Apollo 15

Lunar...

Apollo 15 lunar roving vehicle.

Manufacture Boeing and General Motors.

So sort of Oldsmobile.

and forged lifelong friendships during the height of the space race.

She shares stories of meeting her future husband, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, and the unique challenges and triumphs that came with being connected to one of NASA's most celebrated eras.

This conversation explores the realities behind the public image of the astronauts' families, including the camaraderie among the famous Mercury 7 wives and the important role they played with their husbands and risk everything to advance space exploration.

Anita also reflects on the space program of the 1960s and compares it to today's era of exploration, offering thoughtful insights on how NASA and the dream of reaching beyond Earth have evolved.

Well, great to talk to you about this book and really.

you know, your experiences with NASA and your husband.

I got to ask, you know, they sort of did this for Apollo 13 a little bit to kind of give you an insight into what the lives of the wives were.

And the right stuff kind of did it, but it was so kind of almost tongue in cheek.

And being in a super cold spacecraft on the way back from the moon, you know, and that was depicted really well by Bill Paxton in the movie, the Ron Howard movie, Apollo 13.

And then another interesting one is Apollo 15.

Not too many people are aware of this.

When Jim Irwin wasn't getting his hydration, his liquids and potassium on the moon, and that led to some serious heart problems and ultimately killed him.

This outer edge, of course, represents the moon's crust, and the differences are deliberate, dynamic enough for people to assume it was an error.

But in 1971, Apollo 15 used a laser altimeter to measure the thickness of the moon's crust.

We might call it a shell if you, uh, you know, keep up with the channel.

The scientists who conducted this study were surprised to find that the shell on the far side of the moon is seven miles thicker than the side we see.

That's, that, that's what we're talking about.

Apollo 15.

Yeah, exactly.

[laughs] That's right.

traveling

aboard Apollo, an Apollo mission.

And according to this guy, it did travel upon the Apollo 12 mission.

Um, NASA said, no, not interested.

Um, he managed to get, hustle a random bunch of people.

Yep.

Yeah.

So he managed to get, so NASA, so he wanted to send this on an Apollo mission.

But he got himself noticed for the right reasons, totally committed, changed geology training for the astronauts, raised the profile of geology within the entire program.

I met Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 15.

He was the backup lunar module pilot.

The experiments that I was working on had to be exercised by each crew member before we loaded them into the lunar module and sent them off to the moon.

Within an easy driving distance of the landing site there are these highland blocks, the North Massif and the South Massif.

These highland blocks were formed as mountains.

Orbital imagery based on photographs taken by Apollo 15 had demonstrated the existence of boulders which had rolled down the mountains from high up on the slopes where they'd carved tracks.

And so accessing these boulders that had rolled down the massifs became a high priority.

You might remember Jim Irwin.

He was on Apollo 15.

Jim was with the crew, Apollo 15.

He stepped down on the moon, brought those moon rocks back, and because of that failure, Time that he would come here, we developed a relationship over the years.

And I had the unique opportunity of becoming a friend of Jim, having him tell me some of the things about the moonwalk.