When NASA planned to send four astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972, the rocket was built here in Alabama. Artemis-2 took the first people to Earth's nearest neighbor since 1972. It trip was a highlight for the U.S. Space Agency. Alabama played a role in one of its low points, the loss of space shuttle Challenger in 1986. The Artemis crew photographed a spot on the moon called the "Ocean of Storms." An astronaut from Mobile, Alabama was supposed to land there during Apollo 12 in 1969. It didn't happen.
On the original rollout day for the Artemis two spacecraft, the four astronauts that make up the crew were at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to take questions from the press.
“But for this crew, we've been on this journey for about two and a half years, and we just we truly look at that and see teamwork,” said Artemis Commander Reed Wiseman. He, Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen of Canada will ride to Earth aboard NASA's newest rocket. It's called the Space Launch System, or SLS. It's designed, built, tested and managed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. And that's not the only help the Artemis crew got.
“I've actually been very fortunate to become friends with Rusty Schweikart,” said Wiseman before the moon mission. The Artemis crew member also flew aboard the International Space Station. “And Rusty gave me a bag of wisdom quotes from different cultures all over the world that I took to the space station.”
People who follow NASA might hear the name Rusty Schweikart and go, “whoa.” Everybody else might say “who,” It's okay, Schweikart flew on Apollo 9 1969. He and his crewmates sang “happy birthday” to NASA manager Christopher Kraft during their mission to test the bug like lunar lander that Neil Armstrong would use two missions later on Apollo 11. And that's not the only name that Reid Wiseman dropped that day.
"And, I'm going to take that little bag of wisdom, but also in my heart and mind, the wisdom What we've learned from Charlie Duke, and General Stafford, and Dr Schmitt on what it meant to them.
And, if those names leave you scratching your head.
Astronaut Harrison Schmitt flew on Apollo 17 in 1972. If Artemis-2 is successful, the astronauts will be the first people to go to the moon since then. Charlie Duke made a lunar landing during Apollo 16.
“I'll just share my General Stafford story, which was the day we all got assigned to this mission publicly,” said Wiseman.
Astronaut Tom Stafford flew Apollo 10. That was the dress rehearsal for Neil Armstrong's moon landing. Stafford's phone call was also the one that Artemis commander Reed Wiseman says he almost didn't take.
“I was on my couch. I was getting ready to take a nap. It had been a long day with the media, and I almost hit the red hang up button, but I just figured I would answer it, I answer it. It was General Stafford ‘Reid, congratulations. We are so excited for you!’”
But there's one name from NASA's Apollo days that didn't come up during the Artemis press briefing while the astronauts talk to reporters, Craig Sumner is weaving stories for an audience of school kids from Louisville, Kentucky. He's in a white lab coat covered with embroidered NASA patches.
“What's the best part of your job?” asked one youngster.
“The people I worked with the enjoyment of the journey to develop new processes and new techniques, new software, lightweight materials. It's the journey on Apollo and on the space shuttle program, and even on Artemis,” responded Sumner.
Okay, so he’s is not your "run of the mill" volunteer museum docent.
“I retired as the deputy project manager on the space shuttle external tank,,” said Sumner.(Then, I) went to private sector, and I was the director, Chief Engineer on the space shuttle propulsion elements, and a final taste on Artemis the Space Launch System.”
Sumner is a retired NASA engineer who got his start during Apollo. He built the lunar rovers during a college internship. Those with Sumner traded that job in the 1980s to work on propulsion for the space shuttle, including the big orange external fuel tank.
The Space Shuttle Program retired in 2011 and so did Sumner. But not for long.
“I was brought on board as a ‘SME,” a subject matter expert, to work on the thermal protection system and go test what we were going to go fly and make sure it performed and exceeded our expectations," he said.
And the term "SME" is not the only bit of NASA jargon you're going to hear during this story. The space program was building its new moon rocket, and it needed somebody to work with the new guys. That's why they called Sumner.
“You can bring a lot of new ideas to the table, but if they aren't the right ones, you got to have somebody will stand up and say, We're not going down that road,” said Sumner. “We've already done that on the Apollo program or whatever, to make sure that we don't make the same mistake twice.”
