Joseph Allen

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1985, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is an American astronaut, one for whom spacewalking seems to have no terrors. It's Joseph Allen.

Presenter0:38

Doctor Allen, which of the United States are you from?

Joseph Allen0:41

I'm from the State of Indiana. Are you fond of music? I am very fond of music.

Presenter0:46

Now tell me, when you're on the space shuttle, do you have any music? Can you get some piped up from below or do you have some on board?

Joseph Allen0:54

The answer is yes to both questions.

Joseph Allen0:57

We do hear just bits and pieces of music occasionally that come up from below.

Joseph Allen1:02

Normally, however, we carry on board cassettes, just very normal, ordinary cassettes that we play in cassette players very much like a Walkman.

Presenter1:12

Yeah.

Joseph Allen1:13

We do not play them aloud in the spaceship only because some people might not not like that particular selection or someone else might be trying to catch a quick nap, but we play them with earphones.

Presenter1:24

Of course every single ounce counts, so you're presumably to a very limited number of cassettes.

Joseph Allen1:30

We are we take uh six per person. But uh the the space shuttle carries uh four, five, six.

Joseph Allen1:37

Even seven people at one time, so that's quite a few cassettes aboard for any one mission.

Presenter1:42

Well, you've got, in a way, the same problem here. You're choosing disks for a desert island.

Presenter1:47

What's the first one you've got there? Just eight of them.

Joseph Allen1:50

The first that I will take with me is a country and western recording sung by Whelan Jennings, and the title is My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys. Is that true? That is in a sense true. I grew up in the state of Indiana, as I mentioned.

Joseph Allen2:07

There are many people that work on farms and ranches around Indiana, and my home now is in Houston, Texas, and certainly Texas is the land of ranches and cowboys.

Speaker 42:17

My heroes have always been cowboys

Speaker 42:25

And they still are, it seems.

Speaker 42:30

Sadly in search of

Speaker 42:33

One stepping back of themselves and the slow moving tree.

Presenter2:42

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys by Weyland Jennings.

Presenter2:46

So brought up in Indiana, Joe, one of a big family?

Presenter2:50

Yeah.

Joseph Allen2:50

I have one sibling, a brother, a younger brother, who is a physician.

Presenter2:55

What was your first ambition?

Joseph Allen2:57

I decided as a young man to become a teacher, and I've always enjoyed uh thinking about that, and I in fact studied at the university to be a teacher of science and physics.

Presenter3:06

Now you read physics at Yale. What were your other university interests?

Joseph Allen3:09

I en enjoyed sports of various kinds a squash, a sport that we call handball,

Joseph Allen3:16

I enjoyed photography.

Joseph Allen3:19

And uh I enjoyed music.

Presenter3:20

You moved on to do some postgraduate work at the University of Washington. Is that a.

Presenter3:25

A university with special scientific and physical amenities.

Joseph Allen3:33

It is known perhaps primarily for engineering and in fact a very large American corporation, the Boeing Corporation, that manufactures many, many aircraft used around the world, is located right there and supports the engineering study very heavily and and properly. So

Joseph Allen3:49

It for me was a chance to be a researcher in a cyclotron laboratory, a laboratory that sometimes is called one that houses an atom smasher. That's the sort of thing I worked on. I was an experimentalist. We did experiments on the the nucleus of atoms.

Presenter4:03

Yeah.

Presenter4:06

And then?

Joseph Allen4:06

And then I had the opportunity to go with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the the NASA, as a scientist astronaut.

Joseph Allen4:16

and I did so in nineteen sixty seven

Joseph Allen4:19

which was right at the time that the Apollo program was entering its most interesting phase.

Joseph Allen4:25

While

Joseph Allen4:26

A young worker at NASA I performed as a support crewman.

Joseph Allen4:31

On the Apollo flights. Now that's not the person that goes in case someone else breaks a leg. It's still another echelon down. But much of the interesting work of Apollo.

