NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Dr. Gordon Swann, geologist with the US Geological Survey (USGS) and Principal Investigator of Lunar Geology for Apollo, part 2 of 4

Well, let's see, we took him to a wide variety of places and in a sense all over the world. They got a very good background in field theology from some very classical places. But of course, in around here, we took him to meteor crater for obvious reasons. It's the best known meteorite impact on Earth. We took him out to sunset crater in Benito Flo. Because we thought there would likely be basaltic rocks on the moon and there were. We took him to Hawaii again to study the basaltic rocks in Hawaii. They went to Iceland to study the volcanic there. We took him to Big Bend and Texas mainly to show them just general principles of geology. We took him to Grand Canyon to show him layer cake geology. He took them to Kilburn Hall to show him kind of an explosive volcanic crater. They went to Iceland. They went to Iceland. They went to Big Bend, Texas or else. Oh, I was thinking of Bend Oregon.

There was a trip there. I was not on that. They took him to the cat my peninsula in Alaska that I was not on. They took him to which I didn't go on. They took him to Canada. The Sudbury complex because it's thought to be a large old impact. Why so many places? Just to show him a wide variety of things so that we didn't know what was going to be on him. We could make some pretty good guesses, but we didn't really know. We wanted to have a wide background on stuff so they would have some knowledge of almost anything they found and it worked out that way. It turned out that most of the things we predicted about the moon were fairly nearly true and they confirmed a lot of it and brought back a lot of additional stuff by which we could refine the theories. What were you teaching the astronauts to look for primarily? One thing was a variety of rocks.

We wanted them to go in and see an area that had rocks scattered around in it and teach them to bring back a representative suite of the rocks that comprised the area. They were very good at that. They were very astute observers, but we thought there would be a variety of rocks because of the nature of impact and the way it stirs things up and breaks things up and mixes things up. As a matter of fact, there was a large variety of rocks and we wanted them to recognize a variety and bring back what would be a representative suite and to also be able to explain to us the context in which that rock was on the surface. We did a lot of photographing, a lot of describing and that's what we were trying to teach them to do in the field. Why was context important? Well, if you're trying to build a geologic picture, you need to know the context of the rocks, where they were and how they were situated and how it was a relation to each other. If you want to build a picture of the geology and of course they didn't have time to go up there and build the picture themselves.

All I could do was contribute to it and pick up a good bunch of samples and take a lot of good photographs and then you got quite adapted to this. Now, did you feel that NASA was sensitive to the geology that you were doing? Let's talk specifically about the spacesuits. Did you ever get into a spacesuit to figure out what they were going to be up against and what did you find? I spent about 50 hours in spacesuits. Part of it was I wanted to see what the limitations were and I wanted to be able to tell other scientists, yeah, you can do this, yeah, you can't because I've tried it. The astronauts didn't have time to spend a lot of times trying things out in spacesuits. Other people had to learn what could be done, what to expect and then let them give it a shot or two. What was your impression of the spacesuit as a working geological tool? My thing about the spacesuit was you could do almost anything in the suit that you could do out of the suit, except it was a lot more work and a lot slower.

It took a lot more energy and a lot more time, but other than maybe some climbing a tree or that kind of thing, but as far as doing normal geology on reasonable terrain, you could get around in the suit and do about anything you could do in shirtsleeve. It turned out that the low gravity on the moon was an assist to them in getting around and it wasn't quite as hard work so it was here on Earth with the regular 1G. Could they go with the proper tools, do you think? I've heard some complaints about the fact that they couldn't even take a pick or something like that. No, they took rock picks on every mission. Yes, and they used them the first modifying tools. The rock hammer was modified slightly, it looked a lot like an ordinary, what we call a soft rock hammer, but it had a little bit longer handle and had an extension that could be put on so you could make a long hammer out of it. It was flattened on one side so it could be used to drive drivetubes into the ground, to hammer it with a bigger area than the rock knocking into the hammer. But it was only a slight modification.

