NASA-UAP-D027, Apollo 14 Debriefing (Continued), 1971

Most of my streaks appeared to be on the periphery , and , uh , for the first several days , I got the impression that this , this direction was predominant . Later on , it appeared that I don't think I could get that , that good a pattern , but that was my first impression for the first couple of days . The uh next question is , uh , was there any apparent direction of propagation and could you tell it was coming from one side to the other or was it just a . A flash . Several times you did say from the left to the right or something like that . Tried to correlate it , but in my case I couldn't really correlate a pattern out of it . Yeah , I would think that the time period in which we tried to report them streak by streak , flash by flash was representative . And , uh , it was my feeling that it was generally random during that time period and , uh , Therefore , generally random throughout the time that we were noticing them . No , I meant , could you detect that it was moving from one side to the other . It was , it was moving in a specific , a specific , a specific flash . Yes , yes , but you could see it as it traveled from one side to the other . Yes , you really think we tried to report it that way , didn't you ? You did report it . That's the way puzzling is because it happens , it has to be very fast , you know . Isn't that question kind of redundant then ? I don't believe you . I . Was there some character to these flashes that had some , some aspect of direction ? I mean , were they all the same rod shaped or were they , did they have a tail on them ? Well , what I saw , what I reported as a streak was simply that . Uh , now , maybe the way we determined the direction subconsciously was that it was a ball of light moving in a direction leaving a tail , but I don't , I can't say that for sure . All I reported was a streak , and I had the impression of it moving from one direction to the other , and I reported that direction , and I , I can't clarify it much more than that . Maybe , maybe while you're asking a question , we just tell the lights . I think they can see this in the darkened room , but just the idea is to try to see whether this is what you saw or similar to it . I think you need to light up . Well , can you see anything ? Yeah , except that's what it looked like , except it was traveling . In other words , uh , it started out and it definitely progressed across the field of view direction of motion per individual . We did that right , yeah , except you're not traveling . It was traveling . You saw it . I never did see two simultaneously either . Neither do I . You have two streaks in that . I never saw that . The , uh , at one time you said you saw a semicolon-shaped thing . So what a semicolon shaped object . This was in the 1st , 1st report . Before the I never did . I don't if I reported it , that's what I saw , but I don't remember it . Did you see anything that looked like this ? All I can say is whatever was reported is what I saw . No , I , you know , we , we discussed the various shapes prior to flight , and I concentrated pretty hard on trying to , trying to see the shapes , and I think as I reported , no , it was either a streak and just a rather simple streak or it was a , a flash and rather a simple flash , nothing too exotic about it , and on . A more rare one would be maybe just a pinpoint of light for an instant rather than get the idea of a of a flash . There would just be a pinpoint for a second and it would be gone , but that was , that was more rare than the other two . By by a flash you mean a distributed sort of thing . Yeah , I meant , you know , like watching an explosion , you know , just a ball versus just a , just a steady dot , yes . Was it , was it like this at all ? Can you see that ? No . Likely this one this . I see . Can't say it . We're not getting any lighting . I don't think it's lighting . Oh , there , there was something just as you turned it there . OK , I can see that . You mean multiple , uh , well , This one . OK , that , that to me would be the pinpoint that , that I'm describing . The , uh , the , the eruption or the , the nova as we call them , would be more of an explosion . Yeah . How about this ? Yeah , yeah . Were there more dots than that ? Well , you've got a very , very bright center and a diffused edge . I would say that , uh , the impression I had was you would have a , an area like that indicating a blow up , but the center wasn't predominantly that bright . But that's getting closer to what we would call what I would refer to as a nova or a or a flash . It's not as bright as what I call a nova . Yeah . Ed , was your Nova , an explosion like this or a discrete flag flash ? No , it was , uh , what I call a nova was , was more of a , a blob that seemed to start with that and kind of expand , more diffused , yeah , and more diffused as , as the time went on . But brighter than that , brighter than that , yes , that's