NASA Berthiaume, Sheridan - May 31, 2001

Interview with Sheridan J. Berthiaume

 

Interviewer: Matt Tippens

Date of Interview: May 31, 2001

Location: Berthiaume home, Kerrville, Texas

 

TIPPENS: Today is May 31, 2001.  This oral history with Sheridan Berthiaume is being conducted at the home of the interviewee in Kerrville, Texas.  The interview is being conducted for the NASA Johnson Space Center, in conjunction with the Southwest Texas State University history department, by graduate student Matt Tippens. 

 

Thank you for joining me today.  Where did you grow up?

 

BERTHIAUME: Houston.  Primarily Houston.

 

TIPPENS: How many years did you spend — your entire childhood in Houston?

 

BERTHIAUME: No, my father worked for an oil company, so we'd move quite a bit.  But we always would live in Houston, then move somewhere, move back to Houston, move somewhere else, move back to Houston, 'cause that's where the headquarters of the oil company was.  I went to all the years of my high school there.

 

TIPPENS: Where did you go to school — college?

 

BERTHIAUME: I went to Rice [University] and got a B.A. there.  Then I went to SMU [Southern Methodist University] and got a B.S. in electrical engineering there.

 

TIPPENS: What was your degree at Rice in?

 

BERTHIAUME: Just a Bachelor of Arts.

 

TIPPENS: Your electrical engineering degree — how did you decide to study that?

 

BERTHIAUME: Well, that's what I started off as — an electrical engineer at Rice, it was a five-year program, but then you take enough hours after four years you get a B.A. and the fifth year is when you get a B.S.  After four years, I decided I try somewhere else, I went to SMU and got the B.S. in electrical engineering.  Then I went to the University of Houston later on, after I was working for NASA, and got a master's in industrial engineering, operations research was the major there.

 

TIPPENS: Did you enjoy one school over the other? No difference?

 

BERTHIAUME: I enjoyed Rice, that was my undergraduate years.  I wasn't too thrilled with SMU.  U of H, you know I was married, it was a nighttime operation.  So the undergraduate years are always the best, I think.

 

TIPPENS: I noticed you were in the Air Force Reserve.  What did you do there?

 

BERTHIAUME: I started off as a flight simulator specialist.  I was living in Dallas at the time I joined the Air Force, and the base was Carswell Air Force Base.  I was a simulator repairman.  What was fun about was when you are not working on the simulator you can go in there and fly it.  They had a, I think, C-121, which is called a "whale on roller skates," you probably never heard of it.  It was a big, old cargo plane.  That was the simulator they had and I'd fly the simulator about all the time, it was really fun.  Then I got to fly the B-58 simulator at, I guess SAC [Strategic Air Command] had a wing there then, they guy took me over there, and it was fun.  Then when I went to work for NASA, I transferred to Ellington Air Force Base, and when I got there, they didn't want me touching the simulator.  Just a different set of people, they cut back the money, and they were locked on the weekends, which is what I was, I came on the weekends.  I ended up being a clerk/typist [laughs], I was just kind of doing my time then.

 

TIPPENS: How many years did you spend in the Reserves?

 

BERTHIAUME: Six.

 

TIPPENS: What did you do after school — after college — Rice, I guess?

 

BERTHIAUME: I went straight from Rice to SMU.  When I was going to SMU, their engineering program was primarily a co-op program.  I forget the timing now, but I was in school a number of months, then I'd work months.  So, I went to work for Western Electric in Dallas there, right across the street from SMU.  I graduated from SMU and I went to work for Western Electric full time.  It was a repair facility, we did some manufacturing, but mostly it was repair of telephone equipment.  Then I went from there to NASA.

 

TIPPENS: Did anything you did at Western Electric, relate to anything you would do at NASA?

 

BERTHIAUME: Not really.  I was a production foreman there.  People were just fabricating or repairing telephone equipment.

 

TIPPENS: How did you come to work for NASA, how did you get that job?

 

BERTHIAUME: A good friend of mine, that I'd gone to high school and Rice with, named Bill Middleton, he worked for NASA, that would be in the mid-60s, '64, I mean they were hiring like crazy, they just wanted people, 'cause that was the end of Mercury and the beginning of Gemini.  So, if you had an engineering degree, or any kind of technical degree, you were just about hired.  He said, "Why don't you come down and give it a try."  He worked in landing and recovery division, so I went down and interviewed and got the job.

