Still a star: Conifer’s McCandless recalls his days as an astronaut

Conifer’s nighttime skies are filled with clusters of faraway stars, and one resident has been closer to them than most people ever dream of.

Conifer resident and former astronaut Bruce McCandless shared his experiences with a small group of star-struck stargazers at the Conifer Community Center at Beaver Ranch on May 12.

McCandless is somewhat humble about his accomplishments during 312 hours in space. “You watch, and there are lots of guys doing what I did,” McCandless said.

In 1966, McCandless was one of 19 astronauts selected by NASA. He served as a member of the astronaut support crew for the Apollo 14 mission and was the Mission Control capsule communicator for the historic Apollo 11 mission when Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. He was the backup pilot for the first manned Skylab mission and was the first man to step away from a space module in the untethered manned maneuvering unit.

McCandless, 73, wowed the gathering of about 40 people with his adventures with the manned maneuvering unit in space. The task was to venture out 300 feet, stop and come back to the shuttle.

He said the space shuttle was traveling at 18,000 mph at the time of the untethered space walk and that with no air, there’s no wind. McCandless said because you let go of the shuttle, there’s nothing to separate you from it and you glide alongside it through space.

During his untethered space walk, the shuttle used a laser range finder to track McCandless’ distance from the shuttle. He had a low-tech method to judge his distance from the ship: a single piece of angle iron. Held a certain way, the distance from the shuttle could be determined along the length.

“It fit the NASA budget at the time,” he said.

Images from that historic step have become iconic. McCandless himself took many images with a Nikon camera wrapped in quilted thermal padding and mounted on his shoulder. During his four-hour space walk, he looked down and was surprised to see Florida; he took a picture.

He noticed that, from space, there are no lines on the land, no distinction between people of different countries.

“Nationalities become weightless in space,” he said.

One place that he said has few international boundaries is the International Space Station, currently orbiting above the Earth. The international partners include a host of countries from around the world. McCandless said the life of the station has been extended to 2020.

“It’s foolhardy to spend significant billions of dollars into completing the station, then to abandon it,” he said.

Though McCandless doesn’t agree with President Obama’s push to end the Constellation Program, a program that studies science and technology, he still believes space isn’t an endangered adventure.

“I think that there is a lot of interest in the younger generation and are sufficient challenges to keep people interested for quite a while.”

McCandless said that, last fall, Congress passed a resolution to continue funding the Constellation program, and now NASA is under orders to keep building the program.

“If we abandon the ability to put humans in space for 10 to 15 years, we will probably be reading about what’s going on … rather than doing it ourselves,” he said.

He said he’d rather battle tall odds than read about someone else doing it.

“A few journeys to the moon don’t mean we know all about it,” he said.

McCandless said he wasn’t sure of his future plans but sees himself as a participant in ongoing space program discussions.

Even with the inherent dangers of space travel, McCandless said that everybody he knows who’s visited space would like to return there someday. Astronaut John Glenn was 76 when he made his return trip to the heavens.

“John Glenn went back and did a great job,” he said.