David Scott

• 1. Introduction

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  David Randolph Scott was born on the 6th of June 1932 at Randolph Field, near San Antonio, Texas. His middle name came directly from that base, a fitting detail for a man whose identity would be shaped at every turn by the places and machines of American military aviation. He would grow up to become the seventh person to walk on the Moon, the commander of Apollo 15, and the only living person to have commanded a spacecraft that landed on the lunar surface.

  But the journey from a boy watching war films at a Texas military school to the man standing at the rim of Hadley Rille runs through decades of near-misses, emergency aborts, and decisions that could have gone the other way entirely. How did a colonel's son who struggled to get into West Point end up designing the outward-opening hatch that replaced the one that killed three astronauts? How does a man carry out one of history's most celebrated scientific missions, then spend years facing investigation for the stamps he tucked into his spacesuit? And what does it mean to be the only surviving commander of a Moon landing, decades after the world moved on?

• 2. A Pilot's Son

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  Tom William Scott, David's father, was a fighter pilot in the United States Army Air Corps who rose to brigadier general. His postings shaped the family's geography entirely. By 1936, when David was just four, the family had already moved from Randolph Field to an air base in Indiana and then across the Pacific to Manila in the Philippines, which was then under U.S. rule. They came home in December 1939, and by Pearl Harbor in 1941, were back in San Antonio.

  When Tom Scott deployed overseas after Pearl Harbor, David was sent to Texas Military Institute for the discipline his father could no longer provide. Summers were spent at Hermosa Beach in California with David Shattuck, his father's college friend, after whom David had been named. He spent those years building model airplanes and watching films about flying. When Tom Scott returned, David was old enough to be taken up in a military aircraft, and he later described it in his autobiography as "the most exciting thing I had ever experienced".

  At Riverside Polytechnic High School, where his father was posted to March Air Force Base, Scott joined the swimming team and set state and local records. When Tom Scott was transferred again, this time to Washington, D.C., David faced a choice about whether to stay in California to finish high school. He followed his father and graduated from Western High School in Washington in June 1949.

• 3. West Point and Edwards

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  Scott lacked the political connections to secure a direct appointment to West Point, so he took a government civil service examination for competitive appointments. He also accepted a swimming scholarship to the University of Michigan, where he was an honor student in the engineering school and set a freshman record in the 440-yard freestyle. In the spring of 1950, West Point invited him, and he accepted.

  At West Point, Scott graduated 5th in his class of 633 and earned a Bachelor of Science in military science. The Air Force Academy was founded in 1954, the year he graduated, but an interim arrangement allowed a quarter of West Point graduates to volunteer for Air Force commissions. Scott took it. He then completed Undergraduate Pilot Training at Webb Air Force Base in Texas in 1955 before flying with the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands from April 1956 to July 1960, flying F-86 Sabres and F-100 Super Sabres.

  Europe tested him in ways the training had not. The weather at Soesterberg was often poor. Once, Scott had to land on a golf course after a flameout. On another occasion, he barely reached a Dutch base on the edge of the North Sea. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, his squadron was placed on the highest alert for weeks before standing down without entering combat.

  To reach test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base, Scott was advised to earn a graduate degree in aeronautics. He applied to MIT and was accepted, earning both a Master of Science in Aeronautics/Astronautics and the Engineer in Aeronautics/Astronautics degree in 1962. When the Air Force then ordered him to report to the Air Force Academy as a professor, Scott went directly to the Pentagon and found a sympathetic colonel. The orders were changed. He reported to Edwards in July 1962, where the commandant of the flight test school was Chuck Yeager. Scott graduated top pilot in Class 62C, then moved on to the Aerospace Research Pilot School, where he trained on aircraft like the Lockheed NF-104A at altitudes of up to 100,000 feet.

• 4. Gemini 8 and the Emergency

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  On the 16th of March 1966, David Scott and Neil Armstrong were launched into orbit on Gemini 8, a mission originally planned to last three days. The Agena rocket they were to dock with had been launched an hour and forty minutes earlier. When they completed the docking, it was the first docking ever accomplished in space.

  What followed was anything but routine. The joined craft began moving unexpectedly, and Mission Control was out of contact during that portion of the orbit. Armstrong and Scott believed the Agena was causing the problem, so they performed an emergency undocking. The spin got worse. One of the Gemini craft's own Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System thrusters was firing without command. With the spacecraft spinning, there was risk of blackout or structural disintegration. The crew shut down those thrusters. Armstrong then activated the Reaction Control System thrusters, designed for reentry, to stop the spin. Mission rules required that once the RCS was activated early, the spacecraft had to return to Earth. Gemini 8 splashed down in the Western Pacific on the day of launch, the mission lasting only ten hours. Scott's planned spacewalk was scrubbed.

  Authors Francis French and Colin Burgess later wrote that Scott, in particular, had shown remarkable presence of mind by thinking to re-enable ground control of the Agena before the two vehicles separated, even in the middle of an emergency and out of contact with Mission Control. This allowed NASA to recover the Agena for a subsequent Gemini mission. Five days after the abbreviated flight, Scott was assigned to an Apollo crew. He received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross, and a promotion to lieutenant colonel.

• 5. Apollo 9 and the Test Pilot's Dream

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  Scott's Apollo assignment began as backup senior pilot for what would become Apollo 1, and on the 27th of January 1967 he was at North American Rockwell's plant in Downey, California, when fire killed the prime crew during a pre-launch test. The inward-opening hatch had been impossible for the crew to open. Scott's post-fire assignment was to help design a simpler, outward-opening replacement.

