Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman

by Neal Thompson

  A few weeks earlier, in late January, NASA had launched a chimpanzee named Ham on a flight, using the same type of Redstone rocket that Shepard was scheduled to fly. For two years NASA had been using chimps and pigs in test launches. This time, engineers had designed Ham’s flight as a means of testing its system of communicating with the capsule; Ham was trained to pull certain levers during the flight, and if he pulled the correct lever, NASA would send a signal to the capsule that would release banana pellets as Ham’s reward.

  That flight, while considered a success, was riddled with imperfections. A faulty valve caused too much fuel to pump into the engine of the booster rocket, causing Ham to fly too high and too far. Because too much fuel was pumped through the rocket’s engines, the tanks ran dry, which triggered Ham’s capsule to separate from the spent rocket. The capsule then reentered the atmosphere too fast and at the wrong angle, which increased the friction between the capsule and the atmosphere, causing temperatures inside the capsule to soar. The capsule’s electrical system also malfunctioned, so that instead of receiving banana pellets for pulling the appropriate levers, Ham received electrical shocks. Ham’s capsule finally splashed into the Atlantic but immediately began filling with seawater. Recovery crews arrived thirty minutes later and pulled Ham from the sinking capsule. The chimp was very pissed off.

  Wernher von Braun didn’t want Shepard’s flight to be similarly marred, and he decided to conduct one more unmanned test launch. But Shepard, despite the life-threatening dangers the chimp had withstood—dangers he now faced himself—was furious at the delays, blaming excessive “German thoroughness” and NASA’s willingness to “pacify” von Braun. “We’re ready to go. Let’s go,” he’d tell anyone who would listen. One day he urged von Braun directly, “For God’s sake, let’s fly now.” But von Braun wouldn’t budge. And NASA backed him.

  Then, to make matters worse, politics intervened. Jerome B. Wiesner, a scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whom Kennedy had selected to be his technical adviser on science issues, had advised Kennedy a week prior to his inauguration that “the prestige of the United States will in part be determined by the leadership we demonstrate in space activities.”

  But then, when he became head of the newly appointed President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) that spring, Wiesner got cold feet. His committee—scoffed at by the astronauts as those “pee-sack” people—began warning Kennedy of the damage a dead astronaut could do to his young administration, and advised that NASA first send more chimps into space, possibly two dozen or more. Shepard told Glenn he was ready to have a “chimp barbecue.”

  Cartoonists had a field day with the chimps. One showed a chimp instructing astronauts how to operate a capsule and get bananas for pushing the right buttons. Another showed Ham explaining to Shepard that at some point during his flight, he’d crave a banana. Shepard’s colleagues began teasing him: first the chimp, then the chump. Depending on his mood, he either chuckled or sneered.

  During one training exercise at the Cape, when Shepard began complaining about some aspect of the simulation run, one of the engineers joked, “Maybe we should get somebody who works for bananas.” Shepard grabbed an ashtray and threw it at the man’s head, just missing him. At one press conference, Glenn made a joke about the similarities between the astronauts and NASA’s chimps. Shepard had finally heard enough about chimps and told Glenn to “scratch” himself.

  But he’d soon have bigger worries than chimps.

  Wiesner continued to advise caution in a memo to the White House: “The effect of TV cameras staring down (astronauts’) throats . . . could have a catastrophic effect.” The scientist acknowledged that the launch of an American into space would be an event “viewed in the same category as Columbus’ discovery of the new world . . . and should be exploited properly by the Administration.” But in the interest of safety, he called for a panel of experts to study the situation and prepare a report that would recommend to Kennedy whether or not to go ahead with a manned launch that spring.

  Panel members visited all of NASA’s training sites, where Shepard and the others were required to perform dog-and-pony shows for the panel, proving all over again that they could handle fifteen Gs in the centrifuge (and, therefore, could withstand the physical forces of a rocket launch), that they could tame MASTIF, and so on. Shepard had to show members how he would exit from his capsule, a replica of which was placed in the pool at Langley. The space program had come so far in the previous two years and was now on the verge of its first major success, but here were these guys in suits, fretting and wringing their hands. Shepard was disgusted and became convinced that the committee consisted of weak men incapable of making a bold decision.

  “What the hell can we tell these pee-sack people that we haven’t told them ten times?” Shepard complained to a NASA official during the delays to his flight. His overriding fear was that the delays had opened the door for the Russians to reach space first.

  A senator who sat on the PSAC committee visited the Cape one day and asked if he could pose for some pictures with Shepard. Shepard was doing simulated launches in the training capsule, and the senator climbed the steps and stuck his head inside the capsule, where Shepard lay on his back, scrunched into a contoured couch. “Well, you seem to be in a rather tight spot there, young man,” the lawmaker said. “Yeah, Senator,” Shepard said. “But probably not so tight as some of the spots you get into up there in Washington.” Shepard laughed loudly at his gibe, and the senator chuckled some, but not much.