Funding and politics are as much a part of Sumner's message to the new guys on Artemis as the nuts and bolts of building rockets, and he doesn't hold back on problems he sees with how Washington is handling NASA's new Artemis program.
“They agreed to a contract value, and then they said, well, we can't give you that much money,” Sumner recalled. “We're just going to give you this much. What can you do with it? And then you drag the entire army with you and increase the cost. You don't meet milestones, and you look like fools.”
Critics of the Space Launch System say it’s one hundred and forty percent over budget and costing taxpayers four billion dollars for each rocket.
“Part of that cheaper is better philosophy was put to the test during the unmanned flight of Artemis one, NASA is using as much hardware from the retired space shuttle as possible instead of the three liquid fueled engines like on the shuttle, NASA's new moon rocket uses four the shuttle's two solid rocket boosters in the external tank that Sumner worked on were made bigger and longer. Sumner says it was great working with the Artemis engineers, most of them anyway,
“The new guys were sponges. They wanted to absorb everything that you could give them in the shortest period of time, the old guys, unfortunately stayed too long," he recalled.
Okay, every talk Sumner gives at the US Space and Rocket Center ends with handing out trading cards for the youngsters. His picture is on one of them. Sumner focuses on the high points of his days at NASA during his talks, but there were the low points too.
“I got to sit down with Larry down in New Orleans one evening,” he said.
“Larry” is Lawrence Malloy. He was in charge of shuttle propulsion at the Marshall Space Flight Center in the mid 1980’s. He was also part of a launch decision one cold night that went down in NASA history.
“Larry shared with me what was going on from his knot hole. Larry knew that we had a problem. He didn't know it was going to be as catastrophic. I mean, he knew that it could grow or go to that," said
It did. 40 years ago aboard space shuttle Challenger.
When four NASA astronauts blasted off on Artemis-2, something was trending on the social media platform Bluesky. It was called "Challenger trauma." People posted about witnessing the 1986 space shuttle Challenger accident and how they felt a visceral sense of unease as Artemis lifted off from the launch pad. The four astronauts blasted off on a rocket built here in Alabama. The investigation into the loss of Challenger focused on a statement witnesses say was made by a manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. APR news looked at the Alabama connection to NASA's first space shuttle accident as seen by its youngest witnesses.
“I'd like to introduce Mr. Larry Malloy, who is the project manager of the solid rocket booster at the Marshall Space Flight Center,” said Jesse Moore. He was NASA Associate Administrator. The date was February 28th, 1986.
“Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, as Mr. Moore has stated, I intend to give you a briefing on some aspects of the solid rocket booster assembly the assembly, the details of that solid rocket booster, and then concentrate with a bit of information on how the solid rocket motors are assembled, how they are refurbished, and the particularly on the seals and the joint is,” said Mulloy. He ran the Space Shuttle’s solid rocket booster program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
His testimony that day was before the Roger’s Commission. That panel was investigating what happened just one month before…
At 11 am on January 28, 1986, NASA was forty minutes away from its first space shuttle disaster. Challenger was on the launch pad for the last time.
‘It was very cold, which we're not used to,” said Jennifer Eschen Carter. She lives in Atlanta where she works for an accounting firm. Carter was talking about a three hour long school bus ride that cold morning, forty years ago.
“We don't have a lot of clothing in Florida, right? That's usually suitable for 27 degrees. I know, I remember we were all freezing, you know, the bus, I don't remember it being heated, right,” she recalled.
Carter and her classmates were on their way to Kennedy Space Center for the liftoff of space shuttle Challenger on mission 51-L. They didn’t think they were going to make it. But, their bus rattled up the main gate of NASA’s launch site just in time.
“You know, when you're nine, the concept of death you understand, but the concept of such a tragedy really is something that's not easy to digest,” said Carter.
“Okay, how about you, young man, what's your name,” I asked one of Carter’s classmates back in 1986.
“Robbie Sampson,” the young man responded.
