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Normally astronaut training takes about one full year,
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and it includes such subjects as
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flight physiology,
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orbital trajectories,
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or orbital management.
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Another part of the astronaut basic training is survival training.
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In the days of Gemini,
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you never knew for sure where a spacecraft might land
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if there was an emergency, deorbit.
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So, we had to take desert training,
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and jungle survival training.
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So, we had to learn how to cook and eat snake
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and all other, such other good things as that,
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and how to make water in a desert.
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After that year and a half of astronaut basic training,
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our names were all put on a list
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and that list was quite a bit longer at that time
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then there were seats available.
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And so, we were all given other duties
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to keep us occupied
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and to help continue our training.
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Five of us were assigned to the lunar module,
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and our job was to be with these lunar modules
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as they were being built.
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So, we spent a lot of time there.
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I must admit that probably I had more time
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sleeping on the floor of Lunar Module #6
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than the crew who flew it on the moon.
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Well, my next job was to be on the support crew of Apollo 8,
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and Apollo 8 was the spacecraft that flew to the moon
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and came back but did not land.
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When they went behind the moon,
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they were supposed to do a thrusting maneuver
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to slow them down
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so they would be captured into lunar orbit.
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So we just had to sit and cool our heels
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when they went behind the moon,
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and we knew if they came out a little early on the other side,
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that they had not burned enough,
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not slowed down enough,
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and were going to skip out into space,
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they wouldn't be captured in orbit.
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If they came out a little bit late,
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it meant they had over-done it,
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and they weren't going to be in orbit,
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but were going to begin a spiral down to the lunar surface.
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And, of course, without a lunar module,
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