By Hope 103.2Thursday 18 Jul 2019Open House InterviewsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
Listen: Astronaut Charlie Duke speaks to Sheridan Voysey. Photo by Rick Mulheirn @spacegalore
Charlie Duke was the 10th astronaut to walk on the moon, with the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. He also played a vital role in the first moon landing of 1969, as “Capsule Communicator” – speaking to Neil Armstrong and crew from on the ground in Houston, Texas. In 2009 he spoke to Sheridan Voysey on Open House about his experiences in space, and his conversion to Christian faith. Below is the full transcript of their conversation.
Transcript:
Sheridan: Tell us about how you entered NASA. You started off in the Navy, then you went to the Air Force, then onto NASA. When did you seriously consider the idea of joining the space program?
Charlie: I think it was probably about 5 years after I graduated from the Naval Academy, it was in the Air Force. I was at MIT doing a Master’s program in aeronautics and astronautics, and working on the Apollo Guidance and Navigation System. I met some of the astronauts and they were so excited and thrilled about having that job, and that began me thinking about perhaps that would be a job I could do when I finish my training.
Sheridan: Did you ever think though you would one day set foot on the moon?
Charlie: Oh, not in my wildest thoughts or dreams. I wanted to be an astronaut, I definitely made that decision when I was at Edwards Air Force Base during Test Pilot School. And fortunately, I was selected but we had 40-something astronauts who were qualified to fly, back in those days, and we knew we didn’t have that many flights, we were the junior group, and the fact that we would get to fly was just a figment of our imagination, if you will, because everybody was ahead of us.
Preparing for the Moon
Sheridan: Preparing for Apollo 16, getting into that giant suit, it takes two people to actually help you get into it in the first place. Doesn’t it?
Charlie: Well, it does in training because it’s heavy, the backpack’s heavy, but…in flight of course, on the moon, you’re one-sixth gravity and you had your partner there, on the lunar surface, sort of help you get zipped up and stuff but you could get in it all by yourself. But generally, it was a two-man operation, we would help one another.
10, 9, 8, 7…
Sheridan: So you’re sitting in a massive rocket and you start hearing the 10-9-8 count down start from Mission Control. Describe the emotions. How did you feel at that moment?
Charlie: Well, you’re ready to go. We had been 2 years in training, and I’m telling you, I was ready to go. I wasn’t looking forward to an abort, I wasn’t looking forward to any delay, I wasn’t looking forward to another month of training, I was prepared and my thoughts were, “Let’s light this thing and let’s get going.”
Sheridan: But there must have been some sort of anxiety there.
Charlie: Well, not really. The anxiety comes from, “Is it going to work right? Are we going to make it off on schedule?” We only had a 4-hour window where we could launch or we’d have to delay for 30 days. And so, the anxiety is, “Come on, keep counting,” and then, once it ignites and you’re on your way, the anxiety shifts to, “keep it all working right.”
Sheridan: Yeah. Just explain that 4-hour window.
Charlie: Each Apollo landing had a specific point on the moon that we had to touch down in for the exploration. And to hit that point from the Earth with the fuel restrictions and everything else, limits of the Apollo system, there was only a 4-hour window where you could launch and actually get to that point on schedule. Outside of that window, you had to land somewhere else, which we hadn’t trained for, that restricted us to a 4-hour launch window.
Trusting in Mission Control
Sheridan: Okay. So the rockets start and everybody watches these, you know, blazing plumes of flame and smoke and everything come from the launch pad. And you shoot into the air, you can’t see where you’re going. I guess you really have to trust the competence of your colleagues at Mission Control from that point on, don’t you?
Charlie: We had a guidance reference system in Apollo that I couldn’t see, it was on the other side of the airplane, it was in front of the commander. And the windows are covered over, at this point, Apollo, so you can’t see outside. And your guidance onboard says you go and Mission Control says you go, and of course the final authority is Mission Control. And if they say, “You’re getting off track, abort,” then you better do that. Fortunately, we were right on trajectory but we were shaking like crazy from side-to-side, it was a very substantial vibration in that Saturn rocket, you know, it’s almost 110 meters tall. So it was vibrating from side to side pretty good.
The Effects of Zero Gravity
Sheridan: So here you are, you’re blasting up into air, you get into orbit, and then, you’re actually experiencing this zero-gravity. What is that like?
