The Green Boulder

Dune Crater

 

The Genesis Rock

Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1996 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
Scan and panorama assembly credits in the Image Library.
Video credits in the Video Library.
Except where noted, audio clips by David Shaffer.
Last revised 3 August 2017.

MP3 Audio Clip ( 11 min 44 sec )

145:24:01 Allen: And, Dave, give us a call as you come up toward Spur...

145:24:02 Scott: (Before hearing Joe) We're almost to Spur now.

145:24:03 Allen: ...we've got some parking instructions.

145:24:09 Scott: Parking instructions? Okay. Let's see, do we want to hit the upper rim or the lower rim of Spur?

145:24:18 Irwin: You see that large block on the...

145:24:20 Scott: Yeah.

145:24:21 Irwin: ...the northern rim.

145:24:22 Scott: Yeah, I think we should work down to the northern rim, right?

145:24:25 Irwin: Yeah, if we're going to sample any blocks there on the rim, that'd be the place to do it.

145:24:29 Scott: Yeah.

[As they learned at Station 6, the downslope rim provides a level place to work.]

145:24:47 Scott: (Obviously pleased with the way things are going) Okay! We're in good shape, Joe. (Pause) That one wall there has quite a bit of debris, doesn't it?

145:24:59 Irwin: Yeah, and it looks like it, again, has a linear pattern running north and south.

145:25:07 Scott: (Chuckling) Almost does.

145:25:14 Irwin: (To Joe) We're talking about the debris that's exposed on the north wall of Spur. And the slope here at Spur is, oh, 8 to 10 degrees.

145:25:32 Allen: Roger. (Long Pause)

145:25:46 Scott: Okay; I'll park it east on a level slope here. If I can. (Long Pause) Right down by all the (Laughing) Try to avoid the big crater. Be a nice place to park.

145:26:20 Irwin: Yeah, it looks good place. Take a break here (by working on a level surface for a change).

145:26:25 Scott: Yeah. (Pause) Okay, I think we're - oop - just about level, right there.

145:26:32 Irwin: Yeah.

145:26:33 Scott: Okay? Okay, Joe.

145:26:35 Irwin: I'll give them a reading if you want, Dave.

145:26:36 Scott: Yes, I'll get the TV on.

[Dave and I reached this point in the mission at the end of a day of review and, before we started again the next morning, had the following conversation.]

[Jones - "Some time ago, Jack Schmitt told me that, after you left the Astronaut Corps and went out to Edwards, you kept up your interest in geology. Is that true?"]

[Scott - "Sort of. Let's see; what did I do? I'd have to think about it."]

[Jones - "As an amateur geologist?"]

[Scott - "Well, yeah, there are some great areas out there. Red Rock Canyon. And, just driving back and forth to L.A., you go through some of the best road cuts...You been out there?"]

[Jones - "Not in a long time."]

[Scott - "Well, you know the freeway (California Route 14, from Lancaster to Santa Clarita) was relatively new. I went out there in '73 and they (had) just got some marvelous road cuts through the San Gabriels. But I really didn't do anything, actively. Nothing compared to every month to a different spot (during pre-flight geology training) with intensive (field work)...I mean, I like geology; I think it's fun. I wish I had more time...In fact, you've heard of the Clementine mission? SDIO (Strategic Defense Initiative Office) is going to launch a lunar satellite next January. Paul Spudis (at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston) is on the science team. He feeds me stuff so I can keep up. They're going to map (the Moon) from 500 km, and they have a number of sensors, one of which has spectral ranges and they're looking to see how olivine, plagioclase, whatever, is (distributed) on the surface. And it goes right over Hadley, and it will be interesting to see if we found the only one, or if there's a lot."]

[The Clementine Mission was highly successful. It was launched and mapped much of the lunar surface over the next months.]

145:26:42 Scott: We're at Spur Crater, Joe.

145:26:46 Irwin: I'll give them the shadow device, too. Okay; the heading is 290, (bearing) 349, (distance driven) 7.3, (range) 4.7, 095, 100, 82, 90; motor temps are both lower limit.

[The bearing and range of 349/4.7 puts them near AY.9/76.9. They are actually quite close to AZ.6/77.8. They are actually about 4.4 km from the LM.]

[The indicated Nav system error is about 290 meters. Generally, the errors suggested by Ken Rattee's estimated locations were roughly 150 meters up through Station 6. Starting with Station 6a, the errors are more typically 300 meters and, as well, the positions calculated from the nav readouts are systematically farther southwest of the actual locations than was the case during the outbound traverse. The change in error is most convincingly shown in the outbound and inbound locations on the west rim of Dune. In both cases, Dave and Jim were due west of the center of the crater on the same track (they were retracing their outbound tracks at this point) and, yet, the nav readouts differed in range by 300 meters - 348/3.0 outbound versus 350/3.3 inbound. It is tempting to think that the change in error is related to the sidehill driving Dave did between Station 6 and Station 6a and, as well, to the maneuvering he had to do at the boulder.]

145:27:15 Irwin: (Before he hears Joe) And the shadow is 4 degrees left.

145:27:24 Scott: Let's get the other two.

145:27:26 Irwin: You mean roll and pitch?

145:27:27 Scott: Yes, the pitch is about 3 degrees down, and the roll...(Pause)

145:27:37 Irwin: You have to hold it in the damp position, I guess.

[The pitch/roll indicator must be reoriented in order to get the roll reading. As shown in Figure 1-26 from the Rover Handbook, the pitch/roll indicator is attached to the left side of the console. See, also, a pre-shipment Boeing photo of the console on the flight Rover. In its stowed position, the indicator gives a pitch reading and then must be rotated out from the console to show roll. Use of the damper allows the crew to damp gauge oscillations relatively quickly. ]

145:27:49 Allen: Roger; we copy. And it was at...

145:27:52 Scott: And, Jim, why don't you get off, first (before Dave tries to aim the high-gain)...

145:27:53 Irwin: Okay....

145:27:54 Allen: ...first glance that that heading is still a good heading. We'll be back with you.

145:27:58 Scott: Okay.

145:28:04 Irwin: Got it.

145:28:08 Scott: Okay.

145:28:11 Allen: And, Dave and Jim...

145:28:12 Irwin: I'm off and I'm going to take a pan.

145:28:13 Allen: Okay; sounds good.

145:28:14 Irwin: Okay, I'm off and I'll get the TV.

145:28:15 Allen: And we're looking at about 30 minutes working time here at this station.

145:28:22 Scott: (To Jim) Yeah, we're in good shape. (Responding to Joe) Oh, good! (Pause) Okay, Joe. We're going to FM TV, now.

145:28:36 Allen: Roger.

145:28:39 Scott: And I'll give you a general pointing, and you can try your big dish.

145:28:45 Allen: Okay, Dave. Try to use the sight on this one and just make sure that the filter is flipped up out of the way, please. The sun filter.

145:28:56 Scott: Oh! (Static; Long Pause)

[Jim's Station 7 pan (assembly by Dave Byrne) consists of frames AS15-90- 12201 to 12222.]

[Frame 12201 is the down-Sun and, as indicated in a comparison ( 142k ) with Jim's down-Sun before of the Genesis Rock, 12227, that famous sample can be seen in the distance.]

[Frame 12209 has Mt. Hadley on the left and a portion of the Swann Range on the right. In a labelled version ( 156k ), distances are given from Spur Crater to the summit of Mt. Hadley and three peaks in the Swann Range. These four peaks are also labeled in a detail ( 517k ) from LTO41B4 ( 12 Mb ).]

[Frames 12213 and 12214 show the Rover tracks coming down from Station 6a, as can be seen in a mini-pan assembled by David Harland.]

[Frame AS15-90- 12217 shows the Rover seats, handcontroller, and control panel.]

[Frames 12218, 12219, and 12220 show Dave using the sighting scope to align the high-gain antenna.]

[Yuri Krasilnikov has created a stereo porttrait of Mt Hadley by combining frames 12208-9 from this pan and frames 12186-7 from his Station 6a pan taken at the Green Boulder. ]

145:29:38 Scott: Yeah. You got it now? (Static; Long Pause)

145:30:11 Irwin: We kicked up some more green material here, Dave.

145:30:13 Scott: Sure it isn't that light gray albedo stuff (that they saw at the north rim of the Station 6 crater)?

145:30:15 Irwin: No, it looks green!

145:30:16 Scott: .I think it might...The contrast?

145:30:20 Irwin: No! No, I see white; I see a light green; and I see a brown.

145:30:28 Scott: Hey, Jim.

145:30:29 Irwin: Yeah.

145:30:30 Scott: Stand where you are and give me alignment on the antenna, and see if I can get pointed at the Earth. You can turn to your right there; take about three steps right, and if you look up - don't fall back, just look up - you'll be able to align the antenna in your position relative to the Earth. You'll have to take your visor up probably. (Pause) Do you see the Earth up there?

145:30:56 Irwin: Can't get my back ... fall over....

145:30:58 Allen: ...Dave and Jim, you could look at the meter on the LCRU and peak up (that is, maximize the reading on the Automatic Gain Control) AGC (meter) while you move the antenna. Make sure, also, that the sun filter is up off the sighting device.

145:31:11 Scott: Joe, it has been ever since we started. The shade down and everything else. And there's just not that much...

145:31:18 Allen: Roger. We understand.

145:31:19 Scott: ...light ... really.

145:31:20 Allen: Just checking.

145:31:25 Scott: Okay; I'll try the AGC, then. Like radar.

[TV on.]

[Frame AS15-90- 12219, which is from Jim's pan, shows Dave using the sighting scope. This may be the best picture of its kind in the Apollo collection.]

145:31:34 Allen: Okay; that's good. Beautiful, beautiful. Right on the money.

145:31:41 Irwin: You can use that sound to lock in, Dave.

145:31:44 Scott: You know, I did that, I didn't even look at that; I just used your AGC.

145:31:48 Allen: All right!

145:31:49 Irwin: You also get the sound when you're locked on, too.

145:31:51 Scott: Yeah, you...

[Scott - "The comm clears (as soon as the antenna is aligned). Use the sound, rather than the sight glass. There wasn't enough light in it to do any good."]

[Although there is no discussion in the Mission Report of the problems that Dave had with the sighting scope, changes were made for Apollo 16. John Young had no trouble getting proper alignment on his flight, nor did Gene Cernan on Apollo 17. See the dialog and discussion that starts at 167:43:54.]

145:31:59 Irwin: Roger. You don't think there's green here, huh?

145:32:05 Scott: No, Jim, I don't know. I think it's a grey...(That the apparent green color is produced by a) difference in the gray and the albedo. At least, that would be my guess. (Pause)

[The TV camera is pointed down toward the surface just aft of the right front wheel. Jim goes to his seat and he see him get up on his toes as he reaches inboard.]

145:32:28 Scott: (Garbled) green. But, it's worth sampling. (Pause)

[Jones - " From the look of this picture, there isn't much dust on the TV lens, here at that start."]

[Scott - "Well, we just drove slowly a short distance. That's worth observing."]

[Jones - "A couple hundred meters, maybe?"]

[Scott - "Not much further, I would think. And you can tell, right away, comparing the images...Well, we stopped at 6a and didn't do anything, so we went all the way from..."]

[Jones - "You came up the hill, drove over to 6 and stopped there. We saw Jim clean the thing off just before you drove back over here. So it's from 6 to the boulder and then down."]