 

TIPPENS: Were you interested in the space program at the time?

 

BERTHIAUME: Not any more than the average person, you know.

 

TIPPENS: What year was that — that you first came to NASA?

 

BERTHIAUME: November 1964.

 

TIPPENS: When you first got there, what was the Clear Lake area like at that time?

 

BERTHIAUME: It was then the Manned Spacecraft Center.  It was pretty much built.  I have trouble remembering exactly because I grew up in Houston, we used to go down there and crab, every so often, before the Manned Spacecraft Center got there, and there was nothing then.  I'm having trouble remembering exactly what it looked like when I got there.  Nothing like it is today, but I can't put my finger on exactly how big it was.

 

TIPPENS: Was there housing available in that area?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, yeah.  When I first got there, I was single, so I was just living in an apartment up in southeast Houston.  Clear Lake City was just starting to get developed.  I'm not clear in my mind what it looked like in the '60s.

 

TIPPENS: As far as restaurants, entertainment, did you have to go into Houston for that?  Was there anything going on in Clear Lake?

 

BERTHIAUME: Mainly in Houston.  These people had been working up at the Houston Petroleum Center before they got their offices at the Manned Spacecraft Center.  There was some activity around the Manned Spacecraft Center.  We lived up in Houston, I lived with two other guys who worked at NASA too, so most of our stuff was up in Houston.

 

TIPPENS: You worked in landing and control division.  What did you do in that position?

 

BERTHIAUME: It was called landing and recovery division.  I was in recovery operations and when a mission would come along, you'd try to figure out what was the best placement of Air Force, aircraft, Navy ships, and Navy helicopters were to support the mission.  Some of them were unmanned some of them were manned.  You had to, supposedly, know all the abort possibilities, where they'd land, where's the probability they might end up, the best place to put the ships and aircraft.  So, we'd right this document called the Recovery Requirements Document.  It would be a document that was going to the Department of Defense people that supported us.  There was an Atlantic bunch called CTF-140, Commander Task Force 140, and a Pacific group called CTF-130.  We'd write this document, describe the mission, and then what we expected of the Department of Defense, their troops, ships, and aircraft, where they should be at what times.  That was the main work, you get that thing published and sent out to DOD.  Then when the mission came along, they'd put us all in the field, you may get an Air Force base, you may get a destroyer, you may get the primary ship, which was usually, just about always an aircraft carrier, always an aircraft carrier. 

 

The other thing was training.  Between missions, if you had time, they sent you out on training missions 'cause DOD personnel was turning over all the time.  You'd got out and press-the-flesh and tell them about NASA's need for their support and how they can help us and what they need to do to be ready for the next mission or they type of mission coming up.

 

TIPPENS: Did you ever have a problem with getting their support or equipment?

 

BERTHIAUME: No, they were always super enthusiastic and helpful.

 

TIPPENS: When a flight would go up, what would you be doing during that time?

 

BERTHIAUME: You're either deployed with the recovery troops, you'd fly on the aircraft with them, and we'd have direction finding equipment tuned to the spacecraft beacons and we were watching for that.  Or, you'd be on a ship, if it was the aircraft carrier, you might be flying in the helicopters over it, if it's a destroyer, of course, you're just on the destroyer in the secondary recovery areas.  The other major thing was being in the control center, they had a recovery room in the control center that followed the mission and then send information out to the field, when they're coming down and where they're coming down, and so on.

 

TIPPENS: So, did you actually get on the helicopter and go out to where the capsule would come down?  So, you were among the first people the astronauts saw when they came back from space?

 

BERTHIAUME: The astronauts wouldn't see us, but we'd see them.  They had a hard time seeing much of anything except for those parachutes on the way down.  The first people they'd usually see would be the frogmen that would jump out of the helicopter and put a collar on the Gemini or the Apollo and open the hatch.  Or, if they came in with the spacecraft, just make sure they were all right until they get hooked up.

 

TIPPENS: Did you have any contact with the astronauts right after they came back?

 

BERTHIAUME: Not usually, they were usually pretty much confined to the doctors.  They would get showered up and a physical and so on.  Once they were located and on the carrier, our job was kind of done except for, usually, they'd be cotted off the carrier back to ground base somewhere and come back to Houston.

