PREFACE
1. Transcript of the Apollo 11 postflight press conference, August 12, 1969, Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas.
INTRODUCTION
1. Courtney Brooks, James Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson Jr., Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft (Washington, DC: NASA History Series, 1979), chapter 7-2, http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4205/ch7-2.html.
2. The roadway from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Pad 39, about the width of an eight-lane highway, was designed to carry a combined weight of about 18 million pounds. It was built in three layers with an average depth of seven feet. The base layer consisted of 2.5 feet of hydraulic fill, the middle made up of three feet of crushed rock, and the top layer about eight inches of river rock.
3. Moon Machines (Silver Spring, MD: Discovery Channel, 2008). The Block II Apollo command module that flew to the moon nine times eventually weighed in at 13,000 pounds (crew included). See https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/CSM06_Command_Module_Overview_pp39-52.pdf.
4. BBC Archive, “Three Astronauts Die in Apollo 1 Tragedy,” February 8, 1967. See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12804764.
5. Mike Gray, Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon (New York: Norton, 1992), 138.
6. David J. Shayler, Disasters and Accidents in Manned Spaceflight (Chichester, UK: Springer-Praxis Books, 2000), 104.
7. John Young and James Hansen, Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 111.
8. Ibid., 114.
9. Geoffrey Little, “John Young, Spaceman,” Air and Space Magazine, September 2005, p. 3, online edition. http://www.airspacemag.com/space/spaceman-7766826/?no-ist=&page=3; see also David Sington, In the Shadow of the Moon (New York: THINKFilm, 2008).
10. Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974), 270.
11. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 114.
12. Curt Newport, Lost Spacecraft: The Search for Liberty Bell 7 (Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books, 2002), 185.
13. According to Dr. Lawrence Lamb, an Air Force flight surgeon, “It was not possible to have the luxury of a two-gas system” in the American spacecraft. See Lawrence E. Lamb, MD, Inside the Space Race: A Space Surgeon’s Diary (Austin, TX: Synergy Books, 2006), 139.
14. Thurston Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (New York: Penguin Press, 2013), 306–307.
15. For a detailed discussion of the engineering trade-offs involved in the decision to use a pure oxygen atmosphere in the Block I Apollo spacecraft, see Erland A. Kennan and Edmund H. Harvey Jr., Mission to the Moon: A Critical Examination of NASA and the Space Program (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1969). See especially chapter 7, “Oxygen: The Most Dangerous Gas,” 123–50. The authors refer to the use of a pure oxygen atmosphere in Apollo as “the better of several evils” (136).
16. The Apollo Spacecraft—A Chronology, Volume 1, Part 3 (D), “Lunar Orbit Rendezvous: Mode and Module, July 1962 through September 1962”; Apollo Spacecraft Project Office, Manned Spacecraft Center, Weekly Activity Report, July 8–14, 1962; Apollo Quarterly Status Report No. 1, 13. See also http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4009/v1p3d.htm.
17. North American Aviation had used a two-gas (oxygen and nitrogen) atmosphere in the X-15 cockpit specifically to reduce the fire hazard.
18. Letter from Carl D. Sword, Manned Spacecraft Center, to North American Aviation, Space and Information Systems Division, “Contract Change Authorization No. 1,” August 28, 1962.
1: 1926
1. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, “Dr. Robert H. Goddard, American Rocketry Pioneer,” http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/about/history/dr_goddard.html.
2. Sington, In the Shadow of the Moon.
3. Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, “Goddard Rocket (1926).” http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/milestones-of-flight/online/current-objects/1926.cfm.
4. Neil Armstrong, “Armstrong Recalls History-Making Career” (John H. Glenn Lecture Series, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, July 19, 2009).
5. Carl L. Chappell, Seven Minus One: The Story of Gus Grissom (Madison, IN: Frontier Publishing, 1968), 1.
6. Edgar Mitchell with Dwight Williams, The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey through the Material and Mystical Worlds (Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career Press, 2008), 24–25.
7. Ibid.
8. Chappell, Seven Minus One, 13.
9. “Bicycle mechanic” was a common occupation among the earliest American flyers, notably Orville and Wilbur Wright along with the aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss. See David McCullough, The Wright Brothers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015), 239.
10. Chappell, Seven Minus One, 13
11. Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin (New York: Walker and Walker, 2011), 22; Wilfred Burchett and Anthony Purdy, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin: First Man in Space (London: Panther Books, 1961), 103.
12. Chappell, Seven Minus One, 14.
13. Origin of “Indiana: Indiana State Name Origin”: http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/symbol-official-item/indiana/state-name-origin/origin-indiana.
14. King family history at: http://www.myrootsplace.com/familygroup.php?familyID=F39723&tree=mrptree.
15. Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Gemini: A Personal Account of Man’s Venture in Space (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 17.
16. Booth Tarkington, Penrod and Sam (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1916), 83, 118.
17. Weeks before Gus Grissom’s first space flight in July 1961, four workers were killed in a natural gas explosion at the Mitchell plant. See “Four Killed in Mitchell Plant Blast,” Daily Tribune, Seymour, IN, June 22, 1961, 1.
18. Chappell, Seven Minus One, 40.
19. Dick Calkins, “Strange Adventures in the Spider Ship,” Buck Rogers 25th Century (Chicago: Pleasure Books, 1935).
20. Carpenter, M. Scott, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil I. Grissom, Walter M. Schirra Jr., Alan B. Shepard Jr., and Donald K. Slayton, We Seven (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), 55.
21. Russell Baker, Growing Up (New York: Signet, 1982), 207.
22. Chappell, Seven Minus One, 17.
23. Ibid., 27.
24. Harrison Smith, “Test Pilot Made 2,407 Carrier Landings.” Washington Post, February 23, 2016.
25. Chappell, Seven Minus One, 19.
26. Author’s interview with Lowell Grissom, September 1, 2011. See also Francis French and Colin Burgess, Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961–1965 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 77.
27. “The Three Degrees of Masonry: Master Mason Degree,” at http://www.mastermason.com/jjcrowder/threedegrees/threedegrees.htm.
28. See McCullough, The Wright Brothers.
29. Al Worden and Francis French, Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut’s Journey to the Moon (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2011), 8.
2: WORK
1. Joseph Heller, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 165.
2. Chappell, Seven Minus One, 6.
3. Indiana Historical Society, “Notable Hoosiers.” http://www.indianahistory.org/our-collections/reference/notable-hoosiers/virgil-gus-grissom.
4. Sington, In the Shadow of the Moon.
5. Ray Boomhower, Gus Grissom: The Lost Astronaut (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 2004), 42.
6. Ibid. See also “Hoosier Astronaut Traded BB Gun for 1st Air Jaunt,” Indianapolis Times, April 12, 1959.
7. Grissom, Gemini, 17–18.
8. Indiana Historical Society, “Notable Hoosiers.”
9. Betty Grissom comments during fiftieth anniversary observance of the flight of Liberty Bell 7, Mitchell, IN, July 21, 2011.
10. Ibid., 18.
11. Chappell, Seven Minus One, 4.
12. Author’s interview with Jenny Leonard, July 23, 2011, Mitchell, IN.
13. Indiana Historical Society, “Notable Hoosiers.”
14. Heller, Now and Then, 67.
15. Grissom, Gemini, 18. The author’s cousin, once removed, was advised in early 1943 to join the US Navy to avoid the “foul trenches” his father had endured in World War I. John H. “Doc” Bradley would later spend several weeks on a sulfurous Pacific island as a Navy corpsman. He is best known as one of the men who helped raise the American flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima, the scene captured in AP photographer Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photo. To his relatives, he was cousin “Jack,” and he never, ever, talked about his war experiences, except to say: “The heroes are the guys who didn’t come home.” See also James Bradley and Ron Powers, Flags of Our Fathers (New York: Bantam Books, 2000), 83.