[The total distance was about 400 to 500 meters.]

[Scott - "And we hadn't done anything with it at 6a; but we still hadn't been very far. And I think that's a big difference in the images, don't you think?"]

[Jones - "Yeah; I do, too."]

[Scott - "Not far. Not going fast, but in soft powder. It would interesting to find out why it does that. Is it electrostatics of some sort? We weren't kicking up much dust, I don't think, 'cause we weren't going very fast. The problem is, if you have a camera on a mobile rover, remotely controlled, you need to pay attention to the lens. How do you keep it from getting dusty?"]

145:32:53 Scott: Yeah.

[Fendell raises his aim and we see Jim looking past the front of the Rover toward the large rock. The Swann Range is in the background. Frame AS15-90-12201, which is a frame from Jim's pan, shows the rock Jim is describing.]

145:33:00 Scott: You sure can.

145:33:01 Irwin: And, it looks like it's a different color rock. Well, it's a dark...(Pause)

145:33:12 Scott: Okay, let's go sample the rim over here.

145:33:15 Irwin: Okay.

[Fendell has started a counter-clockwise pan. The level horizon shows that Dave has, indeed, parked the Rover on a relatively flat spot.]

145:33:26 Irwin: Houston, you should be pointing right at the LM.

145:33:31 Allen: Rog, Jim. We're looking.

Video Clip   2 min 47 sec ( 0.7 Mb RealVideo or 25 Mb MPG )

[Fendell stops his pan as he reaches the rille and backtracks slightly to try to find the LM. Unfortunately, the TV resolution is insufficient to show either the spacecraft or the bright patch that surrounds it.]

145:33:42 Irwin: Hey, look at that light colored rock with...

145:33:44 Scott: Yes.

145:33:45 Irwin: ...it almost looks like a white vein on top of the other rock!

145:33:47 Scott: Yeah, look at that! How about that, We'll get that one.

145:33:51 Allen: Get it now.

145:33:52 Irwin: It's a...

145:33:53 Scott: Yeah. It's a breccia. It's a dark gray rock that looks like a...Actually it looks like a big pinnacle with a small gray and white breccia on top of it. The pinnacle is about 6 inches across and 4 or 5 inches high. On top of it is about a 2- to 3-inch subangular frag with a light gray or medium gray matrix, and about 20 percent white clast in it. Very unique. It stands out...(Laughing) it's amazing! Okay, Jimmy. Let's gather some data.

145:34:30 Irwin: You're going to sample that, right?

145:34:31 Scott: Yeah.

145:34:32 Irwin: Okay. (Long Pause)

[Dave takes a cross-Sun stereopair from the north, AS15-86- 11662 and 11663. Meanwhile, Jim takes a down-Sun stereopair. Frame AS15-90- 12223 shows Dave at the right taking his cross-Suns. Jim stepped to his left to take 12224, which shows that Dave has finished his pictures and has the tongs open in his right hand. Note the sample bags hanging from the bottom of his camera. A magnified, processed detail ( a15det12224.jpg ) shows Dave's watch. On the assumption that Jim took 12224 just before the next interchange, the time in Houston is about 10:09 in the morning of 1 August 1971.]

145:34:52 Irwin: Yeah.

[David Harland has assembled a mosaic of "before" and "after" photos of this sample. A second version shows the sample in larger format.]

[Fendell has resumed his counter-clockwise camera rotation and reaches Dave just as he takes the sample from his tongs for examination. Jim is getting a bag ready.]

145:35:04 Scott: Oh, there are sparklies in...No, it's a breccia. (Planting his tongs) That's soil. It's sort of caked on the top, though. Yeah. (Bending over as he gets sunlight on the rock for close examination) Another black matrix (breccia), fine-grained, with white clasts - millimeter size - and there are some very fine grained little sparkles in there, though.

[Dave is hoping to find a piece of anorthosite, a type of crystalline rock expected to be abundant in the ancient lunar crust which, presumably, comprises at least a portion of the Hadley Delta bedrock. Anorthosite is easily recognizable because of the characteristic reflectivity of its crystals.]

[Jones - "When you look at this sample, 194, your reaction to it has a flavor of 'Oh, it's just another breccia.'"]

[Scott - "Yeah."]

[Jones - "Were you expecting the mountain to have a fair bit of crystalline rock, if you found a crater that got down to bedrock?"]

[Scott - "Not necessarily."]

[Jones - "Some people were hoping?"]

[Scott - "Of course we were. Sure. Hoping and maybe expecting, but the tone of 'oh, this is only another breccia' is only because we've already picked up a lot of this class or rock."]

[Jones - " As in: 'We know this is a common rock around here, let's find out what else is around?'"]

[Scott - "Yeah. But this was a different breccia, 'cause it had the white in it. So that was significant. But, in the macro sense of all rocks on the Moon, it was still classed as a breccia. And we're hoping, expecting...A lot of people figured that we'd hit highland material right away. It's hard to reflect on that long ago, but maybe what we should have done on one crater was get good photos and go pick up everything we could pick up and then get good photos again and then head on out. And not spend quite so much time with the detailed geology."]

[Jones - "I'm a little surprised you're not raking here."]

[Scott - "Well, maybe we haven't got to it yet. (Jim will start a rake sample at about 145:58:06.) You can't do it all. And this is the procedure to investigate a rock in the field. Which is probably good but, in retrospect, realizing what limited time we have had and probably will have, it might have been good to stop at one crater and just sweep it of anything that's between one inch and three inches, put the rocks you get in one big bag, and photo it. Then somebody could spend a year just sorting out which of the fifty rocks were in what location. (That post-mission analysis) would take a lot of time, but would be cheaper than cranking up the whole Apollo program again."]

[Vesicles are the imprints of gas bubbles frozen in a once-molten rock. Although vesicles are prevalent in basalts formed near the surface of a lava flow, they also occur in breccias formed under pressures high enough to create partial melting. The most prominent examples of vesicles found in lunar breccias are those in the large boulder sampled by the Apollo 17 crews at their Station 6. Photo AS17-141-21629 shows some which are several centimeters across.]

[This first Station 7 sample is 15418, a 1.14 kg piece of "shock-melted gabbroic anorthosite" The "fine-grained, little sparkles" that Dave sees are indications of the anorthositic components of the rock, a hint of the discovery of pure anorthosites that awaits them.]

145:35:41 Irwin: Yeah.

145:35:42 Allen: Just standing by for the (bag) number, Dave.

145:35:43 Scott: (Before he hears Joe, putting the rock in the bag) 194. 94. Yeah. (Getting his tongs) Let me get the other one that is sitting right next to it. Look how the upper layer (coughs) of the soil here is caked.

145:36:00 Allen: Standing by for the number, Jim.

145:36:01 Scott: No; better yet, why don't you gather some soil? (Responding to Joe) We gave it...

145:36:06 Irwin: 194.

[Dave plants his tongs and takes the bag Jim has been holding.]

Video Clip   2 min 59 sec ( 0.8 Mb RealVideo or 27 Mb MPG )

145:36:09 Allen: Thank you.

145:36:10 Scott: (To Joe) We'll get it (meaning the bag numbers) to you. (To Jim) Yeah. Let's get soil in this bag. Okay?

145:36:15 Irwin: Okay.

Quicktime Clip (1 min 07 sec)

145:36:18 Scott: Right there by the rock.

145:36:19 Irwin: Yeah.

145:36:21 Scott: Leave the rock alone.

145:36:22 Irwin: Yeah. Is that a glass one, sitting right below it (that is, under the first sample)?

145:36:27 Scott: It sure looks like it! It was under it wasn't it?

145:36:30 Irwin: Yeah.

145:36:31 Scott: Yeah! (Pause) Let me take a picture. Just a minute, let me take a picture, and why don't you pick up that little piece of glass and we'll put it in the bag, too.

145:36:46 Irwin: Okay.

145:36:48 Scott: That must have been under the rock.

145:36:50 Irwin: Yeah.

145:36:52 Scott: Okay, I got the picture...

[After Jim pours a scoopful of soil into the bag, Dave steps back to the north to get cross-Sun AS15-86- 11664. Note the small, glass-coated rock in the hole.]

145:36:53 Scott: Yeah. Pick up that little rock. (Pause)

[Jim gets the rock with the scoop and raises it slowly to the bag that Dave holds down at knee height.]

145:36:59 Scott: That a boy. Okay, let me get a(n "after") picture. (Pause)

[Dave's "after" of the glass-coated rock is AS15-86- 11665.]

[While Jim talks, Dave puts the sample bag in his SCB. Note that Dave has not given the bag number to Houston.]

145:37:26 Scott: (Doubtful) Ah...

145:37:27 Irwin: See what I mean?

145:37:28 Scott: Right here?

145:37:29 Irwin: Right here.

145:37:30 Scott: Yeah. That's just a light...Okay. I'd call it light gray but, we'll check it when we get home.

[As Dave moves the gnomon a short distance west, Fendell resumes his counter-clockwise TV pan.]

145:37:41 Scott: Yeah. You mean...Well, look at this one right here!

145:37:45 Irwin: That's what I'm talking about.

145:37:46 Scott: Okay. Sure is. That's awful big, but I think we ought to sample here anyway, all those little frags. (Pause)

[Dave is probably taking a cross-Sun stereopair, AS15-86-11666 and 11667.]

[Jim takes down-Suns AS15-90- 12225 and 12226. ]

145:38:10 Irwin: Oh, it's a good story.

145:38:12 Scott: Something about green cheese? (Jim laughs) Who'd ever believe it? (Pause)

[Fendell reaches the counter-clockwise pan limit and, then, reverses direction.]

145:38:28 Scott: Yeah. Oh, my! (Brief Pause)

145:38:31 Irwin: It is green!

145:38:32 Scott: It is green.

145:38:33 Irwin: (Quite excited and pleased) I told you it was green!!

145:38:34 Scott: You're right! Ooh! Fantastic. Hey hold this! Wait a minute, I can't put this into the bag yet; I got to look at this. This has got be something. Again. (Pause) Man, that looks almost...No, it's gray. The visor makes it green, Jim. (Jim laughs) It's grey.

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145:39:04 Irwin: A different shade of gray. No, I know; I put my visor up, too.

145:39:10 Scott: But it's a very light grey, very fine grained, sure looks like a basalt with some less than millimeter-size vesicles in it, maybe 5 percent or so. It's a subangular rock. It's friable. I can...Maybe it's not a basalt. It's friable...I can scrape it off with my glove and I put some streaks in it, in case anybody wonders what that is when we get back. But, it's definitely different from anything we've seen before. (Pause) 195. Let me get another one here.

[Fendell pans past Dave and Jim but does not stop to watch them.]

[The largest of the samples collect here are 15424 and 25, which are 120 gram and 220 grams pieces of what is described in the Preliminary Science Report as "friable green clods" and are examples of what was later called "instant rock" or, more formally, "regolith breccia", which are pieces of soil compressed enough in an impact to have some strength.]

145:39:53 Scott: (Chuckles) With the visor on, Joe, I was about ready to call it a dunite, but I opened up my visor, and I was wrong. I didn't get to call it what I wanted to.

[Scott - "We're struggling with something that we'd never seen before. We were expecting to see some sort of (lunar) highlands material or something that came from deep - which could be a dunite - and we're trying to put it in that class."]