what I about what I'd call a flash or a star . Uh , here , here again , you've got too much contrast between the center and the , uh , diffused area there though . That's also your time frame that you're flashing , that's too long . It was faster than that . But am I right , Ed , from what you just said that that when you said flash you really meant a star and not a , not a , not what you just described ? I think I almost tended to use flash and star interchangeably . That's not true for you . No , uh , when I flash , Nova to me were essentially the same thing . The only distinction I make is the , the pinpoint versus an explosion . Uh-huh . OK , I think what Stu was calling a , a pinpoint was about what I'd call a star or a flash , and a Nova to me was a much bigger , brighter thing . OK , I got a couple of quick ones . First of all , the cabin lighting , uh , exactly was it completely dark or were there some instrument lights still on ? Absolutely . Absolutely . OK . Wait a minute . Well , there is , you're talking about the time period that we ran this , uh , quantitative report , right ? Right , right . So completely dark . OK . And , uh , did you have your eyes closed most of the time or were they open in the dark cabin ? Mine we had gold . I had gold even though we had the window shades on when we'd roll around so the sun would hit some of the windows , there'd be some light seepage around and we were aware of that ahead of time . So that during that time period we , at least I made an attempt to keep my eyes closed , open otherwise , and of course we closed our eyes when they flipped his flashlight on . But generally speaking , eyes were open . No , mine , mine was , uh , almost closed all the time . I was floating down the corner of the LED , but I , I kept my eyes closed because , uh , I didn't know when we might roll into the sun and I didn't want to pick up any light at all . OK , the next question on the flashlight was , uh , when you shined it in your eyes , what was the approximate duration in each eye ? About how many seconds ? Well , I just kind of moved it across for 5 seconds or so , 5 or 6 seconds . It hurt . It was very frightening . And uh next question on uh still your orientation in the LAB uh you said you were looking toward plus X is , uh , will you ? Across . I was , uh , generally , you know , how you , you have the three couches , and , uh , plus X is , uh , I was oriented this way with my head looking face up , uh , down in this corner . So your head was in the same direction as it would be if you were on the couch , just rotated . Yes , that's it . OK . And uh the next question is , uh , in almost every case you did report that it was in one eye or the other . I believe there was one incident where you had , uh , both eyes . And my question is , uh , uh , it may be somewhat redundant , but , uh , are you absolutely certain that you could distinguish that it was one eye as opposed to , uh . Yeah , I felt I was getting more on the left than the right for some reason . Well , in fact , in fact , you're all heavily biased towards the right on the , on the one on your reports , really , very heavily , like , like 3 or 4 to 1 . I would have sworn that I was biased to the left . You have 1212 right and 6 . Left and you had 10 right and 4 left and uh of the ones you reported , you had 6 right and 2 left and the rest were no reports of both eyes . It was all very heavily by the right eye . That's very surprising . No , well , you know , while we're talking about that , I , it seems to me that uh . I would get a flash or a streak or whatever the phenomenon or whatever the shape was simultaneous with somebody else reporting . That's the next question . We , uh , uh , there were 3 from listening to the tapes , 3 events and it occurred in , in cases where , uh , different pairs were involved , uh , which were coincidences where I think in one case , uh , uh . Ed , you said , uh , flash , and then Al , you said simultaneous with him . I had a flash in the whole right eye . Now my question would be , uh , when you , when it was simultaneous , was it after he began speaking , or was it in fact , uh , was his words good enough for you to , to have been a mark on your flash ? Well , certainly within a fraction of a second , I think it was simultaneous . Yeah , the couple of times it happened to me , it was his mark or whoever's mark it was was good enough . Yeah , OK , same here . And , uh , then the next question is , uh , earlier before the session and when you were describing some of the subjective observations you mentioned the , uh , halos that you'd seen that you'd see a flash followed by , uh , and we finally got to take his halo off and put it away . The uh excuse me , I'm sorry . Now , the , uh , uh , the after effects , were they , were they present most of the time ? Did you see , did you have , uh , cognizance of , of a spike and then a sort of a glow afterwards ? Only on what I call the nova or the supernova . Is that true