16. NASA Johnson Manned Spacecraft Center oral history interview with George Page, June 25, 2001.
17. US Department of Veterans Affairs, “Education and Training: History and Timeline,” http://www.benefits.va.gov/gibill/history.asp.
18. Application for Marriage License, Virgil I. Grissom and Betty Lavonne Moore, Lawrence County, State of Indiana, July 3, 1945. Reproduced at https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-21134-30835-29?cc=1410397.
19. Betty Grissom and Henry Still, Starfall (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1974), 19.
20. John Norberg, Wings of Their Dreams: Purdue in Flight (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2007), 327.
3: PURDUE
1. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 56.
2. Author’s interview with Bill Head, July 23, 2011, Mitchell, IN.
3. Norberg, Wings of Their Dreams, 324.
4. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 24–25.
5. Grissom, Gemini, 76.
6. Norberg, Wings of Their Dreams, 324.
7. Purdue Engineer, February 1967, 24.
8. John Norberg, ed., Full Steam Ahead: Purdue Mechanical Engineering Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2013), 42–43.
9. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 227.
10. In a video pitch for membership in the High Twelve International, the Academy Award–winning actor and World War II Navy veteran Ernest Borgnine insisted that members “seldom experience a bad meal or sit through a boring program.” http://www.high12.org.
11. The house on Sylvia Street is long gone, having been razed to make room for a parking garage. The couple’s last address in West Lafayette was 219½ Littleton Street, a few blocks east of campus toward the Wabash River.
12. Author’s interview with Bill Head, July 23, 2011, Mitchell, IN.
13. Ibid.
14. Betty Grissom comments during fiftieth anniversary observance of the flight of Liberty Bell 7, Mitchell, IN, July 21, 2011.
15. Author’s interview with Bill Head, July 23, 2011, Mitchell, IN.
16. Frederick L. Hovde Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Purdue University Libraries.
17. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong and Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan.
18. Grissom, Gemini, 175–76.
19. Author’s interview with Bill Head, July 23, 2011, Mitchell, IN.
20. US National Archives and Records Administration, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, “Records of Persons of Exceptional Prominence,” Official Military Personnel Files, Virgil I. Grissom.
21. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 27–28.
22. Norberg, Wings of Their Dreams, 326.
23. Betty Grissom correspondence with Purdue University President Frederick L. Hovde, March 23, 1967, Purdue University Libraries Archives and Special Collections, Frederick L. Hovde Papers.
24. Frederick L. Hovde Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Purdue University Libraries.
25. Timber Cove was the real estate development in Seabrook, Texas, where many of the early astronauts lived along with many NASA program managers.
26. Frederick L. Hovde Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Purdue University Libraries.
4: WINGMAN
1. James Salter, Burning the Days: Recollection (New York: Vintage, 1997), 135, 139.
2. James Salter, The Hunters (New York: Vintage, 1997 edition), xiv.
3. Ibid., 102.
4. Salter, Burning the Days, 203.
5. See, for example, I. F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War, 1950–1951: A Nonconformist History of Our Times (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1952).
6. The title “jet ace” was bestowed on pilots with five confirmed enemy kills. An “ace” stood above all other pilots in his unit.
7. “The Last American Aces,” Air and Space/Smithsonian, August 2015, 38.
8. Richard Hallion, ed., Silver Wings, Golden Valor: The USAF Remembers Korea (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2006), 54; Frederick C. Blesse, Check Six: A Fighter Pilot Looks Back (New York: Ivy Books, 1987), 71.
9. James Salter, Gods of Tin: The Flying Years (Washington, DC: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2004), 45.
10. James Salter, interviewed on the PBS Newshour, May 28, 2001. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment-jan-june01-hunters_05-28/.
11. Hallion, Silver Wings, Golden Valor, 29.
12. Ibid., 29–30.
13. Salter, Gods of Tin, 68.
14. Ibid., 46.
15. In October 1946, engineers at White Sands had launched a V-2 missile to an altitude of sixty-five miles where a small 35mm camera recorded the first pictures of Earth as seen from space. The camera was smashed, but the film canister survived the descent, bringing back with it the black-and-white images. See Tony Reichhardt, “The First Photo from Space,” Air and Space Magazine, November 2006, http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-first-photo-from-space-13721411/?no-ist.
16. Robert G. Rogers, Round Trip to the Morgue: Snapshots and Reflections of Colonel Robert G. Rogers (Grand Prairie, TX: Semaphore Publishing House, 2006), 52.
17. Ibid., 57.
18. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 29.
19. Rogers, Roundtrip to the Morgue, 55.
20. Ibid., 61–62.
21. Ibid., 30.
22. Ibid., 31.
23. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 31.
24. Grissom, Gemini, 19.
25. Rogers, Round Trip to the Morgue, 61.
26. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 31.
27. Salter, Gods of Tin, 48.
28. Many of the American Korean War aces, fighter pilots who had shot down at least five enemy aircraft, were from the 4th Fighter Wing. US Marine Major John Glenn (three kills) and Air Force First Lieutenant Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (two kills) were with the 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing (see Stephen Sherman, Korean War Aces, http://acepilots.com/korea_aces.html#top).
29. Email from James Salter to author, August 8, 2011.
30. “US Air Force Fact Sheet: 334th Fighter Squadron, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base,” http://www.seymourjohnson.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=4510.
31. Blesse, Check Six, 80.
32. Ibid.
33. Salter, Gods of Tin, 48, 52; Blesse, Check Six, 94.
34. Gods of Tin, 68.
35. Ibid., 96–97.
36. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 39.
37. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 56.
38. French and Burgess, Into That Silent Sea, 49.
39. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 38.
40. Salter, Gods of Tin, 68.
41. Blesse, Check Six, 86, 95.
42. Salter, Gods of Tin, 68.
43. Glenn’s frequent wingman, Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, was a Marine Corps reservist who survived several close calls during his tour in Korea. Glenn described Williams as a “very active combat pilot.” See “As Good a Marine as He Was a Ballplayer,” http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/news/tributes/mlb_obit_ted_williams.jsp?content=military.
44. Sherman, Korean War Aces.
45. Salter, Gods of Tin, 53.
46. Ibid., 60.
47. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 38.
48. Salter, Gods of Tin, 54.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 47.
51. Salter interview on PBS Newshour, May 28, 2001.
52. Blesse, Check Six, 91.
53. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 39.
54. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 56.
55. Salter, Gods of Tin, 77.
56. Ibid., 44.
57. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 39.
58. Salter, Gods of Tin, 58.
59. Besides Grissom, Glenn, and Aldrin, other astronauts who served in Korea included Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr. (a naval aviator who was an Air Force exchange pilot), Neil Armstrong, and Frank Borman. Schirra, Gus Grissom’s next-door neighbor in the Timber Cove development southeast of Houston, would later serve as the executor of Grissom’s estate.
60. Ray Jones, Memoir: Dynamite, Check Six (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2013), 1.
61. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 56–57.
62. It is unclear from the accounts of the incident whether the cadet was flying a propeller aircraft or a jet trainer, although, according to Betty, her husband “did a lot of flying in the T-33 jet trainer and it was good experience.” Grissom and Still, Starfall, 39.
63. Ibid.
64. Sington, In the Shadow of the Moon.
1. “Long twilight struggle” was among the many memorable phrases from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address on January 20, 1961.
2. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1953. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9600.