Good. It was cut for a second. That was what you wanted on it. Okay, good. Gordon Swan. Who was some of the astronauts you thought that really took to it? There were several astronauts who were really enthusiastic about it. I think Neil Armstrong would have been if he had gone on a later mission where he had more time to do rocks, but Fred Hayes on Apollo 13 which of course failed. Got very enthusiastic on Apollo 15. Both Dave Scott and Jim Irwin were very enthusiastic. In fact, Dave was so enthusiastic about it. He had a beautiful rock cabinet built and put in the hallway of his house. It was internally lighted and he brought samples from these field trips and put them in. And his wife took a course at one of the universities in freshman geology so she could talk to her husband at night. I understand some of the late terms. But both Charlie Duke and John Young were very enthusiastic.

I didn't work much with the orbital guys, but Ken Mattingley stands out as a guy that the poor guys that briefed Ken didn't seem to get much sleep. He had wanted them to work till two o'clock in the morning and I didn't talk until himself. So Ken was very enthusiastic. The one I could pick out and it wouldn't hurt his feelings to say that he wasn't too enthusiastic goes out shepherd and out told me shortly before his flight. He said, well, he said, you know, rocks and geology and that kind of thing. I don't really my thing, but I'll do you the best job I can. And I said, well, you know, I'm not big on aeronautical engineering either. And he said, I guess we understand each other. Don't we? Well, I understand that. Why would an engineer be particularly enthusiastic about rocks? And I did a good job when he got up there. So they did very what did that Michael Collins say? What was his term? He didn't like the term. He might use Michael Collins. Michael Collins. He didn't I only know this from his book because I didn't hear him say, but he didn't like the term hypidomorphic granular,

which is a term that you use when you're looking at a rock through a microscope, an igneous rock. Two or three of the guys briefing the astronaut's election to him were very enthusiastic, patrologist, mineralogist types. And they probably got a little bit too carried away with the details of rock textures and stuff. And this was a texture that it just stuck in Mike's craw. How do you feel that the scientists astronauts were greeted by the test pilot astronauts? Was there was there a feeling of, you know, who needs these guys? I think there might have been a little bit, but I don't really know. My physical connection with that, you know, the test pilot guys were very nice to the scientists astronauts and all that, but I don't know. You probably need to ask the astronauts this kind of question. Why, why, why couldn't, why man, man, not robots?

A lot of questions then. Still some today. Why? I don't think that you'll ever, or we won't send our lifetime, develop a robot can do everything a man can do. A man is such a wonderful combination of things. We can't run as fast as an antelope, but we can run. We can't swim as well as a shark, we can swim. We do have to have assistance to fly, but we can fly better than a bird. But a lot of it is this connection between an eye and a hand and a brain and an ear or a vocal cord. Being able to use all of these things to assimilate something and to perform tasks. And you just, well, we can't build a computer yet that can really reason and think they may be able to manipulate numbers a lot faster than a man can. But they can't put together all this stuff and use the logic and the reason that a man can. Well, a lot of people, even Wassertberg, who I recently interviewed, I said, could robots have done the job as well?

And he said, well, given the constraints that the astronauts were under, yes, I think robots would have done as well. Jerry Wassertberg is primarily a geochemist. He claims to be a good field geologist, maybe he is, but I disagree with him. I don't think that a robot would have done anywhere near as well as those guys did. A robot might have done some things that they can't do, but I don't think a robot would have come close to doing what they did. I wouldn't have cost as much to do with a robot, probably, and that's an argument. But I don't think that we're at a place where we can replace a man with a machine yet. Do you felt that NASA gave you guys enough support for field training and stuff? I understand some of the early missions, these guys even antied up themselves for paying for their expenses and stuff, and some of the early field training. I think we got, in general, I think we got pretty good support from NASA on this.

There were some parts of NASA that were very engineering oriented that didn't even want to do any science on the moon. They wanted to carry out the President's mandate to land a man on the moon safety and returning to Earth, and it didn't say anything about science. But in general, I think NASA was pretty supportive of science. Deak Slaten, who was in charge of the astronaut office, I don't think Deak was ever very interested in geology, but he recognized it was important. And he...