Joseph Allen4:41

Was being done by support crewmen, so that was quite a challenge and a very exciting time for me. And then Apollo came to an end.

Joseph Allen4:49

And we were starting to design the space shuttle.

Joseph Allen4:53

I did not.

Joseph Allen4:54

actually enter in the design because I was a physicist by training, not a a designer and engineer per se. So I decided to put the astronaut business on the shelf for a little while.

Joseph Allen5:05

I moved to Washington DC.

Joseph Allen5:07

And I work

Joseph Allen5:09

Together with the administrator of the country, starting with the President of the United States down to the NASA Administrator.

Joseph Allen5:16

Hand in hand with the Congress.

Joseph Allen5:18

in what it is that the United States should do with regard to space exploration.

Joseph Allen5:24

and space utilization.

Joseph Allen5:26

and I d I did that for several years,

Joseph Allen5:29

It was, however, politics, and I decided I'd better get into a safer line of work.

Presenter5:34

Yeah.

Joseph Allen5:34

And so I went back to becoming an astronaut.

Presenter5:37

Let's have your second record. What's that tweet?

Joseph Allen5:39

The New World Symphony by Dvorak

Joseph Allen5:43

He of course was a Czech, a very well known composer, but the New World Symphony is about America, and I'm very fond of this record because one of the first times I listened to it

Joseph Allen5:54

Closely, I was in an airplane many years ago flying over the Grand Canyon, and the airplane was in those days a new fangled one. It had a sound system aboard and was playing the New World Symphony as we flew above the Grand Canyon. I'll never forget it.

Presenter7:14

The second movement of Vochak's New World Symphony.

Presenter7:18

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Carion.

Presenter7:22

You have advanced training going on all the time with a with a lot of people all hoping that they'll be next go aloft.

Presenter7:32

A great amount of testing going on, and you're working in simulators. Now, how accurate is a simulator? Does it really give

Presenter7:40

an impression of what it's going to be like.

Joseph Allen7:43

Roy, it certainly does give a good impression not a complete impression, mind you, but a simulator is in many ways like a Hollywood version of a space flight as experienced from within the spaceship itself.

Joseph Allen7:57

When we go into the simulator, as we do at 8 o'clock nearly every morning for a number of hours during the course of the day, we practice in the simulator various phases of the flight, like the launch, the landing, and then various phases while we're there in orbit. All the while, though, we don't feel the g-forces of acceleration, even though we may be practicing the liftoff.

Joseph Allen8:20

We do hear the rockets, but they're of course just loudspeakers outside that are making the noise of rockets.

Speaker 18:26

Yeah.

Joseph Allen8:26

And most importantly, all the dials, gauges and switches in the simulator actually do work. They send out signals to computers outside that are generating this Hollywood version of a space flight and are making things operate properly. We can in fact even look out the windows of the simulator. They're not really windows. They are television tubes of a sort.

Joseph Allen8:52

And on the television displays we see the earth below us, or the landing strip on which we're to land, or for that matter a satellite perhaps, just ahead of us that we're supposed to fly over to and rescue. You don't get the G Force.

Presenter9:04

Yeah. Neither do you get the sense of

Joseph Allen9:06

The most important observation being that we cannot make ourselves experience zero gravity or this perpetual floating

Joseph Allen9:15

As long as we're here on the surface of the Earth, there's always a gravity that was recognized by Sir Isaac Newton, and there's no way really we can get away from it.

Joseph Allen9:24

or balance out the force of it until we get up to the speed that carries us into orbit.

Presenter9:30

Now before an astronaut is allowed into space, how many hundred hours should he have done in the simulator?

Joseph Allen9:36

Hundreds. It it varies from individual to individual. Before John Young and Bob Crippen flew the space shuttle for the very first time, they had each amassed upwards of one thousand hours of practice.

Presenter9:49

Mm-hmm.

Joseph Allen9:50

before they left the ground the first time in the space shuttle.

Presenter9:53

That's impressive.

