Apollo 15 - Planning and Training

Planning and Training

The crew for Apollo 15 had previously served as the backup crew for Apollo 12. There had been a friendly rivalry between that prime and backup crew on that mission, with the prime being all Navy, and the backup all Air Force.

Originally Apollo 15 would have been an H mission, like Apollos 12, 13, 14. But on September 2, 1970, NASA announced it was cancelling what were to be the current incarnations of the Apollo 15 and Apollo 19 missions. To maximize the return from the remaining missions, Apollo 15 would now fly as a J mission and have the honor of carrying the first Lunar Rover.

One of the major changes in the training for 15 was the geology training. Although on previous flights the crews had been trained in field geology, for the first time 15 would make it a high priority. Scott and Irwin would train with Leon Silver, a Caltech geologist who on Earth was interested in the Precambrian. Silver had been suggested by Harrison Schmitt as an alternative to the classroom lecturers that NASA had previously used. Among other things, Silver had made important refinements to the methods for dating rocks using the decay of uranium into lead in the late 1950s.

At first Silver would take the prime and backup crews to various geological sites in Arizona and New Mexico as if for a normal field geology lesson, but as launch time approached, these trips became more realistic. Crews began to wear mock-ups of the backpacks they would carry, and communicate using walkie-talkies to a CapCom in a tent. (During a mission the Capsule Communicators (CapComs), always fellow astronauts, were the only people who normally would speak to the crew). The CapCom was accompanied by a group of geologists unfamiliar with the area who would rely on the astronauts' descriptions to interpret the findings.

The decision to land at Hadley came in September 1970. The Site Selection Committees had narrowed the field down to two sites — Hadley Rille or the crater Marius, near which were a group of low, possibly volcanic, domes. Although not ultimately his decision, the commander of a mission always held great sway. To Dave Scott the choice was clear, with Hadley, being "exploration at its finest".

Command Module Pilot Al Worden undertook a different kind of geology training. Working with an Egyptian, Farouk El-Baz, he flew over areas in an airplane simulating the speed at which terrain would pass below him while in the CSM in orbit. He became quite adept at making observations as the object traveled below.