["(In training) we had spent a lot of time looking at all the classification of rocks; and, all of a sudden, we're in a situation in which we find a rock that doesn't fall into any classification and isn't even close to anything we've ever really seen or discussed. Nobody'd conjectured this kind of thing, which turned out to be a matrix of soil and small, green glass spherules - the fire fountain kind of thing. The struggle here is to find some category to put it in so that the people back on the Earth can start thinking about it. At the time, I don't think anybody had even conjectured these fire fountain ideas. I haven't followed this all that closely (since the flight); but that's a pretty spectacular event, if it did, indeed, occur. And it explains why you get green glass and orange glass, which nobody ever expected. So, as you read through this and listen to it, Jim was convinced, right away - which is sort of neat - and said 'That's green.' Which it was! I was trying to put it in some category, and it didn't fit anything, so it was difficult for me to agree with him. Jim was flexible enough to put it in a new category, which is 'green rock'."]

[NASA photos S79-32188 and S79-32189 show a collection of the green glass beads, which proved to be a prominent component of the soils Dave and Jim collected not only here are Spur but also at the other sample sites on Hadley Delta: Stations 2, 6, and 6a. In 2008, a team from Brown University, Carnegie Institution for Science, and Case Western Reserve University announced in the 10 July issue of Nature the discovery of water content of up to 46 ppm (parts-per-million). Water content is highest at the center of each bead, a clear indication that the water had been part of the lunar magma that produced ancient volcanic fire fountains that produced the beads. A Carnegie press release summarizes the findings.]

[Jones - "There was a lot of what was later called 'instant rock' at 17, which is impact consolidated soil, which is what you're describing. Regolith breccia."]

[Scott - "But is there a category of rock into which all of these fall, as a unique characteristic and, if so, do such rocks exist on the Earth?"]

[Jones - "And the answer is probably no, because impacts are rare and, where you do have impacts, they tend to weather pretty quickly. Whereas, up there, when you make a regolith breccia, it's going to stick around for a while."]

[Scott - "Right. And would you expect such things on Mars? Not trying to get into the geologist's domain, but it's sort of an interesting opening into new vistas, because you start thinking - as they're finding out everywhere - (that) there's still an awful lot of unknowns in just the planetary system. Things that people can't even conjecture, that might be there. And does this now open up a new area of investigation of these types of rocks. Sedimentary, volcanic, igneous, and whatever these are called."]

[Jones - " Impact rocks, I suppose. And, I presume, there are breccias at impact sites on Earth."]

145:40:22 Irwin: Okay. (Pause)

[Dave takes a stereopair, AS15-86- 11668 and 11669.]

145:40:30 Irwin: Yeah.

145:40:31 Scott: I think this is a big frag here; but, it broke...

145:40:34 Irwin: Yeah.

145:40:35 Scott: ...when it hit. All these pieces are roughly the same. Yeah.

145:40:37 Irwin: Not much soil here, really.

145:40:39 Scott: No, it really isn't.

[Fendell is looking at Mt. Hadley. There are suggestions of the linear pattern on the mountain, but nothing as convincing as the still photographs.]

145:40:40 Scott: Get a little (garbled), just for drill.

145:40:42 Irwin: This one right here.

145:40:43 Scott: Yeah, that's good.

145:40:43 Allen: ...is it your impression that you are sampling on the ejecta blanket of Spur Crater, now?

145:40:48 Scott: (Responding to Joe) Yes, sir; probably from the deepest part, because we're right on the rim.

145:40:53 Allen: Sounds good!

145:40:59 Scott: Okay, 195. Wouldn't you agree with that, Jim?

145:41:01 Irwin: Yeah. Yes, sir. (Pause)

[Fendell is looking almost directly up-Sun and, compared with the situation at Station 6, there is very little effect of dust on the picture quality.]

145:41:17 Irwin: Get that unusual one?

145:41:19 Scott: Get that unusual one. (Pause) Here's some dense...And there's another unusual one; look at the little crater here, and the one that's facing us. There is a little white corner to the thing.

145:41:34 Allen: Okay, Dave. Get as many of those as you can, and you might be watching for a place where you think the rake might help you.

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145:41:43 Scott: Yeah. I think we can probably do a rake here, Joe.

145:41:47 Allen: Okay, sounds like a good place....

145:41:48 Scott: Okay, there's a big boulder over there down-Sun of us, that I'm sure you can see, Joe, which is gray. And it has some very outstanding gray clasts and white clasts, and oh, boy, it's a beaut! We're going to get ahold of that one in a minute.

145:42:07 Irwin: Okay, I have my pictures, Dave.

[The sample with the "white corner on the thing" is one of the best known of all Apollo samples, 15415, a 269 gram piece of pure anorthosite (185k). See, also, a red-blue anaglyph (0.5 Mb) of the 'N' face made from S71-44990 and 44991 by Erwin D'Hoore. Reporters covering the mission almost immediately named it the Genesis Rock. Interestingly, it was sitting up off the surface on a pedestal of soil. Readers should note that, during the drive back to the LM on EVA-1 at 123:56:52, Dave noticed another rock on a pedestal.]

[Jim's down-Sun "before" pictures are AS15-90- 12227 and 12228. In 12227, Dave is standing quite close to the gnomon. Although the pedestal is a little washed out in this picture, the Genesis Rock, the white object, is quite obvious. Jim moved several steps to his right to take 228, which shows Dave holding the tongs in his left hand. The Station 7 boulder is in the background.]

[Dave's cross-Sun "befores" are AS15-86- 11670 and 11671. David Harland has assembled a mosaic of Genesis Rock "befores" and "afters".]

145:42:10 Scott: Okay, let's see. What do you think the best way to sample it (meaning the Genesis Rock) would be?

145:42:14 Irwin: I think probably...Could we break off a piece of the clod underneath it? Or I guess you could probably lift that top fragment right off.

[Fendell has stopped to look at the rille and, now, zooms in on the near surface.]

[Dave may have been about to call the rock a white clast breccia when he cleaned some of the dirt cover off and saw the predominant plagioclase. Jim sees the characteristic reflections almost before Dave does.]

145:42:41 Scott: Oh, boy!

145:42:42 Irwin: I got...

145:42:42 Scott: Look at that.

145:42:44 Irwin: Look at the glint!

145:42:45 Scott: Aaah.

145:42:46 Irwin: Almost see twinning in there!

145:42:47 Scott: Guess what we just found. (Jim laughs with pleasure) Guess what we just found! I think we found what we came for.

145:42:53 Irwin: Crystalline rock, huh?

145:42:55 Scott: Yes, sir. You better believe it.

145:42:57 Allen: Yes, sir.

145:42:58 Scott: Look at the plage in there.

145:42:59 Irwin: Yeah.

145:43:00 Scott: Almost all plage.

145:43:01 Irwin: (Garbled)

145:43:02 Scott: As a matter of fact (Laughing) Oh, boy! I think we might have ourselves something close to anorthosite, 'cause it's crystalline, and there's just a bunch...It's just almost all plage. What a beaut.

[NASA photo S71-43477 shows Dave examining the Genesis Rock in the Lunar Receiving Lab after the flight.]

145:43:22 Scott: Yeah. We'll get some of these.

[Fendell is now looking at Dave and Jim. Jim has his back to the camera and Dave is standing at his right, facing south, as they examine the ground around their find. They are working inside the rim of Spur on a noticeable slope.]

145:43:27 Scott: Ah! Ah!

145:43:29 Irwin: Beautiful.

145:43:30 Scott: Hey, let me get some of that clod there. No, let's don't mix them. Let's make this a special...Why (don't)...I'll zip it up.

145:43:36 Irwin: Okay.

[Jim turns to his right to present his SCB.]

145:43:40 Allen: Yes, sir.

145:43:41 Scott: Our first one. (Pause) Don't lose your bag (meaning the SCB) now, Jim. (Jim laughs) Oh, boy!

[Scott, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "(Station 7) is where we found what we're calling a lot of plage (a short form of 'plagioclase', the dominant mineral in anorthosite) in that rock, an anorthositic rock if there ever was one. That was the one on the other rock, on sort of a pinnacle. It was different. It looked white, dust covered, with white spots on it, which indicated it was different from the general gray fragments around it."]

[Jones - "That rock has assumed a fair amount of significance for this mission. And when Jim and I got together in '89, he was still carrying around a replica of it."]

[Scott - "He did?"]

[Jones - "Yeah. Somebody in Houston made copies of some of the rocks and Jim had a copy of this rock that he carried around in his briefcase and in his coat pocket and showed to anybody who wanted to look at it."]

[Scott - "I'll be darned. I know they made Styrofoam models of a lot of rocks. But I have not seen one of that rock. That'd be real interesting."]

[Jones - "Was that a real day brightener?"]

[Scott - "It was. It's crystalline, and nobody'd ever found any crystalline rock before (except small pieces in the soil samples). That was the whole idea of the Front (traverse), because (the craters on Mt. Hadley Delta were expected to have) excavated some of the pre-mare highlands material, which people contemplated was crystalline, plagioclase, anorthosite. So we had spent a fair amount of time discussing that, obviously tuned to looking for it. When you look across the surface, the rocks are all covered with dust, so you're not going to see this clear demonstration of the twining in plagioclase for the crystalline rock. You have to pick it up and you have to look at it to be able to see it."]

["We'd been looking at a lot of rocks, and anorthosite's one of these categories, just like previously I'd been trying to classify the green rock as a dunite. That (meaning dunite) would be equally significant, maybe even more so from coming deep."]

["So, yeah, it was a very significant find and perhaps one of the nice things about it was it was neat, clean and precisely plagioclase. It wasn't confusing. A lot of rocks are confusing. The green rock (meaning the 'friable clod'), that's confusing. And then this big chunk of green in the boulder at 6a, it's confusing because it doesn't fit anything. This was so neat and so precise and so clean. Definitive. I mean, it was a step into another category without any dilution or confusion. It was just - bang! - there it was."]

[Jones - "And the two of you are standing there, huddled together, you're both looking at the rock, and there's absolutely no doubt about what it was."]

[Scott - "I mean, it was such a clean, precise departure (from the previous samples). Of course, among the geology community, there was disagreement (before the flight, about the chances of finding anorthosite) - as there always is. So this was such a neat, clean departure into a whole new realm of exploration because it says, 'okay, if there's one, then there are many, many more and there are many variations of the one, too. Other rocks will have had more impact-type plagioclase that's fine-grained and beat up and whatever.' But to find one that's just pure...And this was impact (modified), too. I mean, when they got it back to the lab, it was pretty beat up, itself. But, on the other hand, standing out on the surface in the bright sunlight, boy, it just was a boomer. It was probably more definitive than any plagioclase we had seen, except the real pure stuff they had in the lab. You see a lot of the stuff in the San Gabes (meaning the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles) and that sort of thing, but this was so different from the other breccias, so different from the grey, that it jumped out at you."]

[Jones - "And it jumped out to both of you. You both had noticed it before, when you first looked after getting off the Rover."]

[Scott - "We saw it; it was different 'cause it was white. But it was covered with dust, and the white was even covered, so that you couldn't see the crystals. There's a great variety here, as you can see. You mention the rake. One of the problems with the rake is you can't pick up big fragments. For the rake, you've got to have many different types of small rocks in a small area. So, if you have a lot of big rocks, the rake doesn't make much sense. (And it doesn't tell you what's typical or unique.) Or, if you have all the same, it doesn't make much sense."]