Joseph Allen9:54

Very, very impressive number. And of course, in many ways it's like being a slow student because you go over and over and over the assignment until you absolutely get it right in every respect.

Presenter10:04

But it's important that it must be automatic.

Joseph Allen10:06

Yes, uh you really don't have the luxury of thinking at great length about a problem if it occurs during a space flight. You must know exactly what to do and how to do it.

Joseph Allen10:19

and go through the procedure step by step.

Joseph Allen10:22

You may be interested to know that we we do take reminders aboard to how the spacecraft is flown.

Joseph Allen10:28

We officially call it the flight data file.

Joseph Allen10:31

Astronauts refer to it jokingly sometimes as the owner's manual for the space shuttle, but the flight data file consists not of just a book, but a number of books, checklists, cue cards and reminders, a total of which weighs, not in space but on the ground, 55 pounds. So we carry 55 pounds of books into orbit with us.

Presenter10:53

Next record p

Joseph Allen10:53

Yes.

Joseph Allen10:54

The next record I would definitely take along.

Joseph Allen10:57

A one entitled Journal, October. It's an album in fact.

Joseph Allen11:02

done by the artist David Darling.

Joseph Allen11:05

And I will confess to you, Roy, that I have a very

Joseph Allen11:08

Personal interest in the recording artist David who performs and has also written composed the music, He is my brother-in-law.

Presenter11:15

Ha.

Joseph Allen11:16

He has many, many fans, but I'm one of his most faithful and most enthusiastic.

Joseph Allen11:21

I'd like to uh listen, if we could, to one of the cuts on the record entitled Minor Blue.

Presenter11:58

David Dunning playing Minor Blue.

Presenter12:02

So the real thing at last, you're going up into space, your first trip.

Presenter12:07

Yeah.

Joseph Allen12:07

We're awakened about five hours before the blast off, and we're now on a very carefully controlled schedule because we don't want to be late for the launch.

Joseph Allen12:16

And

Joseph Allen12:17

Almost every launch should go at a precise moment, that moment we call or at least during several moments of time that we call the window.

Joseph Allen12:25

A window is determined by many things. It may be determined by the position of the sun, the position of a satellite that we're going up to rendezvous with.

Joseph Allen12:34

any number of things, but in each case

Joseph Allen12:37

The orbiting of satellites or the moving of the earth around the sun does not tolerate the tardiness of.

Joseph Allen12:44

Humankind on the ground, so we want to be very certain that we're ready when that window approaches.

Joseph Allen12:50

We're wakened about five hours, we eat,

Joseph Allen12:52

We get dressed in rather ordinary looking flight suits, no longer space suits of the sort worn by astronauts many years ago. We have a a last review of the weather all around the world, not just at the landing site, because one never knows where you might come down.

Joseph Allen13:07

We fill our pockets with the necessary equipment that we've laid out carefully the night before, and then we enter the space ship, the space shuttle itself, about two hours before the blast off is to take place.

Presenter13:18

So you're sitting there for two hours rather nervously, but I suppose you've got plenty to do.

Joseph Allen13:22

There's several things to do and we're we're watching closely. We're listening to the chatter coming over the voice loops to us. We're quite interested in that because we hope that everything proceeds smoothly.

Joseph Allen13:33

Propellant is still being placed aboard the space shuttle at that time and

Joseph Allen13:37

When we go out to it, it's already very unlike any simulation because the ship itself creaks and groans and steam is coming out not steam really, but the mists from the cryogenic fuels loaded aboard.

Joseph Allen13:51

And it seems to have a personality in life.

Joseph Allen13:55

of its own that we've never seen before as we approach it.

Joseph Allen13:58

We go down through all the checks, and that occupies many of those minutes of time. And still there are a few gaps in that where we can sit and think as to what may be coming next. And and largely it's one not of fear or anxiety, but one of great anticipation.

Presenter14:14

The noise of blast off must be rather alarming.

Joseph Allen14:16

It definitely gets your attention immediately.

