Chasing the Moon

by Robert Stone

  Apollo’s first flight was scheduled to launch only three months after the close of the Gemini program, maintaining the same energetic pace. The excitement surrounding the conclusion of the Gemini program led some journalists to assume that meeting the country’s objectives in space before the end of the decade would be relatively easy. But Webb worried about anyone expressing overconfidence. Despite Gemini’s many successes, memory of Gemini 8’s close call was still immediate.

  When Lyndon Johnson met with the Gemini 12 crew in front of cameras at the LBJ Ranch following their return, James Webb was standing at his side. Johnson spoke in a hoarse voice, the result of minor throat surgery the previous week. He shortened his planned talk but heeded Webb’s suggestion that he insert a few words of caution when looking forward to Apollo. “The months ahead will not be easy as we reach toward the Moon,” Johnson said, prompting some journalists to wonder if Kennedy’s deadline was being reconsidered. But Johnson said he was merely calling attention to Apollo’s many untested systems, which were far more complex than anything on Gemini.

  Plans for the first Apollo flight were on schedule at Cape Kennedy when President Johnson and James Webb appeared together again, eight weeks later. The venue was the East Room of the White House; the occasion, the signing of the Outer Space Treaty. The treaty established the legal foundation for all subsequent international space law, specifically placing a prohibition on any nuclear weapons in space, on the military use of any celestial body, or on claims of sovereignty over any celestial resource. Henceforth, outer space would be used for peaceful purposes only.

  Fortuitously, the treaty signing coincided with a Washington gathering of the Apollo Executives Group, composed of elite decision makers from NASA and the leading aerospace contractors. Immediately after the White House signing, Webb, von Braun, and other NASA center directors, including Houston’s Robert Gilruth and the Kennedy Space Center’s director Kurt Debus, as well as the heads of North American Aviation, McDonnell Aircraft, and Grumman, gathered for cocktails at the International Club, a short distance from the White House.

  At roughly seven-thirty that evening, the relaxed mood began to change. Lee Atwood, CEO of North American Aviation, and the Cape’s Kurt Debus received paged messages asking them to take urgent phone calls. Next was Robert Gilruth. When Atwood returned, he looked grave and took Webb aside. Webb next rushed to locate an available phone and immediately placed a call to the White House switchboard, where he was connected to one of Lyndon Johnson’s secretaries. Webb dictated a short message, which was typed on a small piece of White House stationery, with a notation of the time. The note was then folded in half.

  The message was taken to the president’s private quarters and passed to Lyndon Johnson, who was attending a party in honor of his retiring secretary of commerce. Johnson unfolded the note as the departing secretary was making a toast. As he read it, Johnson recalled, “The shock hit me like a physical blow.”

  As everyone looked to the president, they noticed the sudden change in his demeanor. In a somber voice, Johnson then read the entire message out loud:

  “James Webb just reported that the first Apollo crew was under test at Cape Kennedy and a fire broke out in their capsule and all three were killed. He does not know whether it was the primary crew or backup crew but believes it was the primary crew of Grissom, White, and Chaffee.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EARTHRISE

  (1967–1968)

  ONCE EACH MONTH, the small cohort of Florida-based journalists gathered for an informal evening of drinks, dinner, jokes, stories, and rumors. They shared a common beat: the American space program. Informally dubbed the Better Health and Sunshine Club, the gatherings would often begin in the afternoon with a round of golf. This Friday the dining room at the Rockledge Country Club, a few miles inland from Cape Kennedy, was the chosen venue.

  The twenty predominantly male journalists and press officers who had congregated at the large table were in good spirits. Their recently published stories reflected a general sense of optimism. Not only did it appear likely that President Kennedy’s lunar goal would be achieved before the deadline, but it was widely believed that the United States had established its lead in the space race. After ten piloted Gemini missions, the first Apollo flight, with Grissom, White, and Chaffee, was scheduled to launch in about a month. The Soviets hadn’t placed a single cosmonaut in orbit for nearly two years.