 

TIPPENS: Did you remember any great problems going out on these flights when the astronauts would come in?

 

BERTHIAUME: Problems — luckily, they pretty much came down where they were supposed to.  One exception was one of the Gemini missions, I can't remember, they got docked up with the Agena, it was a docking target, I don't know if you remember this or not, I can't remember the number, it was either Gemini 5, 6, or 7, or something like that.  It started spinning, and they thought the Agena was bad, but it turned out the aircraft had a stuck thruster.  So, they got rid of the Agena and that made it go faster, finally they got it settled down.  Then they came down in the Pacific to the destroyer [?], that's the only time they really didn't come down to the primary recovery point.  We had a guy on the destroyer, and the Air Force guys out of Japan, I think Tachikawa, went out and located it.  There were no helicopters out there, in the West Pacific, you're just talking about fixed-winged aircraft and destroyers, and it turned out to be a good recovery.  They got 'em back on the ship all right.

 

TIPPENS: Who would have, I guess, the ultimate say in who was in command, NASA or the military?

 

BERTHIAUME: The military, no doubt about it, they were in command, and they were very touchy about it — rightfully so.  You know, they had their chain-of-command.  We were there as advisors and information sources, but we didn't command anything as far as the DOD was concerned.  Sitting in the recovery room there would be the head recovery guy, then across the aisle from him at a different console was the head DOD guy.  That was the interface from NASA to the DOD.  Of course, he bent over backwards to do whatever he could, but they took orders from him, they didn't take orders from any NASA guys.  So we just provided information, when you go on a ship, you know, the captain, or the commander of an Air Force squadron, their always very sensitive that something's going to wrong with a high-profile mission like a NASA recovery support and operation.  So, they were usually, not running scared, but they wanted all the information they could, 'cause, a lot of times, this was the first time they done it and they didn't want to screw up and have anything go on the record [laughs].  So, they were more than receptive to all the information you could give 'em.  But, to answer your question, we didn't tell them anything as far as "get over here, go over there," that all came through their normal chain-of-command.

 

TIPPENS: Around this time that you were in landing and recovery, what was your work schedule like as far as hours, days of the week?

 

BERTHIAUME: It was something between forty hours and something — right before a mission it'd get busy — but it wasn't overly demanding, between forty hours and fifty hours a week, I guess.

 

TIPPENS: Was it stressful, did it affect your home life, or anything like that?

 

BERTHIAUME: No, when I started off I was single, I'd just as soon be on the road as home, so it was a great life for a single guy — Japan, Philippines, Bermuda, Hawaii, Africa, Europe — you know, you were all over the world.  That's how I got to see the world was in the landing and recovery division.  Then I got married in '65, so that was just about a little over a year since I started work there.  We didn't have kids till '67, so I had a few years I was pretty much foot loose and fancy free to go where I wanted to go.  So, it was not stressful, no.

 

TIPPENS: Is there a recovery mission that really stands out in your mind?

 

BERTHIAUME: I guess Apollo 8, that's the one where they circumnavigated the moon, Frank Borman, he came back and we got to see him come down and splash down near the carrier.  That was pretty exciting — because that was such an exciting mission.  I wasn't out on Apollo 11, I was alternating with another guy, I had even numbered missions, 8, 10, 12, and so on.  He got the Apollo 11.  If I'd been on Apollo 11, that'd probably been pretty exciting.  But, Apollo 8 stands out in my mind.

 

TIPPENS: Is there any great difficulty you remember in these recoveries?

 

BERTHIAUME: The one that seems confusing was an unmanned mission — I can't remember the mission — it was an Apollo unmanned mission.  It was one of these deals where it overshot the carrier, this was out in the Pacific somewhere.  They had helicopters deployed in different directions from the carrier, they capsule overshot to the north, so the carrier, they knew where it was, so the carrier takes off to the north, and the helicopters had been deployed to the south, trying to catch up, and they were running low on fuel, so the carrier had to wheel around, come back to the south, and barely got these helicopters recovered, and then wheeled around to the north.  It was just kind of a screw-up getting the helicopters recovered.  But, that was an unmanned mission, I can't remember which one it was, 201, 202, or something like that. 