["We've now had a lot of volcanic type rocks. Everywhere, volcanics. So, we're in that domain, if you will. We discovered a green impact rock, which is a new domain - if that's what you call it, I forget the words. We have stepped from volcanic into a new 'huh?' and then, all of a sudden, into an igneous-type rock - crystalline - which is another whole new world. And all we need to find is a sedimentary rock there, and we've got them all. (Chuckling) You never know! On the Moon? Probably not. But you could on Mars."]

[Jones - "The other thing about this rock is that there were a lot of people in the media who picked up on statements like 'we found what we came for'. People had been talking, in simplistic terms, about finding the oldest rock and, in hindsight, there's a feeling in some quarters that Apollo was initially about beating the Russians and then it was about finding the oldest rock. Real simplistic. As opposed to learning how to work on the Moon and finding out what's there. There had been a dramatic decrease in interest in the missions after 11 and, I think, another step down after this one. After you guys found this rock."]

[Scott - "Oh, okay, 'So they found the old rock, so now what are they all doing up there?' Yeah. I haven't heard that aspect. I have heard the media interpretation that we sort of seeded that. In other words, 'we found what we came for' and we said that because that's what we were supposed to say, regardless of what we found. We're supposed to say that to justify the mission! I've heard that story."]

[Jones - "Wonderful! That's almost as good as the tabloid stories that Gene and Jack were visited by space aliens."]

[Dave also made a tongue-in-cheek comment about the name the rock was given by the press.]

[Scott - "Somebody wrote some critique - I forget where I read it, probably one of the books that came out on the 20th anniversary (of Apollo 11). Some guy was writing about what the astronauts did on the Moon and all that sort of stuff, and he said 'Ah, these guys found this rock they called the Genesis Rock. They were wrong. It wasn't the Genesis Rock at all.' (Straight-faced) Okay."]

[Jones - "It was somebody in the media - while you were up there - who named it."]

[Scott - "That's right. I was up there; and I wasn't reading the newspaper."]

["And it wasn't the oldest rock that even we got. We found an older rock (as did the Apollo 17 crew). But that's alright. It's good for a story. Gave 'em (meaning the press) something to talk about."]

[Jim sidesteps downslope to get in position to get a sample of the pedestal material. Dave takes AS15-86- 11672.]

145:44:10 Irwin: I think I can just...I think it's just a clod. Don't you?

145:44:12 Scott: I don't know. Try it. Put your scoop there in the middle and break off a chip.

145:44:15 Irwin: Yeah. (Pause)

[Jim has made his way carefully down slope to a point about three meters south of Dave and about a meter vertically below him. An estimate of the slope made by making measurements on the TV screen with a ruled piece of paper is 16 degrees and, rather than go directly down, Jim sidestepped diagonally across the slope to get into position.]

[Scott - "Pretty steep slope. I mean, that's a deep crater, relatively."]

[Jones - "100 meters across and 15 to 20 deep?"]

[Scott - "Yeah. Pretty deep little crater."]

[Jim meets some resistance as he tries to dig into the pedestal and has to use the tip of the scoop as a hammer to break it apart. A fist-sized piece falls off on the downslope side.]

145:44:27 Irwin: (Putting his scoop next to the fist-sized piece) Want to take this piece here?

145:44:28 Scott: Yeah. Let me get you a bag. Wait. Let me take a picture first, so you know which one we got.

[Dave's cross-Sun of the broken pedestal is AS15-86- 11673.]

145:44:41 Allen: Roger. 170.

[Dave comes downslope a step toward Jim, but is still well above him. Jim has some trouble getting the sample in the scoop head.]

[Jim gets the sample in the scoop and raises it slowly into Dave's reach.]

145:44:47 Scott: Boy, that's a beautiful rock...

145:44:48 Allen: ...are you working on the outside of the crater or are you...

145:44:50 Scott: ...that other one. Gosh! Look at...

145:44:51 Allen: ...over the lip right now? (Pause)

145:44:55 Scott: Oh, just a tad over the lip on a little bench, but it's...

145:44:58 Irwin: Dave, could you hold that one?

145:44:59 Scott: Yeah.

[Dave comes another step downslope and turns to his right to get his left hand down to the scoop.]

[Dave tries to take hold of the sample but it falls to the ground.]

145:45:09 Irwin: A little frangible.

145:45:10 Scott: Yeah. It really is.

Video Clip   2 min 38 sec ( 0.7 Mb RealVideo or 24 Mb MPG )

[Jim has come a step upslope to retrieve the sample. As he lifts it, he starts to lose his balance to his right and drops the sample.]

145:45:14 Irwin: Yeah. (Pause)

[Dave gets his tongs and opens them.]

[Scott, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "When my palms got dirty, I had a difficult time manipulating the handle squeeze (on the tongs) and the opening and closing because of all the dirt in the tongs. And so, about half way through EVA-2, I switched to the other set of tongs which were clean. That helped quite a bit."]

[I do not know when or where Dave made the switch, or even if it was during EVA-2.]

[Jim gets the bag open and, after some manipulation, gets the sample in. The sample is 15435, about 0.4 kilograms of what is described in the Preliminary Science Report as "clods of breccia" and is almost too big for the bag.]

145:45:46 Scott: Got it? That a boy. Good show. Post-pick-up picture.

[Dave's "after" photo of the pedestal sample is AS15-86- 11674.]

145:45:58 Irwin: I think we ought to get over to that big rock.

145:45:59 Scott: Yeah. We're getting there.

145:46:00 Irwin: Before we run out of time.

145:46:01 Scott: All right.

145:46:03 Irwin: Because I think that big rock is probably more important.

145:46:04 Scott: It's a big breccia, though. (Garbled under Joe)

145:46:05 Allen: Dave, we think you might be about to run out of film.

145:46:06 Irwin: (Garbled under Joe) bag.

[Jim is probably reminding Dave that the pedestal sample needs to go in Dave's SCB.]

145:46:09 Allen: ...maybe you better check that now.

145:46:14 Scott: All right, Joe. Jim, this one we got to pick up, and then we'll go to the big rock.

[After taking his "after" photo of the pedestal sample, Dave grabbed the gnomon and, since then, has moved parallel to the rim but below it, going away from the Rover. Jim walked up to that level and then turned to follow Dave. Dave stops and puts the gnomon down after a few meters. See the Station 7 sketch map, figure 5-98 from the Apollo 15 Preliminary Science Report.]

[Jones - "The soil here is fairly firm. In coming back up to the level that you are, Jim's doing a slow, one-foot-after-the-other walk, but he's not sliding at all."]

[Scott - "And that's a good illustration of the difference in working on a firm slope and a loose slope. See. Because this looks like it might even be steeper than the loose slope where we had a lot of difficulty working."]

[Jones - "At Station 6, you were standing below where Jim was doing the trench and you had a hell of a time getting back up to the rim, treading dust."]

145:46:33 Allen: And there might be diamonds in the next one.

145:46:39 Scott: Yeah, babe.

145:46:43 Irwin: Okay, it's in (Dave's SCB).

[Dave turns to face northwest so that Jim can read his frame counter without having to go downhill.]

145:46:46 Scott: (To Jim) Okay. (Garbled under Joe) down here.

145:46:47 Allen: ...get a reading on Dave's camera for us, please.

145:46:51 Irwin: Oh, he's got a lot left. He's only reading 145.

145:46:54 Allen: Roger, good. Sounds good. (Long Pause)

[The color magazines, such as the one Dave has on his camera, nominally hold enough film for about 160 frames. Dave's first usable frame on this magazine was 11550 and he just took 11674, an indication that the frame count of 145 is accurate. Dave will run out of film after taking 11694, the 165th frame on the magazine.]

[While Dave takes a cross-Sun stereopair of "before" photographs, AS15-86- 11675 and 11676, Jim gets in position east of the gnomon to take AS15-90- 12229.]

145:47:21 Irwin: Yeah.

[Dave gets a sample with his tongs and then raises it for examination.]

145:47:26 Scott: (Garbled under Joe)

145:47:29 Allen: ...Did you fill a bag after 170? If so, we missed the number, and we can probably sort it out later. (Pause)

MP3 Audio Clip ( 13 min 05 sec )

145:47:47 Scott: This one. (To Joe) No, I think that was the last one, Joe. We'll rely on you to sort it out later. Okay, I have...Oh, look at this, Jim! Haa!

Video Clip   2 min 52 sec ( 0.7 Mb RealVideo or 26 Mb MPG )

145:47:58 Irwin: What a contact!

145:47:59 Scott: Look, what a contact!

145:48:00 Irwin: Yeah, man!

[During Dave's next transmission, Jim gets a bag off his camera but drops it. He puts the end of his scoop on the fallen bag and then pulls another bag off his camera.]

145:48:52 Irwin: 198.

145:48:53 Scott: 198.

[This sample is 15455, a 0.94 kg rock containing "large, white norite clasts in black breccia".]

145:49:02 Irwin: Yeah. I dropped one.

145:49:03 Scott: He dropped one, Joe, thank you. (Giggles)

145:49:05 Irwin: I don't know what we would do without you, Joe.

145:49:07 Scott: Hey, isn't that super?

[This is one of several occasions during Apollo when the TV allowed Houston to participate directly in the mission by noticing dropped bags and loose SCBs. One particularly notable occasion came when John Young and Charlie Duke were doing geology at Plum Crater on their first Apollo 16 EVA. While the crew worked, people in the Backroom became intrigued with a large rock on the crater rim near the Rover, and, once Young and Duke were back at the Rover, Houston asked them to collect the rock. This was sample 61016, known more familiarly as Big Muley, an 11.7 kg anorthositic, igneous rock that is the largest individual sample we have from the Moon.]

[Dave takes a cross-Sun "after", AS15-86-11677.]

[While Dave was taking the picture, Jim was facing west, with his left foot downslope from his right. As he tried to change position slightly, he stumbled.]

[Dave picks up the gnomon and then heads diagonally up slope to about the same level as the boulder before starting around to it on a path parallel to the rim. Jim climbs up to the level from which Dave started and then follows.]

[Dave puts the gnomon down and gets into position to take cross-Sun pictures AS15-86- 11678 and 11679. Note the pair of parallel, elongated rocks just to the right of center.]

145:49:53 Irwin: Yeah, I will as soon as I zip it. (Long Pause)

[Dave hops sideways toward Jim so that Jim can put the pedestal sample in his SCB.]

145:50:17 Scott: Okay. (Pause)

[Jim takes a down-Sun "before", AS15-90- 12230.]

145:50:33 Irwin: Yeah.

[During the mission reviews, many of the astronauts said that their hands got quite sore by the end of an EVA. The soreness was produced, in part, by repeatedly squeezing the glove closed against the internal pressure of the suit and, in part, by the abrasion caused by unavoidable hand movement inside the glove. For example, repeated reaching abraded the finger tips and, in some cases, lifted fingernails off the quick. Some of the astronauts wore nylon liners which, at least, delayed the onset of problems.]

[Post-flight photo S71-42195 making some after-dinner remarks onboard the U.S.S. Okinawa a few hours after splashdown. A detail shows the damage to the nails on Dave's middle and ring fingers of his right hand.]

145:50:35 Scott: Bag.

145:50:36 Irwin: Oh, yeah, the bag. I was wondering whether you wanted to use the scoop.

