Falling to Earth - Bay Area Science Festival November 4, 2011

Al Worden was Commander of the Apollo 15 mission that flew to the moon in 1971. He piloted the Command Module alone for three days orbiting the moon, while his fellow astronauts collected samples and conducted experiments on the lunar surface. Nine months after his return from the moon, Worden received a phone call telling him he was fired and ordering him out of his office by the end of the week. He refused to leave. What happened in those nine months, from being honored with parades and meetings with world leaders to being unceremoniously fired, has been a source of much speculation for four decades. Worden has never before told the entire story around the dramatic events that shook NASA and ended his spaceflight career. In his upcoming book, Falling to Earth, Worden recounts them fully for the first time, in a candid account of what it was like to be an Apollo astronaut, with all its glory, and pitfalls.

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