 

But, all the manned missions, I don't remember any screw-ups, it always went real smoothly.  I remember one time, I don't know what the problem was, it was Apollo 12, Conrad was an astronaut on it, he was kind of a fiery little guy.  They were locking him up in this mobile quarantine facility and something happened in there and boy he was just raging mad.  I wasn't the chief guy, he was really raking into poor old John Stonesifer [?], "John, if I don't get out of the freakin' box, MQF," he was just really upset about it.  I don't know what he was upset about, just being in there, I think.

 

TIPPENS: On these unmanned missions, was it a priority to recover the capsule or whatever came down, was it a main priority to get all the equipment?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, usually there were like heat shield tests.  They wanted to get back and look at the heat shields, see how it survived reentry.  I remember one of them, Apollo, they were calling AS, or Apollo-Saturn 202, this was in the Pacific, I was in an airplane this time.  I watched that thing come in just beautiful, we were not in the prime recovery area, we were up track of it, one of things went across the sky, just left a fiery track across the sky, it was really exciting.  It was unmanned and really a pretty sight.

 

TIPPENS: Around this time, did you have some sense of the "space race" that was taking place between the Americans and the Soviets?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, but no inside information about it.  We didn't know anything about what the Russians were doing.  There was a sense of urgency to get on with it, get it done.

 

TIPPENS: Did you feel you were in competition with them — to try to beat 'em to the moon?

 

BERTHIAUME: Well, there wasn't an overriding sensation all the time, I knew it was going on, but I didn't feel any urgency about it, you know, personally, I gotta to this to beat the Russians.  I gotta to this today 'cause it's my job.

 

TIPPENS: When Apollo 11 landed do you remember what you were doing at the time?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, I was painting the closet in my house [laughs].  As I said, I was deployed in the even numbered missions and worked in the control center on the odd numbered missions, so I was working the control center on 11, it was not my shift.  So, I was painting the closet in my house, and I remember that "Eagle has landed."

 

TIPPENS: So you were watching it on TV?

 

BERTHIAUME: No, I wasn't watching TV, I watched TV at night when they walked on the moon, but I was just listening to the radio when they landed.

 

TIPPENS: As far as the feeling around NASA at the time, was there just a great sense of accomplishment?

 

BERTHIAUME: Oh sure, definitely.  You know, it's funny how quick, it kind of turned into a letdown too, you've been working toward that so long and all of a sudden it happens and its just kinda, you know, what's next.  I know the public lost the enthusiasm in a hurry and I felt that same way at work, even with us.

 

TIPPENS: What did you do in Flight Control Division?

 

BERTHIAUME: I can't remember exactly when I went over there, it used to be the landing and recovery was a division by itself and then, at some point, it was downgraded from a division to a branch, and branch went into flight control division.  So, there were still people working on recovery, on worked on recovery for a while.  Then I worked on launch mission rules.  There's two sets of rules for flight, there's launch mission rules, whether you launch or not, and once it's up, there's flight mission rules, how you make all the decisions.  You know, there 99 percent pre-made, if you lose this fuel cell and that, you come home.  You can't fly on less that this kind of guidance system, those are flight rules.  The launch rules are mainly instrumentation and, of course, the booster, and all that.  I was in the Johnson Space Center input to launch mission rules, we don't have anything to do with launch, so the input to launch mission rules is pretty small compared to the real Kennedy Space Center launch mission rules.  We had things, we don't want you to launch without this instrumentation because there's no use clearing the tower and then saying, "We can't control the flight," because we don't have instrumentation.  So, it was mainly if instrumentation was working.  I'd collect launch mission rules from guys around JSC and then package it up and sent it to the Cape [Canaveral] and they'd get put in the launch mission rules.

 

TIPPENS: You see some of these instances, maybe, where something isn't quite working right, who has the final call on whether a mission is go or no go?

 

BERTHIAUME: The flight director.  You mean once it's in the air?

 

TIPPENS: No, right before launch.

 

BERTHIAUME: Oh, right before launch, it's the Kennedy launch director.  Then once it clears the tower it comes to the JSC flight director.  It was in those days, I guess it still is that way.

 

TIPPENS: What about your work in Institutional Systems Division?