for you to do ? I didn't really noticed a halo effect myself . I , I guess I'm not sure what , what we're calling the , the , the halo effect . You mean a , a diffused , uh , brightness , more , more like an afterglow than halo . Did , did I call any of those ? I sure don't remember it . No , I think it described it . Yeah , I , I don't think I saw any of those . OK . And uh oh the other question we had was uh uh do you remember making any observations in lunar orbit ? Uh , it's not , I know there were no formal periods , but , uh , you know , I thought about that on the way back , and , uh , I was , I was so tired that night that I , I really don't remember seeing any flashes , but I , I didn't look for any either . So I , I guess the question would be , I , I consciously did not see any , but . I sure , that's , I , I , I wouldn't take that as a data point . OK , that's fine . Yeah . And then , uh , the final question that I have is , uh , after our formal session , uh , that was on , what was it about 191 GET , uh , you then had a sleep period later on . Do you remember whether you saw any during that period closer in ? It's significant whether you're inside the magneto pole or not . I don't consciously recall , but I don't really recall that there was any night except on the lunar surface that I didn't . At some time or another see some . You , you definitely , you didn't see any on the lunar surface ? I just , no , I don't remember about the lunar surface . There was precious little sleep that night anyhow , so . OK , well that's set all the questions on here . We douse the lights for a minute , get , uh , while , while you're dousing a lot , I have one additional question . Did you get the impression that light flashes could have been within the cabin or definitely within your eye ? Definitely within the eye . OK . The , uh , I wanna get some idea about orientation and , uh , and length of the streets . Did you ever see anything that No , I never did . The , uh , you , you use the uh terminology of uh 6 o'clock or hours of the clock . Does that mean to you , uh , when you say 6 o'clock to the center , about how long the streak is that ? That's a hard question to answer . Uh , if you are visualizing uh something about um . Oh , about the arm's length away from you . How long would you say your longest streak was ? That long ? Can you see my fingers ? I'll show them . Let me describe it a different way . Give you , it appeared to me that the things . Uh , I would say we're 3 or 4 inches away from my , my plane , whatever that means , and we're a couple of inches long . Tell us what it means a couple inches long and 3 or 4 inches in front of you and it , uh , it looked like this . Too long for me . See that one up above ? The one up above looks better . How about this ? Uh , probably fairly close . Yeah , I'd say that's probably about as close as the longest one . Let's see , I'm not sure what our , what our scale is here . I , I'd rather say that if I , if I'd consider whatever it may be , but the field of view of , say , my right eye and take a radius of that , that I'd put a streak at , uh , of about , uh , a half the radius would be the average streak . Half or a little longer . Um , OK , uh , you think , is there any way that you can , you can associate this length of straight to what you said too ? The monitor is charging or can yous . Well , it would depend on how big a circle I want to draw from my field of view . I , I , yeah , I saw streaks , uh , that long because uh . Because with my eyes closed , I , I imagine a rather big field of view here in my eye . So , uh , yeah , I'd , I'd see , I'd see streaks that long . And one time you said you saw streaks oriented in a certain direction . Do you remember that ? The way you had it , bring it on up that way . And Ed , what about you ? Well , I think I had them from several directions and I reported them as moving from one direction to the other at that time . There were several of them though . How about , uh , any particular direction up and down , left and right ? I didn't notice any , any preferred orientation . And here again , I think I try to express the , the , uh , the length of the arc of the flash in terms of the , of the peripheral field and if you're talking about a . A horizontal peripheral field as being somewhere in the vicinity of 150 to 160 degrees , then in some , in some cases the light flashes would go across as much as 50 or 60 degrees of that . Yeah , that's interesting . Were the light flashes broken in the center ? In some cases they were . In some cases I had the feeling it was two dots , one immediately following the other , giving the impression of right to left or top to bottom or bottom to top or . The point is , you see that the retina is so curved that if you draw a straight line , you can't get too long , long , you shouldn't be able to get too long a streak without breaking out of the retina again , you know , in the plane of the retina because it's