Charlie: Well, at first, you have a headache, it seems like your blood pressure is real high. You know, your heart doesn’t have to pump blood against gravity like it does down here, and so, you have this sort of pounding sensation in your head. And I felt like I was going to get seasick for the first hour or so.
“In zero gravity, your body adjusts… and you just really enjoy this lightness and you just sort of float around wherever you want to…”
Fortunately, that went away, and then, I was able to relax and float around the spacecraft, do the procedures and the checklist items that I had to perform. The other two guys on board, John and T. K. Mattingly, they didn’t have any problems at all. In zero gravity, once you got used to it, your body adjust, the headache goes away, and you just really enjoy this lightness and you just sort of float around wherever you want to and…
Sheridan: There’s always the case of the stray-fruit juice drip. Tell us about that.
Charlie: Oh, that occurred later on. We were in lunar orbit and we had, what I call, a drink bag, it was inside of our suit that contains some fluids, in this case orange juice, that we were to drink on the lunar surface. Well, inside the suit, every time I’d breathe, my valve leaked and this orange juice would float out of the bag into my helmet. And it was just very very frustrating and it also got very very messy because orange juice is very sticky when it starts to dry up. And so, it was just all over inside my helmet and it elicited some crude comments, if you will, from us in those days.
Sheridan: This was a little solitary drip that would just be flying around inside your helmet?
Charlie: Yeah.
One Terrifying Moment at ‘The Moon Olympics’
Sheridan: The zero gravity allowed you to have a bit of fun up there too, you did your own Moon Olympics I hear.
Charlie: Well, that was on the moon. The one-sixth gravity on the moon was really freeing. Down here, with all of my equipment on, I weighed 362 pounds, up on the moon , I weighed 60 pounds. And so, you could jump high but easy to lose your balance. So we just thought it would be fun and have the Moon Olympics on the moon, a high jump and a broad jump. It turned out that, during the high jump, I fell over backwards, which was the only scary moment of the whole mission. Fortunately, my suit held together and I bounced onto my back. But that ended the Olympics, it was really a frightening moment at that point as I was falling over backwards.
Sheridan: Tell us why because the fact is that, if something had have happened to your spacesuit, what would’ve happened?
Charlie: Well, my spacesuit, I wasn’t concern about the spacesuit actually, it was very strong. It’d been demonstrated to me that you could, you know, pound it with a sledgehammer and it was gonna hold together. The weak link was the backpack which was our life support system which contained oxygen, and electrical power, and cooling water, and communications, and it was cables, and electrical systems, and plumbing. And if you fell on your back on that, you could rupture a tank, you could rupture the plumbing, and you lose all your pressurization and you die. The body can’t survive a vacuum. And so, the danger on the lunar surface, or out in space on a spacewalk, is if a glove pops off or a helmet breaks or something happens, you lose your pressurization, there’s no way out, you’re dead.
The Many Risks Involved
Sheridan: Tell us about some of those other small margins of error, I guess. What else could’ve gone wrong with what you experienced up there?
Charlie: Well, of course in the final stages of landing, we could’ve had a computer problem that would’ve caused the jets to fire incorrectly. We could’ve had a short in some of the electrical systems which could lose pressurization, you could lose your guidance system. There were a lot of little things that could happen that could kill you in the final stages of flight. And of course on liftoff from the moon, if the engine didn’t light, and you couldn’t get it lit through the emergency procedures, you were just going to die. Sooner or later you would give out oxygen, probably just go to sleep from high concentrations of carbon dioxide.
Sheridan: It really is an amazing feat of humanity that we’ve actually achieved it, isn’t it? It’s amazing.
Charlie: It’s amazing, yeah. Looking back, you know, with what look like from now rudimentary technologies, but then, the state of the art. Our computer on board had 80K memory and, you know, your cell phone has lots more than that in miniaturization and everything. But it all worked and we had motivated people, dedicated people, smart people involved in all stages of this program, and people didn’t make any mistakes. Except for Apollo 1, Apollo was a tremendous success, even recovering Apollo 13, which was a near disaster.
Approaching the Moon in the Lunar Module
Sheridan: Yes, which you also were involved with. You were up in the lunar module, the module actually parts company with the spaceship.