Joseph Allen14:19

You know, you're on your way someplace. You hope it's up. Yeah. And.

Joseph Allen14:24

You know, we we ignite the three main engines underneath the space shuttle simultaneously.

Joseph Allen14:30

Let them burn for about two seconds while we check using computers, that they've come right up to their proper thrust.

Joseph Allen14:37

And if that is the case, the computers automatically send the signals to light the very large white rockets on the side, two of those rockets.

Joseph Allen14:46

And

Joseph Allen14:47

Release the hold down arms.

Presenter14:49

And then the pressure starts.

Joseph Allen14:50

All of that happens at once and you really can feel the whole vehicle shake, shudder and then continue to vibrate in a rather dramatic and in in a way, a violent but controlled surge forward. And up we go.

Presenter15:05

How long does the pressure last?

Joseph Allen15:07

We accelerate to three g's of force so we weigh three times our normal weight for exactly two minutes.

Joseph Allen15:13

whereupon the white rockets are exhausted, they burn out,

Joseph Allen15:16

There's an enormous flash of light outside and uh quite a loud explosive sound, which uh once again uh gets your attention even more.

Joseph Allen15:25

But then you realize that the main engines continue to burn and you continue accelerating out more smoothly now, with not so much fire and brimstone, for a total of eight and a half minutes. Then, when those main engines cut off at the end of the eight and a half minutes,

Joseph Allen15:39

It is a very sharp cut off, so you go from weighing three times your normal weight and within one second's time you weighed absolutely nothing at all.

Presenter15:49

And then you're in orbit.

Presenter15:51

How many trips have you made, Joe?

Joseph Allen15:53

I've uh been to space two times, for six days on the first journey and for uh nearly eight days on the second voyage.

Presenter16:01

How long does a circuit of the earth take?

Joseph Allen16:03

Very close to one and a half hours, ninety minutes. So during that time you travel at the speed of eighteen thousand miles an hour about, or another way to look at it, every second that ticks by you go over five miles on the ground.

Presenter16:19

Is visibility of the earth always good?

Joseph Allen16:21

It's beautiful. For 45 minutes of that hour and a half's time, it's gorgeous because that, of course, is the daytime. And then suddenly.

Joseph Allen16:31

Almost instantly the brightly lighted earth becomes black because we've gone from the sun side to the dark side of the earth.

Joseph Allen16:40

And then during that time, the next forty five minutes, it's night time, and then we can very clearly see the lights of cities.

Presenter16:47

Let's get back to music, Joe. What next?

Joseph Allen16:49

I've uh selected one of the numbers on uh a favorite album of mine, which in fact was composed right here in the City of London.

Joseph Allen16:58

for the very popular production Cats.

Joseph Allen17:02

I enjoy nearly every number on this, but I have selected the one entitled Memory.

Speaker 417:09

Eight night.

Speaker 417:11

Not a sound from the pavement

Speaker 417:16

Has the moon lost her memory?

Speaker 417:20

She is smiling alone.

Speaker 417:25

In the lambland.

Speaker 417:29

The withered leaves collect at my feet

Speaker 417:34

And the win.

Presenter17:39

Elaine Page singing Memory from Cats.

Presenter17:43

Now on your second trip aloft, Joe,

Presenter17:45

The ultimate development of spacewalking.

Presenter17:50

Why?

Joseph Allen17:51

You're referring, I know, Roy, to the rather exciting assignment we had on my second mission.

Joseph Allen17:58

to recover two satellites that at first appeared to be lost in space.

Joseph Allen18:04

They were in fact our communication satellites that had set out

Joseph Allen18:10

February of 1984, rather normal looking ascent into space aboard the space shuttle and then quite a normal deployment from the space shuttle.

Joseph Allen18:19

But each of these satellites individually, once deployed,

Joseph Allen18:23

proved to have a faulty rocket motor attached to them, a rocket motor that is

Joseph Allen18:30

Necessary to put a communication satellite from the Space Shuttle low Earth orbit to the much higher geosynchronous orbit from which communication satellites must work.

