During the hour and a half it would take for Intrepid to rendezvous, Commander
Pete Conrad asked Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean if he would like to take a
minute and fly Intrepid. The fact was that even though Bean was called the
"lunar module pilot," all the flying was done by the
commander. While other commanders may not have thought of or allowed
it, Conrad had the compassion to share a flying experience that most astronauts
would never know. When Alan Bean questioned the fact that Mission Control might
find out, it became apparent that Conrad had this all planned out; they were on
the backside of the moon and no one would know. So for a brief few minutes, on
the backside of the moon, Alan Bean became a true lunar module pilot thanks to
his good friend, Pete Conrad.
 Back in lunar orbit, the dust the lunar explorers had brought in with them
began to float, thick enough to be visible in the cabin. After the two
spacecraft had docked, they attempted to vacuum up the dust, with little
success. When command module pilot Dick Gordon opened the tunnel to the LM, he
saw two dim figures floating in a cloud of dust. He refused to allow them back
in to mess up his "nice clean spacecraft," possibly because it might cause
electrical problems or possibly to harass his friends that he was so happy to
see. So he made Conrad and Bean remove and package their filthy suits, hoping
to minimize contamination of the command module.
In spite of their efforts, considerable dust clung to everything they brought
back and remained suspended in the atmosphere; the environmental control system
seemed not to filter it out as completely as had been expected. With little
time left before they had to jettison the lunar module, Conrad and Bean
strapped themselves into their command module seats the same way they had
entered the world...naked.
Intrepid, now a useless hulk, still had one more contribution to make to the
scientific objectives of the mission. For the benefit of seismologists wanting
to calibrate the instrument that Conrad and Bean had just left on the moon,
Mission Control now burned the empty spacecraft's remaining fuel to take it out
of orbit. At a speed of 1.67 kilometers per second (3,735 miles per hour) the
ascent stage plowed into the moon 76 kilometers (47 miles) east-southeast of
the instrument package, producing a bizarre response: the seismometer recorded
vibrations that persisted almost undiminished for nearly an hour. It was so
completely unlike anything ever seen on earth that seismologists had no
immediate explanation. One scientist compared the result to striking a church
bell and hearing the reverberations for 30 minutes.
Yankee Clipper stayed in lunar orbit for 11 more revolutions, finishing up
photography and landmark tracking, looking at sites being considered for Apollo
14 and 15. Then the crew boosted their spacecraft out of lunar orbit and
settled in for the three-day voyage home.
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