Charlie: Yes, we had two spacecraft on Apollo. The primary spacecraft that took us to the moon and returned us was called the command module, that’s what we rode in going to the moon and returning. Once we got into lunar orbit, John and I got into the lunar module, which was the vehicle that would take you down the land onto the lunar surface, and that would be your home for 3 days. And then, you would lift off in the upper stage, called the essence stage, to return to orbit.
Sheridan: So you’re in the module and you’re approaching the moon’s surface, you can see the craters started to get closer and closer to you as you’re looking through the window, how do you feel at that moment?
Charlie: Very excited. Actually you don’t see the lunar surface until you are about 2 kilometres above the surface. And at that point, the vehicle makes a maneuver and the surface comes into view through the front window. And we recognized the major landmarks in our landing area and we knew we were almost directly on target and on track. And so, I began to look out the window to see about our traverse to the north, which we had thought was gonna be very rough terrain, turned out it looked okay, took a quick glance out for the west, that terrain looked okay. And then, of course we started concentrating mostly on getting us safe landing. So I talked John, John was actually flying, and I talked him down giving him information that he needed to make a safe landing. And we did.
Sheridan: And so you then land on the moon and then you have to sleep. I mean how can anybody sleep when they’ve just landed on the moon? You’d be like a kid before Christmas.
Charlie: Well, exactly. And that first rest period, it took me…I knew I wasn’t gonna get to sleep because my mind was just racing, you know, about, “I’m gonna be out on the moon here in 8 hours.” And so, I had to take a sleeping pill the first night. But after the second and third rest periods, you were exhausted from working in that space suit for 8 hours, or being in it for 8 hours, and overcoming the pressurization resistances and stuff like that. So you took off your suit after you got back in the second night, and the third, and just went right to sleep.
Walking, and Buggy-Driving, on the Moon
Sheridan: So Ken Mattingly is back in the commander ship. You and John Young then don the space suits and go for a moonwalk. Tell me what that’s like.
Charlie: Well, of course very very exciting. Emotionally, it was a great high, the culmination of all of our training and effort. And so, I opened the hatch, John got out, climbed down the ladder. And a few minutes later, I climbed down the ladder and, since we were the fifth landing, we knew we weren’t going to sink into the moon dust, it was going to support our weight. So we just hopped off the pad and I was in awe of the beauty of the moon, and the pristine nature of it, and the thoughts kept occurring, “Nobody has ever been here before.” You know, “Look at the mountains to the south and the mountains to the north, the grey rolling terrain and just the excitement of being there.” You know, it was like a kid, Christmas morning, running from one present to the next. And that’s really the way we did it, but more in an organized fashion because we had a lot to do and a lot to accomplish. So we were just in wonder and all as we were going about our business.
Sheridan: You did have some jobs to do like collecting moon rocks and things like that, didn’t you?
Charlie: Well, that was the primary objective of course was to collect the variety of rocks that we were to find in our landing area. But we also had a whole suite of experiments that we emplaced and left on the moon. Two seismic experiments, a magnetometer, a mass heat flow, a mass spectrometer, those kind of things that would measure these parameters of the moon, where we landed. And then, we had a lot of special geology experiments that we did.
Sheridan: You also got to race around in that lunar buggy, I don’t know if I got the terminology correct, but you had that car that you were racing around the place with. That sounds like a lot of fun, looked like a lot of fun.
Charlie: It was. It was called the lunar rover was the official name, and we just called it the rover. I was the navigator and I sat in the right seat. John was the driver, he sat in the left seat. And so, I had a set of maps that would try to navigate us from point A to point B. The farthest we got was about 4 maybe 5 kilometers away from our landing spot. And it was rough driving across the moon. This little car only weighed 80 pounds, it bounced a lot, you had to put on your seat belt. And it spun a lot, the back end, it was very sensitive steering so the back end would break loose and spin out a little bit. So it was a challenge driving it for John but also a lot of fun.
Sheridan: Yes. The lunar rover, that’s still up there on the moon, isn’t it?
Charlie: There are three. Yes, the last three Apollo missions had a rover, so there are three. And as I say to folks, “If you want a $8,000,000 car with a dead battery, there’s three of them on the moon.”
Sheridan: Because when it’s outside of any atmospheric conditions like we have here on Earth, they’d actually all be in pristine condition, wouldn’t they? Apart from the battery.
Charlie: Yeah, they should be. Unless a meteorite hits right next to them and obliterates them, they’re probably in a drivable condition if you change the battery.
