Charles Duke

• 1. Introduction

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  Charles Duke was 36 years and 201 days old when he stepped onto the Moon on the 21st of April 1972, making him the youngest person ever to walk on another world. That record has never been broken. He arrived at a site called the Descartes Highlands, the highest region on the near side of the Moon, on a mission that had nearly been cancelled before it began. His lungs were riddled with pneumonia just months before launch. A medical quarantine rippled backward through two Apollo missions. And on the day the spacecraft finally lifted off, someone at the launch site thought they saw him swimming at a Holiday Inn pool when he was supposed to be sealed away from the world. What follows is the story of how a boy from Lancaster, South Carolina, who got seasick on a training cruise and nearly washed out over a minor eye condition, became one of only twelve people in history to leave footprints on the Moon.

• 2. A Southern Boy Goes North

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  Lancaster, South Carolina, is where Duke settled into something like a permanent home. His father, Charles Moss Duke Sr., sold insurance there after the family's wartime migrations across the American South and out to California. His mother, Willie Catherine, ran a dress shop. Duke and his identical twin brother Bill, born six minutes later, made model aircraft as boys. Duke earned Eagle Scout rank in 1946, the same year the family put down roots in Lancaster after the war. A congenital heart defect kept Bill from strenuous sport, and would eventually steer him toward medicine; golf was something they could do together.

  Duke wanted a military career. His father had served in the Navy, so Duke sought a nomination to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis from his local congressman, James P. Richards. Richards was willing, but advised the boy to prepare. Duke and his parents chose the Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg, Florida, where Duke graduated as valedictorian and president of the senior class in 1953. The Lancaster News ran his picture on the front page when his acceptance to Annapolis came through.

  At the Naval Academy, golf was his sport, not competition athletics. A two-month cruise to Europe on an escort carrier left him seasick, and he began doubting the Navy. A familiarization flight in an N3N seaplane pointed him elsewhere. The United States Air Force Academy had just been established and could not yet graduate its own officers, so a portion of each Annapolis class was allowed to volunteer for the Air Force. During his commissioning physical, Duke discovered a minor astigmatism in his right eye, disqualifying him from naval aviation. The Air Force accepted him anyway. He received his Bachelor of Science in naval sciences in June 1957 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.

• 3. Cold War Pilot, Then Scholar

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  Duke's flight training carried him through propeller-driven aircraft and then jets at Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, Texas, before advanced work on the F-86 Sabre at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, where he graduated as a distinguished graduate for the second time. That distinction gave him his choice of assignment, and he chose the front line: the 526th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Ramstein Air Base in West Germany, at the height of the Cold War. Four of the squadron's aircraft were always on alert, ready to intercept any crossing from East Germany, especially during the tensions of the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

  At MIT in Boston, beginning in June 1962, Duke studied aeronautics and astronautics toward a Master of Science degree. His grades slipped while he was courting Dotty Meade Claiborne, a graduate of Hollins College and the University of North Carolina, and he was placed on academic probation. The Air Force allowed him to continue. For his thesis, he teamed with a classmate named Mike Jones to do statistical analysis for Project Apollo's guidance systems. That work brought him a meeting with astronaut Charles Bassett and earned him an A that lifted his average to the required B. His degree came in May 1964.

  The next assignment was the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. Duke felt his chances were slim; he had barely met the minimum qualifications. The commandant was Chuck Yeager. Duke's twelve-member class, designated 64-C and commencing in August 1964, included Spence M. Armstrong, Al Worden, Stuart Roosa, and Hank Hartsfield. Peter Hoag finished first; Duke tied for second. After graduating in September 1965, he stayed on as an instructor, teaching control systems and flying the F-101 Voodoo, F-104 Starfighter, and T-33 Shooting Star.

• 4. The Voice of Mission Control

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  On the 10th of September 1965, NASA announced it was recruiting a fifth astronaut group. Duke spotted the story on the front page of the Los Angeles Times and realized he met every requirement. His superior at Edwards, Chuck Yeager, and deputy commandant Colonel Robert Buchanan told him he could apply to NASA or the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, but not both without MOL taking him. Duke applied only to NASA, as did Roosa and Worden. Hartsfield applied for both and was taken by MOL.