3. Ibid.
4. The “Agreement between the Commander-in-Chief, United Nations Command, on the One Hand, and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army and the Commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers, on the Other Hand, Concerning a Military Armistice in Korea,” was signed by US Army Lieutenant General William K. Harrison Jr. and North Korean General Nam II, representing North Korea and China. During the eleven-minute ceremony in a roadside hall built specially by the North Koreans for the occasion, neither man acknowledged the other. The truce went into effect at 10 p.m. that evening. See also “American Documentation” (n.d.), http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(issn)1936-6108; Lindesay Parrott, “Truce is Signed, Ending the Fighting in Korea; POW Exchange Near; Rhee Gets U.S. Pledge; Eisenhower Bids Free World Stay Vigilant,” New York Times, July 27, 1953, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(issn)1936-6108.
5. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 41.
6. US National Archives and Records Administration, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, “Records of Persons of Exceptional Prominence,” Official Military Personnel Files, Virgil I. Grissom.
7. Gordon Cooper and Bruce Henderson, Leap of Faith: An Astronaut’s Journey into the Unknown (New York: Harper Collins, 2000), 88–89.
8. Ibid., 42.
9. Cooper and Henderson, Leap of Faith, 37–39. In a notorious stunt during Project Mercury, Cooper was angered the day before his Faith 7 flight on May 15, 1963, to find that technicians had made a last-minute modification to his custom-made pressure suit. He vented his anger by buzzing the crew quarters at Cape Canaveral in a F-102 jet. Walt Williams, the legendary Project Mercury operations director, happened to step out of the doorway as Cooper came roaring over a few feet off the ground. Livid, Williams very nearly bumped Cooper from the flight. The stunt was typical of Cooper’s career as an astronaut.
10. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 42.
11. Ibid. See also Martin Caidin, The Astronauts: The Story of Project Mercury, America’s Man-in-Space Program (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1960), 91. Caidin’s account of the accident makes it appear as if Grissom was at fault, noting that it was “Captain Grissom’s one flying accident.” A brief biographical sketch of Gordon Cooper’s career by Caidin, a veteran aerospace and aviation writer and author, makes no reference to the T-33 accident.
12. Cooper and Henderson, Leap of Faith, 22.
13. US National Archives and Records Administration, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, “Records of Persons of Exceptional Prominence,” Official Military Personnel Files, Virgil I. Grissom.
14. Richard Hallion, Test Pilots: The Frontiersmen of Flight (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, revised edition, 1988), 215.
15. See website: http://www.colonelrichardcorbett.com/Edwards.html.
16. Harrison Schmitt interview, In the Shadow of the Moon.
17. “X Marks the Spot: And at Edwards Air Force Base, Every Spot Tells a Story,” Air and Space Collector’s Edition, 2014, 26.
18. Colin Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven: The Search for America’s Astronauts (Chichester, UK: Springer Praxis, 2011), 151–53.
19. James Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997), 108–109.
20. Ibid., 126.
21. Ibid., 127–28. Korolev, fearing that Sputnik’s instruments would overheat in orbit, insisted that both halves of the metallic sphere first be polished by hand until they shone. This way, the satellite would reflect as much sunlight as possible.
22. Neil Armstrong, “40th Anniversary of Apollo 11” (John H. Glenn Lecture Series, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, July 19, 2009).
23. Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days, 146.
24. Armstrong, “40th Anniversary of Apollo 11.”
25. “NASA History in Brief,” last updated on May 20, 2011, http://history.nasa.gov/brief.html.
26. Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, 25. The society proposed calling the US civilian space agency the Astronautical Research and Development Agency. Hence, the future NASA could have instead been known as ARDA. See also “Major Events Leading to Project Mercury, March 1944 through December 1957,” http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4001/p1a.htm.
27. The military countered the civilian assertion of dominance over space exploration by creating the Advanced Research Projects Agency in December 1957 to oversee military space programs and to forestall further technological surprises.
28. “The Space Race,” episode from “The Sixties: The Decade That Changed the World,” CNN, 2015.
29. Caidin, The Astronauts, 65.
30. Ibid., 72.
31. Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, 32.
32. Grissom, Gemini, 21.
33. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 55.
34. Cooper and Henderson, Leap of Faith, 22.
35. Loudon S. Wainwright, “Grissom: A Quiet Little Fellow Who Scoffs at the Chance of Becoming a Hero,” Life, March 3, 1961, 28–29.
36. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 55.
37. Author’s interview with Samuel T. Beddingfield, March 23, 2010.
38. Ibid.
39. Sam Beddingfield, “Astronaut Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom,” http://www.ispyspace.com/Gus_Grissom.html.
40. Grissom, Gemini, 16; emphasis added.
41. Alex Malley, “An Audience with Neil Armstrong,” The Bottom Line, CPA Australia, May 2011.
42. Henry Fountain, “Dr. Donald D. Flickinger, 89, A Pioneer in Space Medicine,” New York Times, March 9, 1997; Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, 33.
43. Grissom, Gemini, 21.
44. Ibid., 22.
45. Ibid.
46. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 33, 45.
47. In the Shadow of the Moon.
6: MERCURY SEVEN
1. Dr. W. Randall Lovelace II, who ran the clinic where the astronaut candidates underwent biomedical testing, was said to favor including one woman in the original group of American spacefarers. He was overruled by President Eisenhower, whose directive to select candidates only from the nation’s test pilot schools effectively eliminated women from consideration. See NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project interview with Charles J. Donlan, April 27, 1998, http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/DonlanCJ/DonlanCJ_4-27-98.htm.
2. Scott Carpenter and Kris Stoever, For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut (New York: New American Library, 2004), 185.
3. Another Air Force test pilot and future Mercury astronaut Donald “Deke” Slayton noted that the early astronauts did nothing as spectacular as flying the X-1 or X-15 rocket planes; they were among the “ninety percent of American test pilots who never got close to stuff like that.” He added, “We were working test pilots who happened to get selected” as astronauts.” See Donald K. Slayton and Michael Cassutt, Deke! U.S. Manned Space: From Mercury to the Shuttle (New York: Thomas Doherty Associates, Forge paperback edition, 1994), 82.
4. Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, 51.
5. Lamb, Inside the Space Race, 79.
6. Ibid., 78.
7. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 182–83.
8. Ibid., 183.
9. Project Mercury Overview—Astronaut Selection, https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mercury/missions/astronaut.html.
10. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 169.
11. Lamb, Inside the Space Race, 104.
12. Walter Cunningham, The All-American Boys: An Insider’s Look at the U.S. Space Program (New York: iBooks, 2003), 41.
13. NASA oral history interview with Charles J. Donlan, April 27, 1998.
14. Wally Schirra with Richard N. Billings, Schirra’s Space (Annapolis, MD: Bluejacket Books/Naval Institute Press, 1995), 60.
15. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 58.
16. NASA oral history interview with Charles J. Donlan, April, 27, 1998.
17. Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, 220.
18. Slayton and Cassutt, Deke!, 72.
19. Ibid., 73.
20. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 58.
21. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 180.
22. Ibid., 187–88.
23. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 56.
24. Ibid.
25. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 192, 344.
26. Nancy Conrad and Howard Klausner, Rocketman: Astronaut Pete Conrad’s Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond (New York: New American Library, 2005), 116.
27. Schirra and Billings, Schirra’s Space, 61.
28. Robert Sherrod, “Apollo Expeditions to the Moon,” chapter 8.1, http://history.nasa.gov/SP-350/ch-8-1.html.
29. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 189.
30. Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, 231.
31. Ibid.; author’s interview with Walter B. Sullivan, May 15, 2012.
32. NASA History Office, “Awarding the Prime Contract,” http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4201/ch6-3.htm.
33. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 65.
34. Author’s interview with Bill Head, July 23, 2011, Mitchell, IN.
35. NASA oral history interview with Charles J. Donlan, April 27, 1998.
36. Ibid.
37. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 175.
38. Grissom, Gemini, 22.
39. On April 15, 1959, Special Order A-161 was amended to read “CAPT VIRGIL I. GRISSOM.”
40. A series of one-year extensions from the Department of Defense were issued as the Mercury program dragged into 1963 and the two-man Gemini program moved from the drawing board to testing to the launchpad.
41. Slayton and Cassutt, Deke!, 74.
42. Ibid.
43. Author’s interview with Lowell Grissom, September 1, 2011.
44. NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project interview with Jerome B. Hammack, Seabrook, TX, August 14, 1997. See http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/HammackJB/HammackJB_8-14-97.htm.
45. Beddingfield, “Astronaut Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom.”
46. Author’s interview with Lowell Grissom, September 1, 2011.
47. Beddingfield, “Astronaut Virgil ‘Gus’ Grissom.”
48. Kris Stoever graciously conveyed her ailing mother’s recollections in a personal communication dated November 29, 2010.
49. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 66.
50. Slayton and Cassutt, Deke!, 88.
51. Ibid., 80–81.
52. Grissom, Gemini, 35–36.
53. Ibid., 36.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Each astronaut family would receive about $70,000 before taxes. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 202.
57. Loudon Wainwright, “Apollo’s Great Leap for the Moon,” Life, July 25, 1969, 18D.
58. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 203.
59. Caiden, The Astronauts, 148–49.
7: EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
1. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 216.
2. Neal Thompson, Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), 268.
3. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 37.
4. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 60.
5. Ibid.
6. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 207.
7. Worden and French, Falling to Earth, 109.
8. Ibid., 111.
9. James Schefter, who covered NASA for a decade beginning in 1963, published the most scurrilous tales about Grissom’s infidelities. In his account of the Space Race, Schefter insisted that the “rumors surround[ing] Grissom” were indeed true, repeating one that he was the father of a child, gender unknown, born to a McDonnell Aircraft secretary. Schefter also repeated a tale about Grissom that “was not a rumor.” According to Schefter, “There was a certain kind of small black fly that hatches in the spring around the space center south of Houston. Swarms of the bugs can splatter [on] windshields, but their real distinction is that the male and female catch each other in midair and fly happily along mated.” Schefter then claimed Grissom told a Life magazine reporter: “They do two things I like best in life, flying and fucking—and they do them at the same time.” Thereafter, Schefter claimed the locals referred to the insects as “Grissom Bugs.” Why Grissom would make such a statement to a reporter, someone who was bound to repeat it, was not explained. If anything, Grissom avoided journalists whenever he could. See James Schefter, The Race: The Uncensored Story of How America Beat Russia to the Moon (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 72.
10. Roger Mudd, The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News (Philadelphia: PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group, 2008), 95.
11. Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journey of an Artist (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 200.
12. In his introduction to JFK’s postwar diary published in 1995, reporter Hugh Sidey noted: “There are, I have found, many compartments within the souls of men who rise to great power.” Prelude to Leadership: The Post-War Diary of John F. Kennedy, introduction by Hugh Sidey, quoted in Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days, 216.
13. “Composite Air-to-Ground and Onboard Voice Tape Transcription of the GT-3 Mission,” NASA, Johnson Space Center, April, 1965. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/GT03_TEC.PDF.
14. Author’s interview with Lowell Grissom, September 1, 2011.
15. Mark Grissom comments during fiftieth anniversary observance of the flight of Liberty Bell 7, Mitchell, IN, July 21, 2011.
16. NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History interview with Jerome B. Hammack, August 14, 1997.
17. Robert Harlan Moser, Past Imperfect: A Personal History of an Adventuresome Lifetime in and around Medicine (Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press, 2002), 214.
18. The author’s Freedom of Information Act request for Gus Grissom’s FBI file, if one exists, was fruitless.
19. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 15.
20. Ibid., 19.
21. Ibid., 259.
8: THE FLIGHT OF LIBERTY BELL 7
1. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 247.
2. As a member of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, Doolittle would later help establish NASA.
3. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 243.
4. NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project interview with Wayne E. Koons, October 14, 2004, transcript, 48.
5. Guenter Wendt, who crammed the astronauts into their spacecraft, observed: “We get the astronaut in with a shoehorn and we get him out with a can opener.” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History interview with Guenter Wendt, Titusville, FL, February 25, 1999.
6. Newport, Lost Spacecraft, 139.
7. Results of the Second U.S. Manned Suborbital Space Flight, July 21, 1961, Manned Spacecraft Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1961), 55.
8. Colin Burgess, Liberty Bell 7: The Suborbital Flight of Virgil I. Grissom (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer Praxis Books, 2014), 74–76.
9. John Bisney and J. L. Pickering, Spaceshots and Snapshots of Projects Mercury and Gemini: A Rare Photographic History (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015), 16–17.
10. Dr. Fred Kelly, America’s Astronauts and Their Indestructible Spirit (Blue Ridge Summit, PA: TAB Books, 1986), 51.
11. Moser, Past Imperfect, 214.
12. Ibid.
13. James Lewis and Robert Thompson, “Sinking of the Liberty Bell 7 (Project Mercury), What Really Happened,” Space Center Lecture Series, July 21, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFmNo8UFMjI.
14. Burgess, Liberty Bell 7, 91.
15. Ibid., 92.
16. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 237.
17. Source for all voice air-to-ground transmissions: “Air-to-Ground Communications for MR-4,” in NASA, Results of the Second U.S. Manned Suborbital Space Flight, July 21, 1961, appendix, 41–46.
18. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 256.
19. NASA, Results of the Second U.S. Manned Suborbital Space Flight, July 21, 1961, 42.
20. Ibid., 51.
21. Ibid.
22. Loyd S. Swenson Jr., James M. Grimwood, and Charles C. Alexander, This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury (Washington, DC: NASA History Series, 1998), 367, 376; Burgess, Liberty Bell 7, 75.
23. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 247.
24. Accounts vary as to whether Grissom managed to stow the custom-made survival knife designed to cut through the spacecraft hull in an emergency. When Liberty Bell 7 was recovered in 1999, the knife was found under Grissom’s couch. See Newport, Lost Spacecraft.
25. Results of the Second U.S. Manned Suborbital Space Flight, July 21, 1961, 46.
26. The author of The Right Stuff did not respond to interview requests.
27. The Sikorsky helicopter, also designated UH-34D, offered a large payload capacity and “generous center-of-gravity range,” according to a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum profile. “Its weaknesses were a reciprocating engine that struggled in the heat and humidity of Southeast Asia and maintenance intensive mechanical components.” See also http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?object=siris_arc_373050.
28. Recorded interview with John Reinhard by Rick Boos, provided to the author on July 8, 2013.
29. Swenson, Grimwood, and Alexander, This New Ocean, 373.
30. Author’s interview with Rick Boos, Celina, OH, March 20, 2014.
31. http://www.byc.com/files/Basket%20Hoist.pdf (slide 5); see also http://www.uscg.mil/directives/cim/3000-3999/CIM_3710_4C.pdf; emphasis original.
32. Naval Helicopter Operations, GlobalSecurity.org, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/rotary-naval-ops.htm.
33. NASA postflight press conference, Cocoa Beach, FL, July 22, 1961.
34. The detection mechanism consisted of two prongs, a screw, and a plug at the bottom of the engine’s oil sump. A warning light would illuminate in the helicopter cockpit if metal chips moved across the prongs, usually resulting in engine damage.
35. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 325.
36. Turner Home Entertainment, Moon Shot (Atlanta: Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., 1994).
37. Ibid.
38. Chappell, Seven Minus One, v.
39. In Search of Liberty Bell 7 (Silver Spring, MD: Discovery Channel Pictures, 1999).
40. Wendt was among those who believed the exterior lanyard probably blew Grissom’s hatch. See Guenter Wendt and Russell Still, The Unbroken Chain (Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books, 2008), 41.
41. Guenter Wendt, 1999 Oral History Interview, C-SPAN, February 25, 1999, http://www.c-span.org/video/?298410-1/guenter-wendt-1999-oral-history-interview.
42. Moser, Past Imperfect, 221.
43. Lewis and Thompson, “Sinking of the Liberty Bell 7 (Project Mercury), What Really Happened.”
44. Ibid.
45. NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project interview with Wayne E. Koons, October 14, 2004, transcript, 46.
46. Moonshot (Atlanta: TBS, 1994).
47. The assertion that Grissom hit the hatch inadvertently is almost certainly incorrect. Robert B. Voas interview, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, May 19, 2002, 41.
48. Stephen Clemmons, collectspace.com, August 16, 2004. http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/000082-2.html.
49. Ibid.
50. “Grissom Insists the Hatch Was Blown by Accident,” New York Times, July 23, 1961, 1.
51. Moonshot.
52. Author’s interview with Robert Moser, February 8, 2013.
53. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 246–47.
54. “Remarks Congratulating Astronaut Virgil Grissom after his Sub-orbital Flight, 21 July 1961,” John F. Kennedy President Library, White House Audio Collection. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHA-044-002.aspx.
55. “Remarks upon Signing Bill Providing for an Expanded Space Program, July 21, 1961,” http://www.jfklink.com/speeches/jfk/publicpapers/1961/jfk296_61.html.
56. Ibid.
57. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 325–26.
58. Results of the Second U.S. Manned Suborbital Space Flight, July 21, 1961, 52.
59. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 240–41.
60. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 325.
9: DOWN A PEG
1. Idiopathic atrial fibrillation.
2. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 220–21.
3. Ibid., 181; see also Henry C. Detloff, Suddenly, Tomorrow Came … A History of the Johnson Space Center (Houston: NASA History Series, 1993), 53.
4. Robert R. Gilruth, recorded interview by Walter D. Sohier and James M. Grimwood, April 1, 1964, p. 1 of transcript, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
5. “Grissom Insists the Hatch was Blown by Accident,” 1.
6. Rik Stevens, “Gus Grissom Letter Showing Astronauts’ Jealousy of John Glenn Now up for Auction.” Associated Press, November 21, 2013.
7. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 219.
8. Ibid., 325.
9. NASA Oral History Project interview with Robert Voas, May 19, 2002, http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/VoasRB/VoasRB_5-19-02.pdf.
10. Matthew H. Hersch, Inventing the American Astronaut (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 38.
11. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 325–26.
12. NASA Oral History Project interview with Walter M. Schirra Jr., December 1, 1998, http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/SchirraWM/WMS_12-1-98.pdf.
13. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 326.
14. Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Speech Files, Remarks to McDonnell Aircraft employees, St. Louis, Missouri, September 12, 1962.
15. Schirra and Billings, Schirra’s Space, 94.
16. Ibid., 218–19.
17. Thom Patterson, “Apollo’s Most Controversial Mission,” CNN, July 27, 2011, http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/27/apollos-most-controversial-mission.
18. NASA Oral History Project interview with Walter M. Schirra Jr., December 1, 1998.
19. Ibid.
20. “Talk Delivered by Major Virgil Grissom at the Society of Experimental Test Pilots East Coast Section Meeting, November 9, 1962, SETP Newsletter (November-December 1962), 5–12. Cited in David A. Mindell, Digital Apollo: Humans and Machine in Spaceflight (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 83–84.
21. Ibid.
22. “President, Touring Canaveral, Sees Polaris Fired,” New York Times, November 17, 1963, 1.
23. Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days, 306.
24. Ibid., 308–309.
25. Ibid., 341.
10: APOGEE
1. Doran and Bizony, Starman, 183.
2. Grissom, Gemini, 2.
3. Ibid., 3–4.
4. Ibid., 5.
5. Ibid., 6.
6. See especially Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
7. Grissom, Gemini, 7.
8. NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project interview with Thomas P. Stafford, October 15, 1997.
9. Young and Hanson, Forever Young, 64.
10. NASA Johnson Space Flight Center Oral History Project interview with Frank Borman, April 13, 1999.
11. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 62.
12. Grissom, Gemini, 74.
13. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 43.
14. In Search of Liberty Bell 7.
15. Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 123.
16. NASA Johnson Space Flight Center Oral History Project interview with Robert F. Thompson, August 29, 2000.
17. The goals of the Gemini program are listed at http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/history/gemini/gemini-goals.htm.
18. Grissom, Gemini, 104.
19. David M. Harland, How NASA Learned to Fly in Space: An Exciting Account of the Gemini Missions (Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books, 2004), 35; Grissom, Gemini, 104.
20. Grissom, Gemini, 106.
21. All Gemini 3 crew and ground control conversations throughout this chapter were drawn from “Gemini III Composite Air-to-Ground and Onboard Voice Tape Transcription, April 1965,” NASA, Johnson Space Center, JSC History Portal, http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/gemini3.htm.
22. Harland, How NASA Learned to Fly in Space, 33.
23. Each of the hatch windows measured eight inches wide by six inches deep. See Harland, How NASA Learned to Fly in Space, 39.
24. Grissom, Gemini, 109.
25. Ibid., 110.
26. After his Gemini flight, Grissom was uncharacteristically introspective about what he observed during his three orbits. For example, he recorded in his account of the Gemini program how surprised he was to actually see that the continents looked just as they did on maps. “I never expected to be able to take in almost a whole continent at a time, and that’s quit a thrill.” The commander said he scoured the tape transcripts of later Gemini missions looking for “some quotable quotes” describing the view from orbit. He found none. The reason was the Gemini crews “were simply too busy with the flight plan to wax poetic about the views.” It was the same on later flights. Space shuttle commander George Zamka told the author after his February 2010 flight to the International Space Station that he was utterly consumed with his mission checklist throughout his thirteen-day mission. “You’re operating at a high duty cycle right up until ‘wheels stop,’” Zamka said, referring to the moment the shuttle rolled to a stop on the runway at the Kennedy Space Center. Astronauts seeking time to appreciate the view from space, Zamka added, would need a six-month crew assignment on the International Space Station. Zamka never got one. Author’s interview with George Zamka, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, April 23, 2010. See also Grissom, Gemini, 108.
27. “Grissom Maneuvers the Gemini as He and Young Make 3 Orbits in Test for a Space Rendezvous,” New York Times, March 24, 1965, 1.
28. Grissom, Gemini, 111.
29. Project Mercury: Bridge to the Moon (Houston: NASAFLIX, 2003).
30. Author’s interview with Thomas P. Stafford, July 5, 2012.
31. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 84–85.
32. “Grissom Maneuvers the Gemini as He and Young Make 3 Orbits in Test for a Space Rendezvous,” 1.
33. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 82; Project Gemini: Bridge to the Moon; “March 23, 1965, Launch of First Crewed Gemini Flight,” http://www.nasa.gov/content/march-23-1965-launch-of-first-crewed-gemini-flight.
34. “Grissom Maneuvers the Gemini as He and Young Make 3 Orbits in Test for a Space Rendezvous,” 1.
35. The USS Intrepid is now berthed on the Hudson River in New York City, the centerpiece of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum Complex.