Video Clip   2 min 22 sec ( 0.6 Mb RealVideo or 21 Mb MPG )

145:50:40 Scott: Don't think we can get a scoop on this one. I think it's going to...(Pause) Ohhh, look at this one! (Laughs)

145:50:48 Irwin: Diamonds, huh?

[The rock is a glass-coated breccia and is probably giving glints of reflected sunlight.]

[Although we can't see precisely what Dave is doing, it appears that he moved a sample and is now taking a picture before he picks it up with the tongs. He takes AS15-86- 11680. The parallel pair of rocks noted in the previous frame are now a little lower and a little left in this frame.]

145:51:15 Irwin: That's a glass-coated breccia.

145:51:16 Scott: Yeah, but look at the glass!

145:51:18 Irwin: Okay.

145:51:21 Scott: It's shiny. 199.

[The samples collected here are 15465-69. The largest piece weighs 375 grams and is, indeed, a glass-coated breccia. While Jim holds the bag open, Dave puts the rock in with the tongs and, also, reads the bag number for Houston.]

145:51:28 Scott: I'll get some more of this, Jim.

145:51:30 Irwin: Okay.

145:51:34 Scott: Here's...Well. (Pause) There's another piece of the frag that it went with. (Pause)

145:51:50 Irwin: Okay.

145:51:51 Scott: Okay.

[During Joe's next transmission, Jim seals the sample bag and Dave steps back to take a cross-Sun after, AS15-86- 11681.]

145:51:57 Scott: (To Jim) Wait a minute.

145:51:58 Allen: ...we're very pleased with your documented samples here. We think you ought to give some thought pretty shortly now, to getting us a rake sample, if you can find a good area. And then we're going to go for some bulk collection: just a lot of soil, filling collection bag 6.

145:52:19 Scott: Okay.

[Dave hops toward Jim and presents his SCB.]

145:52:22 Scott: Yeah. We'll do that. Throw it in (the SCB).

145:52:31 Allen: And, Dave, you're going to want to cinch up Jim's collection bag...

145:52:35 Scott: ...

145:52:36 Allen: ...probably before you go much longer. It's coming very loose there.

[The SCBs are normally attached to PLSS at both the top and bottom but, in the TV picture, it is evident that the bottom attachment has come loose on Jim's and part of the top as well.]

145:52:45 Allen: Roger. We sure don't want to lose that one (because it contains the anorthosite sample).

145:52:47 Irwin: Hey, you got something pretty good in there, don't you?

Video Clip   3 min 42 sec ( 1.0 Mb RealVideo or 33 Mb MPG )

145:52:51 Scott: Okay, turn a little right, Jimmy. I mean left, I'm sorry. It sure has come off. I don't know why.

145:52:58 Irwin: Yeah.

145:53:03 Scott: Oh, yeah, that getting in that Rover bit. (Long Pause)

[Dave seems to be suggesting that Jim's SCB has come loose because it has hit on his seat the various times he climbed on the Rover. The SCB is mounted on the outboard side of his PLSS to minimize such contact, but it is entirely possible that there has been some contact. The other possibilities are that he has hit the SCB on various parts of the Rover while working around it or that it has been brushed against Dave's suit.]

[Dave examines the top attachments on the right side of Jim's PLSS. He then moves Jim's scoop out of the way and hops sideways around to Jim's back to examine the tool harness, knocking the scoop over in the process. He then hops to the right-rear corner of Jim's PLSS and gets down on his right knee to get at the attachment strap at the bottom, which may have not only come loose but have slipped out of the loop at the bottom of the SCB. Dave has his left leg extended out to the side, and it is his own weight that forces his right knee to bend. He has his left hand on the back of Jim's PLSS, possibly for lateral support.]

[After about 5 seconds spent on his knee, Dave bounces up and goes around to Jim's right side, possibly to secure the strap Velcro at the bottom of the PLSS.]

[Jones - "You got down on your right knee to fix Jim's SCB. You had Jim and his PLSS to stabilize you in that position. There was a tendency, with some people, for the suit pressure to straighten the knee. Jack was never able to kneel like this. Did you have to force yourself down against the internal pressure, or..."]

[Scott - "I really don't remember any special technique. It was sort of like you bend over and you don't think about it. I never really thought about it. I just did what needed to be done to get there. And, yeah, you have to push the suit to bend the knee, but it was a natural kind of thing. It required a little effort, but it wasn't a contemplated effort like 'I am now going to bend over, therefore I am now going to push the suit.' It was not like that at all."]

[Jones - "For reasons that I don't understand, kneeling was easier for some people than it was for others. You were one of the ones for whom it was relatively easy."]

[Scott - "It was probably due to the suit fit. I don't know how much time other people spent, but I spent a fair amount of time getting suits fitted, from early days. I was going to do an EVA on Gemini VIII. I spent a lot of time on the Gemini suit, getting it fitted, because one of the problems that Ed White had (on Gemini IV) was mobility. So they felt that if you had a proper fit, then you had better mobility. So I spent a lot of time with the suit guys, and they spent a lot of time with me. And I had good mobility. And that's why, today, when you look at the suits, they're trying to build with all these joints and I think they're missing the point. I think if you take this design and fit it properly, it's fine. I mean, you don't really need to bend over much, but I don't remember any conscious problem in bending over. Certainly it wasn't effortless but, on the other hand, it didn't require a big deal. You want to bend over, you go bend over. But I have to give it to the suit guys; they fit me very well. They did a good job tailoring the suit, which probably costs a lot less than building a suit with twenty joints, or whatever they're trying to do. (Guffaws)"]

[Jones - "There are other instances where you kneel but, in this case, you do have Jim to help you stabilize a little bit in that position."]

[Scott - "I don't think I was leaning on Jim. The problem would be, if I was leaning on Jim, it would throw him off balance. In one-sixth g, there's not a lot of stability there with the other guy. He's not like a person in one g who you can sort of lean on. In one-sixth g, you lean on them and they go away! So, I think if you'll look at that, you'll see I wasn't leaning on Jim. I don't believe I used Jim as a..."]

[Jones - "Now, there are instances where people used the ladder, the MESA, the Rover, things like that and it was a definite help"]

[We looked at it again.]

[Scott - "See if you see Jim move. I bet you don't see him move. A little bit."]

[Jones - "Just a touch."]

[Scott - "Any significant force, and he'd have been down that hill."]

[Jones - "That's right."]

[Scott - "So I'm really not using him to stabilize myself. In fact, as I think about it, I would be more comfortable trying to balance myself, than to use an unstable support; because, if you put pressure on an unstable support and it falls away, then you're really down. So you're better off trying to balance with what you have."]

[Jones - "This is a nice sequence."]

145:54:02 Allen: Dave and Jim, the science input now is that we want to forget that large block entirely. We want as large a collection of smaller frags as you can get us, and you'll probably be working near the Rover for those.

[The large boulder, which Scott and Irwin can see is a breccia, would give them only a limited indication of the potential variety of samples that might have been dug out by the Spur impact. A collection of small pieces of rock should give a better indication of the variety.]

145:54:22 Allen: And, we're coming up on about 10 to 15 minutes remaining here.

145:54:30 Scott: Okay. Okay, hang on partner. I think I got you. Better. Okay, let me get your...I knocked your scoop over. (Pause)

[Dave gets his tongs and hops over to the scoop, which is behind Jim.]

[Dave grabs the scoop near the head but, on his first attempt, drops it. On the second try, he gets a good grip and rotates the scoop head upward, letting the end of the handle bear some of the weight. Once the scoop head is in reach, Dave grabs it and hands it to Jim.]

145:55:01 Irwin: Okay.

[While Jim heads for the Rover, Dave goes for the gnomon.]

145:55:08 Irwin: Okay.

[Jim uses a loping stride as he goes toward the Rover He covers the 40-m distance in about 27 seconds, traveling at a very respectable speed of about 5.3 km/hr. In the background, Dave is examining the boulder.]

[See figure 5-98 from the Preliminary Science Report for the relative positions of the sample sites, the boulder, and the Rover.]

[Scott - "The big rock was one of those very unique opportunities. I'll make a comment on this one, because I remember this one, specifically. I mean, I remember a lot of this (station); but, that big rock, I was saving that as dessert! 'Cause I knew that was a good one; and they turned me off on the big rock. I remember going over and finally whacking a chip off it, just to get a chip off it. There's some question as to where the chip came from and was it a chip off the rock - I think - and we may see that as we go down through this. That's been discussed, maybe when Spudis had that 15th anniversary symposium down in Houston. But it was really disappointing not to be able to finish this big rock. Because it was a dandy. I mean, (all the time we were sampling, we were saying) 'We're going to save that one. Boy, we know that's good! Save it.' And then having to go off and do something else - like the drill. Ha!"]

145:55:12 Allen: That a boy, Davy.

[Joe is applauding Dave's insistence on sampling the boulder, making use of the few seconds while Jim takes the scoop off the extension handle and attaches the rake.]

[Comm Break]

[Dave positions the gnomon at the north end of the boulder and then makes a series of hops sideways to his left around to the south end, taking pictures as he goes. The pictures are AS15-86- 11682 to 11688.]

[After taking 11688, Dave moves to his right to get a stereo companion, 11689. Fendell gives us a close-up of the boulder.]

[David Harland has assembled a mosaic consisting of frames 11682, 84, and 88.]

[Scott - "We can see it right now. See the white clast in there? An irregularity. I mean, that's just a dandy rock!"]

[We debated the possibility that we could be seeing artifacts in the image rather than clasts in the rock. There are bright spots in the image due to dust on the TV lens, but agreed that we could also see three or four clasts in the rock.]

[Scott - "Spectacular boulder. This was icing on the cake. I mean, you wait a long time for one of these. You put up with an awful lot from geology professors in the field, hammering on you, just to get to this point."]

[Dave's comment is tongue-in-cheek. On page 262 in his book, To a Rocky Moon, Don Wilhelms writes that the "geologists who worked with him are unstinting in their praise of his interest and ability in their subject."]

145:56:28 Irwin: Okay, Dave. I'm set up whenever you are.

145:56:30 Scott: Okay; be right down. (Pause) There's a convenient piece broken off, right here (Pause)

[Dave has hopped back to the south end of the boulder and takes a stereopair of "before" photos of the sample, AS15-86- 11690 and 11691. The sample is the small rock lying next to the boulder.]

[Having collected the sample, Dave takes "after" photo AS15-86- 11692. He then resumes his clockwise circle of the boulder, taking 11693 and 11694 before running out of film.]

[Dave leans to his right to get the gnomon.]

145:57:18 Scott: Yeah. Find a good spot.

145:57:19 Irwin: Yeah, and while I'm raking, there's a rock over there that has a linear pattern in it, that you might want to look at while I'm raking.

145:57:26 Scott: (Still running toward the Rover) Okay, let me get the pictures of the place.

145:57:30 Allen: And, Jim, how's your raking going? Are you pulling off any small frags?

145:57:32 Scott: (Still running) This level ground is great.

[Dave uses the loping stride and makes the 45-meter trip to the Rover in about 23 seconds. He gets a longer glide than Jim was able to achieve and, consequently a higher average speed of about 7.0 km/hr. This may be the fastest run recroded during Apollo.]

145:57:39 Scott: Got to document the area first here, Joe.