  The PSAC report was due for release April 12, 1961. Already the original schedule for Shepard’s launch—which at one point had been planned for early April—had been pushed back a few weeks. But by the time the PSAC report neared completion, Shepard’s window of historic opportunity had closed.

  That very day—April 12—Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin blasted into space, circled the earth, and returned to it. “The stars in the sky look brighter,” the blond-haired, blue-eyed cosmonaut reported. His capsule parachuted to safety in a field beside the Volga River; in his bulky orange suit, helmet in hand, he approached a peasant girl and her mother. “Have you come from outer space?” the woman asked.

  “I am Soviet,” Gagarin said. “I’ve come from outer space.”

  At 3 A.M. the next morning a reporter called Shorty Powers, NASA’s spokesman, to get a reaction. Shorty, who was groggy and quite possibly drunk, gave a response that would haunt him the rest of his days: “We’re all asleep down here.” The press ran with it: U.S. Is Asleep While Soviets Orbit Earth.

  Shepard was in a hotel room at the Cape when he heard the news. A public affairs official from NASA came to his room early on the morning after Gagarin’s flight to break the news. They turned on the television and in disbelief watched grainy footage of millions of Russians welcoming their new hero to Moscow’s Red Square. Shepard scowled at the coverage and slammed his hand down so hard on a table that the NASA public relations officer feared he might have broken it.

  Glenn handled questions from the press later that day and conceded defeat. “They just beat the pants off us, that’s all,” he said. “There’s no use kidding ourselves about that.” President Kennedy said much the same that afternoon: “We are behind. And it will be some time before we catch up.”

  Over the subsequent days, newspaper and magazine headlines reflected America’s disgust and, just as Sputnik had four years earlier, chafed at the nation’s sense of inferiority. “Russia’s Triumph in Space—What Does It Mean?” asked U.S. News & World Report. “A Chance That We Missed,” said Life. Pictures of a jubilant Khrushchev ran alongside pictures of a hangdog Shepard, head down and hands shoved into his pockets, walking away from the camera past John Glenn.

  Then, like salt on the wound, Shepard learned of the results of the PSAC committee report that was delivered to President Kennedy that very afternoon. They recommended that NASA proceed with its plans for Shepard’s flight, and their report likened h
is pending mission to “the flights of the Wright Brothers, Lindbergh.”

  In the days after Gagarin’s feat, Glenn tried to keep Shepard focused on their still-busy training schedule, which he hoped would keep Shepard’s mind off the disappointment. But Shepard kept saying the same thing, over and over: We could have, should have, gone sooner. “We had them,” he repeated. “We had them by the short hairs, and we gave it away.”

  Five days later the nation suffered another cold war blow. A band of fifteen hundred Cuban exiles, trained and financed by the CIA, invaded their homeland with plans to overthrow Fidel Castro. But Castro was waiting for them; many of the rebels were slaughtered and the rest were captured, leaving Kennedy to sheepishly deny that the United States was behind the attack. The Bay of Pigs fueled the determination of Kennedy’s young administration to strike back with a victory. In a speech to the nation shortly after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy acknowledged that he was sick and tired of Russia’s successes and of communism’s march. And, in the wake of Gagarin’s flight, he met with NASA officials and his staff to plead with them to find a way to catch up. A Kennedy aide later called those days “the grimmest I can remember in the White House.”

  In late April, to remind everyone that America was still in this space race, and to give the media a taste of what a real launch would soon look like, NASA conducted a full dress rehearsal of Shepard’s mission, which was now scheduled for May 2.

  Gordo Cooper, acting as Shepard’s stand-in, suited up. He walked from the transport van to the base of the gantry, the skeletal supporting structure that rose alongside the rocket, where an elevator waited to carry him to a platform at the top. With doctors and technicians escorting him and photographers and reporters watching from behind a rope, Cooper suddenly stopped and began backing away from the gantry. “I don’t want to go,” he bawled in a staged tribute to José Jiménez. “Please don’t send me.” The crew, who was in on the gag, grabbed Cooper and forced him into the elevator.

  But in a reflection of the seriousness of the times, the press didn’t appreciate the joke. Stories in the next day’s papers excoriated NASA for goofing around at such a tense and important time in the nation’s history.

  Shepard, meanwhile, was back at Henri Landwirth’s Holiday Inn, packing up for a move into the crew quarters in Hangar S up at the Cape, where he’d spend the final week before launch. He’d been staying at the Holiday Inn, wearing dark glasses and disguises to sneak in and out past the press. Henri Landwirth tried to help, telling reporters and intrusive strangers that Shepard wasn’t there, spiriting him in and out through the kitchen.

  Louise came to visit for a few days, but they saw little of each other. “Strangers and reporters kept barging in on us,” he said later. Their longest moment together was the hourlong car ride to the airport at Orlando, during which they shared very few words. They both knew it could be the last time they saw each other.