 

BERTHIAUME: It was sometime in the early seventies I went over there.  Well, it was the same time I got a master's degree at U of H.  I got a year off, full time, to go get a master's degree.  I was operations research and started doing some computer work there, simulations and so on.  So, I got into computers and came back with this master's degree and then I saw an ad for a lateral transfer at JSC for somebody who was familiar with operations research in respect to computers.  That was what I wanted to do, so I applied and got that job and moved over to, I think it's called computation and analysis division in those days.  When I went there, we had four 1108s, Univac 1108s, which were one micro-second cycle time, that was big stuff in those days.  It had 64,000 words, total memory, I don't remember how much mass storage.  But, anyway, all these numbers would be today, ridiculous, because your desktop would hold the whole room.  We had four 1108s and one 1106 all together.  We ran that for institutional purposes, they do payroll on 'em, they do mission planning, personnel, a lot of administrative stuff, and also the mission planning analysis guys would use them to plan missions, and the engineering guys would use them for engineering studies on the spacecraft.  But none of it was mission support, we weren't in building 30, this was all pre-mission and administrative stuff.  So we just ran and operated those four 1108s and that one 1106 for the center.  We were the main computing center for the non-mission work.  We would keep 'em up to date with operating systems, and new hardware would come out and put new hardware on 'em and reconfigure them, and that sort of business.

 

TIPPENS: So, did NASA pay your way to go to the University of Houston then?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, got a year off, paid my tuition and everything.

 

TIPPENS: What was your master's degree in?

 

BERTHIAUME: Industrial engineering, it was in operations research.

 

TIPPENS: Did you decide that, or NASA wanted you to get that degree?

 

BERTHIAUME: No, you could do anything you wanted to do as long as it was technical, and it applied to NASA.  I'd taken some courses on my own at U of H 'cause I was interested in the subject.  So, that kind of gave me a leg up, showed them I was not slacking during the year off because I'd taken several course at night on my own, paid for them myself to get very far along.  So, I finished the master's there in just one year.

 

TIPPENS: So did you find that getting that master's was beneficial to you later on?

 

BERTHIAUME: Marginal, just using the computer was beneficial 'cause I got in with computers, where I hadn't before.  But the actual operations research techniques, probably didn't use those hardly at all.

 

TIPPENS: I guess you were institutional systems division during the shuttle era, in comparing the shuttle era at NASA with the Apollo era, which era did you prefer?

 

BERTHIAUME: Oh, the Apollo, it was more exciting, of course I was in the space division then in landing and recovery, so I was more in touch with what was going on.  The shuttle, I really didn't have anything to with the flight of the shuttle or anything.  They used us for planning missions and that was about it.

 

TIPPENS: I'm sure your familiar with the space station, what do you see in the future for that?

 

BERTHIAUME: Well, pretty much what they've got planned for it, I guess.  It’s a permanently manned orbiting laboratory for space science.  I don't know what kind of science they're gonna be doing, I don't keep up with it as much as you would think somebody who worked at NASA would.  I get more interested in the planetary or deep space probes that are unmanned and I think those are more interesting stuff than just circling around the earth time and time again and growing plants and stuff like that.  When they fly by the moons of Jupiter and take pictures, I think that's pretty cool stuff.  The space station, it's hard to get that excited about it.

 

TIPPENS: The unmanned missions, is that out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory?

 

BERTHIAUME: Most of them are, yeah.

 

TIPPENS: And they've been doing that the whole time?

 

BERTHIAUME: I don't know when they started, but they've been doing this for a long time and the Hubble space telescope, that's pretty cool, you know, what they see with that thing.  The space station, they have yet to light my fire on the space station.

 

TIPPENS: Are you disappointed we haven't been back to the moon since Apollo?

 

BERTHIAUME: Realistically, no.  I know what it takes to get there, the millions of dollars it would take to get back to the moon.  It'd be nice to go back to the moon, but I can't see it for a long time.  I get more excited with the probes they're doing for the outer planets and so on, I think that's pretty cool.

 

TIPPENS: Do you think a moon base or space station could be set up on the moon?

 

BERTHIAUME: No, not in my lifetime, I don't think, but I'm sure it will be eventually, for sure.  It will be kind of interesting, I guess.  But just going back and staying a few, I get more excited about trying to get a manned mission to Mars, 'cause what does it take, six months to a year to get to Mars and back.  That's a pretty interesting, how they'd work that.

 

TIPPENS: Would you like to see us try to do that, put a man on Mars?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, I think that would be better than going back to the moon.

 

[End of side one, tape one]

 

TIPPENS: How do you feel about civilians, like this guy recently who went up with the Russians, paying their way into space?

