Fifty years ago, on April 21, 1972, Lancaster, S.C. native Charles M. Duke Jr. became the 10th man of 12 in history to walk on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 16 mission.
The Palmetto State moonwalker recently looked back on his historic journey. Duke expressed amazement that time has passed so quickly. But his memories are clear and numerous, he said, including colleague John Young’s landing of the lunar module.
Among the rocks and craters, “there were places we could land, and John picked out a very nice place,” Duke recalled. “I talked him down. So it was successful. So the dynamics of that landing, the last two or three minutes, was really memorable.
“Another memorable moment was liftoff in the Saturn 5,” he continued. “It just shook like crazy,” but “after the first stage, that rocket became really smooth and got us into orbit. The next vivid memory I have is looking out the window and there was the Earth 20,000 miles away. I can still feel the emotion that I had when I saw planet Earth suspended in space out there.
“And then finally, the re-entry. Coming in, sitting in a big fireball. Five thousand degrees outside temperature in that fireball. ‘Course, it had to work, or you’re dead,” said the astronaut with the confidence of one who had not a doubt that it would work. “Experiencing this amazing feeling of being inside of a furnace, but you weren’t hot. It was spectacular, to say the least.”
But being inside that fireball, and blasting off atop a rocket of immense power, elicited no fear from Duke. He trusted his equipment and the engineers who built it, and besides, he had other things to think about.
“We were focused on our job,” he said. “And I think everybody felt like ‘if this thing fails, it’s not gonna be my fault. I’m not making a mistake.’ So we had trained hard, the probability of success on an Apollo flight was over 99 percent. And so I was focused on ‘Let’s go! I’m ready. I’ve trained for two years for this moment, and don’t stop counting! Keep going! I’m ready’!”
Duke expressed some disappointment that the United States hasn’t returned to the moon in the last 50 years, but said the space shuttle program lasted longer than expected, which kept NASA’s focus off the moon. But now, he is pleased that a renewed interest has produced the Artemis program, aimed at that very goal. “And in the future, when we begin to build lunar capability with a permanent space station on the moon, cycling crews back and forth, let’s say, over a two month period…on that experience, we’d develop systems, we’d develop reliable transportation systems. Not only rockets but vehicles that you would use on the surface. And until we get all that done, I think robotics and artificial intelligence are gonna tell us an awful lot about Mars.”
The subject of a manned mission to Mars, romantic to dream of, has practical obstacles long recognized by experts. Duke named a few, beginning with the fact that while reaching the moon only requires a few days, a trip to Mars would take a minimum of eight months – each way. Thus, he said, “Once you start to Mars, you’re on your own. And you can’t say, ‘hey, Houston, send me up another widget. This one just broke.’ You gotta carry that on board if you want a new widget. How do you man the crews? Do you have a doctor on board? What if you have appendicitis? All of these things that need to be thought through correctly so that when we do launch, we have a great probability of success.”
But in addition to the systems and vehicle development he mentioned, Duke imagined other good things could come from a lengthy presence on the moon. “Off in the future I could see mining on the moon. There’s a helium isotope that’s not found here on Earth, and it is radioactive. When it decays, it produces this nuclear energy, there’s no radioactive residue. So the idea would be to bring it back and power a certain type of reactor for clean energy, and would be reliable.”
The South Carolina astronaut, one of only four moonwalkers still living, gave his insight into what the Apollo missions meant to America. “I think it showed the pre-eminence of our technology that has permeated our society for the last 50 years,” Duke said. “Especially the electronics, the materials processing, organizational influences, different management techniques. There’s just a plethora of things you could point to that the moon missions accelerated and emphasized. And so we have reaped a huge benefit from the technologies developed in Apollo.
“And it’s ongoing. It’s now motivated our private industry to get going, and very successfully. Blue Origin and SpaceX, and Boeing has Starliner, they’re going to start flying.”
Duke observed that the space program has been of huge benefit, not only to the United States, but also to the world.
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