Then, they all drank martinis.
Four decades ago on Monday, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. stepped foot on the moon, while pilot Michael Collins orbited overhead.
Dr. William R. Carpentier of Belton was crew flight surgeon for Apollo 11’s voyage and served as a NASA physician from the Gemini manned space program through the end of the Apollo program.
He and technician John Hirasaki locked themselves in quarantine with the astronauts, examining them and taking medical tests after the Apollo 11 splashed back to Earth.
Carpentier’s memories of those times a generation ago are as vivid as if they took place yesterday - a good thing since they have not been extensively chronicled in the media previously.
He talks excitedly about the years of training and the exhilaration of knowing he helped the United States during its race to be first on the moon.
During the eight-day flight to the moon, the world stood still, mesmerized.
Millions sat glued to flickering black-and-white televisions or listened anxiously to AM radios. Humans had reached the moon, and the U.S. was the first to get the job done.
The world waited anxiously. Could the three return? Would radiation and lack of gravity cause them irreparable harm? Did they contract deadly lunar microbes on their journey?
Quarantine recommended
The National Academy of Science seven years earlier had recommended the astronauts be isolated upon their return lest possible space-borne illnesses would spring virulently to life in Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Consequently, upon the trio’s safe splashdown on July 24 into the Pacific Ocean, two men were sealed with the astronauts in quarantine.
If the National Academy’s concerns were valid, Carpentier, Hirasaki and the three astronauts faced possible “death by moon germs.”
They lived in an isolation chamber - a modified 35-foot Airstream vacation trailer aboard the recovery ship, the USS Hornet. The trailer spent three days on the Hornet. Then, it was transported by air to the lunar receiving laboratory in Houston, where the five men spent three more weeks.
One of a team of flight surgeons, Carpentier was first assigned to Apollo 10, a lunar orbit flight. Then, NASA announced Apollo 11 would be the probable first moon landing. Apollo 10 was the quarantine rehearsal, and Carpentier was designated flight surgeon for Apollo 11.
Apollo 11 blasted off on July 16, as the world watched in anticipation.
The Gemini program had answered many questions that scientists had about space travel: Would astronauts die of heart failure or blood clots in space? Could they swallow? Would their kidneys and other organs fail because of prolonged weightlessness? What about radiation? Would they experience psychoses or other psychological trauma in flight?
“The prospective moon landing presented unique problems. Some astronauts experienced cardiovascular deconditioning as a result of space travel,” Carpentier said. “Space travelers had limited resources from backpacks for cooling and oxygen. So, they were closely monitored, making sure their workload was reasonable so they wouldn’t exert themselves beyond the backpacks’ capabilities.”
‘Missed it all’
When the Eagle landed on the moon, Carpentier and Hirasaki were already tucked away in isolation.
“When everybody was outside celebrating, we missed it all. We were inside, getting ready and away from crowds in case we caught a virus or other bug from the crew that we could give to the astronauts,” Carpentier said.
As crowds cheered excitedly, the Apollo 11 crew successfully splashed down on July 24.
Carpentier was in the helicopter to pick them up and started medical assessments.
Immediately, Carpentier smelled something acrid, “like gun powder and wet ashes,” he said. “I smelled it first. Then John smelled it as he unpacked the boxes of moon rocks. He spent more time in the capsule.”
They also swabbed the capsule’s interior for any foreign biological material that might be growing inside.
Hirasaki, in a 2004 interview, noticed curious phenomenon.
“There was a unique scent I hadn’t noticed on other Apollo capsules,” Hirasaki said about opening up Columbia, Apollo 11’s command module. “I attributed it to the dust they picked up on the moon. It smelled like after you strike two pieces of flint together or like a firecracker.”
The hoopla on the outside intensified when President Richard Nixon flew aboard the Hornet to welcome the returning trio. Once the trio was in the aluminum cocoon, Carpentier and Hirasaki got down to serious work.
Inside, after the astronauts’ medical exams and after the moon rocks were packed safely away, Carpentier had the right antidote, and it came with olives.
“We all sat down, shot the breeze for a while and had martinis before going to bed - and that marked the end of the first day,” Carpentier said.
World tour
The world wanted to see these hearty travelers, and NASA was eager for the international publicity.
Carpentier toured as physician-in-residence when Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were dispatched on a seven-week worldwide goodwill tour. He met dignitaries from presidents and prime ministers to the pope.
Later, Carpentier stayed glued to medical monitors during the ill-fated Apollo 13 flight that nearly ended in disaster.
His plentiful stories of adventures are sprinkled with humor and insight: He was in quarantine with space fliers through Apollo 14, when the practice ended. He got into mildly hot water with NASA for telling the international press corps that “a flight surgeon was someone who knew what to do until the doctor gets there.”
Trained as a physician and a pilot in his native Canada, Carpentier completed aviation medicine training at Ohio State because the field combined his two loves - medicine and flying.
Carpentier joined NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston in early 1965 as a flight surgeon for the Gemini program, designed to test humans’ ability to withstand extended space travel. He was only 28 years old.
“I had to learn to do it all - jump out of a helicopter into the ocean in case we had to rescue the astronauts from the sea. Whatever was done medically to the astronauts was done first to me,” he said. “After all, that was my job.”
During his stint with the Gemini program, the short jaunts into space revealed potential medical problems.
“We discovered that astronauts’ heart rates increased rapidly while their blood pressure when down,” Carpentier said. They also reported extreme dizziness.
As perplexing and troublesome as the problem was, the solution was simple: Drinking enough fluids, getting nutrition and electrolytes at regular intervals and exercise.
“That is the key to longer flights,” he said. “We’re going to have to solve those problems if we’re going to colonize Mars.”
After NASA
With the end of the Apollo program, Carpentier faced a turning point. The Skylab program was beginning. As exciting as his NASA career was, it also meant weeks and months away from his wife and two small sons. Staying with the space program meant he would be pushed into administrative and supervisory positions.
He wanted to follow his love of medicine and family.
Upon a friend’s recommendation, he pursued a position in nuclear medicine at Scott & White. Was moving to Temple in 1973 a big letdown after the bright-lights-big-city of Houston and its space culture?
“No. I fell in love with the area. Here people volunteered to make the community better,” he said. “I liked the collegial atmosphere at Scott & White. There was a lively arts community. I liked where I was working, and I could raise my sons.
“Some astronauts had a difficult time after they left the space program. After all, what is left after you’ve walked on the moon? What else is there to accomplish? I had it better because I had my medical career to fall back on,” he said.
His two most prized possessions are an Apollo 11 patch carried to the moon and autographed by the three astronauts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award recognizing exceptional meritorious service.
And then again
Now retired from Scott & White after a three-decade career as a nuclear physician, Carpentier has returned to his space career as a NASA consultant.
He continues some part-time work there and is working on a scientific book about the medical findings of the Gemini program. His other research includes assimilating medical data from flights beginning with Gordon Cooper’s 1963 orbit to present-day shuttle and space station missions.
Now, 40 years after that historic day when humans took “a giant leap” on the lunar surface, Carpentier looks back fondly.
“I have no regrets. If I had it all to do it over again, I would move to the U.S., I would join the space program, I would marry the same woman, and I would move here and practice at Scott & White. No regrets.”
pbenoit@temple-telegram.com
