the air these craters have an uncanny resemblance to some lunar craters, their rims are only slightly raised and the craters themselves are symmetrical and many are relatively shallow depressions. Some are quite small, a few hundred feet in diameter, and two are very large, the largest being over one mile in diameter. The area in which they occur is desolate and isolated, a perfect place to take a high profile group like astronauts, where no one would disturb their training (It was definitely a place where reporters would not like to go for there were no amenities of any kind. Mountain lions, rattlesnakes, scorpions and other wildlife shared the area.). As at Medicine Lake, we all bunked in tents and had our meals around a campfire. During the Apollo missions some of the astronauts commented on how closely the Pinacate site resembled the lunar surface.

By 1967, 100 hours of classroom lectures and 10 field trips became the requirement for astronaut geology training. This training, and then the mission simulations, would become more and more rigorous and realistic as the program matured and simulations were scheduled utilizing prototype and final design equipment and tools. New, detailed training and simulation schedules were set up for each of the lunar landing missions. Starting 44 weeks before their scheduled launch date, the astronauts would follow a tight schedule designed to cover all aspects of the missions. Almost 2200 hours of training and briefings were crammed into their work days at both MSC and KSC. Some required all three astronauts’ presence, others called for the CSM pilot alone, or just the two Moon-landing astronauts. This constituted a scheduled 50 hour work-week for each of the three astronauts and the back-up crew, with untold extra hours of unscheduled time.

To provide some understanding of how the astronauts spent their time leading up to each launch, the above numbers included: a minimum of five hours a week of physical training, six hours a week of flying time, five hours a week of Apollo flight plan reviews, 25 hours of flight suit fit-checks, 196 hours of spacecraft tests, 20 hours reviewing stowage procedures for both the CSM and LM, 40 hours of planetarium exercises to assure that the crew could use celestial navigation to update their programed navigation system in the event of any one of a number of possible failures, 10 hours of egress training to cover water recovery from the CSM after splashdown, 269 hours of briefings and simulations for science operations, and many other types of training.

The 269 hours of science training was one of the largest allocations and was jealously guarded by those of us involved in providing the science payloads while the other side of the NASA house, the engineers, flight controllers, and other critical participants in launch preparations would attempt to preempt some of this time for their use. But in spite of this constant demand for more astronaut time to attend to non-science problems, "Deke" Slayton and Al Shepard stuck to the schedule and we were seldom shortchanged. After being named Commander for Apollo 14, and involved firsthand in the training for his mission, Al became a strong supporter for the science team’s training requirements for the final three missions.

As Principal Investigators (P.I.s) were identified for each of the science experiments, they would also attend from time to time, along with the contractors building the equipment so they could observe how the astronauts deployed or utilized their instruments. At times the simulations would result in changes to accommodate the astronauts’ ideas on how to improve their interaction with the particular experiment; however, whenever possible the astronauts always attempted to adjust to the idiosyncrasies of the experiment to achieve the best results for the P.I.s.

Improving realism of training and simulations

One of the special analog training sites was located near Sunset Crater, a few miles northeast of Flagstaff. Calling it an analog is a bit of a misnomer because it was, in fact, the closest copy of a Moonscape that existed anywhere on Earth. Some of the staff at Flagstaff hit upon the idea to duplicate the lunar surface as seen in one of Lunar Orbiter’s pictures. A careful analysis of the selected frame was made, measuring the diameter and depth of all the small craters that could be seen. Then the history of this small piece of the lunar surface was determined by noting the relative age of each crater based on the observed ejecta patterns; which ejecta layer overlaid other ejecta as impacts continued during the Moon's existence.

After these calculations were made, Red Bailey and Hans Ackerman, two Astrogeology staffers, laid out a grid of fertilizer bags on a 10-acre volcanic ash fall south of Sunset Crater. The bags were arranged not only by the amount of explosive force they would generate to create the proper size craters in the correct locations, but also were timed to go off in the sequence that would provide the correct history of ejecta layers observed on the real lunar surface. It was a roaring success in all respects. When the fertilizer was detonated, the Lunar Orbiter photo was recreated. A movie was made of the explosive action and it was always great fun to replay it for visitors who would come to observe the astronauts training at the site, each new crater erupting in sequence, in slow motion, with the fine ash being blown skyward in great, dark jets.

This site, and two additional sites formed in the same manner, became some of the last tests for the astronauts selected for the landing missions. They required the astronauts to use all of the observational skills they had gained in their previous training. They walked or drove around on the closest thing to the Moon they would see until they actually landed, describing to the science team (simulating how it would be done at the Mission Control Center at MSC) what they were seeing so that a geologic map could be made based on their reports. After completing the simulation, they would go back to the site with their instructors to review their observations and correct any misinterpretations they may have made. All the astronauts from Apollo 12 on trained at these sites. It was one of the very best simulations in which they were involved as it was the most complete test of their skills at observation and description.

