Interesting People

We have all sorts of interesting people onboard — Residents, I mean. I thought I’d tell you about one you’ll likely recognize. I certainly knew his name — and I was able to tell him his own surname.

Wait, what? Yes: I told him his name, because I’ve known it since I was a single-number-of-digits-year-old.

Let me go back to the beginning.

Recently a new shipmate (and his wife, Nancy) joined us. He’s clearly fairly advanced in age but still very spry, physically and mentally. I guessed him for about 80 when he stuck his head into my office, clearly looking around to see what’s what onboard. He asked what “these rooms” are. Offices, I said. “How do you get them?” Some of us who live here work onboard, I said — we rent them.

He introduced himself as Rusty from California, and when I said I’m Randy, he said he has twin sons — Rusty and Randy. He’s on the “try before you buy” program, sailing with us for a week to decide if he wants to buy in for a longer time. I told him I’m happy to answer any questions. He said thanks and went back to exploring.

The next morning he stopped by my office again, asking if he can ask my advice about buying in. I said sure, and suggested we go over to the conference room so we don’t disturb others in the office space (it’s a “quiet area”).

We sat down, and he was earnestly seeking advice on whether he should sell everything and move here …or not. “Depends on your situation, of course,” which prompted him to give me a little more info.

“I’m trying to keep this low-key for now,” he said, quietly. “I’m a retired astronaut.”

“Oh,” I said. “So you’re Rusty Schweickart.” Yes, he confirmed. He flew on Apollo 9.

I shook his hand, and re-evaluated his age. Probably not 80, I thought, and about that time he mentioned he’s 89. (“Damn he’s in great shape! — mentally and physically.” went through my mind.)

I told him that I had worked for 10 years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and in that capacity I had met several astronauts — my point being, and he grasped it instantly — that I’m not “star struck” by “celebrities.” I know that it takes a lot of people to put a mission together, and astronauts are “just” a part of the whole, even if they’re the ones who get the “hero” labels.

“What years?” he immediately asked. 1986-1996, I said. “Did you know Don Yeomans?” I laughed — anytime someone is friends with someone at JPL, and they meet someone who was at JPL, they ask if we knew their friend. Yeomans, now retired, was the manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL, the office responsible for providing predictions for the future close Earth approaches and impacts by comets and asteroids. I certainly know his name, I replied, but never worked with him.

Quick Historical Tangent

The Apollo Program was a series of missions that took humans to the moon. Each mission added something, tested things out, built on successes (or failures), for “achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to the earth,” as President John F. Kennedy urged in a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961.

At the time, the United States had a grand total of about 15 minutes of manned space flight experience, completed just 20 days before. That was Freedom 7 by Alan Shepard, who didn’t even reach orbit. Shepard’s mission, part of the Mercury program, wasn’t intended to reach orbit; we weren’t ready for it. Yet here was Kennedy, saying we should fly a quarter-million miles from Earth, land on the moon, and come back.

It was absolutely crazy, but astronauts signed up to do it, knowing perfectly well that they could die trying. Schweickart was one of just 32 men, and they were all men, selected to be Apollo astronauts.

Every Apollo mission was an important step in the goal. Apollo 9, the third manned Apollo flight and only the second to launch on the giant Saturn V rocket, was the first to take all the moon hardware up into orbit: the Command and Service Module (“CSM”), and the Lunar Module (“LM” — pronounced “lem”). If you were watching Apollo’s progress in the 1960s (I was young, but I sure was), you probably remember those acronyms as well as I do.

The mission objectives: demonstrating the LM’s descent and ascent propulsion systems, showing that its crew could fly it independently, then rendezvous and dock with the CSM (as would be required for the first crewed lunar landing). They would also fire the LM descent engine to propel the spacecraft stack in a backup mode — which was a smart thing to try, since that ended up being required to save the astronauts on the failed Apollo 13 mission. Also, space-qualify the Apollo spacesuit’s Portable Life Support System (PLSS), which would be used on the moon.

The Mission Commander was James McDivitt. The Command Module Pilot was David Scott, and Rusty Schweickart was the Lunar Module Pilot. Rusty would also be the one to do the EVA testing of the PLSS.

The Apollo 9 mission launched 56 years ago today — on 3 March 1969 — and lasted 10 days, 1 hour, and 54 seconds.

Rusty was the backup Commander for the first crewed Skylab mission (1973), and was responsible for developing the hardware and procedures used by that first crew to perform critical in-flight repairs of the Skylab space station. After that, he served as Director of User Affairs in NASA’s Office of Applications, and retired from the agency in 1977.