Joseph Allen18:40

But these two, although they were perfectly good satellites, wound up being not lost in space, but just in the wrong place in space. And the sad fact was

Joseph Allen18:50

They were of no use to their owners at that moment, and their owners set about collecting insurance because the satellites were valued at around one hundred eighty million dollars.

Presenter19:01

Wow.

Joseph Allen19:02

They

Joseph Allen19:03

However, we're not lost. We realized in the next few months we knew exactly where they were, and they might be quite retrievable. And in fact, that was the mission that I set out.

Presenter19:09

And it's

Joseph Allen19:12

on with that assignment together with four of my crewmates to see if we couldn't get those two satellites back.

Joseph Allen19:18

We went right up smartly from our launch site in Cape Kennedy, spent several days in orbit.

Joseph Allen19:24

Deploying satellites. So this was not just a recovery mission. We actually delivered some cargo to orbit, and as long as we were there with now an empty cargo bay,

Joseph Allen19:34

and in the right place, we maneuvered the space shuttle over to where the lost satellites were and uh set out to get them.

Presenter19:42

Now stepping off into space, just like that.

Presenter19:46

I'm sure you must get the sensation that you're going to fall when you leave the spaceship.

Joseph Allen19:49

Well

Joseph Allen19:50

You would think so, but in fact you don't. When we we go outside the spaceship

Joseph Allen19:54

First of all, we're quite accustomed by then to floating. We've after all been floating inside the space shuttle for a number of days, so we continue to float even outside the spaceship.

Joseph Allen20:04

And when we're working in the payload bay, we're very carefully tethered to the spaceship. We use a very thin, almost invisible cable, but believe me, it is quite strong. So we're much like a mountain climber.

Joseph Allen20:17

Even if we were to float away, we're in good position because we just reach for the cable, give a gentle tug, and pull ourselves right back to something firm that we can grab on to.

Joseph Allen20:27

Now when we went out to get the satellites, however, we unfastened that safety cable.

Joseph Allen20:32

and instead used this rather remarkable backpack.

Joseph Allen20:37

That looks like it comes straight out of Buck Rogers in science fiction. In fact, it works exactly as engineers had planned for it to work.

Joseph Allen20:47

When I flew that, I could just by using controls there at your hands.

Joseph Allen20:52

fly myself forwards or backwards, up or down, or side to side, and point myself in any direction.

Joseph Allen20:59

as though I were on the world's most complicated magic carpet, and I could fly right over to the satellites as I did.

Joseph Allen21:06

I uh was carrying a tool that I used to grab the satellite, and it worked beautifully.

Presenter21:11

What's the size of the satellite?

Joseph Allen21:12

They're quite large, about seven feet in diameter, nine or ten feet long, so they're like a rather large, very exquisitely fashioned tin can of sort.

Joseph Allen21:25

We captured them, and then later you literally could steer them around with one finger. Now the fact that they on the ground have a weight of one thousand two hundred pounds means that in zero gravity, even though they don't weigh anything, they do resist being pushed around. They have inertia.

Joseph Allen21:41

It's exactly the sort of thing that comes straight out of Newton's equations, which I won't bore anyone with right now, I hope, myself included. But those equations are perfectly applicable right there, speeding over the earth, and it's exactly that information that we use to get the satellites.

Presenter21:57

How far apart were the two satellites that you got?

Joseph Allen21:59

nearly 800 miles. So we got one on one day and then we rested for a day and planned how we were to get the second satellite and then

Joseph Allen22:08

on uh the second attempt, moved our space shuttle the necessary eight hundred miles or so to catch up with the second satellite and then went after it.

Presenter22:16

That was a wonderful achievement, Eleanor.

Joseph Allen22:17

We were very pleased and

Presenter22:19

I bet Lloyds will please.

