The Eric Metaxas Show - Charlie Duke (Encore)

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

A special Socrates in the City with former astronaut Charles Duke 

Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Eric Mataxis show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments. That's noblegoldinvestments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Did you ever see the movie The Blobs starring Steve McQueen? The blood-curdling threat of the blob. Well, way back when Eric had a small part in that film, but they had a cut. his scene because the blob was supposed to eat him, but he kept spitting him out. Oh, the whole thing was just a disaster. Anyway, here's the guy who's not always that easy to digest. Eric the Texas! I've already told you really everything I think you need to know about the man who lets me call him Charlie.

a warm Socrates in the city round of applause for Brigadier General Charles Moss Duke. You go in the far chair right there. There we go. All right, I better get this out of the way right off the bat. Did you really walk on the moon? Be honest, because you're among friends. If it didn't happen, there's forgiveness. But is that true?

It's true. About 20 years ago, the moon landings were big hoax. And I was interviewed by somebody on NBC, and I said, as Katie Corey, can I said, Katie, if we faked it, why did we fake it nine times? You're going to fake some, do it once and shut up, right? But we went to the moon nine times, had six landings on the moon, and that was the fifth landing of the six. So, I don't know, though, if you really wanted to be clever, you could do it several times just to throw people off, you know. Charlie,

I'm not kidding, I go places and I talk, and every now and again I will bump into someone who is a flatterther. And I realize this because I would use it as the ultimate example of what we all dismiss. We don't take seriously.

And there are people like they're out there. So, have you ever encountered one who actually thought that you were, who confronted you personally and said this never happened? My first encounter with this fellow, I don't remember his name now, but he called me in the middle of the night and he said... How did he get your number, Charlie? We were in a phone book, actually.

All right, that's on you. That's on you. Not many phone books left, but back 20 years ago. And let's call me, he says, my name's so-and-so, and he says, are you Charlie Duke? I'm Charlie Duke. He said, well, you claim you walked on the moon. And I said, yeah, I walked on the moon. He said, well, I have irrefutable proof that you did not land on the moon. And I said, well, why don't you send me some of this irrefutable proof? So I hung up, and he sent me a grainy video that he had done. And it was a fake video, actually. And so, anyway. So, anyway. So, anyway. So, Anyway, I saw him, a friend of his showed up at a meeting in Japan, yeah.

I don't believe Japan exists. And this guy approached Buzz Aldrin in his office in L.A. one time. And he said he had a Bible in his hand. He says, swear on this Bible that you walked on the moon. And Buzz said, get out of here. And the guy kept bugging him, and finally Buzz just popped him one right in the middle of the nose and knocked him down. And so the guy sued Buzz. But the lawyer says, you deserve it.

I mean, the judge says you deserve it. Get out of here. Wow. We need more judges like that. Yeah. So anyway, I had a similar experience in, Japan with this guy. But the evidence is irrefutable that we landed on the moon that we did.

You don't need to convince this group. We believe you. It's kind of why we're here because we believe this. You need an argument. The rocks are total. 600 pounds of moon rocks are totally different than Earth rocks. The photographs that we took, you cannot fake photograph that back in those days, you didn't have the technology to fake photographs like you could do it today.

And so the photographs are all real, the rocks are real, the experiments we brought back, we left a laser reflector up there, and it's all that's being transmitted. So we can hit it with a laser from here. Yeah. And so there's evidence is overwhelming that the moon rocks are real and that we did land on the moon, six successful times. I want to ask you a few geological questions, which is not typical of me. but I want to get into that.

But first I just want to go backwards. You know, I was kidding around about the idea that once you've walked on the moon, you know, people don't really care where you went to college or whatever you're, you know, you've been published in the Atlantic Monthly or whatever it is because, you know. But how did your path go? I alluded to the fact that you started in the Naval Academy. So you didn't even have it as a gleam in your eyes.

to be an astronaut? Because in those days... In those days, there wasn't a space program. We were trying to launch rockets, but nobody was talking about people. And so I graduated from the Naval Academy in 1957, and there wasn't an Air Force Academy in 1957. There wasn't?

