6
12)
L.S.:
Can you tell me anything about the Russian collaboration to “Apollo 20”?
W.R.:
James Chipman Fletcher for USA and Valentin Alexeiev for Russia, Werner Von Braun was
one of the happy viewer. Capcom were Charles Peter Conrad and James Irwin.
13)
L.S.:
Tell me something about the “Apollo 18” and the “Apollo 19” missions; specially about
the last one and its failure. Was it a classified mission with the same goal of the “Apollo 20”? Tell
me about your ex girlfriend, Stephanie Ellis, “first American woman in Space” according to what
you wrote to me in a former letter. The official space history does not include her as astronaut...
W.R.:
Apollo 18 was the Apollo-Soyuz project, the honeymoon before a moon landing mission, it
was presented as a simple "shaking hands " mission in 1975. Apollo 19 and 20 were hazardous
missions. On long duration flight the helium pressure was too high on the LEM, a security disk had
to burst if pressure was going high, but motor was unusable after. So it was changed on Apollo 19
and 20, but not tested in Space before. It was ok, but... in the paper. However, we got no problem
with it. It was a long mission, 7 days scheduled on the Moon, every ray of light was used till ascent.
Apollo 19 had a loss of telemetry, a brutal end of mission without data. Now the truth is unknown
but it seems that it was a natural phenomenon, a collision with a "quasi-satellite ", like Cruithne, or
a meteor (the probability is higher I think). The goal was the same, the landing site was the same,
the exploration program was different, they had a big job to do with the rover, exploring the roof of
the ship by climbing on the "Monaco hill", (I'll have to put a lunar map online). NO American
astronaut is listes, I discovered since may that many people find many William Rultledge in NASA.
I can be found in the list of the Test pilots of Chance Vought, on the consultant list of the James
Forrestal Center, I was involved in fluid mechanics. My boss was Bogdanoff (nothing in common
with the Bogdanoff scientists).
Stephanie Ellis was born in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) in 1946, arrived in America at the age of 7
months. She was a LM specialist, she worked with Grumman Bethpage for new implementations on
the navigation system of the LM (Note that LM15 was officially destructed by Grumman). She
contributed to debug the Luminary program, who was never bug free. Apollo 19 and 20 had serious
problems with docking and rendez-vous. Her technical knowledge was as deep as Roger Chaffee.
She was a wonderful and funny person. I have some pictures of her in the LEM and Ingress 16 mm
footage. I'll not show the other members of the crew.
Russian collaborations; I don't know how, but Russian were informed of the presence of a ship on
the far side. Luna 15 in July 1969 crashed just at the South of the nose of the ship. It was a probe
similar to Ranger or Lunar Orbiter. They provided maps, precise charts of this area. The center of
decision was located in the Ural, in the town of Sverdlovsk. The chief of the program was professor
Valentin Alekseiev, who became later president of the academy of science in Ural. Leonov was
chosen because of his popularity in the communist leading staff, and secondary only because he was
on Apollo-Soyuz. In 1994, I met again Valentin Alekseiev in Ural, Yekaterinburg, and he had a
model of the spaceship made of malachite with incrustations of gold on his desk.
I could tell you 100 stories about how Russians wanted to impress us. For example, when I came to
the Academy of the Ural for the first time, my feet sticked on the ground, they had put varnish on
the floor, not dried, for showing us new offices, they did all this "the Russian way", quickly, with
quantity, not completely ready.
14)
L.S.:
Is there anybody in U.S.A., Russia or in Europe that can confirm your story? And are you
not afraid that somebody can threaten your friends or relatives?
W.R.:
In USA, honestly I don't know who is living now. Conrad died a strange way I think, his
death was awful. Irwin is dead, von Braun also I think. James Fletcher. Leona Marietta Snyder is