Joseph Allen22:20

Lloyds was pleased, and mister Stephen Merritt at Lloyds, who had quite a large interest in the the recovery, was very pleased indeed, which is one reason that we've been in London visiting with the Lloyds people and kind of rejoicing with them that all of us were successful.

Presenter22:35

Another record. What next?

Joseph Allen22:37

A soundtrack from a movie that's a a favorite of mine, The Big Chill,

Joseph Allen22:42

And uh the particular piece on that soundtrack is a well known record.

Joseph Allen22:46

A Joy to the World by Three Dog Knight

Speaker 422:50

Uh

Speaker 423:16

Joe

Presenter23:19

Joy to the WELD by Three Dog Night

Presenter23:22

And when you come down, of course, there's none of the old business of having to ditch in the ocean.

Joseph Allen23:27

Oh dear, I don't want to talk about that. We don't uh come down into the ocean. The space shuttle wouldn't tolerate that, and it would be very unfortunate.

Joseph Allen23:35

We need a runway to land on.

Speaker 423:36

Hmm.

Joseph Allen23:37

But any runway w would be suitable as long as it's long enough. We want a runway that uh is the sort found at most international airports.

Joseph Allen23:45

I don't think we'll land outside of London in the near future, but you never know.

Joseph Allen23:49

But before we come down from orbit, we must be very certain that the runway we're intending to land on is now free of airplanes, the weather is good, because once we make that burn to come home,

Joseph Allen24:01

Forty-five minutes later, whether we want to be there or not, we're going to be right at the approach end of that runway with only one

Joseph Allen24:09

chance available to make a safe landing. The space shuttle looks as though it has engines.

Joseph Allen24:14

that could be used to fly around and come in and try again. But those engines are not running during our descent. They're just along as hitchhikers. They're the engines that took us to orbit. And now we're just all of us coasting back home like an unpowered wagon coming down a very long and steep hill.

Presenter24:32

So really that's the one worrying part of the trip.

Joseph Allen24:35

Well, it would be worrying if we were uncertain in any way that we couldn't do that one hundred times.

Joseph Allen24:43

out of a hundred attempts. But we're quite convinced that we will never miss on that, and we would not have committed

Joseph Allen24:50

to fly the space shuttle until we, the very best engineers,

Joseph Allen24:54

In the NASA, we're convinced that yes, we could do it 100% of the time.

Presenter24:59

Back to music, please. We got number six.

Joseph Allen25:01

The sixth one I would take along is An Album

Joseph Allen25:05

by the pianist George Winston, a very popular piano player, pianist in America right now. The album is entitled December. Very restful music, some of it uh holiday music and Christmas music.

Joseph Allen25:19

And the cut on this record is variations on the

Joseph Allen25:25

Canon by Johann Pachabel

Presenter25:58

George Winston playing Packer Bells Cannon.

Presenter26:02

What's the next step, Joe? A space station?

Joseph Allen26:06

Actually, we are in the very serious planning stages for exactly that right now.

Presenter26:11

How long?

Joseph Allen26:11

If we don't lose our resolve, there is no reason to believe it won't be in orbit and operating in a permanent way in the early nineteen nineties, perhaps by nineteen ninety two. And this, I'm sure you know, Roy, will be very much a cooperative effort.

Joseph Allen26:26

When I said we are studying I included people at British Aerospace, north of London and Stevenage, and many of the studies are being carried out right now for various elements of the space station.

Presenter26:37

You've written a fascinating book, Entering Space, which deals with a lot of these subjects with marvelous pictures. Where'd you get the pictures from?

Joseph Allen26:44

Those pictures are taken with very ordinary cameras aboard the spaceships that we've been discussing. And so they are beautiful pictures. I am very fond of them myself, and in fact that was the reason I set out to write a book, is really to share photographs and just a few thoughts about what it's like

Joseph Allen27:02

To fly in space not me flying in space, but people flying in space.

Presenter27:06

Record number seven.

Joseph Allen27:08

This is also a favorite of mine.

Joseph Allen27:11

Carmina Vurana, this particular one is by the London Symphony Orchestra, conductor Andrei Preven.