  The final selection interview was held at the Rice Hotel in Houston before a seven-member panel chaired by Deke Slayton. The other members included Alan Shepard, John Young, Michael Collins, C.C. Williams, test pilot Warren North, and spacecraft designer Max Faget. A phone call from Slayton in April 1966 confirmed Duke's selection. NASA announced all nineteen names on the 4th of April 1966. Young dubbed the group the "Original Nineteen," a parody of the Mercury Seven.

  Duke became a Lunar Module specialist, with particular responsibility for the propulsion systems. Testing at the White Sands Missile Range in 1966 had revealed combustion instability in the ascent propulsion system, the component that had to work or the astronauts could not leave the Moon. Duke became the Astronaut Office representative on the review committee convened by Apollo Spacecraft Program manager George Low. The committee eventually chose Rocketdyne's injector system paired with Bell's engine.

  For Apollo 10 in 1969, Duke joined the support crew alongside Joe Engle and Jim Irwin. Commander Tom Stafford selected him specifically for his familiarity with the Lunar Module's propulsion systems. Then Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11, asked Duke to serve as CAPCOM again for the same reason; it was unusual to hold the role on back-to-back missions. During the landing on the 20th of July 1969, Duke's voice was the one the world heard from Mission Control, a Southern drawl made famous by a long descent that nearly burned through all of the Lunar Module Eagle's descent propellant. His first words to the crew on the surface came out flustered: "Roger, Twank...Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot!"

• 5. The Rubella Incident

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  Two or three weeks before the Apollo 13 launch in April 1970, Duke contracted rubella from a child named Paul House, the son of his neighbors Glenn and Suzanne House. He had inadvertently exposed the prime crew. NASA doctors checked all three: Jim Lovell and Fred Haise were immune, but Ken Mattingly was not. Mattingly was pulled from the mission and replaced by Jack Swigert. Haise and Swigert later teased Duke about the incident, calling him "Typhoid Mary."

  Mattingly, meanwhile, felt he should have been aboard when the spacecraft's oxygen tank exploded on the way to the Moon. Young, Mattingly, and Duke worked together in simulators to develop emergency procedures, and the crew was brought home safely. The episode changed NASA's protocols permanently: starting with Apollo 14, crews went into quarantine for three weeks before the mission as well as after. In the event, only the Apollo 14 crew endured two quarantine periods; once the absence of life on the Moon was established, the post-mission quarantine was dropped in April 1971.

  The crew rotation scheme that Slayton used had placed Duke, Young, and Mattingly as the prime crew for Apollo 16. But getting there required one more medical crisis. In December 1971, during a geological field trip to Hawaii that was part of final Apollo 16 training, Duke caught the flu on the second day. By New Year's Day he could not get out of bed. An X-ray at the Kennedy Space Center revealed pneumonia in both lungs, and an ambulance took him to the Patrick Air Force Base hospital.

• 6. Descartes and the Highlands

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  Apollo 16 launched at 12:54 Eastern Standard Time on the 16th of April 1972. When the spacecraft cleared the launch pad, Duke became the first twin ever to fly in space. His brother Bill had nearly attended the launch; the Apollo Program director, Rocco Petrone, had spotted someone he believed was Duke swimming at a Holiday Inn pool during the pre-launch quarantine. The staff had to track Duke down in training before Petrone was convinced that he had seen Bill.

  In lunar orbit, problems accumulated. Duke could not align the S-band antenna on the Lunar Module Orion in the yaw axis, forcing him to copy 35 five-digit numbers by hand and enter them into the computer manually. When Young activated the reaction control system, a double failure hit the pressurization system. Young called it "the worst jam I was ever in." Then, during checkout of the Command Service Module Casper's backup engine, severe oscillations shook the spacecraft. A decision to land had to be made within five orbits, roughly ten hours, before the craft drifted too far from the target site.

  After four hours and three orbits, Mission Control cleared the landing. Powered descent began about six hours behind schedule and from an altitude 5,000 m higher than planned. Orion touched down on the Cayley Plains at 02:23:35 UTC on April 21, landing 886 ft northwest of the planned site. Duke stepped out as the tenth person to walk on the Moon, following Young, who became the ninth.