  As dinner was being served, the bartender approached NASA’s veteran public-affairs officer Jack King, the man whose voice had provided the audio countdowns for nearly every launch from Cape Kennedy. He had an urgent phone call. He assumed it was probably another call concerning a NASA manager who had been caught speeding or arrested for DUI.

  King picked up the phone at the bar, about twenty feet away from the table. After observing him say a chipper “hello,” those looking on from the table saw his entire body grow tense and his facial expression become stern. He hung up the phone and stopped at the table to say, “I gotta go. Something’s happened at the Cape.” King would only add, “It’s urgent. You’ll hear from me later tonight.”

  Some of the reporters at the table were still on deadline and headed off to find one of the country club’s few available public telephones, to check in with their contacts at the Cape. Within minutes a local reporter from the Cocoa Tribune learned that the prime crew of the first Apollo mission had been killed in a launchpad fire. As word spread throughout the dining room, all the journalists departed and drove back to their offices. Few would get any rest during the next week.

  In the small El Lago suburb of Houston, astronaut Bill Anders had been spending the early evening working in his yard when he was called inside to take a phone call. Fellow astronaut Alan Bean regretfully told him the tragic news from the Cape and informed him that he had been assigned the solemn task of officially notifying Ed White’s wife, Pat, of her husband’s death. It was a duty that each astronaut knew he might have to perform someday. Anders changed his clothes and arrived at the Whites’ house ten minutes later. The Whites lived next door to Neil Armstrong, who was away in Washington for the signing of the Outer Space Treaty. When Anders arrived, Pat White was on the porch, talking with Armstrong’s wife, Jan. Had Neil Armstrong called her from Washington and asked her to be there as well? Anders wasn’t sure, but as he walked up to the house and looked into their faces, he received an impression that Jan Armstrong had a sense of the dreaded news he was about to relay.

  NASA’s deputy administrator Robert Seamans was in his office at NASA headquarters, after being called away from a private dinner at his home. He had drawn up the agency’s plan of action for handling an ongoing emergency, instituted after the crisis during Gemini 8. Only secure private phone lines were to be used. It was the beginning of a very long night. First, he and NASA’s director of the Office of Manned Space Flight, George Mueller, compiled a list of candidates to sit on an accident review board. Following the plan, the investigation would be conducted swiftly and contained within the space agency. Both Seamans and James Webb feared that an independent board of review could take months or longer and endanger the future of the Apollo program itself. With Mueller he looked for people with no previous management role in Apollo, people who could remain objective. An astronaut would need to be included on the board, sitting in what was likely to be its most high-profile public position. In consultation with Deke Slayton, they chose Frank Borman, the veteran commander of Gemini 7. Borman’s mature and no-nonsense approach to problem-solving made him an obvious candidate. Following Gemini 7, he had advanced to the Apollo program and was one of the few astronauts already well acquainted with the spacecraft. Heading the nine-member board would be Dr. Floyd Thompson, director of NASA’s Langley Research Center, which hadn’t been closely involved in Apollo planning at that time.

  In a nearby office, public-affairs chief Julian Scheer refused to allow any NA
SA spokesperson to confirm news of the tragedy until all three wives had been notified. Locating and informing Gus Grissom’s wife, Betty, was taking longer than expected.

  In the midst of the tense two hours while the media held off breaking the news, Seamans was on a call with defense secretary Robert McNamara. Suddenly, in mid-sentence, Seamans heard a telephone operator cut into the line. She had been ordered to interrupt the call immediately by NBC reporter Peter Hackes, who had informed her it was a matter of national emergency. “The word is out! The country is almost in a panic kind of frame of mind,” Hackes told him. “You’ve got to go on TV at eleven o’clock and reassure them.”