 

BERTHIAUME: It's kind of frivolous, but I've got nothing against it, if the Russians are willing to take him up and wanted the money I guess it's free enterprise.  I don't think he was a risk.  You know, NASA seemed to think he was a risk to the brew that was up there, he'd get in the way.  I don't know that much about space station operations, but it probably wasn't that unsafe to have the guy up there.  It's not like were taking him to the moon and landing him on the moon.  So, that's fine, if somebody wants to do it and they want the money, like the Russians.

 

TIPPENS: Do you think that's a way NASA can get some funding for the space program, by having civilians pay their way into space?

 

BERTHIAUME: Probably not, it's kind of, I can't think of another instance where the government subsidizes us rich folks.  If you're rich enough you can pilot a jet airplane or something, and they don't seem to do that.  That's not the role of the government, I think, to give special privileges to rich people, our government anyway.

 

TIPPENS: Were there people who worked with you who had a significant impact on you, such as lifelong friends, that sort of thing?

 

BERTHIAUME: Well, I made a lot of friends there, but the two people that I thought were outstanding men, and one of them I barely knew, one was Chris Kraft.  That guy just, he was the smartest, most squared away, straight forward guy I ever met.  I really admired that guy.  If you're interested in space and haven't read his book, you ought to read his book, maybe, you'd realize what a sharp guy he is.  The other guy was Gene Kranz.  I worked for Gene and I knew him.  Those two guys were the guys I really looked up to at NASA.  There were a lot of other sharp guys, Glen Lunney, was a third one, I guess.  But Kraft and Kranz I thought were really — just outstanding gentlemen.

 

TIPPENS: Was Kraft the flight director prior to Kranz?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, he was the original flight director, and I think Kranz was one of the first few that came on as a flight director after Kraft and, of course, Kranz step aside later on.

 

TIPPENS: How long was Kraft the flight director?

 

BERTHIAUME: Hmmm, I just read his book, I ought to know, no, I don't know.  He certainly did through Gemini, I can't remember if he did Apollo or not.  I think he probably quit after Gemini and took over full time as an administrator.

 

TIPPENS: Do you know why he left that position?

 

BERTHIAUME: Well, he just moved up, became an administrator.  He was head of flight operations directorate, then he became head of JSC.

 

TIPPENS: Looking back to when you first became interested in the space program, or came to work for the space program, did you ever think you'd be part of something so historic, so groundbreaking?

 

BERTHIAUME: No, I didn't.  It was quite different than working at Western Electric where we were just repairing telephone equipment day after day.  So, it was nice having a goal like that and then achieving that goal.  It was a great experience.

 

TIPPENS: Why do you think so many former NASA employees have retire to the Hill Country area?

 

BERTHIAUME: It's a nice place to live [laughs].  I guess people working in Houston they get up here from time to time and see what a nice place it is.  A lot of 'em probably did the same thing I did, buy the place as a weekend retreat while your still working, which we did here in '89, and then when you retire, you just live up here full time.  Gene Cernan lives right down the road there on Lower Turtle Creek, Gerry Griffin's in Hunt, a lot of folks around here.  I see people in town, a lot of times I recognize their face, don't remember their name.  We talk and then we realize we knew each other at one time at JSC.

 

TIPPENS: What do you see for the future of NASA as far as the program, do you see it continuing on to other planets, do you see them having continuous problems with funding, or what do you see in the future?

 

BERTHIAUME: Oh, I'm sure, everybody does, the funding problems.  The space station in the short range.  I don't know, Mars, if we'll ever get there or not, probably not in my lifetime.  You said the moon base, probably someday too.  Then the interplanetary probes, you know probes to outside the solar system are kind of, take forever, there's no current technology, you leave the solar system and that's it.  They get going but they don't come across anything.  I guess someday they'll find some way to get to another star, and investigate other star systems, and so on.  But that's a long way down the road.

 

TIPPENS: In your position with recovery, you had some contact, I guess, with astronauts, would you say you have any good astronaut stories to tell that you can think of?

 

BERTHIAUME: No, I really didn't have that much contact with astronauts.  I briefed the Apollo 8 crew; I went down and briefed them before the flight on the recovery operations.  I just did that once.  No, my contact with astronauts was pretty small.  I don't think there's any of that would know me on a first name basis.  Maybe Borman, just 'cause I briefed him and he was real friendly on Apollo 8.  I'm sure he's forgotten me by now.  That was the only time I had contact with them.  As I said, once they're on the ship they're pretty much in the hands of the doctors and the ship captain.  Then they cotted them off carrier back to land somewhere.