shaped like that , but it has some depth , does it not ? Had it been any longer than that , uh , it just is , is on the retina . Can't hear that through a couple of portions . Can't hear you . It should not have been in any longer than what I showed you if you just went through the retina as one track , but if it went through a couple of eyes , then you'd have the impression of a long streak . That's why we're interested in the character . I have one more about the cloud that you saw . This is a new phenomenon which we hadn't expected . Can you describe this lightning behind the cloud ? Then I think it occurred . I reported it a couple of times , and it appeared , as I recall , to be down low on one eye or the other , and it was just a , a diffuse lighting . Any color ? White , silver . If you were out in the country and looking at the horizon and there was lightning behind a cloud , was it like that ? Except generally if you do that you can see a streak behind the cloud . This , there was no streak . It was just a diffuse lighting simulators when they get out . We , we have a little gizmo that'll simulate that sort of phosphene when you , when you get , get , when you get out of the , out of , out of quarantine , maybe have a look at it . I have one last attempt to try to do the cloud here . You douse the lights a minute . Good job . Oh yeah , they still we . Was it anything like that ? I didn't see it . It's pretty cloudy , right ? They have not darkened that , but I still don't see it . Um , I haven't seen anything on it yet . OK . I'll get it . OK . But what you're trying to describe is just what we used to call heat lightning as a . Yeah . As a kid . Uh yeah , it's a general , uh , diffused light . Yeah . You didn't see the relief of the cloud , did you ? Uh , no , not necessarily , no . It's just a , just a blob of light . The um one final question we did voice up to your question about um whether you you noticed any other uh sensations besides flashes , which was the reason for asking that was that if it was uh you know did you feel any tingling or or find yourself twitching or or hear anything . And the reason for that is that if it is an interaction back in the brain , then then your other senses are just about as sensitive as your visual sense and maybe you should feel something , but you never noticed that it didn't notice it . Didn't notice any sensation , but there's there's two things to think about . Did you notice your , your thumb itching or your lips twitching ? In particular , in particular . No , never looked for it either . Well , it's , you know , these are suggestive questions and the fact that you say no is , uh , significant . You can press on with different parts of the anatomy and you might get a yes , but . Anything to do with . Well , those are . Those are the two biggest cross sections for . I , I , I , you know , if there's something significant about your thumbs or your lips , uh , you ought , maybe you should warn , uh , people to look for that , uh , because , uh , I don't know , unless it's going to be so obvious that , that , if you would . Are you seeing itch all over ? Well , sometimes you might think you should be , feel very comfortable . OK , we , we're in . Thanks very much . So I think um I think I said to Ed yesterday that you really did provide a an enormously improved metadata on this phenomenon that we've had in any previous flights , that's great . Well , I would , I would add this to that , I think that's the way you really have to go is to take a definite period , set it aside and do it because otherwise it's so random and uh so many other things going through your mind that uh . It's the only way you gaining quantitative , however , you , you did a remarkable job of concentrating on it for that length of time . Uh , do you , do you , uh , feel that that was being unreasonable to ask you to do that without you going to sleep or something like that ? No , it's a pretty boring thing to do , you're sitting there lying watching them . You think we , you know , we should be , uh , that we're that in planning for , for doing this sort of thing on future missions that we should be , uh , we shouldn't try and do much more than we try to , to , to get you to do because it's just too much just to sit there lying there trying to concentrate for that length of time . Well , if you can find a time period during the flight when , uh , when they have , when the kids don't have anything else to do , I think it's reasonable to suggest that , yeah . Uh-huh . I don't think I would do it , uh , before a sleep period or when they're tired or they'll go to sleep on you . Yeah , you know , I think along that line , Phil , by the time you've , if you , you know , talk a little bit pre-flight like we did , then , uh , and then you know the phenomena is there because , you know , your first sleep period or the first time you get the spacecraft dark and close your eyes , you're going to see flashes and , uh , so then that , you know , sort of sparks your curiosity a little more and then when they say let's settle down and , and count them , well , I think you're agreeable to it . Um . You OK ? One other comment on that , and I'm not even sure that it's related , but I really think that this is just a general impression that if I would look at look at the glove or the wristwatch or something like that and then close my eyes again , I'd almost always see a flash , and I tried then to correlate looking at say a crack through the . Through the window shade or looking at my watch or something and then closing my eyes and I really came to the impression that the 2 may have been correlated , but I never really looked at it enough to To say that for sure , but I think there was a correlation between seeing a light or something like this and then closing your eyes , and pretty soon you'd pick up that flash . That's , that's an important observation . If the action is directly in the bipore or the retina cells , the outer segment , you might expect it to behave the way electrical phosphenes do rather than than just from light , which takes dark adaption . What do you think about that , Ed ? I'm not quite sure what your point is . I was going to make the comment that , uh , with respect to the flashes . Putting the flashlight in my eyes did not seem to destroy my dark adaptation . Uh , now what that means I don't know . Did you do like that ? Yeah , that slow or that fast ? Yeah , for some time . You certainly wiped out some of the nerves . I wiped out something . I wiped it all out . I'm not sure that's true , Chuck . How , how long did you do it ? You should wipe it all out . Uh , oh , a couple of minutes , 1 minute , 1 minute back and forth like this , about 5 seconds per track something like that . Yeah , hey , hey , you know , I , I know what you're saying though is that the reason you think you didn't knock it all out is because you can still see the flashes . Is that what you're saying ? Well , the cockpit looked different . Remember , I was doing this eyes open and , uh , it seemed like . With just what I consider dark adaptation that I was more dark adapted . Uh , that I dark adapted much sooner after doing that than I did when we started the experiment . Yeah , you would , I , yeah , yeah , sure , yeah , that you would do because you wipe out the cubs less with that just with the flashing you do with the tungsten light or something else . Hey , I'd , I'd like to make sure on this dark adaptation now I know during the , uh , during the formal , uh , 1 hour or 40 minutes , whatever it was that Ed was was shining the light , but I don't know whether you picked it up on air to ground or not , but I had done that prior to that during one of the sleep periods and there's there's just , you do not have to be dark adapted to see these beau . I think that's a conclusion from what Ed's . That's a very significant data point because it almost certainly proves that it's not a real light in your eye generated in your eye . It's actually an interaction . Yeah , but why did it take us so long when we started the experiment before we saw anything ? It was quite a while . And yet when I wiped the light across my eyes within 30 or 40 seconds , there they were again . 17 minutes . Pardon , 17 minutes . Yeah , but when I did it with the flashlight within 30 or 40 seconds they were right there again . You said that they were fainter . They seemed fainter than they had on previous previous times that you'd observed them , and there definitely is a threshold effect of some sort because you saw twice as many during that period as the other two did . And I think maybe it's just my guess was when I , when you didn't see them and then you started to see them regularly , was that it was just that they are fainter , they seem fainter than you expected , and so it took you a while to sort of get your attention down to to to to fainter ones than what you were looking for . Well , that may be that may be the case , except they did indeed appear fainter in the beginning . And it wasn't a matter of of looking for fainter objects . They were brighter after , after a while . And for you , Al , and they didn't diminish in brightness when I did the flashlight across my eyes . They were still just as bright 30 seconds later as they had been before I used the flashlight . And that's why I'm questioning the dark adaptation bit . I . Either I didn't wipe the dark adaptation out , or there is something related to dark adaptation that influences the phenomenon . I don't understand it . It doesn't make sense . That doggone time period that we did it and and the few flashes we saw was very surprising to me , and , and we talked about this and we commented on it at the time . Boy , it seemed like , you know , you'd wake up during a sleep period . And they were all over the place . Now here again , maybe I'd lose track of time , you know , you're laying there in the dark cabin and maybe it was longer than what I