They started it in 1955, but the first class wasn't going to graduate until 1959. So up until that point, they would allow West Pointers, and Mitch it went to volunteer for the Air Force, up to 25% of the class. And so I fell in love with airplanes at the Naval Academy. And so the decision was Naval Aviation or Air Force. And I was leaning in Air Force, but I really didn't know.

So I took my physical, my senior year, first class year we called it, and I said, and the doctor after I got finished, he said, well, Mitch and Mediouk, you don't qualify for naval aviation, but the Air Force will take you. That's true. That's true. True story. And so I ended up in the Air Force, and the whole story was the doctor says, we have found a stigmatism in your right eye, and you don't qualify for naval aviation,

but the Air Force will take you. So anyway. They're desperate. They're just getting started. They'll take anybody. Yeah. I mean, I have to ask you this question. As a kid, did you ever have any inkling or premonition

that you would do something like go to the moon? Or was it simply completely, you know, because I grew up at a time when I was a kid, people started going to the moon. So I can't think of a time when nobody was doing that. Well, I'm 86, and I can remember Pearl Harbor. I was six years old, my twin brother. And it was a very, I can remember it vividly.

And so my dad went off to the Navy at 35 years old. And we ended up in South Carolina with my grandmother. And my mom, and my heroes were that greatest generation, is broke our closet. And so I wanted to serve my country. I chose to go to the Naval Academy because my dad had been in Navy. And I was, as a kid, I can remember making these balsywood planes and throwing them off the front top story of my grandmother's house.

And we could hit some matches and we'd light the tail and we'd throw this thing off. So it was like the zeros crashing, you know. And so I can remember those kind of things. But certainly it wasn't any, I fell in love with airplanes, I guess, in those days. And I had this adventure spirit, I'll call it. And there's a book by Dr. Seuss called Beyond Z, and it talks about this kid who learns the alphabet. On Beyond Zebra. Yeah, Beyond Zebra.

On Beyond Zebra. Yeah. And his name was Conrad Cornelius O'Donel. A very young man who's learning the spell. The A is for ape and the B is for bear. C to C, through the Z. Z is for zebra. I know them all well, says Conrad Conno's of Donald O'Dell. But he almost fell flat on his face on the floor

when I picked up the chalk and drew one letter more. But the things that I see and the things that I do, I can never spell if I stop with the Z. Numbers don't lie. The impact that balance in nature makes every single day is astounding, You can see the numbers for yourself on their website at balance of nature.com. Listen to these stats concerning balance of nature's worldwide success. More than a thousand success stories reported each month, hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide,

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every order ship's free. Folks, go to MyPillow.com. Use the promo code Eric. Mypillow.com. Promocode Eric. Remind folks, you know, not only did you walk on the moon 50 years ago with Apollo 16, but you were seminally involved in Apollo 11. And I want to get to that in just a minute, but let's just, when Kennedy

makes that statement, that by the end of this decade we're going to put a man on the moon, to me, you know, we all know they're leaders like that, right? They say, we're going to do this and this and this, and then their staff has to get it done. And the staff says, this is crazy. We'll never be able to do this.

And I wonder, was that the case? In other words, when Kennedy made that statement, you know, giving himself eight years in change to pull this off, was there a sense at NASA that this was possible, or did he throw this out there and then they had to play catch-up? I think it really came from NASA. There was a letter written by Werner von Braun, who headed the rocketry program at NASA and also for the Army. and Kennedy or somebody at the White House put out, how can we beat the Russians? How can we win the space race?

And Von Braun wrote this big letter to Kennedy and he said the only way, and the summary was the only way we can beat him is beat them to the moon. So it came from Werner von Braun, former Nazi, recruited by us. You knew Vernon. or from Brown?

Yes. I was, my first two or three years, one of my additional duties in the astronaut office was to go attend his staff meeting and monitor the development of the Saturn Rockets. And so Stu Russo and I would fly up to Huntsville, Alabama, spend half a day in his management meeting once a month, and fly home and then report to the astronaut office. So we got to be friends, and he was really a wonderful guy, great inspiration to me and a tremendous individual.