 

TIPPENS: I'm sure you've seen some of these movies that deal with the Apollo missions, would you say they're historically accurate?

 

BERTHIAUME: Apollo 13 was amazing, did you see that, I saw nothing in there that was wrong.  I'm sure there had to something.  I think Jerry Bostick was the technical advisor on that, he was a FIDO [Flight Dynamics Officer], I mean, I was just amazed it was so real.  None of it was NASA footage, it was all original footage.  I saw Contact, but that's kind of goofy, that's the only NASA one I can remember.  What would be another one?

 

TIPPENS: The Right Stuff.

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, I saw that.  You know that was more astronaut personal life than the missions.  The mission stuff, you know, is all right, but I don't know anything about their personal lives.

 

TIPPENS: What about these shows, they had a show here on FOX [Television] recently about, saying we never actually went to the moon, do you just think that's just total nonsense?  What do you say to people like that?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, I don't know what you can say, I don't anyway you can prove it to 'em, 'cause their minds are made up.  That's like proving evolutionism to somebody or like that.  I have no idea how to prove it to 'em.  So, I disregard trying to argue with them.  I've never met anybody like that, but I hear about 'em in the paper.

 

TIPPENS: Looking back on your entire NASA career, is there a moment that stands out as your maybe most memorable, or most exciting, or your proudest accomplishment?

 

BERTHIAUME: The most exciting was probably on Apollo 8 recovery.  I felt I had made a contribution to that.  I briefed the astronauts beforehand on recovery operations.  I guess that was the most satisfying.

 

TIPPENS: You talk about Apollo 8, was there a lot of media attention as far as onboard the Navy carriers?

 

BERTHIAUME: Oh yeah, Apollo 8 was a big deal.  It started off, it was a secret mission.  I think it was called the C mission, you know Apollo 7 went so well, that was when they just bored around earth orbit for so long.  I remember one day they called me in the office and shut the door and said, "We're gonna let you in on a big secret, 'cause we need some recovery planning," this is the other people in recovery.  They were planning Apollo C mission; they were thinking about circling the moon on the next Apollo mission.  I go, "Whoa," you know.  We all were vowed to secrecy and worked on this lunar recovery mission, which is different from an earth orbit recovery mission.  So, it was pretty interesting.  Of course, when we got up there, of course, there was a lot of media attention, that when he read, you know, the Genesis on Christmas Eve, it was a big deal.

 

TIPPENS: Were you interviewed, or did they try to get interviews with NASA personnel?

 

BERTHIAUME: The only time I'd be interviewed was on the ship.  You know they had reporters out there, they were stuck out there on the ship [laughs], so they'd interview everybody.  I got interviewed a few times, you know, and made the paper, and said something.  They were pretty desperate to file stories every day.

 

TIPPENS: Did they ever get in the way out there?

 

BERTHIAUME: The press?  No, not really, it was pretty well defined what their roles were.  I don't remember them ever reporting anything that was controversial or caused a big stink.  You'd think reporters or photographers onboard a ship would be looking for something.  But it was such a positive program, it seemed like they were looking for the positive things, rather than you think, today's reporter would be looking for some dirt.  Because I don't remember people, you know, saying, "Oh no, watch out, don't talk to reporters, 'cause they're gonna get you to say something," you know, we just talked, and it always turned out positive.  It was just a different attitude out there on the ship in that program.

 

TIPPENS: Was that pretty unexpected then, when Apollo 8 circled the moon, nobody thought they were ready to do that?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, NASA people were surprised.

 

TIPPENS: When were you allowed to, I guess, share that information?

 

BERTHIAUME: I don't remember.  I can't remember how long before the mission, it was several weeks before they announced to the public what they were doing, but I knew it was getting along.  Like I say, it's different planning for a lunar return than it is for an earth orbit return.  Where in earth orbit, the ground track just circles the earth, so you can pick target points wherever you want to.  When you go to the moon, you're only coming back in one spot, you have a few abort possibilities, but there's not all the target point picking.  Because once you circle the moon, you're pretty much fixed where you're gonna come back to.