  Seamans refused. He told Hackes, “I can’t do that….I don’t know all the facts.” Nevertheless, NBC was on the air a few minutes later with a thirty-minute special report. Assured that the three widows had been informed, NASA spokesman Paul Haney confirmed the death of the astronauts in a brief statement. Initial news accounts said all three had died instantaneously, an erroneous detail that was widely reported until a journalist revealed two days later that the astronauts had lived for at least a minute after the first sign of fire and had, in fact, died as a result of smoke inhalation.

  Within a few hours of the tragedy, a television report was already speculating that the fire started with a spark in the communications wiring, located near Grissom’s couch on the left side of the spacecraft. In a special report, NBC’s Hackes explained that the 100 percent oxygen atmosphere in the Apollo spacecraft would have made the fire burn especially quickly, noting that the Russians had chosen not to use a 100 percent oxygen environment in their vehicles. The network’s Capitol Hill correspondent, Hackes also offered insight about changing congressional attitudes regarding the expense of the space program. In light of competing demands to fund the war in Vietnam and Great Society programs, he predicted new calls to further reduce NASA’s budget.

  Far less objective was CBS’s Walter Cronkite. “This is a time for great sadness—national sadness and certainly the personal sadness of the people in the space program. But it’s also a time for courage. And if that sounds trite, I’ll change the word[s] to guts….These guys who went into it knew it was a test program…[that] was bound to claim its victims….It should not be a cause for our turning back or having any question of faltering in our progress forward toward the landing on the Moon….It shouldn’t in any way damage our national resolve to press on with the program for which these men gave their lives.”

  * * *

  —

  FRANK BORMAN’S SLEEK T-38 Talon roared off Houston’s Ellington Field runway shortly after sunrise the next morning. He was piloting the twin-jet, high-altitude supersonic trainer directly across the Gulf of Mexico toward Cape Kennedy rather than following the coastline, due to the urgency of the situation. As the sky on the eastern horizon began to lighten, he pushed the engines to their limit to hasten his arrival. Alone with his thoughts in the sheltered cockpit, the thirty-eight-year-old Air Force colonel reflected on the events of the past twelve hours.

  The previous evening, a Texas Ranger had unexpectedly arrived at a remote lakeside cottage where he, his wife, Susan, and his two boys had just unpacked for what they hoped would be a leisurely weekend away from their Houston home. Close friends had invited Borman and his family as weekend guests, but the astronaut had left no word of his plans with the Manned Spacecraft Center. Nevertheless, the Texas Rangers had somehow tracked him down and told him to call Houston. Borman had been instructed to drive home immediately and on Saturday morning fly a T-38 to the Cape to join other members of the accident review board investigating the causes of the fire. Leaving the boys with their hosts, he and Susan returned to Houston and headed first to the Whites’ home. Nearly all the astronauts lived close to one another in El Lago. When they arrived, Bill Anders, his wife, Valerie, and Jan Armstrong were consoling Pat White.

  Astronaut Frank Borman climbs into the cockpit of a NASA T-38 Talon. The space agency maintained a small fleet of the two-engine jet trainers for the astronauts to use whenever traveling to facilities around the country. Extensive hours in the T-38 prior to launch helped the astronauts hone their flying skills and physically prepare for weightlessness during space flight.

  Since moving to Houston in 1962, Susan and Pat had become close friends. Susan remained with Pat while Frank returned to their home nearby to catch a few hours of sleep before his morning flight to the Cape. But as much as she tried to be there for her friend, Susan couldn’t help but imagine herself in the same situation. In the Whites’ living room, the astronaut families gathered and talked until three or four in the morning. Some later remembered it as a rare moment that brought forth a frank and heartfelt discussion about the ultimate meaning of death.

  Borman had been two classes ahead of Ed White at West Point, and by the mid-1950s both were part of the Air Force’s global military presence during the Cold War: White flew F-86 Sabre jets in Germany; Borman was with a fighter-bomber squadron in the Philippines. Not long after, both graduated from the Edwards test-pilot school, although in different classes, and in 1962, Borman and White were among nine men chosen as members of NASA’s second group of astronauts, “the New Nine.”