And so I got really excited. These guys really know what they're doing. At what point in the 60s did you get a sense that you would be an astronaut? I was at MIT in a master's program in 62. My second year, I was. looking for a thesis project. And MIT actually had the contract to build the Apollo Guidance and Navigation System. And they had designed this system to be able to inertial measurement unit. And you get it aligned properly and you fire the engine. It's going to burn in the right direction.

So they built this system, but they didn't know if anybody could work it or not. So they needed a pilot to do it. and see if it was feasible. And so another Air Force officer and I did that, and we developed this, we were developing the capability of an astronaut to fly the system or to operate the system. And I met these astronauts

who would come in up to monitor the development of the system like I did later on for Saturn. And I'd never met anybody that was so excited about their job been so enthusiastic. And so I said, how do I get that job? And they said, well, get your degree and then go to test pilot school and you might have a chance. And so Dorothy and I were married at that point. And I said, should we go to test pilot school? And we all agreed that that's what I should do. And so I got selected. And let's see, it was June of 1964. I got my degree and we

headed to California to Edward to the Tespalot School. And there I worked for Chuck Yeager. He was the commandant of the school at the time, and very enthusiastic and a very good motivator, a good mentor of mine. And so anyway, I graduated and he put me on his staff, and that was in August of 1965 and the next month in September I read an article in the front page of the Los Angeles

Times saying NASA's looking for more astronauts please apply and I read the qualifications I said hey that's me of course there's about 3,500 other guys but I applied and was one of 19 got selected so first chance

I applied I got picked And so that started my career. So let's move forward to Apollo 11. Many people here will remember what happened as Neil Armstrong is bringing the lunar module down after he has, what do you call it, decoupled from Mike Collins up there? Undoct, yeah.

Undoct, you sure? Yeah. So he and Buzz undock, and they're going to land on the moon. It's never been done before. And Neil Armstrong chose you personally to be what? What is it called? Capcom, capsule communicator. It's the only, and it's always an astronaut,

and it's the only person in mission control that could actually talk to the crew. And they always picked an astronaut because you had to have. the astronaut language and mindset for this job. And so I had done the similar job on Apollo 10, which was sort of a dress rehearsal for the moon landing. We actually took a lunar module to the moon, and we started down, but the lunar module was not capable of landing, so they just aborted and came back up in orbit.

So the whole team that did that went to work for went to work for Apollo 11. And I wasn't supposed to be on the team that was the next group of astronauts, but Neil said, Charlie, I want you to do this. So, yes, sir. It was a great honor to be asked. So as he tell, for people who don't remember it, say what happened. In other words, he's bringing this thing down.

Well, things looked pretty good as we started the engine and we started down, but then we started having communication problems, so we had to reorient vehicle. Then we had computer problem, computer overloads, and it was given us warnings as we came down. And at first I thought we were going to abort because mission rules said you had to have the computer

or you weren't going to land. But the flight controllers that monitored the computer kept hollering, we'd go on that alarm flight. And so they knew that the computer was still operating to guide and control the vehicle, it was just dropping off some of the jobs at the end of the queue that weren't important. It was telling you that, that it was overloaded. So those continued to start that continued on down.

And then at 7,000 feet, the vehicle pitches down so you can see the moon for the first time. You mean that Neil and Buzz could see the moon from the module? Yeah, they could see the moon for the first time. And Neil said we had him targeted into a big boulder field, big rocks, apparently. And he said, we can't land there. So he leveled off and flew across the moon for four or five miles, if I remember, leveled at about an altitude of about 500 feet. Well, that used up all the reserve gas. So he finds a place and he pitches up, comes down like that.

like a helicopter and it, but as he's doing this, though, nobody's talking, everybody's holding their breath because this is, this is a bad situation. He has not yet landed on the moon, and you don't know in mission control if he is going to be able to make it because how much gas is, how much gas is in the tank? There is none left, right? There's a few seconds. No, no, it was about 5% left and our minimum cutoff was 4% When he got to 4%, we'd call an abort so he would have enough fuel to start positive rate of climb away from the moon. And so the flight engineer that was monitoring the fuel said 60 seconds flight, that means he had 60 seconds to land.