 

TIPPENS: When they pick a spot to come back to, what kind of concerns are taken into account as far as picking a landing spot?

 

BERTHIAUME: Well, the main thing was, we had lines of longitude, five of them, for the lunar missions.  They went with a Pacific recovery, there's more room in the Pacific, that was one reason you did it out there.  Where the latitude was controlled by the declination of the moon, if the moon was north when they leave the moon, they're gonna land in the southern hemisphere of the earth.  So, the latitude is fixed, we just targeted that line of longitude.  You're just trying to get them where there wouldn't be any land problems of hitting land.  So, this line was, they'd studied all this ahead of time and got the line established.  So, once the line was established, it was just up to the mission when they left the moon, what their declination was, that's the latitude of the moon relative to earth.  That's where they hit was, that line and the minus of that latitude.

 

TIPPENS: With what kind of certainty could they predict where the craft was gonna land?

 

BERTHIAUME: They'd land just a few miles from the carrier almost every time.  They started out with Mercury, it was just like a bowling ball coming in.  Once it started coming in, that was it.  There was no flying it.  Gemini had a little bit of maneuverability, the center of lift get offset by the center of mass, then you can rotate around the center of mass and go right, go left, go up, or go down as your coming in.  Apollo had a lot more.  So, they could pretty much fly these things in there.  Coming back from the moon, their first priority was to hit the top of the atmosphere, which is 400,000 feet, at the right angle and the right velocity, that was the two parameters you're lookin' for, because too shallow, you skip out, too steep, you burn up coming in.  Of course, velocity determines what those angles are.  Then once they hit the atmosphere, it's up to the Apollo guidance system, it knew where the target point was, and it would fly, this was all automatic, and it would fly the spacecraft in to the target point.

 

TIPPENS: Within in what distance did the recovery personnel and equipment need to be stationed?

 

BERTHIAUME: Seemed like it was just two or three miles away from the target point to avoid being hit, you know, that was it.  Helicopters were the same way, nobody was right at the target point, even though the chances of it happening were almost miniscule, you sure would look stupid if you were sitting on the target point and the spacecraft hit you, you know, dumbass [laughs].  With the big ocean, little ship, kind of deal, there's not much chance of it actually hitting the ship.  They'd move everybody out two or three miles from the actual target point.  Of course, the chutes came out at 10,000 feet, and it took them a few minutes to get down on the chutes.  Usually, by the time they landed, the helicopters were right there, and they could probably see it from the aircraft carrier also.

 

TIPPENS: So, there were airplanes or helicopters circling the area, looking for the craft as it came in?

 

BERTHIAUME: Oh yeah, the helicopters came off the carrier, they'd be right in the prime recovery area, right around the ship, some of them further down track some of them up track, most of them around the ship.  They had direction finding equipment for the spacecraft beacon.  Of course, there'd be a NASA guy, usually on a couple of the helicopters, just helping the guys look out.  This box, NASA supplied the box they put in the helicopter.  The guys knew how to use it, they're radio operators, but it wasn't something they did every day, so you kind of looked over their shoulder and helped them out if they got confused.  You just had to follow an indicator, you know, right, left, where it was.  But most of the time, if it was a daylight recovery, they guy be trying to tune it in, and somebody would be, "I see it, I see it."  The visual would usually precede the radio contact.

 

TIPPENS: Did anyone ever miss the mark by a lot?

 

BERTHIAUME: Scott Carpenter did.  That was Mercury, that was before my time.  He was just screwin' around, he was just kind of spacy or something, and just screwin' around, he used up all his fuel, forgot to do something on time.  He went over 60 or 70 miles down range.  That was the biggest miss, I think, was Scott Carpenter's Mercury flight.

 

TIPPENS: Was that pilot error then?

 

BERTHIAUME: Yeah, some of it was pilot error, some of it was guidance, they'd forgotten to take in rotation of the earth, and some kind of deal.  But, he never flew again.  I heard the story that Kraft said, "That guy will never fly again."  Reading his book, that's what he said in his book too, "I made sure that guy would never fly again."  And he didn't, it was his last flight.  That was the next to last Mercury flight.

 

TIPPENS: That's all the questions I have.  I want to thank you for your interview today and for making a contribution to this project.

 

BERTHIAUME: Very good questions, I'm really impressed with your questions.

 

TIPPENS: Thank you.