  The Descartes Highlands had been expected to be volcanic in origin and composed largely of basalt. The rocks Duke and Young collected would prove otherwise. Over 71 hours and 14 minutes on the surface, they conducted three excravehicular activities totaling 20 hours and 15 minutes for Duke, collected nearly 213 lb of rock and soil, and drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle across the roughest terrain yet encountered on any lunar mission. Near the end of their final surface excursion, Duke attempted a lunar high jump. He jumped about 0.81 m, overbalanced, and fell backward onto his primary life support system. A suit rupture or a broken PLSS would have killed him. Young's response was brief: "That ain't very smart."

  Duke left two items on the surface, both photographed before departure. One was a plastic-encased family portrait taken by NASA photographer Ludy Benjamin, signed and thumb-printed by his family on the back, with the inscription: "This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth, who landed on the Moon on the twentieth of April 1972." The other was one of two silver medallions commemorating the Air Force's 25th anniversary in 1972; Duke took the second with the approval of Air Force Chief of Staff General John D. Ryan and Secretary of the Air Force Robert Seamans. The medallion he brought back is now on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, alongside a Moon rock from Apollo 16.

• 7. After the Moon

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  Duke retired from NASA on the 1st of January 1976, having accumulated 265 hours and 51 minutes in space. He left active Air Force duty as a colonel, entered the Reserve, and graduated from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1978. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1979 and retired from the Reserve in June 1986. In total he logged 4,147 hours of flying time, of which 3,632 were in jet aircraft.

  In 1975, Duke heard that Coors Beer was considering expanding distribution into Texas beyond its then-available Dallas and El Paso markets. He formed a partnership with former Olympic basketball player Dick Boushka, and they submitted a bid for a new Coors distributorship in Austin. Coors declined Austin but offered San Antonio instead. They accepted. The family sold the house in El Lago and moved to New Braunfels, a community near San Antonio. The distributorship thrived, but Duke grew bored and sold his interest in February 1978, realizing a substantial profit with Boushka.

  In 1978, Duke became a committed born-again Christian. He wrote in his autobiography that his temper, his ego, and a single-minded devotion to work had strained his marriage and his relationships with his children to the point that, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dotty had suffered from depression and had considered suicide. Both Duke and Dotty, who became a Christian before him, credited their faith with reshaping those relationships. The couple are members of Christ Our King Anglican Church, an Anglican Church in North America congregation in New Braunfels, where Duke remains an active participant in Christian ministry.

  His business career after the distributorship included serving as president of the Orbit Corporation from 1976 to 1978, director of the Robbins Company from 1986 to 1989, chairman of Duke Resources from 1988 to 1993, chairman of Texcor from 1989 to 1994, and chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation from 2011 to 2012. Asteroid 26382 Charlieduke was named in his honor; the official citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on the 18th of May 2019. In December 2019, he was named Texan of the Year for 2020, the same year he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

• 8. Country Music and the Moon

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  In 2018, a country music duo called The Stryker Brothers released a song titled "Charlie Duke Took Country Music To The Moon." The track told a true story: Duke had brought two audio cassette tapes of country music aboard Apollo 16. His friend Bill Bailey, a disc jockey at Houston-area country music station KIKK, had arranged personalized recordings from a roster of artists that included Merle Haggard, Porter Wagoner, Dolly Parton, Buck Owens, Jerry Reed, Chet Atkins, and Floyd Cramer. Haggard introduced the tapes.

  "The Stryker Brothers" was the stage name for a collaboration between Robert Earl Keen and Randy Rogers. The two initially kept their identities secret; promotional material claimed the music came from two real brothers who had died in a prison fire. Duke appeared in an online video asserting that he had known the brothers as children at Bailey's home and had given them a copy of the tapes after returning from the Moon. In reality, Duke had met Randy Rogers at an event in New Braunfels, where both men live.

  The BBC World Service podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon, released in 2019 to mark fifty years since Apollo 11, featured Duke prominently. His documentary film Lunar Tribute premiered at the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History on the 20th of October 2017. At the post-screening panel, Neil deGrasse Tyson noted that Duke was the youngest person to walk on the Moon. Duke's response, at age 82, was that he still was.