So if he does not land it in 60 seconds, if he doesn't get past this boulder field, you have to abort the whole mission. That was the rule. Because I'm just trying to follow this. In other words, if you use too much gas, you're not getting off the moon. No, it's a different engine. It's different engine. Okay. The asset engine is it's not used at all. All right. So, but you are, but you still had 60, he had 60 seconds. The land. And you were all just holding your breath. Yes. The tension in mission control was through the roof. dead silence

and the only communication was the flight controller that was monitoring propulsion he called 60 seconds I called 60 seconds to the crew, Eagle 60 seconds and then 30 seconds

later the controller said 30 seconds flight I radioed to Neal 30 seconds Eagle and he had 30 seconds to land the next thing he heard permission control was aboard if they weren't on the moon.

And so 13 seconds later, according to my stopwatch, I heard contact engine stop, and we knew they were on the moon. Famous line. Do you remember the line? I've said it so many times. Yeah, I remember it. And so after that, it was dead. That wasn't a yes or no question. I'm wondering if you will

if you will because not everyone here remembers the line you said twank, tranquility base you got a room full of guys about to turn blue over here was that it? Yeah, basically yeah but the whole world was listening to this. Well first off Neil says there was dead we were on the moon

we knew they were on the moon and so Neil says Houston Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed. And I responded, Roger Twang, I'm Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. And sure enough, we were holding our breath at a whole room and started cheering a little bit. But flight director, Gene Krantz, got us back to work because if you landed and sprung a leak, you had to be ready to get off right away. So it was very critical time, but the sigh of relief was palpable, you know,

and everybody just started breathing again. And when I called 30 seconds, he was probably 20 feet off the moon. But, and if I'd have called Eagle Abort, he may be 10 feet off the moon. Hello. Say again, Houston. Neil Armstrong is not going to abort from 10 feet off the moon. I'll tell you that. Yeah.

It would be a pity to go 240,000 miles, and then 10 feet away decide to listen to those kind of orders. Well, so you were part of that, and of course, the difference between Apollo 16 and Apollo 11 is that Apollo 11 did not know even whether it could land. In other words, when you, the modules, the pods on the module were so huge because this is where we get into the geology, no one really knew what the surface would be like and whether it would support the lunar module as it landed or if the lunar module would just sink into the moon.

We had one scientist, geologist, that argued that with the age of the moon, it could be 200 feet of moon dust, and you land, you just sink out of sight. And so you had to prove that that wasn't true. And so we sent the unmanned surveyors to land. And the surveyor landing pads were the same bearing, not the same size, but the same, gave you the same bearing strength on the moon that a lunar module would give you.

So when they turned on the camera and there's this thing sitting right up on top of the pad, you know, hallelujah, we're going to be able to land, you know, and everybody got really excited about that. And so, and it turned out that the footprint of a boot on the moon was the same bearing strength as the foot pads on the lunar module. And so it was very well calculated that we weren't going to sink out of sight. Now, you did go in about two inches. That's the most that we were. we sank in.

And it's all, the moon is covered with this very, very fine dust like powder, and it's a pulverized rock, actually. The moon has no organic material like Earth. It's just a big rock that's been pounded by meteors over the eons and is covered with this crushed rock. But it has very good bearing strength, and you look at it under a microscope, and it's very angular like sand on the seashore. And so it gave you a good bearing strength.

And so we understood that. And so we were able to walk around on the moon and do the things you're supposed to do up there and with assurance that you weren't going to sink out of sight. Now, the problem was that if you got too close to a steep crater and you fell in, you could not. get out because it's like walking up a steep sand dune you hop up and you slide back hop up and slide back and so you didn't want to fall into the crater and so you

gave it a big wide berth when we got around these big craters well so obviously Apollo 11 was a great success we beat the Ruskies I don't think they've been to the moon to this day have they They have with unmanned spacecraft. That doesn't count, Charlie. That doesn't count. And so obviously Apollo 12, great success. Apollo 13, horror story.