thought , but it just seemed like that , you know , there's abundance of flashes , and I was amazed when it took 17 minutes to see a flash . I thought any time that you wanted to close your eyes you were going to and concentrate on it , you were going to , you were going to see these things . That's why I suggest that you really ought to set a time period aside because it is such a random function as far as I'm concerned that . To try to do it , uh , on a non-quantitative basis is off the top . plus the fact that I think that , uh , That each individual is going to report at different , uh , levels of activity too . I had a feeling there was maybe some little faint things that I would sort of see that I didn't want to talk about because I couldn't define them as a flash . Yeah , I had those too . So , uh I , I think , I think also it's a good idea to do it this way because you're subjective , Your impression is not necessarily right . Like you felt that you were , you saw more of them in your left eye than your right , and that wasn't true . It was wrong . So we need to get the data real time . When you go to sleep at night , do you see any of these things ? Most people do see something as they're going to sleep in a darkened room . They can't get to sleep right away down here . Uh , I think everybody does . I don't know . Yeah , you , you , you got lights blinking around , you know , in your eyes if you get in a real dark room occasionally , but , uh , and , and maybe it's because we've never really concentrated on looking for this particular type of phenomenon . These phenomena that you saw were different from the ones that you , you see once in a while . Oh , definitely . It's a lot more frequent . Yeah . No question about that . How about in brightness ? About what ? Right . It's hard to say . Yeah , I guess we'll , I'll , I'll make a note to , to , to see if I see any of those , you know , uh , from here on , uh , but I certainly haven't since we've been back , uh , but here again , and , and Ed mentioned this , and I , and I agree with him , but it's another subjective thing that the flashes you see when you wake up in the middle of the night as a whole appear to be brighter than the flashes as a whole during that experiment that we did . During the during the day . And , and I'm like , I , I was a little reluctant to call anything except a very positive flash during that during that time frame . You know , I wanted to make really sure that that was indeed . A mark at the time that I called it , but those that you saw during the middle of the night appeared to be brighter and like I say , appeared to be more of them . But here again , you know , you may lay there for an hour and you think it's 55 , 10 minutes or something . I don't know . Maybe , maybe you lose track of the time , but It's a subjective thing . It saw one blue flash . Did anyone else see color ? No . Uh , wait a minute . No , that wasn't blue . It was a , a silver . A blue white sort of like a blue diamond , you say like a blue diamond was that the brightest that you saw ? I don't recall it was the brightest , no . Ha , has , has anybody been hit in the head and seen stars you were these anything like that ? Yeah , I think I'm more concentrating on the pain . When you , when you go to bed tonight , if you in a dark room , if you just knuckle your eyeballs , you should see flashes , and it might be worth trying that to see whether they look like the same sort of , we cry a lot in here . OK , no , I'll say , you know , if you can get the next cruises interested , uh , Phil , you know it makes a great topic of conversation , and , you know , during the flight you've got nothing else to talk about . You can talk about light flashes , so you know I think if you get the get the crew's curiosity aroused , boy , it's a good deal . Well , I think the , the pressure on the subject which has built up is such that there will be some formal experiment on the way to go . OK . Thanks very much . Thank you . Thank you . We're all good . Now we'll , we'll keep back in touch with you and let you know what we're gonna do with this other thing and what we're gonna do , how things are coming time wise for the . for the for the tolling , you know , you know what the , the date is , you know what the time is now ? 0 7:31 on Saturday the . Oh . Is it a release time you mean ? Yeah . Work on springing this early , Chuck . Somebody said that , uh , 21 days ended up on Saturday morning , yeah . Yeah . I would've been led to believe otherwise , Chuck . In the debriefing plan , it says 0800 the 26th on Friday . Deke says we get out , uh , uh , Friday morning . Yeah , he , he called yesterday . Yeah , he called me last night . He says , How the hell did we ever get this number in here ? I said , I don't know where you got that number , but well , the radiation people are here . We're talking about release and all that kind of business . Can we get a hack on when they're going to get total body counts ?