“Robbie,” I asked. “Did you know that anything was wrong when you noticed the shuttle go up?”
“Yes, because when I saw the two boosters sort of meet together, it's I sort of felt that there was something wrong, especially when there was that big cloud of smoke,” he responded
“Oh, yes, I remember Robbie,” Jenny Eschen Carter responded during our recent interview from her home in Atlanta.
“He was, obviously, he was also kind of a space guy, a nerd, not a nerd guy. I don't want to say, you know, but I call myself a nerd. I'm space nerd, so, you know, but interested in this, like, and I remember, I remember Robbie,” she recalled.
Jenny remembers Robbie because she was there, too.
Okay, how about you, young lady,” I asked in 1986. “What's your name?”
“Jennifer Eschen,” she responded at the age of nine.
“Okay, Jennifer, did you expect anything like this? When you came over to watch the shuttle going,” I asked.
“No,” she responded.
“What were you expecting?” I inquired further.
”I was expecting a safe trip, because I always thought it was very exciting to have a teacher in space,” Carter responded back then.
Challenger was my first story about the space shuttle program. Robbie and Jenny were among the first interviews I did that day. I still had the original tape for forty years later when I spoke with her in Atlanta…
“And so, yeah, so I think we obviously knew something was wrong,” said Carter as an adult. “Boosters, big plume of smoke. Everyone's upset. They closed. The Cape said, Get out of here, leave so we knew something bad had happened. We, I don't think it had any idea how bad.”
That uncertainty followed Jenny Eschen Carter and her classmates as they headed home.
“I think it took even longer to get back because of traffic and, I mean, just spent hours on a freezing bus with no information, you know,” she said.
Carter says all they knew was that something went wrong.
“And the teachers just trying to, you know, dial into a an AM/FM station to get any any information,” Carter said of the trip home. “And I don't remember there being I don't remember them telling us if they knew, of course, they did not tell us on the bus what had happened, but I don't think they knew. And if they did know, they didn't know for sure.”
Four months later recovery ships with cranes located most of Challenger’s wreckage at the bottom of the Atlantic near the Florida coast. In April of 1986, NASA brought it here. I was among the first group of reporters taken by bus to a hangar at the Kennedy Space center. The first thing I saw was Challenger’s tail rudder strapped down on a flat bed truck. The top of the fin looked okay. The bottom was tore metal and dangling cables.
“The orbiter is been laid out on four foot grid squares that you can see the yellow lines on the floor here,” said Terry Armentrout with the National Transportation Safety Board in 1986.
“The mock up is, as I said over there, full scale. However, it should be clear to you that this particular building isn't quite large enough to carry the full footprint of the orbiter itself. So that's why I use the term modular mock up,” he added.
In 1986, the loss of Challenger was treated as an aircraft accident. That’s why Terry Armentrout and the NTSB was in charge.
“And then you can see the payload bay,” Armentrout went on. “The saw the vertical side walls of the payload bay are mocked up in a vertical position. The skin that you see immediately behind me here is that of the mid body. That's the mid body belly skin of the payload bay area. When we get around to the side or the peripheries during this walk through, you'll see the payload bay doors.”
The mid body of the shuttle is the side of the spacecraft between the nose and tail. The words United States were still clearly visible on that part of the wreckage. Investigators laid out parts of Challenger’s remains to try to confirm what caused the accident. They weren’t the only ones looking for answers
“So there was that little fire, again, a nine year old, a little fire next to a gas tank,” said Jenny Eschen Carter during our recent interview.”
Forty years after the Challenger accident, Carter recalled how she and her classmates, all around the age of ten tried to make sense of what happened.
“And so, right? So I can't comprehend that, right? You know, like there was fire next to a gas tank and that caused the explosion. Now, as to how the fire happened, wasn't until, again, I feel like decades later, right?” she said.
“The evidence that this outer surface here was still together with the crew vessel as it hit the water and it broke away upon impact from the crew vessel,” said Terry Armentrout of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Back at the hangar containing Challenger’s wreckage, perhaps the most poignant answer from Armentrout was about the wreckage that formed the underside of the shuttle’s nose.