As the time for an actual flight drew close, simulations of some of the tasks would be done in pressure suits. However, the problem with all the pressure suit simulations was the inability to replicate the one-sixth G gravity field they would experience on the Moon. There were attempts to simulate the low lunar gravity by using two different types of simulators and specially rigged harnesses that partially suspended the astronaut and reduced his weight to one-sixth his Earth weight. These simulations were usually not very satisfactory because of the complicated harness setup that would reduce the astronaut’s apparent weight but not the equipment he was working with. However, some of these tests provided important insights since the mass of the equipment was accurate and the astronauts got a feel for this unique combination of forces.

The NASA airplane, used to simulate low or zero “g”, also was a poor substitute because of the short duration of each flight parabola. Neutral buoyancy simulations (held in a large, swimming pool-size tank), a much better way to simulate low “g” environments, and the standard way to train for shuttle and Space Station missions, were in their infancy and only utilized for simulating the zero “g” parts of the Apollo missions, such as retrieving equipment from the Service Module that would be carried out while in lunar orbit.

By this time in the training (crews being selected for specific missions) simulation sites included a MSC high-bay building, the “back lot” at MSC, a small, outdoor site at the Kennedy Space Center KSC, and the special analog sites at different locations scattered around the country chosen to be most like what the astronauts would find on the Moon. The MSC “back lot,” or “rock pile,” was a few acres of simulated lunar terrain with a LM mockup in the center. The surface was covered with gravel and sand and salted with different types of rocks. A smaller, simulated, outdoor lunar surface was built at KSC, primarily as a convenience for the astronauts who spent more and more time there as their launch date approached.

The KSC site would often be unusable because the “craters” would fill with water at high tide (very unmoonlike); however, this site permitted last minute reviews of specific tasks that may have been added or modified since the last simulations at MSC or in the field. The KSC outdoor site did not include a LM mockup so it was limited in the type of simulation it could support. However, there was an indoor site that did include a LM simulator. The KSC simulations were often conducted in pressure suits to provide as much authenticity as possible. Equipment provided was spare flight article hardware or the closest copy of mission hardware we could obtain.

Final pre-mission training and simulation

In May, 1969, George Mueller agreed to develop a small vehicle for the astronauts to use on the "J" missions (Apollos 15, 16, and 17). The Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was given responsibility to build the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) and Ben Milwitzky, at NASA Headquarters, was designated as the program manager. Ben had previous experience working with JPL developing small, automated vehicles (later cancelled) to be carried on the Surveyor missions. As soon as the LRV design was released by MSFC for bid Rutledge "Putty" Mills, a USGS engineer at Flagstaff, quickly copied the design and had a replica available to be used during the "J" mission geology training and simulations. It was frequently used at the "Moonscape."

In addition to simulating the geologic tasks they would carry out, the astronauts simulated the deployment of the ALSEP packages and the use of all the other equipment and experiments they would carry on the mission. For the “J” missions the important equipment additions were the lunar roving vehicle (LRV) and the lunar drill. The LRV’s deployment from its stowed position on the LM landing stage became a critical part of the timeline. To accomplish all the planned activities for the extended EVA time of the “J” missions, compared to the earlier missions, the astronauts had be able to get the LRV functioning as quickly as possible. This meant removing it from the LM stowage bay, setting the LRV on the lunar surface, unfolding it, stowing sample bags and tools, and then checking out its operation.

Another important task to simulate was getting the loaded lunar sample return containers (ALSRCs) back in the LM from the lunar surface. This maneuver tested the ingenuity of the MSC engineers because the astronauts would be unable to carry the bulky containers up the LM ladder. It was solved by devising a pulley system. One astronaut would kneel in the LM hatch, the other would stay on the surface and hitch up the containers to the pulley cables and pull them slowly up to the awaiting astronaut. Although a relatively straight forward solution, the cable system could be easily tangled and thus required many hours of practice to rig the pulleys and coordinate the two astronauts’ actions. Lending urgency to these “rock box” simulations was the knowledge that of all their tasks this was the most important, the harvest of Moon rocks and soil. If for some reason the sample containers were left behind, the mission would be deemed a failure. This would be especially true for the “J” missions that would include samples from locations far from the lunar equator and precious cores collected by the lunar drill from below the lunar surface.

Results of the training and simulation

How successful were these efforts? Future historians will be the judges, but here are a few examples. By the time Apollo 11 returned from the Moon, we had developed the routine by which the science results would be processed and disseminated. After splashdown, the astronauts were picked up by a Navy helicopter operating from an aircraft carrier, transferred to a specially designed trailer on the carrier, flown back to Houston still in the trailer, and placed in quarantine in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL). The samples, film, and other data were removed from the LM and CM and flown to the LRL in their own aircraft. Once in the LRL, the astronauts were debriefed by a team of scientists and engineers while the samples were unpacked, examined, cataloged and the photographs taken by the astronauts developed. In the meantime, we would be receiving data from the experiments left on the Moon.

