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

But there are other factors that make calculating the distance of future Artemis missions a little complicated. These considerations center on orbital dynamics. The Moon’s 27-day orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle. On average, the distance between the centers of the Earth and the Moon ranges between about 225,800 and 252,000 miles (363,400 to 405,500 km). The Sun’s gravitational influence throws the Moon’s orbit into a constant state of change. Sometimes the Moon’s perigee, or nearest point to Earth, is closer than average. Similarly, the Moon’s apogee stretches farther from Earth on some orbits. The Moon’s apogee can reach as far as 252,727 miles (406,725 km). The Moon’s orbit only touches this distance about once every 5,000 years, but it routinely gets close (within 100 km, or 62 miles, three times between now and 2040). A NASA website explains all of this in extensive detail. Suffice it to say, it is impossible to predict when humans might break the Artemis II distance record. NASA planned to place the Gateway mini-space station into a so-called near-rectilinear halo orbit looping as close as 1,900 miles (3,000 km) and as far as 43,500 miles (70,000 km) from the Moon, opening up opportunities for astronauts to reach greater distances from Earth than Artemis II. This is where NASA planned to send future Artemis crews to meet up with lunar landers to carry them to the Moon’s south pole. The space agency has now canceled Gateway to focus on building a base on the lunar surface, where astronauts can learn to harvest resources like water, live in partial gravity, and prove out technologies for future expeditions to Mars. The bottom line: Astronauts likely won’t exceed Artemis II’s distance from Earth on most lunar landing missions, but it’s conceivable that on some occasions, circumstances will align to propel a crew a little beyond the 252,756-mile mark. The sure bet will come when someone finally takes aim at Mars. Ars: Was the distance record ever a big deal to you? Haise: Somebody figured out how to get it in Guinness to make us feel better because we didn’t land. That was the big disappointment. I hoped to walk on the Moon, and that went away. If you look at the so-called distance record, all the orbits around the Moon, all the missions that went, were 60 miles or so [from the Moon]. If you take our flight, it just so happened that the Moon was a little farther away. The Moon doesn’t go in a circle. It’s an ellipse, so it was kind of at its farthest point from Earth, and we were only a little above the normal orbit. It wasn’t a big deal. It just coincided with the fact that the Moon was farther away from the Earth. Ars: Are you surprised your record stood for as long as it did? Haise: It’s a surprise, mainly because our US government hasn’t supported programs to get us back. The average citizen I know and talk to a lot, they somehow think NASA has a big pot of gold somewhere that they can just use to do whatever they want. They don’t realize that to get monies to do things, be it unmanned research, satellite programs or whatever, including any manned program, it requires getting money from Congress and through the annual budgeting cycle. NASA spent [nearly] 25 or 30 years making this [Orion] capsule. They finally got it made. The Artemis I mission, when did they fly? It was two-and-a-half years ago, without people, right? And here it is, the first time it’s ever flown with people. That’s the nature of the business in space. Apollo was, uniquely, I would say, the only program that was fully funded, supported from the president through Congress from the start to achieving the goal, which was to land by the end of the decade. Even then, the funding started getting cut. That’s the nature of the business. But the average person I talk to, a lot of them are children, of course. I don’t expect them to know that. But a lot of the citizens I talk to, they have absolutely no idea of how a program is spawned and how it’s budgeted to keep it alive and make it happen. 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. Going around the Moon, after we finished that burn, and Jack [Swigert] and I were tourists. We got out our cameras and put color and black and white film packs in it, and shot a lot of pictures. We got pictures with a little better resolution, but still didn’t get anywhere near like they’ve taken on Artemis II. Hopefully, some of their pictures are near the South Pole, which is where it’s hoped that we’ll land someday and actually have a lunar base, close to the water ice in some of the craters near the South Pole. Ars: Did you have an opportunity to take in the view at the Moon? Haise: Jim (Lovell) wasn’t as interested as I was. He was too disappointed about not landing, and he had been already once. So he had seen the Moon quite a bit on Apollo 8, when they went around a number of orbits. Ars: Did you have a chance to meet with any of the Artemis II astronauts before they flew? Haise: I had lunch with Victor Glover one time after he had flown the Dragon capsule, the second flight in the Dragon. I wanted to know a little bit about Dragon. I met the commander [Reid Wiseman] at an event one time in Houston, and that was quite a while ago. It was before his wife passed away. In fact, she was at the luncheon also. I met Christina Koch, the youngest member of the crew, a couple of times. She very nicely came to speak at the Memorial Tree ceremony for [Apollo 15 astronaut] Al Worden [at Johnson Space Center in Houston]. Al was head of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. He was the chairman when she was given an award that helped her with education funding. So she appreciated that, and came and spoke at Al’s event, and then I met her again at Jim Lovell’s son’s house. Jeffrey [Lovell], he lives in Houston here, and he hosted an event at his house, again, trying to draw in some people he had invited to help fund the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which gives out over 30 scholarships a year. Ars: What else stands out to you about the Artemis II mission? Haise: My commander, as you know, recorded a message for the crew with his son, Jeffrey, and his daughter, Susan. Unfortunately, Jim passed away, but the message was read up to them. I was FaceTiming with Jim at least once a week over the years, and he unfortunately passed away last year. Ars: That was very poignant. There have been a lot of touching moments on this mission. Haise: One of the biggest values, I feel, is the photography. Hopefully, they got good photography of the proposed eventual landing places. But the biggest value of all, and this is underplayed in the media, is this was a test flight. Who rode the rocket before? Nobody. How many humans have ridden in that capsule? Nobody. So they tested the capsule … to make sure it’s OK, testing all its variety of systems and making sure everything is working. To me, it was a great test pilot mission. Everybody’s got so excited about some pictures, which is good, but to me, I was a test pilot, so that’s the way I look at the mission. This was a great test pilot mission. Ars: This mission seems to have captured a lot of public interest. I’m sure you can understand that after everything that’s been written about Apollo 13. Haise: Apollo 13, to young people, when they hear a little bit about the story in school, it’s like a folktale, a survival folktale, much like many you may read about, like Shackleton’s sailing ship that got trapped in the ice. Apollo 13 has gotten to be in the same class as that. That makes it interesting.