36. Grissom, Gemini, 113.
37. Ibid.
38. “Grissom Maneuver the Gemini as He and Young Make 3 Orbits in Test for Space Rendezvous,” 1.
39. Author’s interview with the Honorable Lee H. Hamilton, January 10, 2012.
40. Ibid.
41. Rookie astronaut Donn Eisele had originally been assigned to the Apollo 1 crew, but he was dropped when he sustained a left shoulder separation that required surgery. He was replaced by Ed White and reassigned to the backup crew. Eisele is interred at Arlington National Cemetery several plots over from the graves of Grissom and Chaffee.
11: RISK AND REWARD
1. Salter, Gods of Tin, 114.
2. President John F. Kennedy, “Address on the Nation’s Space Effort,” Rice University. University Stadium, Houston, TX, September 12, 1962.
3. Robert Krulwich, “Neil Armstrong Talks about the First Moon Walk,” National Public Radio, December 8, 2010.
4. Andrew Chaikan and Victoria Kohl, Voices from the Moon: Apollo Astronauts Describe Their Lunar Experiences (New York: Viking Studio, 2009), 159.
5. “Glenn: An Unswerving and Self-Denying Man Engaged in a Stern, Dangerous Pursuit,” Life, March 3, 1961, 26.
6. Big Ten Network, The Boilermakers: Gus Grissom, 2010.
7. Salter, The Hunters, 177.
8. Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, 259.
9. Apollo 12 Uncensored: The Untold Story of the 2nd Manned Mission to the Moon (Beverly Hills, CA: Global Science Productions, 1996), DVD.
10. Author’s interview with Lowell Grissom, September 1, 2011.
11. Gus Grissom, interview by Jules Bergman, ABC News, December 16, 1966.
12. Gus Grissom, interview by Nelson Benton, CBS News, December 1966.
13. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 49.
14. Alan Bean remarks at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, July 17, 2009.
15. Charles Donlan, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Interview by Jim Slade, April 27, 1998.
16. Grissom, Gemini, 22.
17. Carpenter et al., We Seven, 55.
18. Malcolm Scott Carpenter, Leroy G. Cooper, John H. Glenn, Virgil I. Grissom, Walter M. Schirra, Alan B. Shepard, and Donald K. Slayton, The Astronauts: Pioneers in Space (New York: Golden Press, 1961), 46.
19. General Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, Yeager: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1985), 106.
20. William Lundgren, Across the High Frontier: The Story of a Test Pilot, Major Charles E. Yeager, USAF (New York: William Morrow, 1955), 75–76.
21. Yeager and Janos, Yeager, 164.
22. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 16.
23. Brooks, Grimwood, and Swenson, Chariots for Apollo, chapter 8.
24. Jay Barbree, Live From Cape Canaveral (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2007), 123.
25. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 16.
26. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 79.
27. Interview with Paul Recer, February 23, 2011.
28. Cecile King Grissom, telephone interview by Robert Sherrod, December 31, 1969. Transcribed interview, NASA Headquarters Historical Reference Collection, Washington, DC.
29. Dennis Grissom died on December 30, 1994, at the age of ninety-one; Cecile King Grissom died on November 8, 1995. She was ninety-four.
30. Author’s interview with Ralph Basilio, June 9, 2014.
31. C-SPAN interview with Guenter Wendt, February 25, 1999.
32. Ibid.
12: HOW ASTRONAUTS TALK
1. Schefter, The Race, 248.
2. Author’s interview with Alan Bean, August 31, 2010.
3. Ibid.
4. Apollo 1 preflight press conference, Manned Spaceflight Center, December 1966, https://www.dvidshub.net/audio/32132/apollo-1#.Vtr8Rse0Hwx.
5. Howard Benedict, “After Rash of Space Flights, U.S. to Launch Only 1 Or 2 in 1967,” Indianapolis Star, December 26, 1966.
6. Email correspondence with Marcia Dunn, February 23–24, 2011.
7. Cooper and Henderson, Leap of Faith, 67.
8. Henry C. Dethloff, Suddenly, Tomorrow Came: The NASA History of the Johnson Space Center (Washington, DC: NASA History Series, 1993), 125.
9. Loudon Wainwright, The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), 301.
10. Ibid., 310.
11. Andrew Chaikin, A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 22–23.
12. Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., First on the Moon (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky and Konecky, n.d.), 49.
13. John Barbour, Footprints on the Moon (New York: Associated Press, 1969), 125.
14. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 8.
13: FRONT OF THE LINE
1. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 68.
2. Ibid., 71.
3. Ibid., 68.
4. Author’s interview with Lowell Grissom, September 1, 2011.
5. North American Aviation likely pedaled influence in Washington through its lobbyist Fred Black and his business partner, the political fixer Bobby Baker, to win the Apollo contract over the more qualified aerospace contractor Martin Company, which would eventually become part of the military contracting giant Lockheed Martin Corp. For a thorough discussion of North American Aviation’s role in the Apollo program, see Gray, Angle of Attack, esp. 117–19.
6. Besides Apollo 1, Apollo 7 and 8 also lacked a docking mechanism that was included on all other Apollo Block II spacecraft.
7. Initial plans to launch the first Apollo flight in late 1966, perhaps rendezvousing with the last Gemini flight, were cancelled when it became clear the Spacecraft 012 would not be ready.
8. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 10.
9. Donald L. Chaffee and C. Donald Chrysler, On Course to the Stars: The Roger B. Chaffee Story (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1968), 67.
10. “Donald Chaffee, Astronaut’s Father,” Chicago Tribune, October 31, 1998.
11. Chaffee and Chrysler, On Course to the Stars, 74.
12. Ibid., 73.
13. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 54–55.
14. Chaffee and Chrysler, On Course to the Stars, 84.
15. Eugene Cernan and Don Davis, The Last Man on the Moon (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000), 3.
16. “Crew of Apollo Accepted Risks: 3 Men Believed Space Flight Was Worth Facing Perils,” New York Times, January 29, 1967, 48.
17. The beach conversation between Donald and Roger Chaffee in the summer of 1966 is drawn from “A Father’s Love, a Nation’s Loss, a Reflection,” unpublished article by Rick Boos, January 27, 1989.
18. ABC News special report on the Apollo 1 fire with science editor Jules Bergman, January 28, 1967.
19. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 59.
20. Salter also flew with Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin during the Korean War.
21. Email to the author from James Salter, August 18, 2011.
22. Salter, Burning the Days, 285–86.
23. Moser, Past Imperfect, 269.
24. ABC News broadcast interview with Edward White, December 1966.
25. Salter, Burnings the Days, 175.
26. “Crew of Apollo Accepted Risks,” New York Times, January 29, 1967, 48.
27. “Cause of the Apollo 204 Fire,” Report of the Apollo 204 Review Board, Part V, Section 4, http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/invest.html.
28. NASA ordered North American Aviation to bundle and install spacecraft wiring by hand after the Apollo 1 fire.
29. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 65.
30. Ibid., 114. See also “John Young, Spaceman,” Air and Space Magazine, September 2005 http://www.airspacemag.com/space/spaceman-7766826/#ixzz3M7NB1I2h; Sington, In the Shadow of the Moon.
31. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 15.
32. Lovell provides a detailed description of the Apollo Block I hatch, which he noted was “designed less to permit easy escape than to maintain the integrity of the craft.” See Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 14.
33. Ibid., 2, 17; Slayton and Cassutt, Deke!, 189.
34. Author’s interview with former NASA public affairs officer Bob Button, December 3, 2014.
35. NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History interview with Richard Gordon, June 16, 1999. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/GordonRF/GordonRF_6-16-99.htm.