This routine was followed for all the missions with a major difference after Apollo 14. The astronauts and the samples would no longer have to spend time in quarantine and the debriefings became much more relaxed and easier to carry out. Without the intervening glass window barrier in the LRL, we were able to have more direct interaction with the crews to answer questions as we tried to piece together all that they had done. This was an important change because the last three missions were more complex and the ability to immediately discuss the astronaut’s recollections was very valuable in reconstructing their long, LRV traverses.

To sum up the operational accomplishments of the six Apollo landing missions: almost 5000 pounds of experiment equipment was landed on the Moon, some 840 pounds of lunar material (rocks, dirt, drill cores, etc.) were returned under carefully controlled conditions. Five ALSEP’s that included most of the total of 53 individual experiments deployed by the astronauts while on the lunar surface were emplaced at different locations; and approximately 60 miles of traverses were recorded, both on foot and using the LRV in support of the geology and geophysical surveys. In addition, detailed data were collected on Apollos 15, 16, and 17 from instruments carried in the Command and Service Modules including photographs, compositional analyses of broad areas of the Moon’s surface, mapping its magnetic and gravity fields, and analyzing its tenuous atmosphere. All of this data contributed toward deciphering the Moon’s many mysteries as well as resolving less controversial issues.

In subsequent years, thousands of technical papers have been published based on the results of the science conduced by the astronauts including the deployment of experiments that sent back information long after they left. One, the Laser Ranging Retroreflector, is still in use. Perhaps more importantly, Apollo science achievements have provided us with a better understanding of our own small planet, Earth!

Meteor Crater, Arizona	Eugene "Gene" Shoemaker (1928-1997)	Gene Shoemaker lecturing to an astronaut class at Meteor Crater - 1964	USGS instructor Joel Watkins with, from left, astronauts Dave Scott, Neil Armstrong and Roger Chaffee
Astronaut Neil Armstrong participating in a geology lecture at the Grand Canyon, 1965	Post-Apollo simulation, Sunset Crater, Flagstaff, 1965	USGS geologist Gordon Swann conducting a post-Apollo simulation using a early-model Apollo pressure suit. Gordon later became the Field Geology Team P.I. for Apollo missions 14 and 15.	A high fidelity mock-up of the LM was provided by Grumman to add realism to some of the simulations. Dave Scott used the mock-up when he planned his standup EVA for Apollo 15
Post-Apollo network established in 1965 to permit field simulations to communicate with the USGS Mission Control Center in downtown Flagstaff. It was also used during the Apollo simulations that started at a later date.	Jack Schmitt manning the USGS Mission Control Center, back to camera Bob Sutton. After completing graduate school, and before his selection as a Scientist-Astronaut, Jack had been hired by Gene Shoemaker to join his team in Flagstaff.	To assist in astronaut training a replica of the lunar surface was made in an ash field near Sunset Crater. Here the USGS crew is excavating holes that will become copies of lunar craters.	Fertilizer explosive bags being set to make a crater
Sunset Crater replica "Moonscape" at moment of creation	An aerial view of the new "Moonscape."	Comparison of the replica "Moonscape" at top and Lunar Orbiter photo it copied	Geologic map of the "Moonscape." It was used to check against the map made during training exercises based on the observations made by the astronauts and relayed back to the USGS Mission Control Center.
USGS simulation by USGS geologists at the "Moonscape" testing prototype geology equipment, 1968. By this time MSC had provided USGS early-model Apollo pressure suits to improve fidelity of the simulations.	‎‎LRV training vehicle built by "Putty" Mills, USGS engineer, to be as close as possible to the LRV they would use on the Moon. Compare with actual LRV as photographed at Hadley Rille during Apollo 15 mission.	‎LRV at Hadley Rille during Apollo 15 mission.	Apollo 12 astronauts Al Bean, on left, and Pete Conrad at Flagstaff for a training exercise. "Moonscape" photo in foreground being discussed for their training exercise.
Apollo 14 astronauts Ed Mitchell, on left, and Al Shepard training to use the Modular Equipment Transporter (MET) that they carried on their flight. The MET was only used on Apollo 14 to carry geology tools and sample bags.	Apollo 15 astronauts Jim Irwin, on left, and Dave Scott during a training exercise at the "Moonscape." They are using the USGS LRV training vehicle	Apollo 16 astronauts Charley Duke, on left, and John Young during a training exercise at Flagstaff using the USGS LRV.	Apollo 17 astronauts Jack Schmitt, on the left, and Gene Cernan during geology training exercise on the big island of Hawaii.