Moon Boots and Moon Dust
Sheridan: That’s amazing. Did you bring back any personal mementos… any moon rocks sitting on your shelves or any moon dust saved from your shoes?
Charlie: I got some…I got the maps that I was telling you about, the shovel that we used on the moon, some of our check lists that we were using, some little pins that were pulled out of the experiments, as we deployed, stuck in my pocket. But we weren’t allowed to keep any moon rocks or moon dust of any significance. So, and I don’t have my moon boots, we left those up there. Which was a mistake, I wish I brought them back.
Sheridan: Why? Why did you leave them up there?
Charlie: We only had a limited weight that we could lift off the moon and the rocks were the majority of the payload, if you will, plus us. And so, there was a very few pounds of material that we could bring back extra with us. So we kicked out the backpacks, we didn’t need those anymore, we left the moon boots up there. But they didn’t weigh very much, I wish I had one now as a momento, but I don’t.
Hurtling Back to Earth Inside a Fireball
So it’s time to go back home…you are sitting in this hunk of steel hurtling back towards Earth. What’s that like?
Charlie: Well, it was, again, a 3-day journey back and it was very relaxing for us because mission accomplished, spacecraft was in good shape, technically and operationally. And so, we had about a day where we got everything tied down and situated and secure for the reentry and just gotten positioned to re-enter, which was the last spectacular experience of the whole mission. As we hit the atmosphere at over 40,000 kilometers per hour, we had a fireball around the spacecraft, it was like being inside of a furnace. Outside it was very hot but inside it was a very comfortable 70 degrees. And so, we were decelerating at 7.5 times gravity, so it felt like a big elephant sitting on your chest for a while. Then that went away and you started falling towards the Earth and our parachutes came out and, about 8,000 feet 3,000 meters or so, you had a big splash down on the Pacific Ocean and it was mission complete.
Sheridan: In fact, actually when you did the splashdown, you almost were knocked out, weren’t you?
Charlie: Yeah. As a matter of fact, I was sort of out of position in my seat, I was looking out the right window at a helicopter, and Mattingly was calling out the altitude and I said, “Well, when he gets to 100 feet, I’m gonna put my head back,” and he was calling “500, 400, 300, 200, 100.” When we got to 100, we hit the water and I had a little whiplash and I hit the corner of the couch which gave me a few stars. I wasn’t quite unconscious but it was 10 seconds or so. And then, I had to push in a circuit breaker so we could jettison our parachutes, which, by this time, in a strong wind, we had it flipped us over and we were upside down, so we had to get righted back up before we could get outside.
A Powerful Shared Experience
Sheridan: Charlie, you, John, and Ken shared an experience that only literally a handful of people in history have ever experienced. Did that form any special bond between you three? Have you stayed in touch over the years?
Charlie: Yeah, we’re still close friends, John and I particularly. We see one another two or three times a year, he still lives in Houston. T. K. Mattingly is a good friend but I see him maybe once a year. But our friendships are still very strong.
Sheridan: Going through something like that, you’d have to be…you’ve experienced something that so few people have, it’d have to be bringing you together in some kind of special ways for sure. Yeah.
Charlie: Well, that’s true. You know, you’re in a very confined environment for 11 days and if you don’t have compatible personalities and stuff, it could’ve been very strenuous and stressful.
Not Much Privacy
Sheridan: And you did say that you shared so much together. I mean literally when a toilet break came for each one of you, one moved up one end of the module and the other two moved up the other, didn’t you?
Charlie: Right, yeah. It was no privacy in Apollo. We had, you know, 300 cubic feet of space, and so, if you had to go, everybody just got out of your way and you did your business.
A Restless, ‘Driven’ Man
Sheridan: Those 11 memorable days there, where in April…absolutely memorable. And back in April of 1972, you have described yourself as pretty driven in those days, driven for success and driven in your career. But once you’ve walked on the moon, what more is there left to achieve? Describe your emotional state after Apollo 16.