  As he flew his T-38 toward the Cape, Borman heard the voices of anonymous air-traffic controllers offering him brief messages of emotional support. The news of the Apollo fire was all over radio and television. The T-38’s NASA call sign was all that was needed to explain the reason for its unusual early Saturday-morning flight plan.

  Notice of a sudden accidental death was something military jet pilots and their wives had learned to accept as a part of their lives. In the Air Force, Borman had seen his share of aircraft fatalities and had served on accident review boards. It was no different in the space program. In a little more than two years, three of the twenty-eight Gemini astronauts had been killed in T-38 crashes. But this wasn’t another aircraft accident. It was a sudden fire erupting inside a sealed spacecraft. And it happened while it was on the ground and during a test no one believed was especially dangerous.

  The second-oldest of the New Nine, Borman had emerged as one of its leaders. He avoided unnecessary chitchat, more often speaking with a calm but forceful authority that seldom prompted a rebuttal. A single ice-cold stare from his penetrating eyes could silence a room in seconds. After heading the two-week Gemini 7 mission with Jim Lovell, Borman had been chosen to command one of the early Apollo crews, expected to test the lunar module in earth orbit. Now, as a result of the tragedy on Pad 34, that mission and the future of the entire Apollo program were in doubt.

  On the Apollo review board, he would represent every future astronaut who would enter that spacecraft, lie on its couches, and fly it into space. He wanted to make sure no astronaut did so without having full confidence it was the finest and safest spacecraft that could be built.

  As he brought his T-38 in for a landing on the Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Skid Strip, Borman could see the first Apollo crew’s Saturn 1B partly shrouded by the red service structure. The entire area surrounding Pad 34 had been locked down for the past few hours. After checking in to a motel and renting a car, Borman joined NASA officials and members of the review board and headed to Pad 34. There they took the elevator to the white room surrounding the Apollo command module. As they grew closer, they could see discarded fire extinguishers and cables strewn on the floor. Twenty-six workmen had fought the blaze; two had been hospitalized.

  The outside of the spacecraft was partially blackened with soot, and through the open hatchway Borman could see the center couch where Ed White had been lying a few hours earlier. In the air was a strong odor of burned paper and foam material. A layer of dark-gray ash covered everything on the left side of the spacecraft, while on the right there were flight manuals and other things that appeared slightly browned but otherwise untouched. In the center, prominently visible, were twin oxygen hoses that had been
attached to White’s space suit. Both showed signs of having been severed with a blade as White’s body was removed.

  The charred interior of the Apollo Command Module photographed shortly after the fire on Pad 34 that claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee on January 27, 1967.

  * * *

  —

  JAMES WEBB AND NASA were now facing a crisis that he and Robert Seamans had considered only an imagined possibility when they drew up the emergency plan following Gemini 7. Members of the review board were already conferring at the Cape when Webb traveled to the White House to brief President Johnson. He was ushered into the president’s private quarters, where Johnson, on this late Saturday morning, remained dressed in pajamas. The president’s science adviser was already urging him to appoint an independent presidential commission, something Webb wanted to avoid. NASA’s adversaries could use an open-ended investigation to weaken the agency, justify additional budget cuts, and, as a consequence, delay the lunar landing.

  Webb outlined two options for the president: a NASA investigation or an independent commission. While doing so, Webb cautioned the president that his enemies could use an independent investigation to unearth details about a Johnson aide who had already been implicated in an influence-peddling deal with a lobbyist for North American Aviation. The 1968 presidential election was on the horizon, and Johnson would certainly want to avoid any reminders of past scandals, especially if they might be peripherally connected to the death of three national heroes.

  “I want you to handle the investigation,” Johnson said. Webb agreed, not mentioning the NASA board he and Seamans had put together the previous evening. He pointed out that Johnson could always change his mind, only requesting that he be told in advance if the president did so.