So 14, 15, 16. 17 was the last one. When did you know that you were going to get to go to the moon? After Apollo 11, I was selected as backup crew for Apollo 13. And so the flight rotation was backup and three flights later you'd fly. So 13 backup, 16 fly. And that's the way it worked out. And we had started training backup with John Young, the commander who had been on Apollo 10

and myself as Lunal Module Pilot and then Jack Swigert, was the command module pilot. But as backup on 13, a week before the launch, I catch the measles and exposed everybody the measles, and Maddingly had never had the measles. So they jerked him off the flight a couple of days before. The flight and the guy trained with took his place. And so Maddenly came back on our crew. And so we trained for the next two years after the flight of 13 together.

and we flew together on Apollo 16. We've obviously had time to think about the fact that the measles prevented you from being on Apollo 13. No, I was back up. We weren't not supposed to go. Okay. The prime crew was composed of Jim Lovell, Fred Hayes, and Tom T.K. Madigley. and but he got bumped off because he was not immune to the measles. And so the guy I trained with took his place.

And after a few days training, Lovell said, we're ready to go, and they launched on schedule. So when the accident occurred at 55 hours after the launch, John Young called and it was about 10 o'clock at night, if I remember Houston time, said, hey, they got a big accident, they got a big problem, we got to go to mission control. So the three of us showed up at mission control to see what we could do. And 35 hours later, I finally went home.

And by this time, they whipped them around the moon, and we'd done all the procedures to use the lunar module to get them back on trajectory and around the moon and started home. And so everything was working well. But we were a spacecraft that had the capability for two guys for three days. Now we got three guys for four days. How do you make the oxygen last, the drinking water, the electrical power, all of that kind of stuff.

So it took hours and hours and hours to figure all that out. But we did, and things weren't going to run out. we're going to have enough stuff turn out the critical consumable was drinking water and and we had a I think we I don't remember exactly but rationed down to like six ounces a day to make the water last and they powered back up and if you want to see an accurate movie about this Paula 13 go see Tom Hanks's movie Apollo 13 it's really good. And so they made it back. And then so now Maddie's back on our crew and we get announced as Apollo 16. So at that point you know you're scheduled to go. We're scheduled to go.

There's no guarantee you're going to go because NASA could cancel a mission and canceled like they did. They canceled 18, 19, and 20. There was supposed to be three more after Apollo 17, but they canceled all of those. And so... And why? They got nervous. They wanted to use the money for space shuttle. And Apollo was a risky program. And if they killed somebody

on the moon, it might be the end of it. All the man. Quit while you're ahead. Yeah, quit while you're ahead. And the last three missions brought back most of the rocks and did most of the science. We were three days on the

moon. Whereas as the first three missions were only 24 hours on the moon at maximum. And so we had a car. We had all these. Well, let's start with the, because this is amazing. It's amazing. But the Saturn rocket, 360 feet tall, that's inconceivable to most of us here. What was it like to get into the cockpit on top something,

360 feet tall with those engines. We got out to the white room, which surrounded the hatch, and John Young gets in first, and then I get in. I'm on the right side. He's on the left, and Mattingly is going to sit in the center seat or lay down. Actually, you'll land down. If you take you just cheer and push you over on your back, that's the position you're in in the spacecraft. And they strapped you in, and you just sit and you wait for a lift. off and everybody's reviewing your procedures but what you're really thinking about is keep counting keep counting I'm ready to go and I know what to do keep counting and because you got a

four-hour window to launch for months a month and if you don't make that four hours you've got 30 days till the moon comes around again to launch well in 30 days and I say well we've decided to cancel this thing and you just had an accident or you did this and you lose your chance so everybody was saying keep counting keep counting and for us right on the second ignition and off we went so what are what are those g forces feel like so many people have imagined this you've experienced this it starts out very slow because you have seven and a half million pounds of thrust pushing a six and a half million pound vehicle and so it lifts off very slowly but the notice of part was the vibration. It's like a 360-foot long limber fishing pole. And you've got somebody

down here shaking, and you're out there on the other end, and you're going like this. And so it, you can't see outside because the windows are covered over. And I don't remember anybody telling me it was really supposed to shake that hard. I got a little nervous. And my heart, I could tell Marr was really pounding. But John was so calm. We're on our way. We're going. Houston. We're going. Houston, you're going.