Joseph Allen27:18

It's difficult to know what portion of this to play right at the moment. I think we're going to start with just the first part. And as we listen to this, let's imagine ourselves floating in zero gravity, looking out through the large windows of the space shuttle at the world passing by below us.

Speaker 427:37

I'm all in the middle of the day.

Presenter28:35

Part of Karl Orff's Carmina Burana.

Presenter28:38

The London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Andre Preven.

Presenter28:42

Well now, you've overcome many problems in space. You've now got a problem or two to overcome on a desert island.

Presenter28:50

How do you fancy yourself as a a Robinson Crusoe, a lonely castaway?

Joseph Allen28:54

My first question is what did I do wrong in the space shuttle to wind up on the desert island? Surely NASA's going to be very upset with me.

Presenter28:58

Surely

Presenter29:01

You press the wrong button.

Joseph Allen29:02

I'm Basker.

Joseph Allen29:04

You'll be interested to know that prior to being active duty flight status astronauts, we've gone to a number of schools, including several survival schools, to

Joseph Allen29:15

teach us to deal with exactly this sort of thing.

Presenter29:17

You could rig up shelter.

Joseph Allen29:18

But we do rig up shelters, in fact, that we're taught about what is going to be in our survival kits and so on. So, and they're all very useful things.

Presenter29:25

And you know what to eat and what not to eat.

Joseph Allen29:27

Exactly that.

Presenter29:28

Would you try to escape? Could you build a craft?

Joseph Allen29:31

Well, it depends, of course, entirely on what's th there on the island, but uh I think it would be possible to fashion a craft and I thought there were hope of getting uh

Joseph Allen29:40

place where there was civilization, I might try it. On the other hand, it was a very beautiful and pleasant island. Maybe uh I'd be a little slow in setting out to get back to hard work.

Presenter29:49

Your last record.

Joseph Allen29:50

The last one I hope is a fitting one. It's one I genuinely enjoy. It's by a remarkable performer, known to everyone here, I'm sure, Elton John.

Joseph Allen30:00

And Elton John actually visited the Space Center about ten years ago.

Joseph Allen30:05

He was performing on a concert tour through the State.

Joseph Allen30:09

was in Houston, Texas.

Joseph Allen30:10

and uh that night at his concert performed what I've selected uh today, which is Rocketman.

Speaker 430:21

It's gonna be a long, long time till Juckstown brings me round again to find

Speaker 430:28

Um and home down

Presenter30:45

Elton John.

Presenter30:46

Rocket Man. If you could take only one disc, which would it be?

Joseph Allen30:50

Well, that would be easy for me to decide. I would take Journal October by David Darling. It would remind me of my family and my home and its beautiful music as well.

Presenter31:02

And one luxury, one object of no practical use whatever, that would give you pleasure to have, to touch, to handle, to look at.

Joseph Allen31:10

I think I w I would take a pocket watch that I now have that actually was my father's, given to him by his father's, and it's a beautiful gold pocket watch, and it's still in very good working order. It is uh beautiful to look at and comforting to have.

Joseph Allen31:26

I

Joseph Allen31:27

Will confess to you, it also might be very useful to have. You can do numbers of things if you just have some idea of how time is passing. So I may cheat a little, dude. You didn't say that.

Presenter31:34

I may cheat a little bit, but you don't say that. No. And one book you already have as a standard issue, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

Joseph Allen31:43

Well

Joseph Allen31:43

Uh against that as a background, after considerable thought, I would ask for the complete works of Arthur Conan Doyle, uh because I'm

Presenter31:52

Oh dear.

Joseph Allen31:53

No

Joseph Allen31:55

Oh dear.

Joseph Allen31:58

All right. Well, I will take then some of my favorite Sherlock Holmes.

Presenter32:01

That can be done. And thank you, Dr. Joseph Allen, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Joseph Allen32:07

Well, thank you. I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and the music.

Presenter32:10

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 132:18

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.