145:57:42 Allen: Rog. We couldn't miss that. (Pause)

[Jim has picked a spot east of the Rover and Fendell pans counter-clockwise to find him.]

[Scott - "As an example of the discussions in the Control Center about prioritizing things, this might be a good point to find out what was going on in trade-offs because, obviously, from a field geology point of view, the Lee Silvers of the world would be saying 'Leave them here as long as you can.' But the other people (meaning the ALSEP experimenters) are looking at the clock and they're beginning to scream because they're going to lose their whatever. And then the guys on the Rover walkback/driveback are screaming because we're using consumables. So you've got inputs from the various factions to prioritize, and it would be interesting to see how they prioritize things, because this is really a turning point in the field geology in that the big rock is a good thing to do, and we stopped that. I mean, the rake, obviously, is very important but we're sort of optimizing our time now, right? And all of a sudden they turn it off - which is probably the best field geology we've been doing - to go on to other things, because of the time limitations. That's planetary field geology. In terrestrial field geology, you would not stop, even if it started snowing and raining. So, here's a situation in which the system stops this field exercise at its peak and starts another exercise. How was that decision made? How was it prioritized? What were the inputs? What was the weighting of the various factors? And who made that decision? I don't know, but I know the process."]

[Jones - "This is a good place to do that. I'll get the material. And there's another other factor in here. Occasionally you guys exercise crew option and say, 'No, we're going to go ahead and do that.' Like stopping and picking up the rock on the way back to the LM on the first EVA."]

[Scott - "But, after they said stop working on the big rock (at 145:54:02), I spent four minutes on it. And I would have spent a lot more except that I knew this prioritization was going on back in the Control Center and I knew the system was exercising all these things. So, okay, if that's what they say, they have reason to say that. I'll go along with the reason to press on. If I had my druthers, I would say, 'Okay, Joe, how much time do we have left?' Joe would say, 'You have an hour before you have to be in.' 'How long does it take to drive back.' 'Thirty minutes.' 'Okay, I'm going to stay here thirty minutes.' Period. That's probably what we would have liked to have done, because this was the thing we had spent most of our training on. This was, obviously, a fantastic crater and there was a lot more to do, so, had we really been given that option...On the other hand, we don't know all the things that are going on."]

[Jones - "Somebody else is arguing that you really do need to stop at the South Cluster and spend a couple of minutes there."]

[Scott - "Yeah, right. And we know they are debating all this and we know, intuitively, that a Lee Silver, as an example, would be as strongly for continuing this exercise as we would be, and he's probably a better voice than we are in this big discussion. So, okay, leave it to Lee, and if it comes out we have to leave, we know that our interests have been properly represented by the guy who can probably have the most influence on the system. And, if the decision is that we press on to some other spot, we're not going to be any better in convincing them than Lee Silver, we know that. So, press on to the other spot. And that's sort of how the system works. We're isolated, and we didn't have all the information to make the decision. It was a good system in that all this information could be assimilated, quickly prioritized, included, and press on. And this is a real turning point, from field geology to something else."]

[Jones - "And, if you feel strongly enough about something, you can say that..."]

[Scott - "Yeah, but I know what's going on back there. Schmitt's in there, and Swann's in there, and Silver and Head and I know all those guys and what they're doing 'cause we've been in the field - not in identical situations, but in comparable situations in which people make their inputs and somebody weights the inputs, which is another reason we had the Flight Directors go into the field with us and see how we do our geology. Because, then, they can better weight the factors to come up with a decision. Had they not been in the field, they would not have understood what Lee Silver was trying to tell them - 'cause he's probably saying them, 'Hey, let them finish here'. So a Flight Director who's been out there and seen the geology process and seen the Lee Silvers of the world instructing us and doing our thing, would be better able to make a decision, in terms of trade-offs, than a Flight Director who had never been in the field. A Flight Director who had never been in the field would make engineering decisions, period, and say, 'Lee Silver, who's he? No, no, just turn that loop off. We've got these other things to worry about.' So you wouldn't get the proper trade-off."]

145:57:50 Irwin: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. That's good. You see that rock over at your...just a little south of you? (Pause)

145:58:03 Scott: Oh, I just ran out of film.

145:58:05 Allen: Roger, Dave.

[Off-camera, Dave and Jim probably got in their accustomed positions for taking "before". Because he is out of film, Dave doesn't get any cross-Suns, but Jim takes a stereopair of down-Suns, AS15-90- 12231 and 12232. In 12231, the gnomon may be swinging. In 12232, the Station 7 boulder is in the background. Note that Dave has dropped his tongs. At this point, he is still holding the rock he collected near the boulder and probably tried to stick the tongs in the ground to free a hand for picture taking.]

145:58:12 Irwin: Okay.

145:58:13 Scott: And you'd better take the...

145:58:14 Irwin: I'm surprised you're running out already, though you must have taken a lot of pictures over there.

145:58:17 Scott: Yup. (Pause)

[Scott - "I got carried away with that rock, I know that. I really did. That rock was so much fun that I'm sure I burned up fifty pictures just because it was a neat rock."]

[Fendell finds Dave as he approaches his Rover seat. We get a good view as he pulls a sample bag off his camera, opens it, puts the rock in, rolls the top of the bag and seals it with the metal strips.]

[Jones - "Nice sequence of you bagging the sample and closing the bag."]

[Scott - "These are good engineering films."]

145:58:31 Scott: Joe, there was a...

145:58:32 Allen: ...when convenient...

145:58:33 Scott: ...frag...

145:58:34 Allen: ...our TV camera's starting to warm up considerably. We'd like for you to clean off the camera top and the LCRU when convenient, please.

[While he listens to Joe, Dave raises his Rover seat so that he can put the sample bag in the enclosed area under the seat.]

[Dave forgot to look at the bag number before he rolled the top closed and it takes him a second to find the number.]

145:59:05 Allen: Roger. Wouldn't be at all surprised.

[Dave attempts to clean the top of his Hasselblad with his fingers, apparently by tapping it.]

145:59:17 Scott: And I think I'll brush off the (TV) camera for you, and I can brush off my camera before I change the film.

[Dave hops sideways to the back of the Rover to get the dustbrush. In the background, Jim has just finished a long swath with the rake and is holding it vertically and shaking it to get the soil out.]

145:59:35 Allen: That's a jackpot! (Pause)

[Evidently, Dave has gone around the other side of the Rover to get to the TV. The TV picture jiggles, presumably as Dave dusts the camera and the LCRU.]

145:59:44 Irwin: Okay. (Pause)

[Jim turns to his left, probably looking for a clean patch of ground where he could pile the collection of rocks.]

[The idea is to collect all the rocks in the swath and, by dumping the collection on the ground, they risk losing some and/or risk adding rocks that came from the dump site rather than the swath.]

145:59:57 Irwin: Yeah.

145:59:58 Scott: I'll just do my film...

145:59:59 Irwin: Though I think we can fill up the bag pretty fast, here.

146:00:02 Scott: Okay, then, you take the pictures and I'll just change my film later.

146:00:06 Irwin: Okay. I'll...

146:00:11 Scott: Save the (the time that would be taken by) film changing here. Let me get you a bag. (Pause)

[Dave comes into view from the front of the Rover, puts the dust brush on his seat and joins Jim.]

146:00:27 Allen: Roger. (Pause)

[Dave bends his right leg and gets the bag down to about knee height. Jim makes the pour without any apparent difficulty.]

146:00:38 Scott: Yeah. It (meaning the first swath)'s about 1 meter long and one rake-width wide. (Long Pause)

[Jim positions himself and does a second swath next to the first. Rather than stand still and pull the rake with his arm, he holds his right arm out and walks backwards, using his legs to pull the rake at a steady pace through the soil. After a meter or so, he raises the rake and shakes the soil out.]

[Fendell zooms in and, with Dave and Jim in slightly different positions, we get a good view of the pour.]

[Dave's dropped tongs are out of view behind the Rover.]

146:01:38 Scott: That's all right. I'll get them.

146:01:40 Irwin: I can get them with the scoop here in a little bit.

146:01:43 Scott: Yeah. Sure miss that yo-yo. (Jim finishes the third swatch) Oh, good! That's three swaths 1 meter long apiece. (Pause as Jim makes the third pour) And the bag isn't full yet. Let's shoot for a full bag. What do you think? (It will) take you just a second to go one more sweep there. (Pause as Jim starts the fourth swath) Oh, my poor old tong!

146:02:16 Irwin: Oh, I don't weigh that much up here, Dave, to break your tongs.

146:02:21 Scott: I don't know what I'd do without them.

146:02:23 Irwin: Just so I don't bury them.

[Jim finishes the fourth swath.]

146:02:26 Scott: Good, good, good. Don't shake anymore, you('ll lose some of the rocks)...(Pause) Yeah. That's too bad; we didn't get many out of that one. Why don't you take one over...Let me move the gnomon about 3 inches here; and take one on this side, Jim. Okay? Move the gnomon back about a foot. Why don't you take a swath here and I'll...

146:02:53 Irwin: Yeah, you know, because we're moving a little farther from the rim

146:02:56 Scott: Yeah.

[Each of Jim's swaths had been taken closer to the Rover than the previous one, apparently with the starting points on a line at an angle to the rim. Dave moves the gnomon to our right, about a foot closer to the rim.]

146:02:58 Scott: Yeah.

146:02:59 Irwin: This one ought to be a more fruitful one. Either that or my arm's getting tired.

146:03:06 Scott: That's probably true, too. (Pause while Jim takes the final swath) (To Houston) How about a double core here, Joe? Got any ideas on that one?

146:03:19 Allen: (While Jim makes the pour) Dave, we're coming up on the departure time about 10 minutes from now. All we really need is soil from this same area. And we're making money hand over fist. Maybe a few walnut-sized rocks if there's some around.

146:03:35 Scott: We got...Okay, Joe.

146:03:36 Irwin: A bagful.

146:03:37 Scott: (Closing the bag) We got a whole bagful of those in the comp(rehensive rake sample). And that's in 172.

146:03:43 Allen: Roger; copy 172. I guess all we need is a soil sample from this area and perhaps even larger rocks, if there's some grapefruit to football-size rocks there.

[Dave stows the rake sample in Jim's SCB.]

146:04:07 Irwin: Oh, yeah. I see it.

146:04:08 Scott: Why don't you back off and document the area. Let me get my tongs and pick that up.

146:04:11 Irwin: Okay.

146:04:12 Scott: Perfectly round, about...

146:04:14 Irwin: Yeah. Here, let me help you.

Video Clip   2 min 49 sec ( 0.7 Mb RealVideo or 25 Mb MPG )

146:04:15 Scott: Yeah. Get the tongs. (Pause)

[Partly hidden by the Rover, Jim uses the rake tines to lift the tongs.]

146:04:26 Irwin: Keep an eye on the spherule.

146:04:28 Scott: Tongs are right on it. I got the tongs. (Long Pause)

[Dave takes the tongs, knocks some dirt off them, opens them, and collects the glass sphere.]

[Jim takes a stereopair of "afters" of the rake site, AS15-90- 12233 and 12234. In 12233, Dave is examining the tongs for damage.]

[A taw is a shooting marble.]

[Jones - "Were you part of the generation of marble shooters."]

[Scott - "Was I ever! Oh, absolutely. Did a lot of marble shooting. Bull ring, mostly. That's where you put a little circle in the center of a bigger circle and you try to knock them out from the outside circle."]