Charlie: Well, after Apollo 16, I was pumped up, as you can imagine, having just experienced this great adventure. And I wanted to go again, so I volunteered for a backup crew for Apollo 17 for the outside chance of maybe going to the moon again. Well, didn’t work. They stayed healthy and the primary crew flew. And after that was over, it was January of 1973, so it was like 9 months later after we flew and now Apollo was over. And the thought did occur to me, “Okay, now what are you gonna do with the rest of your life? You’re 37-years-old, you’ve had this great experience, you’ve climbed the top of the ladder. How are you gonna top this, buddy?” I began to look around trying to find what was satisfying. I’ve worked on Space Shuttle, it was exciting but not as thrilling as Apollo. I took my eyes off the moon and put them on money, making a business and making a lot of money would satisfy this drive that I still had.
You see, in my heart, that drive that took me to the moon was still there. And while I was satisfied for a while now, I was still motivated to do something, to bring this peace and satisfaction and purpose to my life. But business didn’t do it. It was only later on, about 6 years later, when I really found out the answer that I was searching for.
His Wife’s Struggle With Depression
Sheridan: Well, part of your answer actually came through your wife because, during this time when you’re kind of wondering, “What on Earth am I gonna do and why do I still have this emptiness in my soul?” Dotty, your wife, she’s going through her own dark valleys. Isn’t she? Depression, even suicidal feelings.
Charlie: Yes. And that was a real shock to me of course. We had been married 9 years, when I went to the moon, and then, the ensuing 3 years after that was very tough on Dotty. She thought that, when the moon flights were over, we could work on our marriage because it was under a lot of stress and strain at that point, me gone all the time, training, anxious, she’s anxious about my safety, etc., two little kids to raise. So there was a lot of stress on her life and she wanted to work on her marriage, after where I got back, but it turned out that I was still driven. And she was saying, “Well, I’ll never have a happy marriage,” and so, she tried a number of things to find her direction. But nothing worked for her until some people came to our church in October, 1975, on what was called a Faithful Life Weekend.
And these people had a personal relationship with Jesus and they had a peace and a joy and a purpose in their life. And they said Jesus brought it to them and they related their stories, some similar to what Dotty’s was going through, and how they had experienced a transformation. So, after that weekend, she prayed, “God, I don’t know whether you’re real,” and, “Jesus, I don’t know whether you’re the Son of God, but if you are, give me my life. If you’re not, I wanna die.”
Transformed by Faith in Jesus
Well there really is a God, and Jesus came into her life and I watched her change from sadness to joy over the next 3 to 4 months and things really started getting better at home. But I was in business, at this point, and not really interested in a deeper walk with God. I believed in God, you know, I’d been baptized and I went to church faithfully and all of that but it was more of a mental acknowledgement of God than rather a heartfelt understanding and knowing God.
“I realized that what was really my God in those days was my career. I’d put career first in my life. And career is not God, ”
So Dotty, over the next 2 and a half years, she just began to change and love me and our home, began to have a peace in it. And after I sold this business, finding out money wasn’t the answer, we were invited to a Bible study at a tennis club, one weekend, in April of 1978. And at that point of my life, I realized that I had to make a decision that Jesus was really the Son of God, or the biggest liar that ever walked, and scriptures that I’d learned in Sunday school years ago began to come back. And it was, “Is this true or is it not true? It’s either true or it isn’t. There’s no maybe, you know, there’s no riding a fence. And Jesus is either who he says he is, who died for our sins that we might have eternal life or he’s a big liar. We get to make up our minds. We have free will. We can receive it, believe it, accept it in a heartfelt way, and our life will be transformed by His power. And we can walk with God or we can turn away and say, ‘I don’t need any of this,’ and enter eternity without God.” It’s amazing how God loves us but he doesn’t make us robots and we can choose to be obedient, and follow, and experience the joy, and the love, and the piece of God. And that’s what happened in my life when I said, “Yes, Lord.”
Even the Moon Won’t Fulfil a Restless Soul
Sheridan: Yeah. The thing that I find amazing about your story, Charlie, is that the moral of it is that you can travel to the moon and back and still be spiritually empty.
Charlie: Right. You know, I mean, it wasn’t a spiritual experience for me going to the moon, I didn’t feel close to God when searching for God any more than I had, which was Church and Sunday acknowledgement of God, but no seeking him, no desire to serve Him. But I realized that what was really my God in those days was my career. I’d put career first in my life. And career is not God, money is not God, sex is not God, idols are not God. You know, there’s only one God, His name is Jesus, and if you put anything else above Him in your life, you’re gonna be empty. Sooner or later, you’re gonna end up disappointed.
