http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/a14.clsout2.html wrote:
133:20:31 Shepard: Okay. We're about the maximum elevation now, Houston. It's leveled out a little bit. And it looks like we'll be approaching the [Cone Crater] rim here very shortly.
.............................................................
133:21:15 Mitchell: (Pause) Oops! It (the MET)'s going over. No, got it. (Long Pause) Fantastic stabilization; Al, it's going to turn over. (Pause)
133:21:50 Shepard: Okay. We better reconnoiter here. I don't see the crater yet.
133:21:57 Mitchell: I agree. Rock under my wheels. (Long Pause)
133:22:28 Shepard: See this boulder pattern and all that we're in here right now? This boulder field and all?
[Al is asking if the boulder field they are in is on the map. A significant problem is that Al thinks they are farther north than they really are and still west of the Cone rim. He may be looking at the boulder field outside the southwest rim in the area immediately north of boulder 1033.]
133:22:33 Mitchell: I thought it (meaning the boulder field) was on the south rim.
[Ed has a reasonable idea where they are and, in the area south of Cone, several of the largest boulders.]
133:22:37 Haise: And, Al and Ed, do you have the rim in sight at this time?
133:22:45 Mitchell: Oh, yeah.
133:22:46 Shepard: It's affirmative. It's down in the valley.
[They heard 'LM' instead of 'rim'.]
133:22:51 Haise: I'm sorry. You misunderstood the question. I meant the rim of Cone Crater.
133:22:58 Shepard: Oh, the rim. That is negative. We haven't found that yet. (Pause)
133:23:10 Mitchell: This big boulder right here (on the traverse map), Al, which stands out bigger than anything else (undoubtedly Saddle Rock) ought...We ought to be able to see it.
[Because he has no references to help him judge size and distance, Ed does not recognize that the large boulder on the map is in sight. Al will first call attention to the "white boulder" at 133:25:40. Later, they will go over to Saddle Rock and collect samples.]
133:23:17 Shepard: Well, I don't know what the rim is still way up here from the looks of things.
133:23:23 Haise: And, Ed and Al, we've already eaten in our 30-minute extension and we're past that now. I think we'd better proceed with the sampling and continue with the EVA.
133:23:37 Mitchell: Okay, Fredo.
133:23:40 Shepard: Okay. We'll start with a pan from here. I'll take that.
133:23:47 Mitchell: All right, I'll start sampling. (Long Pause)
[Mitchell - "
Right now, as I listen to this, I feel an enormous sense of frustration, just like I did then. It was terribly, terribly frustrating; coming up over that ridge that we were going up, and thinking, finally, that was it; and it wasn't - suddenly recognizing that, really, you just don't know where the hell you are. You know you're close. You can't be very far away. You know you got to quit and go back. It was probably one of the most frustrating periods I've ever experienced. There's no feeling of being lost. I mean, the LM is there; we can get back to the LM. It's not reaching and looking down into that bloody crater. It's terribly frustrating."]
[Jones - "Still, twenty years later."]
[Mitchell - "
Still, twenty years later. Well, I'm tapping back into those same feelings. The only thing that really makes it palatable is that six weeks later, after the flight, when we realized that we really were there and, from point C1, another ten or twenty feet it would have been obvious. That really is distressing."]
[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "
If we'd gotten to the point where we'd been willing to do away with the rest of the traverse (that is, do their work at the Cone rim and then proceed directly back to the LM without stopping), we could have made the rim all right. But I personally wasn't willing to do that. I felt that gathering more samples was the better of the two choices. We looked at the map again today and described two boulder fields that indicate that we were probably within 150 to 300 feet - depending on these two boulder fields - of the rim and still were not able to see it. That was a pretty good-sized lunar feature, to be that close to the top of the thing and not see it. That is just part of the navigation problem.]
[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "At this point, in spite of personal frustration - and I know Al felt frustrated in the same way - to have us stop at that point and turn around and come back was the proper decision."]
133:24:26 Shepard: Okay, Houston. We are in the middle of a fairly large boulder field. It covers perhaps as much as a square mile. And, as the pan will show, I don't believe we have quite reached the rim yet. However, we can't be too far away and I think certainly we'll find that these samples (come from) pretty far down in Cone Crater.
[
By collecting samples from the large rocks near the rim, they are certain of giving the geologists back home a look at material dug out by the impact from the deepest part of the crater. One use of the samples is to estimate the age of Cone Crater. Rock that had been buried deep within Cone Ridge were not exposed to cosmic rays until dug out by the impact and it is possible to use geochemistry techniques to estimate how long the rocks have been exposed. In 1975, C.J. Morgan was able to determine that Cone is about 26 million years old. In turn, good ages for a number of lunar craters permit improved estimates of the ages of other craters for which the only available indication of age is the number of smaller craters per unit area on the ejecta blanket.]>>
Apollo 14: A View from Antares
Even now 40 years later; space flight is hazardous!