“There is evidence that that in this outer shell has been which has been explained before, that the damage that we see would it from from past experience, would indicate that we had some mass within this outer shell,” he said.
That’s as close as Armentrout came to saying that the crew cabin with the astronauts inside was still cradled inside this part of the wreckage when it hit the water…
Two months later the Rogers’ Commission released it’s report. Much of the criticism was aimed at Lawrence Mulloy of the Marshall Space Flight Center. The head of the solid rocket booster program at Marshall denied making the statement “my god Thiokol, when do you want me to launch, April?” which reportedly contributed to Challenger’s ill fated launch. Instead, Mulloy said he was voicing concerns that engineers at Thiokol were trying to make a last minute change to rules governing whether to launch a shuttle.
NASA made changes in how to ran the space shuttle program with Astronauts having more say into what went on. The goal was to try to avoid the kind of space disaster witnessed by those school students from Dade City Florida forty years ago.
Okay, how about you, young lady, I'll start with you," I said back in 1986. "First of all, could you, could you tell me your name?
"Jennifer Golden," she responded.
"All right, Jennifer," I continued. "What did it look like?
"Well, it was just a big thing of smoke, and then all of a sudden it was real bright, and there was a big thing of smoke. They just went off in two directions, and then you couldn't see anymore. It was, there was you could tell that there was a problem," she said.
“Yes, Jennifer Golden and I, same thing. She was also in fifth grade," recalled Jenny Eschen Carter. She says after Challenger, she and Jennifer Golden grew up together.
"We were cheerleaders together, you know, obviously went all the way through high school together,” Carter said.
The two Jennifers also had Challenger in common. Now, forty years later Carter sounds bitter.
“I got really angry, and honestly, I kind of liken it to Chernobyl as far as how the what 'group think' does, the disaster that was waiting to happen and that several People knew it sounds like was going to happen and was very possible, and that they were more worried about the optics of delaying the launch again. It was very upsetting," she said.
The Roger’s Commission ordered changes to how NASA ran the shuttle program with astronauts more in charge. During CNN’s report, one Apollo veteran who walked on the moon spoke out. He was Alan Bean.
Bean flew on Apollo 12. Bean was the fourth man to step onto the lunar surface. Except, Bean wasn’t supposed to be there. The man who was assigned to make that moonwalk was from Mobile, Alabama. The story of astronaut Clifton Williams is next time.
The astronauts took photos of the lunar surface, including one spot called the Ocean of Storms. One astronaut from Mobile was supposed to get a lot closer than that. Clifton Williams was meant to land there during Apollo 12 in 1969.
“Okay, I guess you all know why you're here today and why we're here,” said Deke Slayton during a NASA press conference on October of 1963. He was one of NASA’s original “Mercury-7.”
“We'd like to introduce the new group of 14 astronauts that we've been in the process of selecting for about the last four months,” he said
NASA was gearing up for the space race against Russia. The winner would put a man on the moon first.
“I'm Major Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr, United States Air Force, from Montclair, New Jersey,” said Buzz Aldrin, who would walk on the Moon with Neil Armstrong during Apollo 11
“I'm Captain Bill Anders, Kirtland Air Force Base New Mexico,’ said Anders, who would circle the moon on Apollo 8. Ten more men would introduce themselves with this one bringing up the rear…
“Captain CC Williams, United States Marine Corps stationed at Quantico, Virginia, hometown, Mobile, Alabama,” he said. Williams went by the nickname “CC.” He was the first Astronaut from Alabama.
“Are all the wives of the chosen astronauts in favor of their having been chosen as astronauts?" asked a reporter during the press conference.
Clifton Williams was NASA’s first bachelor astronaut. That made his answer to that question a little tricky.
“Well, none of my lady friends have voiced any objection to my getting away from here,” said Williams, which prompted laughter in the audience.
“CC liked everybody. Everybody liked CC.” said Beth Landsche.
She and Williams met before he became an astronaut. He was a Marine and she was working her way through college as a water skier at the Cypress Gardens park in Florida.