[Jones - "Where'd you grow up?"]

[Scott - "In those days, San Antonio. We moved a lot. My dad was in the (U.S. Army) Air Corps, so I lived in a lot of different places. Spent three years in the Philippines. Lot of years in San Antonio. Illinois, California and whatever."]

[Jones - "I grew up in the suburbs of New York and marbles games were dying out."]

[Scott - "Aggies were the thing. Agates. 'Cause they were (fashioned from agate stone and were) harder than the glass marbles. And you could break glass marbles with an aggie, if they were the shooter. Boy, if you could really flip it in there, you could break the glass guys. Oh, it was great sport when I was a kid. I had sacks of marbles when I was a kid. And you'd win the marbles."]

[Jones - "The ones you knocked out..."]

[Scott - "You won. They were yours."]

[Jones - "Each of the players anted into the inner circle and then took turns shooting and, if you knocked any out of the big circle you got them."]

[Scott - "Great game."]

[Jones - "I played just a little bit when I was growing up. Of course, you'd see it in TV shows and movies."]

[Scott - "I guess they don't play marbles any more. Too bad. Skateboards and rollerblades and whatever. Ah, that's alright."]

146:05:02 Irwin: Where you going to put that little spherule?

146:05:04 Scott: In the bag.

146:05:05 Irwin: Not with the soil, though, are you?

146:05:07 Scott: Yeah.

146:05:08 Irwin: Okay.

146:05:09 Scott: Came out of the soil. I just didn't want to miss it. We'll remember that. That goes in bag number 173, and...Well, our friends in the back room are writing that down right now.

146:05:22 Allen: How right you are! And we want to leave in about...

146:05:24 Scott: Little fat ball.

146:05:25 Allen: ...5 minutes, and we still need the soil.

146:05:29 Scott: It's coming right now.

146:05:31 Allen: Rog. We see it coming in.

[According to Bailey and Ulrich, the glass ball is sample 15307. There is, however, no mention of it in the Preliminary Science Report.]

[Jim uses the side of the rake to collect some soil.]

146:05:38 Scott: Yeah. Let's fill the bag. (Pause) (Laughs)

[Jim's second pour fills the bag almost to overflowing.]

146:05:51 Scott: Yes, sir. That's a full bag. That's a full bag.

146:05:53 Irwin: I want to see you shake that one down.

146:05:54 Scott: All right. (Chuckles; Pause)

[Dave shakes the bag up and down but doesn't get enough settling. He then tips out a small quantity of soil]

[Dave tries to close the bag but decides that he needs to tip out some more soil.]

146:06:17 Irwin: Just don't pour your spherule out.

146:06:23 Scott: (Sealing the bag) Okay; I think you need to reconfigure, and we'll get ready to leave here.

[Here, "need to reconfigure" means that Jim needs to take the rake off the extension handle and re-attach the scoop.]

146:06:32 Scott: Yeah.

[Jim turns to do the tool change at the left-rear corner of the Rover.]

[Jim's SCB is on his right side - the one opposite Dave's current position - and, rather than interrupt Jim's work, Dave decides to go around him to get at the SCB.]

Video Clip   2 min 41 sec ( 0.7 Mb RealVideo or 24 Mb MPG )

[Dave grabs the tongs and the gnomon.]

[This may be a walk-back constraint. Houston wants them to leave soon so that, if the Rover fails for some reason, they will have plenty of oxygen and cooling water for a walk to the LM.]

[During my 1989 discussion with Jim, I asked him about walk-back constraints.]

[Irwin - "I think on the last three missions, walkback constraints defined our maximum distance from the Lunar Module. And also defined the speed at which we traveled, because we had to get to that furtherest point as quickly as possible so we'd have the maximum amount of oxygen and water to get back to the LM if the car did fail."]

["I remember that when we were first talking about the Rover operation, I think we were up at Ely in Minnesota and I think we were rained out of a day of geology, so we ended up in the motel room and we just got around to talking about how we would operate the Rover on our mission, which had just been recently incorporated in the mission plan, and came up with the idea that, 'Man, we better always plan on going to the fartherest point as quickly as possible because of walkback constraints.'"]

[This may also be the reason why they did the EVA-1 traverse before doing the ALSEP deployment. Dave and Jim, along with backups Dick Gordon and Jack Schmitt and geologist Bill Phinney, were in Minnesota on a geology field trip October 7, 8, and 9, 1970. Announcement of the cancellation of two of the remaining Apollo missions and the assignment of the first Rover to the Scott crew had been made on September 2.]

[Irwin - "So walkback constraint was always in our mind, even though it might not have been mentioned here, specifically. We thought we could walk back, you know, the five miles (means kilometers) or so that we'd gone out in about an hour. We thought that was reasonable. It was never tested."]

[Jones - "The only real data to calibrate walk-back speeds was the 14 traverse to Cone Crater."]

[In planning for Apollo 15, NASA assumed that the crew could sustain a speed of 4.0 km/hr on their way back to the LM. For later missions, the assumed speed was reduced to 3.4 km/hr.]

[Irwin - "And you know, if the car does break down and you're coming back, you'd like to go the most direct way."]

146:07:17 Allen: Maybe one big rock wouldn't hurt.

146:07:22 Scott: Yeah. (Pause)

[Fendell starts to pan clockwise and, just before we lose sight of Dave, he heads for his Rover seat, probably to stow the gnomon in its pouch behind his seat. Fendell gives us a good view into Spur before pointing the camera down at the LCRU mirror and, after a few seconds, the camera's own shadow on the ground in front of the Rover.]

146:07:28 Irwin: Yes.

146:07:29 Scott: Why don't you come over here and get your scoop and scoop me up one big rock?

146:07:33 Irwin: Okay.

146:07:34 Allen: And...

146:07:35 Scott: And get your camera on it, because I don't...I don't have any film. How about this one right here that looks like it has some layering in it? Maybe...

146:07:46 Irwin: Yeah, that's the one I was talking about.

146:07:48 Scott: Right there?

146:07:49 Irwin: Yeah.

146:07:50 Scott: Why don't you...?

146:07:51 Irwin: You want to point to it with the...

146:07:52 Scott: Yeah, I've got my foot right there. Why don't you take a couple of cross-Suns real quick?

146:07:54 Irwin: Okay.

146:07:55 Scott: Seven feet, cross-Sun? (Pause) (You're) a little too far away, old buddy. (Pause)

146:08:05 Irwin: Okay.

[Jim's cross-Sun stereopair is AS15-90- 12235 and 12236, which, indeed, show Dave pointing at the proposed sample with his foot.]

146:08:14 Irwin: It's a pretty big one to try and get with a scoop.

146:08:17 Scott: Yeah; you're right. I don't see anything else (suitable for collection).

146:08:19 Irwin: This little fracture. (Pause)

146:08:24 Irwin: Too big.

146:08:25 Scott: Too big. Get another one.

146:08:27 Irwin: Oh! Here, Dave.

146:08:28 Scott: Oh, sure. Good boy. Get that one on your side.

146:08:33 Irwin: Okay. (Pause)

[The sample is 15459, a 4.8 kg breccia. It is the second largest of the Apollo 15 samples but, evidently, is not the one Dave was pointing at with his foot.]

146:08:49 Irwin: Should have left the rake on.

146:08:52 Scott: Yep. (Pause) Can you get it? Good show. Easy does it. Easy does it. That's it. Up a little more. Keep your balance. (Pause) Can you get it up higher?

146:09:16 Irwin: Okay.

146:09:18 Scott: Whup! Don't fall backwards.

146:09:21 Irwin: Yeah. (Pause)

[There are two possibilities here. One is that Jim has gotten his scoop under the sample and is raising it, undoubtedly gingerly, into Dave's reach. The other is that Jim has actually gotten down low enough to get the rock in his hand and then against his leg as he rises. He then works it up his leg high enough that Dave can grab it. The latter scenario comes to mind because of a similar maneuver performed by Charlie Duke at the rim of Plum Crater at the Apollo 16 site.]

146:09:28 Irwin: Good. (Pause)

Video Clip   2 min 20 sec ( 0.6 Mb RealVideo or 21 Mb MPG )

146:09:31 Scott: Okay, fill that square. Okay, Jim. Let's get on the Rover and head back.

146:09:37 Irwin: Okay, I haven't secured the rake there, yet.

146:09:40 Scott: Okay. You secure the rake, and I'll secure the TV, and we'll get moving.

[We see the shadow of somebody working at Jim's seat. This may be Dave, looking for a place to stow rock they've just collected.]

146:09:45 Scott: I wonder how I'm going to do this (that is, stow the rock).

146:09:46 Allen: ...the TV camera where it is right now. It's stowed in the proper position.

146:09:53 Scott: Okay. (Looking under Jim's seat) Oh, shoot!

146:09:59 Irwin: Hardly room there, is there?

146:10:00 Scott: "Hardly room there" is right. Any place we can put your bag on it?

146:10:06 Irwin: Why don't you put that in one of those bags, Dave?

146:10:09 Scott: Yeah. I'm going to put it in the seat pan now. And then, why don't you put your bag in here. Here, let me have...Come over here. I'm going to put your bag in there. Your carrier is awful loose, and I don't want to lose that bag. Put this on the Hand Tool Carrier.

[Dave has probably taken an empty SCB out from under Jim's seat to make room for the SCB Jim has been wearing. The TV image shakes as he works around the seat. His shadow goes out of view, probably as he joins Jim at the back of the Rover.]

146:10:32 Scott: Oh, I don't know what's in there. No...

146:10:37 Allen: And, troops...

146:10:38 Scott: ...(garbled)...

146:10:39 Allen: How many big rocks did you pick up? One?

146:10:40 Irwin: I think that's our best...(Stops to listen to Joe)

146:10:42 Scott: Yeah, one, Joe. We're about out of time, here.

146:10:45 Allen: Rog. Although we're not hurting all that bad, but...

146:10:47 Scott: (Probably getting Jim's bag off) Bend over, Jim.

146:10:48 Irwin: Yes, sir.

146:10:49 Allen: ...we think you should be climbing...

146:10:50 Scott: Bend over, Jim.

146:10:51 Allen: ...aboard now. Looks like you really put some weight on our suspension system when you loaded it, there.

146:11:00 Scott: [Chuckles] Wait until you feel this bag! (Pause)

[We see Dave's shadow as he returns, undoubtedly with Jim's SCB.]

[Jones - "We're well past the three minutes that Joe was talking about at 146:06:59, so I suspect that you're not up against a hard walkback but, rather, trade-offs."]

[Scott - "Yeah. Go back and fool with the drill. That's what's probably driving it at this point."]

146:11:19 Scott: Going as fast as we can, Joe. Right now.

146:11:21 Allen: Roger.

146:11:22 Scott: Okay, Jim. (Pause) Okay, you want to just stay in FM/TV, Joe?

146:11:31 Allen: Negative, Dave. Go ahead and stow it (meaning the high-gain antenna). We just don't want you to move the television camera. It's in the proper position now. We want you to go ahead and stow the antenna.

146:11:41 Scott: Understand. Okay. Better let me get in first, Jim. Okay; doing PM1/WB.

[TV off.]

146:12:03 Scott: Yes, sir. Got it. Okay; the brush is going to be under my seat pan.

146:12:15 Allen: Standing by for your heading reading.