The Moon and Beyond: Thoughts on Future Space Exploration
Sheridan: Forty years after that first moon landing, Charlie, has it all been worth it and do you think it should ever be done again?
Charlie: Well, certainly it was worth it. It was a great technical achievement, it was an economic boon to the world because, out of the space program, has been birthed so many new technologies, and systems, and engineering practices that the return to the world economy is hundreds of times more than was spent. The morale uplift it gave to the U.S. in a time of the Vietnam War and also something that brought the world together, though for a short time, it did sort of unite us that man has done this. And I think we should continue Deep Space and I’m thankful that now that we’re sort of pointed in the right direction with the Orion and also the Altair, they called the Constellation Program, which hopefully will land us back on the moon sometime in the early 2020s.
Sheridan: Okay. Fifty years after it first happened.
Charlie: Yeah. You would’ve thought we’d have been to Mars by now but we chose to come back to Earth orbit with Space Shuttle and other spacecraft that have been good vehicles but not with a sense of, to me, the sense of adventure and exploration that we had in Apollo.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: The Constellation Program was cancelled later in 2009].
Sheridan: Yeah. Speaking of Mars, do you think we should pursue that?
Charlie: Well, I think we should. I think the human spirit is such that we need to explore and…but the political economic argument against it is strong because robotics are so good. But I think the human spirit will prevail and eventually my great-grandchildren or some generation in the future will look back at the Earth and just see a tiny little blue dot out there from the surface of Mars.
Sheridan: And have the experience that you had. Of course we’ve now had at least one airline that we know of here in Australia that are planning trips to space in the near future. Is the technology really moving that rapidly do you think to allow domestic space trips?
Charlie: Well, certainly near space to experience some limited zero-gravity. Well, zero-gravity on a limited time frame. We’re quite a ways away from actually achieving orbital velocity. So these first ones will rocket you to 300,000 to 400,000 feet where you can experience zero gravity, see this beautiful Earth from that altitude, and then, plunge back into reentry 5 or 10 minutes later. The technologies are not quite there yet to get you…well, the technology’s there but whether people who wanna spend that much money to get in Earth orbit right now is gonna be I think economic drag. But eventually, we’ll do it.
Sheridan: Yeah? Would you take a trip like that just for old times sake?
Charlie: If I was flying it, yeah. I’d love to.
Now, About Those Conspiracy Theories…
Sheridan: Yeah, I bet you would. Now, Charlie, one last question. How do you feel with all the conspiracy theories that continue to go around the internet and even on TV programs every now and then that, you know, “It never really happened. It never really happened. We never really went to the moon.”
Charlie: Well, the evidence is overwhelming that we did go to the moon. Visuals that we sent back through the videos, the TV, the photographs. There is absolutely nothing on Earth that you could even come close to duplicating that. There is 600 pounds of moon rocks that were returned that are totally unique from any terrestrial rocks. And also, if we were going to fake it, why did we fake it nine times? We said we went to the moon nine times, we landed six. And if this was a big hoax, we would’ve done it once and stopped. But the evidence is overwhelming that they launched us to the moon and we had six successful landings.
Sheridan: But “the shadows are in the wrong place, Charlie, aren’t they, shadows are in the wrong place!”
Charlie: Well, no, that’s not true. If you analyze all those arguments, I can easily answer about the shadows, about no stars in the sky, and no hole under the lunar module where the rocket blasts was, radiation problems. Those are easily answered by any technically informed person.
Sheridan: Yes, yes. And the detail with which you have just told us your story, I would suggest, would certainly require…
Charlie: Yeah, they took us to the moon … listen, we really did land on the moon, there was no fakery involved.
Walking With Jesus Lasts Forever
Sheridan: Yeah. And yet, I guess, as your DVD has so well put it, you walked on the moon but you also now walk with the ‘Son’, the ‘S-O-N’.
Charlie: That’s right. The walk on the moon, as I say in the DVD, was fantastic, but it lasted 3 days, required a lot of money and a lot of training. The walk with Jesus is free, He paid the price, and it lasts forever.
Sheridan: A nice place to end. Charlie Duke, it’s been so fascinating to talk to you. Thanks for your time.
Charlie: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.
Sheridan: Charlie Duke, the 10th man on the moon with the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. His story is told in the book “Moonwalker,” and charlieduke.net is his website.
[NOTE: Charlie Duke’s website is now www.charlieduke.com.]