And then he has had a full life and career after his astronaut days. After all, he has a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering (1956), and a Master of Science degree in aeronautics and astronautics (1963), both from MIT. He has particularly focused on the threat of asteroid impact on Earth, which is clearly why he knew Don Yeomans at JPL so well.

To that end he co-founded the B612 Foundation with Dutch astrophysicist Piet Hut, physicist and then-U.S. astronaut Ed Lu, and planetary scientist Clark Chapman, “to develop tools and technologies to understand, map, and navigate our solar system and protect our planet from asteroid impacts.”

Back to the Conference Room

Sitting there with Rusty, I didn’t fully recall all of the details of the Apollo 9 mission described above, but I knew it was an important Earth-orbit proof-of-concept step before taking the LM to the moon. And I remembered what the Apollo astronauts had to go through as far as qualification, medical rigors, and training to be there. In other words, I had a pretty good idea what kind of man Rusty was — what he was made of to have been an Apollo astronaut who flew in space.

And there he was, asking me for advice. Well that’s certainly humbling!

What went through my mind: he actually wants straight-talking, no-BS advice! I considered he was a military man with thousands of hours of flight in high-performance aircraft (he was in the U.S. Air Force), a ridiculous number of hours of training and testing at NASA — and was thus very used to straight talk. All of that took about 10 seconds in silence to go through my head as he sat patiently waiting. I told him I would talk very plainly, and he confirmed that’s what he wanted.

“You and Nancy would love it here. But if you come here, at this stage of your life you won’t be going back home afterward. Many of us plan to die here, or at least stay until we need full-time care. We don’t ever plan to go back to a regular home.” I could see he was processing everything quickly, and continued. “The oldest person here is 93,” I said, not adding that she’s ahead of the game: “You’ve got a lot of crap to get rid of — I can’t imagine how much memorabilia you have!”

Then he laughed. “You’ve got that right!” I said since he wouldn’t be going “back home,” he needed to get his stuff “dispositioned” first, and his house sold or ready to pass along to family. He agreed completely, and was very grateful that I answered in a practical way — he shook my hand.

The Week, Over

I saw Rusty and his wife, Nancy, here and there over the next several days, and we agreed to get together for their last meal onboard, a lunch. Kit asked Rusty if he knew Scott Carpenter (one of the original “Mercury Seven” astronauts.) “Sure!” Rusty said. “He was good friend.” Kit’s mother went to school with Carpenter, and they kept in touch for decades. He died in 2013 at 88; Rusty and Nancy went to his service in Boulder. “Mom was there too,” Kit said.

Rusty said they had a great week, and they definitely would like to come back. Yet they know they have a lot of work to do to pass along, donate, and/or sell a lot of “stuff.” Randy, he said (of his son), had started cataloging the space memorabilia some time ago, so they have a head start. “Excellent!” I said.

Rusty assured Kit, the coordinator of the “Speaker’s Corner” series — where Residents speak about things they have interest or passion about (usually both) — that he would do “one or two” talks while he’s here next time. Kit wants “one or two” from Nancy, too, after learning about her life at that lunch. Oh, and Rusty OK’d me writing about him, so here we are.

They gave us a bottle of wine as thanks, and Kit asked if she could take a picture of us.

Interesting People

The point of all of this isn’t that you’ll meet astronauts if you decide on a Residential Cruising lifestyle. But you might. The reason that the Speaker’s Corner series is so popular on board — I’ve heard several Residents call it “one of the best things about being here” — is that there are many, many interesting Residents who are willing to give talks; the Speaker’s Corner schedule is perpetually filled about six weeks out. (My own first talk, about my EMS career, is posted here, and several more, from me and others, are coming to this site soon, so you can get a good taste of the series even if you never join us.)

The most important thing about living on this ship isn’t that it’s sailing around the world, even though that’s obviously a key component. The most important thing is the community — the people who sail together. We literally need a community aboard to make this happen. It’s a diverse bunch, and no one expects to be best friends with everyone, but everyone here has a story and is pretty darned interesting.

And at least one, so far, happened to be someone who was one of my many childhood heroes, and that’s pretty cool. Your heroes might be scientists (we’ve got those). Or actors (those too). Or writers (yep), teachers (definitely), researchers or lawyers or musicians or long-time world travelers or everyday working people (check, check, check, check, and check).

It’s an awesome community.

My advice if you want to join us: get started now. You have work to do. Let me know if you have questions.

For more about Rusty, see his website.

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Randy Cassingham

Randy is the co-founder of Residential Cruising, and is best known as the founder of the oldest entertainment feature on the Internet, This is True. He and his wife, Kit, live full-time on the Residential Cruising ship Villa Vie Odyssey, where they are “Digital Nomads” — continuing their work while living aboard the ship.

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