36. A fatal Soviet accident involving pure oxygen under pressure was not revealed in the West until 1980.
37. Kelly, America’s Astronauts and Their Indestructible Spirit, 154.
38. Ibid., 154–55.
39. Letter from Samuel Phillips, Apollo program director, to Mark E. Bradley, vice president of the Garrett Corp., October 12, 1966.
40. Chariots for Apollo, “Preparations for the First Manned Apollo Mission,” http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4205/ch8-7.html.
41. Report of Apollo 204 Review Board, Part V: Investigation and Analyses; Section 4, “Cause of the Apollo 204 Fire.”
42. Chariots for Apollo, chapter 8, “Preparations for the First Manned Apollo Flight,” http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4205/ch8-7.html.
43. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 87.
44. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 179.
1. Field Enterprises also was the publisher of the World Book Encyclopedia, a unit of which owned the copyright to Gus Grissom’s posthumously published account of the Gemini program.
2. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 183.
3. Schirra with Billings, Schirra’s Space, 180.
4. “Saturn: Launch Complex 34,” NASA documentary, circa 1962, posted to Air Space and Missile Museum YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/SAVYzv5Zwwk.
5. Walter C. Williams, unpublished manuscript, NASA Headquarters History Office, “The Spacecraft 012 Fire,” October 26, 1972, draft, 15.
6. See also Erik Bergaust, Murder on Pad 34 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), 30.
7. Barbree, Live from Cape Canaveral, 124–25.
8. Schirra with Billings, Schirra’s Space, 182–83.
9. Ibid., 183.
10. Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System, https://www.dvidshub.net/audio/32132/apollo-1#.VOveKkKxFUQat26.52.
11. Ibid., beginning at 2:40.
12. NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project interview with Joseph W. Cuzzupoli, Kirkland, WA, January 19, 1999. See also http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/CuzzupoliJW/CuzzupoliJW_1-19-99.htm.
13. NASA Oral History Project interview with Wally Schirra, December 1, 1998.
14. Ibid.
15. Kent Demaret, “‘Group Think’ and ‘Go Fever’ Brought the Shuttle Down, Says Ex-Astronaut Donn Eisele,” People, March 24, 1986, http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20093213,00.html.
16. NASA Oral History Project interview with Wally Schirra, December 1, 1998. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/SchirraWM/WMS_12-1-98.pdf.
17. Demaret, “‘Group Think’ and ‘Go Fever’ Brought the Shuttle Down, Say Ex-Astronaut Donn Eisele.”
18. Christopher C. Kraft, Flight: My Life in Mission Control (New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001), 275.
19. University of Houston, Center for Public History, Christopher C. Kraft, “Remembering Apollo 8,” Houston History: NASA Johnson Space Center, 1958–1978 6, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 15. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/HouHistory/HoustonHistory-Fall08.pdf.
20. Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox, Apollo (Burkittsville, MD: South Mountain Press, 2004), 183.
21. Turner Home Entertainment, Moon Shot.
22. Graveline and Kelly, From Laika with Love, 157.
23. Schirra and Billings, Schirra’s Space, 183.
24. Report of the Apollo 204 Review Board, appendix B, 51.
25. Kelly, America’s Astronauts and Their Indestructible Spirit, 128.
26. Collette Brooks, Lost in Wonder: Imagining Science and Other Mysteries (Berkeley, CA: Counter Point, 2010), 101.
27. Reviewing the audiotapes of the Apollo 1 fire, some listeners thought Chaffee, or perhaps Grissom, may have said, “Fire!”
28. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 172.
29. Graveline and Kelly, From Laika with Love, 146–47.
30. Apollo 1 (Columbus, OH: Spacecraft Films, 2007).
31. Report of the Apollo 204 Review Board, appendix B, B-39.
32. Ibid.
33. United States Senate, Apollo 204 Accident: Report Together with Additional Views. 90th Cong., 2d sess. Report No. 956. Washington, DC, GPO, 1968.
34. Author’s interview with Rick Boos, March 20, 2014, Celina, OH.
35. Report of the Apollo 204 Review Board, Witness Statements and Releases, Appendix B to the Final Report, B-64.
36. The record is unclear on the question of the exact cabin temperature during the fire. Some sources indicate it reached as high as 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Stainless steel used in the spacecraft was observed to have melted as a result of the fire. The melting range for stainless steel, depending on grade, ranges from 1,325 to 1,530 degrees Celsius (about 2,400 to 2,786 degrees Fahrenheit). See also Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 113.
37. Murray and Cox, Apollo, 190.
38. Willie G. Moseley, Smoke Jumper, Moon Pilot: The Remarkable Life of Apollo 14 Astronaut Stuart Roosa (Morley, MO: Acclaim Press, 2011), 103.
39. The inner hatch was to have been lowered onto the polyurethane pad during the planned egress drill. The highly flammable pad soaked up huge amounts of pure oxygen under pressure and should never have been allowed in the cabin during the plugs-out test.
40. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 113.
41. Slayton and Cassutt, Deke!, 190.
42. Report of the Apollo 204 Review Board, appendix B, 161–62.
43. Live from the Moon: The Story of Apollo Television (Columbus, OH: Spacecraft Films, 2009).
44. Ibid.
45. Gene Kranz, Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 197.
46. “3 Astronauts’ Tape Ended With ‘Get Us Out of Here!’” New York Times, January 31, 1967, 1.
47. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 188.
48. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 3–4. Schirra recalled it was Joseph Algranti, chief of aircraft operations at the Manned Spacecraft Center, who had broken the news to the backup crew.
49. Author’s interview with Alfred Worden, Washington, DC, July 29, 2011.
50. Betty Grissom said Charles Berry offered to help notify her in-laws; she declined, saying, “I think they’d rather hear it from me.” Starfall, 189.
51. Transcript of Robert Sherrod interview with Cecile Grissom, December 31, 1969, NASA History Office collection, Washington, DC.
52. Walter C. Williams, unpublished manuscript, chapter 7, October 26, 1972, draft, 14; Gray, Angle of Attack, 228–30.
53. Carpenter and Stoever, For Spacious Skies, 326.
54. Walter Schirra interview with Associated Press reporter Howard Benedict, September 20, 1968.
55. Author’s interview with Rick Boos, July 8, 2013.
15: ABANDON IN PLACE
1. Harford, Korolev, 113.
2. Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days, 100.
3. Ibid., 102.
4. By now, the United States supposedly had built up a substantial advantage over the Soviets in land-based nuclear missiles. Another cost being considered at the time was whether to spend an additional $80 billion for “blast shelters” along with more offensive and defensive weapons. The Apollo program is estimated to have cost more than $20 billion (see Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days, 166).
5. Turner Home Entertainment, Moon Shot.
6. The phrase “train wreck” is apt. According to Richard White, a Stanford University history professor, “In the 19th and early 20th centuries, railroads rejected new technologies that could have improved safety as too complicated and too expensive.” “Our Trouble with Trains,” New York Times, May 18, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/opinion/our-trouble-with-trains.html.
7. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 12.
8. Mitchell and Williams, The Way of the Explorer, 26.
9. Ibid., 39–41.
10. Turner Home Entertainment, Moon Shot.
11. James Oberg, “NASA Has to Fight the Forgetting,” NBCNews.com, January 28, 2007, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/16830696/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/nasa-has-fight-forgetting.
12. Cunningham, The All-American Boys, 13.
13. Conrad later gave the original pen-and-ink drawing to Paul Haney, the NASA public affairs chief in Houston. Haney’s estate eventually sold the drawing at auction.