So we kept accelerating. And as you burn out your fuel, you go acceleration more and more. You're not saying the velocity is increasing. You're saying the acceleration is increasing. Which is increasing the velocity also. Well, I know that. Yeah.

But the acceleration, as the rocket gets lighter, the acceleration, you're getting faster and faster. So what speed do you get to eventually? It depends on the first stage of the Saturn had five engines that produced 7.5 million pounds of thrust, which was constant. But as you burn out your fuel, the vehicle gets lighter and lighter. So in our mission, the first stage lasted for two minutes and 40 seconds. We burned up 4.5 million pounds of fuel. And we paid for it.

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Please use the code Eric. These crosses. If you want to look like Mike Lindell, you want to get the exact. car, like, it's hilarious. Please just use the code, Eric. The impression I got when I interviewed you from my radio program is that you're so focused on the details and the job that you don't get a lot of time for existential rumination. You're just getting this done.

Yeah. Was there ever a moment as you're, you know, traveling 100 and 200,000 miles away from home that you thought about what this is? Well, it was never spiritual. it was never philosophical for me. It was an adventure and a controlled adventure, if you will, because you have so much to do and you have to focus on your procedures. And I guess the closest I came of awe and wonder was we were on our way

and we were about 20,000 miles away from Earth and Mattingly's maneuvering the spacecraft and in the moon, My window over here floats the earth. And it's the whole circle of the earth. And you could see the Arctic Circle down across the Canada and the U.S. and Mexico and Central America. And the land was all brown, and the snow and the clouds were crystal, pure white. And the ocean was this crystal blue. And there's this jewel of earth just spinted in the blackness of space.

And everywhere else you looked, except for the moon and the sun, you can't see any stars because the sun's shining brightly. And space is this velvety black. And the pictures that you don't not capture from those pictures, the emotion that you have when there's the earth. You're out on home, as some of the astronauts who called it, hung up there in the blackness of space. and it was a very emotional experience for me. And to this day, I can vividly see this beauty of the earth. But spiritually, on the moon, you're so busy, you don't have time to think about, at least I didn't. And I don't think anybody on our crew did.

But there were several spiritual moments in Apollo, the first occurrence. occurred on Apollo 8, which was the first time we took the lunar module to the moon, no, the command module to the moon, very risky mission. And on Christmas Eve, 1968, they had Earthrise and they turned on a TV camera and they broadcast from the moon on Christmas Eve. And they started reading from the book of Genesis. and they had the first 11 verses of the first chapter of Genesis, and all three of them read from that, those 11, 12 verses.

And except for Neil Armstrong's, that's one small step for man, one giant leaf for mankind. I think that's the most important words spoken from the moon. Was that? You had, when you, you're up there, what does it take, three or four days to traverse. On the moon. No, no, to get there.

Three days to get there. Three days to get there. And so you're getting there. Everything's happening. And then suddenly you're there. And now you have to undock from your friend. I can't remember who was the... Maddingley.

Okay, so Mattingly stays in the... And you and Young disconnect. So talk about this now. Now you crawl into this lunar... Well, you crawl into the lunar module, and there's no power in there. It's all powered down. We had, if I remember, three batteries, big batteries. And so I had a procedure.

I was first in, and then John floats over, and I just start reading my procedures, power up the electrical system, power up the oxygen system, power up this, that and the other. It took us eight hours to get this thing up to power, full power, and checked out. And you're still connected to the... Well, yeah, we're connected at this point. And when... So we're flying in orbit.

It took almost four orbits and to get powered up. And then we're ready to go, and it got time to undock, so we got in position, and Mattingly just released us, and we floated away.