“Actually, we met in the hometown of North King, North Carolina, where he was based in his first white base squadron. I guess they call it anyway. I was in college, and then I moved later to Cypress Gardens, and he used to fly down there to see me,’ she recalled.
Then, Williams was named to the prime crew of Apollo 12. He would be the lunar module pilot. Beth Williams says that meant after the astronauts landed on the Ocean of Storms, her husband would walk on the moon.
“It was, it was the beginning of a lot of travel and species,” Williams said. “His father was quite ill during that time, and he would be going to the Cape and coming back, and he'd stop to see his dad come on to Houston. It it's, it was a special time.”
Williams' parents were living in Mobile in the mid 1960’s. His father had heart problems. Along with training for his Apollo 12 moonwalk, there were more interviews. One from Scholastic Magazine was on a six inch wide vinyl record. It would be the last time Clifton Williams would answer questions from the public…
“An American astronaut who said he wanted to be the first on the moon, was killed Thursday when his T-38 jet trainer plowed into a hilltop near the Florida Georgia border. Marine Corps Major Clifton C Williams Junior, age 35, was a member of the nation’s third generation of astronauts was flying alone from Cape Canaveral to Houston Manned Space Center, by way of Mobile, Alabama, where his father was reported ill.
Williams radioed a distress signal about 2 PM. And, 10 minutes later, a helicopter rescue crew from Moody Air Force Base near Valdosta, Georgia arrived at the scene on a plantation near the Miccosukee, Florida, 15 miles north of here. The plane disintegrated and the body disintegrated with it, said Air Force major Joe Johnson of Moody The plane drove straight down and plunges between Pine trees about 100 feet apart without touching them. A board of inquiry headed by the first American spaceman Navy Captain Alan B Shepherd was named to investigate the crash by James E. Webb administrator, of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration. The closest Williams came to rocketing to Space was as backup pilot for last year‘s Gemini 10 mission. Since then, he specialized in working on the Lunar Module. That’s the craft that is to carry two Apollo astronauts for all landing on the moon.”
Tuscaloosa News-- October, 6, 1967
“Oh, I recall it vividly. Yeah, I do,” said Beth Williams. “People came to the house, and people were very you know, all of them gathered together, the astronauts and all the friends and NASA people. And it was typical of the way they did. They gathered, you know, 'what do you need?' Everybody worried and took care of.”
“I didn’t miss the damn moon, I missed him,” she said.
But, the Moon was waiting and NASA had to press on..
Alan Bean, the man Clifton Williams partnered with on the back-up crew of Gemini 10, would take his place and walk on the moon. Even though CC wasn’t aboard Apollo 12, Beth Williams followed the moon mission on the news.
“Well, it's just pride that we could do such a thing," she said. "I mean, I wasn't involved, but it was you. Certainly, when you live close to it, you realize how much effort the whole engineers, everybody put into it, and it was that's why it's exciting. It's exciting to see something come to fruition that a little bit is dangerous, and yet they pull it off well.”
That included the moonwalk her husband didn’t get to do.
After Apollo 12, Alan Bean made speeches about walking on the moon. Beth Williams says there one thing in those talks that bothered her.
“He would always say that he replaced CC Williams. And, I called him one time when I was aware of what he was doing, and I said, Alan, stop that nonsense. You did that flight. It's yours. Please leave CC out of it. He doesn't need that. He doesn't need that, and neither do I,” she recalled.
Bean never mentioned it again. But it did come up more one time…
“And, anyway, at his (Alan Bean’s) funeral, his best friend said, ‘we have one more thing to say, because he never said it after that.’ And he said, ‘Alan wanted to remind you all that he replaced CC Williams,’ and if they were looking right at me, I knew what they were doing,” Beth Williams said.
No one has set foot on the moon since 1972. NASA may try it again in 2028 with Artemis four. If those moonwalkers ever make it to the Ocean of Storms, they may find Clifton Williams’ Naval Aviator flight wings and his silver astronaut’s pin. That’s where Apollo 12 moonwalkers Pete Conrad and Alan Bean left them in 1969.