14. Examples of such bureaucratic behavior are rife throughout US history. In the chaotic hours and days following the assassination of President Kennedy, US Deputy Attorney General Nicholas deB Katzenbach wrote and distributed a memorandum that laid the groundwork for establishing the Warren Commission. “We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort,” Katzenbach concluded in a memorandum to President Johnson’s aide Bill Moyers, dated November 25, 1963. The Katzenbach memorandum is reprinted in David R. Wrone’s The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 289.
15. Astronaut Frank Borman, paying his respects to the White family in El Lago before flying to Cape Kennedy to begin investigating the fire, discovered that NASA officials already were pressuring Pat White to have her husband buried with his crewmates at Arlington National Cemetery. If anything happened, Ed White had told his wife he wished to be interred at West Point. Borman soon figured out what was going on and instructed the NASA functionaries that White’s burial would take place at the Academy in accordance with the family’s wishes. NASA was “worrying [more] about what would make it easier on them than on the victims’ families,” Borman realized. See Frank Borman and Robert J. Serling, Countdown: An Autobiography (New York: Silver Arrow Books/William Morrow, 1988), 170. According to the novelist James Salter, a West Point graduate and White’s commanding officer while they were stationed together in Europe, White’s grave is among the most visited at the West Point Cemetery.
16. McCullough, The Wright Brothers, 190–92.
17. Ibid., 197.
18. US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Virgil Ivan Grissom was buried in Section 3, Lot 2503-E, Grid Q-15-16 at Arlington National Cemetery, VA.
19. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 191.
20. “For the Heroes, Salute and Farewell,” Life, February 10, 1967, 28–29.
21. Gemini astronauts Ted Freeman, Elliot See, and Charles Bassett were killed in training jet crashes: Freeman in October 1964, and See and Bassett in February 1966.
22. To the Moon (Boston: NOVA, PBS, 1999).
23. Oberg, “NASA Has to Fight the Forgetting.”
24. Apollo 1; author’s interview with Stephen Clemmons, May 2011.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Borman and Serling, Countdown, 175.
28. Apollo 1; author’s interview with Stephen Clemmons, May 2011.
29. Ibid., 182.
30. The astronauts insisted that North American Aviation also hire Guenter Wendt, the McDonnell “Pad Fuehrer” from the Mercury and Gemini programs, to run Apollo launchpad operations. Only after agreeing to give Wendt complete control did he agree to leave McDonnell and join North American. Wendt oversaw launch operations throughout Apollo, enforcing strict quality control and safety measures.
31. The BMAG switch incident is drawn from Herbert Kean’s commentary posted to the website Collectspace.com, as well as an email exchange with the author.
32. Ibid.
33. Email exchange with David Carey, April 13, 2015.
34. NASA Oral History Project interview with Wally Schirra, December 1, 1998, 12–24.
35. According to Dr. Fred Kelly, NASA had at the time of the fire more than twenty thousand hours of experience with pure oxygen at pressures of five pounds per square inch in altitude chambers and spaceflight. Kelly, “We Have a Fire in the Cockpit,” in From Laika with Love, 145.
36. Young and Hansen, Forever Young, 57–58, 215.
37. Borman and Serling, Countdown, 174.
38. Ibid., 175.
39. Ibid., 180.
40. Sington, In the Shadow of the Moon.
41. Murray and Cox, Apollo, 186; see also The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology. Vol. IV, Part 1 (H) “Preparation for Flight, the Accident, and Investigation March 16 through April 5, 1967, http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4009/v4p1h.htm.
42. Construction of Spacecraft 012 commenced in August 1964 at the North American Aviation plant in Downey, CA. The basic structure was completed in September 1965. Installation, final assembly, and checkout of spacecraft subsystems followed by integrated testing of all subsystems were completed in March 1966. NASA issued a flightworthiness certificate and authorized shipment of the spacecraft despite a long list of problems, particularly with the environmental control system, in August 1966. The spacecraft arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on August 26, 1966. See “Apollo 1 Spacecraft History,” http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_01b_Spacecraft_History.htm.
43. Among them was a former naval aviator and Republican congressman from Illinois, Donald Rumsfeld, who complained that NASA had failed to inform lawmakers of crew safety initiatives. The future US defense secretary during the Iraq war managed to get an amendment passed in 1968, creating an Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. See Bergaust, Murder on Pad 34, 193–95.
44. Moon Machines.
45. “Moon Shot Opposed: Vannevar Bush Says Program Not Worth Dangers Involved,” New York Times, November 17, 1963, E8.
46. Grissom Crater is located at 45 degrees south latitude, 160 degrees west longitude on the lunar far side.
47. The Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, also known as the Rogers Commission, held a lengthy series of public hearings before releasing its report more than four months after the shuttle exploded shortly after launch.
48. Author’s interview with Rick Boos, Celina, OH, March 20, 2014.
49. Mark Grissom comments during fiftieth anniversary observance of the flight of Liberty Bell 7, Mitchell, IN, July 21, 2011.
50. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 249.
51. Email exchange with Rick Armstrong, eldest son of Neil Armstrong, February 27, 2013.
52. Grissom and Cooper formed an Indianapolis 500 racing team with former winner Jim Rathmann, the supplier of the Mercury astronauts’ Corvettes. “GCR Racing” entered several Indy 500 races.
53. Grissom and Still, Starfall, 220–21.
54. Alex French and Howie Kahn, “Punch a Hole in the Sky: An Oral History of the Right Stuff,” WIRED magazine, December 2014, 88–106
55. Rogertebert.com, Great Movie, “The Right Stuff,” March 12, 2002, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-right-stuff-1983.
56. Norman Grissom, untitled remembrance of his brother Virgil I. Grissom, observance of the fiftieth anniversary observance of the flight of Liberty Bell 7, Mitchell, IN, July 23, 2011.
57. Time Capsule, Indianapolis Monthly, October 2000, 104.
58. Pad 34 was closed to the public in 2015 for unspecified security reasons. It has been suggested the closure may be related to “environmental remediation” at the site, where chlorinated solvents such as trichloroethylene were poured into the ground for decades. See “That Sinking Feeling,” Space KSC blog by Stephen C. Smith, October 23, 2015, http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2015/10/that-sinking-feeling.html?showComment=1445865693442#c8847937808292489762.
59. Helen Macdonald, author of the prize-winning 2014 memoir H is for Hawk, has noted: “When contact with others is made difficult through social or personal circumstance, feeding animals can bring enormous solace.” She added, “The birds that choose to come to my garden make my house a less lonely place. And that is why many of us feed animals.” Helen Macdonald, “Why Do We Feed Animals?” New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2016, 18.
60. One observer described NASA’s half-hearted attempts at preservation as allowing the spacecraft “to rot in glorified tool shed.” See Roger Launius’s Blog, “Whatever Became of the Apollo 1 Spacecraft?” May 30, 2014, https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/whatever-became-of-the-apollo-1-spacecraft/.
61. Ibid.
62. Oberg, “NASA Has to Fight the Forgetting”; author’s interview with James Oberg, June 1, 2015. NASA finally placed wreckage from the Challenger and Columbia on public display at the Kennedy Space Center in the summer of 2015. See Marcia Dunn, “Challenger, Columbia Wreckage on Public Display for First Time,” Associated Press, August 2, 2015, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/69b86cef13024ea3a0df06bdb0a67965/challenger-columbia-wreckage-public-display-1st-time.
63. With thanks to James Oberg.
64. Author’s interview with Lowell Grissom, September 1, 2011.
65. Newport, Lost Spacecraft, 149.
66. Ibid., 150.
67. Newport also entertained the possibility that static electricity from the recovery helicopter had caused the hatch to blow prematurely; ibid., 87.