146:12:21 Scott: (With a slight scolding tone) Okay; stand by, Joe.

146:12:24 Irwin: Are you going to give us an update, Joe?

146:12:26 Allen: What's the reading, Jim? You probably won't need it.

146:12:31 Irwin: 290.

146:12:35 Allen: Torque it to 293, please. 293.

146:12:41 Scott: Okay.

146:12:42 Irwin: Okay; understand 293. You want me to torque it, Dave?

146:12:48 Scott: Yes, go ahead; and then...Oh, shoot! You better get in so I can get your...

146:12:52 Irwin: No...

146:12:53 Scott: ...seatbelt.

146:12:54 Irwin: ...If we're going downslope, I'll just hang on.

146:12:55 Scott: (Firmly) No. Seatbelt. Get in.

146:12:56 Irwin: Okay. (Long Pause)

146:13:08 Scott: Okay, that looks good (meaning that Jim is properly seated). Where's your seatbelt?

146:13:13 Irwin: Shoot, I didn't put it down (between the seats). I didn't think I was going to use it.

146:13:15 Scott: Yeah. (Long Pause)

[Jim is probably sitting on his belt.]

146:13:29 Scott: I know it. Just can't get it.

146:13:31 Irwin: Oh.

146:13:32 Scott: With the scoop there. You can't get it up high enough to use it. That's part of the problem: the scoop holds it way down. (Pause)

146:13:50 Scott: Hope you can get your feet in there. (Pause)

146:13:58 Irwin: There.

146:14:00 Scott: Okay. (Pause)

146:14:12 Irwin: Okay. (Pause)

146:14:21 Scott: Phew! Oh, are you hard to put to bed! Could you bring your left leg over, Jim? That's it. (Pause) Okay.

146:14:37 Irwin: Okay, Joe. When we leave here, I'm in a position to shoot some film.

146:14:41 Allen: Beautiful.

146:14:46 Irwin: We'll get some downhill motion, here (meaning some movie footage of the Rover traveling downhill.) (Pause)

146:14:53 Scott: Okay. (Getting seated) Up we go. (Long Pause) Did you torque it, Jim?

146:15:12 Irwin: No, I didn't.

[In original NASA transcript, Jim is quoted as saying "No, I didn't". On several occasions, my first reaction has been that a correct transcription should be "Yeah, I did." Dave's next transmission indicates that he, too, wasn't sure what Jim said.]

146:15:14 Irwin: No.

146:15:15 Scott: Okay.

146:15:16 Irwin: I can get it now if you like.

146:15:18 Scott: Yeah. Get it. Okay. (Pause)

146:15:24 Allen: Rover...

146:15:25 Scott: Okay...

146:15:26 Allen: ...this is Houston.

146:15:27 Scott: ...the seatbelts are pulled fast.

146:15:28 Irwin: Okay; 293.

146:15:29 Scott: Go ahead, Houston.

146:15:31 Allen: Dave, we want you to head toward Station 4, and we'll advise you on what your rate looks like and the tasks that we want you to carry out once you arrive. Just start off in the direction of Station 4, please.

146:15:47 Scott: Okay; give me a heading.

146:15:50 Irwin: I can see it over there, Dave.

146:15:51 Scott: Yeah.

146:15:52 Irwin: (It will) be about 330. That's not going to mean much to you until you get down to the level.

146:16:00 Scott: That's right.

146:16:01 Irwin: And the camera's running, Joe.

[Scott - "They want to get - and we do, too - some time at Dune, because that's a good one. And there's a trade-off between something totally unknown versus something known (Spur) and very good. And the other trade-off is going back to a place a second time."]

["In the macro sense of what do you do with your exploration capability, do you go to a totally unknown place? Do you go to a place that you know is potentially rich that you haven't visited yet? Or do you go back to a place where you've already been. And, boy can you get some good discussions on that."]

["All our activities are regulated by the Control Center and the Backroom. Not controlled. Which is a big difference. In fact, there are some other misinterpretations I've seen over the years in terms of what we had flexibility to do, and whether or not we were controlled by the Mission Control Center. Some people think we're just robots, but it's actually a 'mission advisory center'. We do take the advice, but that's another interpretation of the total system that would be good to be clear. We know who's in the Backroom so, if Joe says, 'Lee Silver says you ought to go to Dune,' I'd go to Dune. I would not question that, 'cause Lee knows what my interests are, and I know what his interests are. So that would be a no-brainer. But if people don't know there's a Lee Silver in the picture, they would wonder why we responded the way we did to these decisions. As an example, why don't we stay there and work this wonderful place. And the answer is, the team in the Backroom wants us to go to Dune. That's part of how the system worked."]

[Jones - "You build a team through training. Trust, Respect. You're the guys in the field who ultimately have to make the judgments, but you'd be foolish not to rely on the insights and collective wisdom of the folks back in Houston."]

[Scott - "Absolutely. And that's another illustration of the difference between planetary field geology and terrestrial field geology. In terrestrial geology, a geologist goes out into the field and pretty much makes decisions on his own. Especially in remote areas. You know, they may go out two or three months in a remote area, maybe one or two or three of them, and they don't talk to the Backroom. Whereas, in planetary field geology, we have very little time and we rely very heavily on the Backroom for decisions, even though we're not talking to them directly. We're talking through Joe, but that's to keep consistency in semantics and to keep out extraneous inputs. But we are talking, through the system, to people we know, almost face to face. So we have a fairly sizable team in the field. Vicariously, but they're there."]

[After I turned the tape recorder off, Dave resumed a prior discussion we had had about the uses one might make of miniature, unmanned rovers.]

[Jones - "While the tape was off, we were talking about the use of micro-Rovers and how lessons from Apollo might be used in designing missions for them. In summary, what you just said is that, with regard to traverses, you don't look in detail at everything along the route, but you pick out representative places and unusual places. Usually a place like Spur, a place like Apollo 17's Shorty or the Rille or Dune. Some place that's going to address a question."]

["In the case where you've got astronauts cruising along on a Rover, they can look around. And, when they get to Spur they can make decisions like, 'Oh, there's another breccia.' And their eyes are drawn to an unusual white rock on the surface. And, in the micro-rover application, you said that maybe what you want to do is, rather than do traverses, land rovers at places like Spur and do detailed, exhaustive, local exploration for a lunar day or two."]

["It seems to me that the challenge in the micro-rover application is to have the software capability - probably back here - to say, 'Oh well, that's another breccia'."]

[Scott - "I think you can do that on-board the rover, with the right imaging and the right processing. And we're looking at that. I think what I'm really focused on here is the method developed during Apollo that leads me to conclude that we collectively decided that stations were more interesting than the route of the traverse. Inspecting the route of the traverse appears to be less interesting than investigating very local areas at specific stations. Maybe that's wrong, but that's what seems to fall out of this, especially when we get time constraints."]

[Jones - "The thing that comes to mind is that, in doing field geology down here, one part of the exercise is mapping layers over stretches of territory. But another is to go pick an outcrop for a particular strata and see what that has to tell you. You don't look at a particular strata at twenty different places. You go find one outcrop and you look at it intensively..."]

[Scott - "And then you tie it in with all the others."]

[Jones - "Right. And you just take a look at some others to see if it's the same stuff. And you convince yourself, relatively quickly that, yeah, there's not a lot of lateral variation. And so you've learned what there is to say about that particular layer. Up there, you were looking for a window into the Front, an exposure of the Hadley Delta bedrock. You found that at Spur; and, after you found the anorthosite and got the rake sample, the Backroom collectively said, 'Well, we've got a good start; time to go look at Dune, which is presumably a secondary impact from stuff tossed in from the north and we'll get a chance to look at the local mare bedrock and possibly samples of the stuff that got tossed in."]

[Scott - "And all at station-specific locations."]

["There are engineering/hardware trade-offs between building a mobile vehicle to go along a traverse, rather than landing at specific sites...Now, on Apollo, carrying people, you've got to have a lunar module as a base and it made sense to have a mobile rover to go to the sites. But, if you don't need to support people and get them back, you have a different engineering problem, which can be more readily focused on the geology and the site selection, 'cause you can tradeoff the cost of supporting people going back to Earth with the cost of additional landing sites for rovers."]

["I'm looking at what we're doing (during Apollo 15) to see what the messages might be out of this (for the micro-rover program). What have we learned out of all this work? I think we're learning how the system decided to prioritize the time on the Moon, and about the trade-offs between engineering, hardware, drills, ALSEP, field geology. We're seeing how those trades were made; and I think that methodology is something that needs to be carried over, because it was developed by a lot of experts in a lot of disciplines and it seems to be repeatable. I would bet that 16 and 17 are generally repeatable in terms of decision making and what happened during the missions. So here's a methodology, a lesson learned that, when somebody starts over, they should understand to help them, rather than inventing it again."]

["This (exploration) methodology was developed over a long period of time by a lot of people. I mean, the first geology field trips looked nothing like this. And there was just a total change in thinking from terrestrial to planetary field geology, because as Apollo evolved, we brought in more and more of the technical/engineering aspects of it. Limitations like walkback and how that affects the conduct of planetary geology. If somebody wants to start again at the Moon, it would behoove them to look at this methodology and to see, A, what the results are; and, B, how did the system make these decisions."]

[Jones - "One of the points that Jack Schmitt makes is that, because of the time limitations, because of the nature of the work that you had to do, the astronauts' function was to be competent field observers. You weren't there to interpret what you were seeing but to make sure that you had sufficient understanding of the theoretical background that you could make informed observations, see all of the things that were there to see, recognize what the representative samples were, make sure you collected some of those, look for the oddballs, the unusual. Make sure that all the relevant information was collected and put it in sufficient context so that people down here could put the puzzle together later."]

[Scott - "Absolutely. The interpretation comes later. And the emphasis of what we did was on the observation and the collection of the representative and non-representative data, so the interpretation could be made. That's my interpretation of what we did, also. Rather than try and stand in the field, as field geologists do, and look at the side of a mountain and decide how did it get that way. In terrestrial geology, when I come back from my two or three months in the field, I have mapped the area and I have interpreted the area. I know what it's all about. On the Moon, we don't do that. That's not what we're supposed to do. On the Moon, we're supposed to observe and bring the data back."]

[Jones - "Was there an evolution in the kind of geology that was presented to you over the years?"]

[Scott - "Oh, yeah. Definitely."]

[Jones - "I get the feeling that, in the beginning, it tended to be a bit too theoretical and not oriented enough toward the things you needed to know to be a qualified observer in the field."]

[Scott - "Well, no. There were some good field exercises, because we took what we learned in the classroom. We would study something in the classroom - volcanism - and then go to Hawaii and look at volcanism, but not in the context of field observers constrained by time, wherein, later on, the interpretations would be made. When we went on our early field trips, we would make the interpretation in the field - albeit, they were very short field trips but the professors would show us how they would interpret in the field from a field geology context. We did do stations, sort of. As an example, one of the early trips was the Grand Canyon. We went all the way to the bottom and then all the way back up and we would stop at the various layers, and discuss the layers and their context. That was maybe an example of the evolution of planetary geology. And we had a day to go down and a day to go up. So there were time constraints. But there was a lot of interpretation discussion. They were teaching us basic geology, but not necessarily teaching us how to find new things and put new things in the context of old things. And we were in groups, and not with the Backroom support and all that."]

 

The Green Boulder

Apollo 15 Journal

Dune Crater