Artemis II broke Fred Haise's distance record, but he is happy to pass it on

Ars: It’s remarkable looking back at Apollo, when you guys were typically landing on the Moon every four to six months.

Haise: Actually, from the Apollo 7 launch through Apollo 11, we launched every two months. Every two months. Then we started slipping. After Apollo 11, when they made the landing in July of that year, they slipped. Apollo 12 was normally to be flown in September, but even then, they slipped it to November, so it waited four months to launch. Then they stretched us even further. On 13, we went all the way to the next April, because of budget cuts.

Ars: It’s been two-and-a-half years since Artemis I, and it will be another year or longer until Artemis III, an Earth orbit mission.

Haise: You could accomplish it faster if you had the program laid out and funded it. I mean, it’s that simple. It ain’t simple to plan it and everything. But if you had the program planned and laid out and done the technology trades and everything, and a preliminary design for where you’re headed with what you’re doing, if you fund it, you can go accomplish it. There’s no magic to it. It’s just you need to apply the money and the resources, the right people, the right engineering, and you can do it.

Credit: NASA NASA astronaut Fred Haise, center, moments after exiting the Apollo 13 command module following splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean on April 17, 1970. NASA astronaut Fred Haise, center, moments after exiting the Apollo 13 command module following splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean on April 17, 1970. Credit: NASA

Ars: What do you remember about being on the far side of the Moon?

Haise: We had done a maneuver earlier, approaching the Moon, because where our explosion happened, we were not on a path to get home. We were not on a free return, which they were on this [Artemis II] flight … When our capsule had the explosion and we had to shut it down, the very first thing to work on after getting the LM (Lunar Module) powered up was to use its rocket engine to change our path to get us sort of in a rough direction of heading home. And that first burn we did looped us around the Moon. Then we did a second maneuver, the biggest one, using the decent landing engine after we passed the Moon. That shaved 10 to 12 hours off our return time, which was helpful, because the LM didn’t have enough power if we kept it powered up, so we had to critically power it down and only had battery power.