  When flights resumed, Scott's crew was offered Apollo 8, a lunar orbit mission without a Lunar Module. Commander James McDivitt declined on behalf of his crew, preferring what would become Apollo 9, which McDivitt called "a test pilot's dream". That mission launched on the 3rd of March 1969, three days after the original planned date of February 28, because all three astronauts had head colds.

  Scott's role as Command Module Pilot on Apollo 9 carried serious weight. If the Lunar Module failed to return, he would have to fly the entire spacecraft through reentry alone, normally a three-man job. Within hours of launch, he performed the transposition and docking maneuver that was essential to every future lunar landing. On the fifth day in space, the 7th of March, McDivitt and Rusty Schweickart flew the LM Spider more than 100 miles from the CSM while Scott remained alone in the Command Module Gumdrop. He became the first American astronaut to be alone in space since the Mercury program.

  Schweickart, who had vomited twice on the third day from space adaptation syndrome, later called the remaining days of the mission "Dave Scott's mission" as Scott ran extensive command module tests. Apollo 9 splashed down on the 13th of March 1969, less than four nautical miles from the helicopter carrier USS Guadalcanal.

• 6. Hadley Rille and the Genesis Rock

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  Apollo 15 launched from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A on the 26th of July 1971. It was the first J Mission, a designation for Apollo flights that emphasized science, with longer surface stays and the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Scott had already spent months preparing, taking his crew on field trips with Caltech geologist Lee Silver, pushing for training conditions that matched what they would actually face on the Moon.

  The landing site had been debated among scientists. Scott argued for the area of Hadley Rille, and his argument prevailed. The LM Falcon descended on the 30th of July with Scott at the controls. When the computer-controlled flight path drifted south of plan, Scott took manual control for the final descent and landed within the designated zone.

  Before any surface traverse, Scott performed the first and only stand-up EVA on the lunar surface, poking his head and upper body out of the LM's docking port to photograph the surrounding terrain from an elevated position. The following day he and James Irwin drove to Hadley Rille in the LRV. A rock found there was later named Great Scott after the astronaut.

  On the second traverse, to the slope of Mount Hadley Delta, Scott and Irwin discovered what the press would call the Genesis Rock: a plagioclase-rich anorthosite from the early lunar crust, found at Spur Crater on the 1st of August. On the third and final moonwalk, the 2nd of August, Scott stood before the television camera and dropped a hammer and a feather to demonstrate Galileo's principle that objects in a vacuum fall at the same rate. Before re-entering the Falcon, he left a small aluminum sculpture by Paul Van Hoeydonck, titled Fallen Astronaut, alongside a plaque bearing the names of astronauts and cosmonauts who had died in the pursuit of space exploration. Apollo 15 splashed down north of Honolulu on the 7th of August 1971.

• 7. Postal Covers and Consequences

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  A friend named Horst Eiermann arranged for the Apollo 15 crew to carry postal covers to the Moon, with each astronaut to receive about $7,000. Scott carried the covers in his spacesuit into the Command Module, and they were transferred to the Lunar Module en route. Scott sent 100 of the covers to Eiermann after the mission. Against the astronauts' wishes, in late 1971, West German stamp dealer Hermann Sieger offered them for sale.

  The crew returned the money, but by April 1972 Deke Slayton had learned of the unauthorized items. Scott, Al Worden, and James Irwin were removed as backup crew for Apollo 17. The matter became public in June 1972. The following month, NASA and the Air Force issued formal reprimands. A press release dated the 11th of July 1972 stated that the astronauts' actions would be given due consideration in any future assignment, a phrase that made another flight effectively impossible. Newsweek reported that there were no forthcoming missions for which Scott was being considered.

  Scott related in his autobiography that Alan Shepard, then head of the Astronaut Office, offered him a choice between backing up Apollo 17 or serving as a special assistant on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint mission with the Soviet Union. Scott chose the latter. The covers that the crew still held were impounded by NASA but returned to the astronauts in 1983 through an out-of-court settlement, after the government concluded it could not successfully defend the lawsuit and that NASA had either authorized the covers or been aware of them.

• 8. After the Moon

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  In the Apollo-Soyuz role Scott traveled to Moscow leading a team of technical experts. There he met Alexei Leonov, commander of the Soviet portion of the mission, with whom he would later co-write a dual autobiography. Scott became deputy director of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in 1973, a posting that let him fly again and renew his acquaintance with Chuck Yeager, who was there as a consulting test pilot.

  On the 18th of April 1975, at age 42, Scott became the Center Director at Dryden. He retired from the Air Force the previous month with the rank of colonel, having logged more than 5,600 hours of flying time. He left NASA on the 30th of September 1977. In the private sector, he founded Scott Science and Technology, Inc. One of his firms was effectively ended by the 1986 Challenger disaster, not because it played any part in the accident, but because subsequent redesign of shuttle components eliminated the firm's role.

  In 1992 a Prescott, Arizona, court found Scott had defrauded nine investors in a partnership that was to create technology to prevent aircraft mechanical breakdowns. He was ordered to pay roughly $400,000. He also served on the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, advising the Secretary of Transportation on the possible conversion of ICBMs to launch vehicles.

  Scott had taken two Bulova timepieces to the Moon without authorization. After his NASA-issued Omega Speedmaster lost its crystal during the third EVA, he wore the Bulova wristwatch. He sold that watch in 2015 for $1.625 million. He then sued Bulova and Kay Jewelers in federal court in 2017, alleging they were using his name and image without permission. The case was dismissed by agreement in August 2018. In 2021, Bulova issued a commemorative watch marking the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 15. That same anniversary is also observed by Scott's co-authored book with Leonov, Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race, published in 2006 with introductions by both Neil Armstrong and Tom Hanks.