  After dropping Louise off at the airport, Shepard returned to the Holiday Inn, packed his bags, and then drove to Hangar S, where Dee O’Hara, the astronauts’ nurse, had decorated the astronauts’ air-conditioned second-floor bedroom. O’Hara was always trying to take care of “my boys” and had carefully put together a cozy bedroom, with robin’s egg blue walls, champagne-colored drapes, two couches, a recliner, and two sets of bunk beds.

  Through the final days of April, Shepard had one set of bunk beds to himself while Glenn and Grissom shared the other. On May 2—just twenty days after Gagarin’s flight—the three men woke early, shared a breakfast of filet mignon and eggs, and waited for NASA bosses to unveil to the American public which of them would make history. A heavy rain fell outside, and Shepard felt certain the launch would be scrapped.

  NASA had even considered bringing all three men out that morning with Shepard, Grissom, and Glenn wearing hoods to keep the secret alive until one man rode the elevator up to the capsule. Shepard thought it was a stupid idea but agreed to the backup plan: to emerge from Hangar S fully suited and wade through a crowd of awaiting reporters and photographers on his way to the launch pad.

  But when rain washed out the day’s scheduled launch and it was postponed for another three days, NASA decided it was time to unmask the man who had been picked. The press, which had expected all along that John Glenn was going to be America’s first spaceman, pestered Shorty Powers for an explanation. Shorty tried to diplomatically explain that Shepard “had what all the others had, with just enough to spare to make him the logical man to go first.” Whatever that meant.

  That afternoon Shepard soothed his frustration over the scrubbed launch with a big shot of brandy, a long run on the beach, and a brief visit to the top of the gantry to peer inside his capsule, followed by three more simulated practice missions in the procedures trainer and then finally a fifteen-minute nap. (Shorty noted later that the brandy was his idea, that Shepard didn’t really need it—“I needed it more than he did.”)

  Two days later, Shepard and Glenn—who had been inseparable for weeks—jogged together out to a deserted, off-limits beach near the launch pad. They chased some crabs along the edge of the surf, just the two of them talking about the flight plans, far from the prelaunch preparations and tensions that began escalating that afternoon.

  Shepard and Glenn returned to Hangar S, and Shepard called Louise, his daughter Laura at her school in St. Louis, and his parents in New Hampshire. Then he and Glenn sat down for a roast beef dinner with the other five astronauts and their agent, Leo D’Orsey.

  The beef, one of the astronauts was explaining to D’Orsey, was part of NASA’s “low-residue” diet. Along with dry toast, skinless potatoes, and white chicken meat, it was designed— with the bathroom-less space capsule in mind—to create very little “output.”

  “No shit?” D’Orsey asked.

  “Exactly,” Shepard said, and the table cracked up.

  After dinner Shepard thanked Glenn for all his hard work. “John’s been most kind,” he said, and offered a toast. He still liked teasing Glenn by referring to him as “my backup.” And Glenn still considered himself Shepard’s superior, both morally and professionally. But it was clear to the others at the dinner table that night that the two men had drawn surprisingly close, that a mutual antagonism had been replaced by something akin to friendship.

  Over the previous three months Shepard and Glenn had spent more time together than either had ever spent with another man. “I don’t think two people could have worked more closely together than we did,” Glenn recalled many years later. As Shepard’s backup—“Al’s alter ego, his virtual twin”—Glenn often attended meetings and took phone calls that Shepard couldn’t handle, and Glenn forced himself to get inside Shepard’s head, to try thinking like Shepard so that he could ask the right questions. What would Al do? Glenn asked himself.

  Shortly after 10 P.M., without bothering to shower or change, the two men lay down in their bunks, and within fifteen minutes both were asleep. During three fitful hours of slumber, Shepard awoke once and walked to the window to check on the weather. Happy to see stars, not clouds, he returned to his bunk, a few feet from where Glenn soundly slept.

  14

  “Light this candle!”

  At 1:30 A.M., May 5, 1961, after a quick shower and shave, Shepard and Glenn sat down to another breakfast of filet mignon wrapped in bacon, eggs, juice, and coffee.

  “Is there anything else I can do?” Glenn asked after breakfast. Shepard told him no, he was fine, he was ready. The two men parted; Glenn went out to check on Shepard’s capsule, and Shepard walked down the hall to the doctor’s exam room. Bill Douglas, the astronauts’ physician, told Shepard to take off his bathrobe so he could conduct one last checkup, a detailed exam for the record books.

  Douglas found a loose nail on the fourth toe of Shepard’s left foot—where someone had stepped on him—and clipped it off. Shepard’s back was sunburned and peeling in spots from recent afternoons beside the Holiday Inn pool. A blister rose beside one of the four tat
too marks on his chest that the technicians used to mark where their bio-medical sensors attached. Shepard murmured “ninety-nine, ninety-nine” while Douglas listened to his chest. His ear canals were clean, his thyroid was “smooth and symmetrical,” and he showed “slight apprehension” about his pending flight, Douglas noted. “I tried to play it cool,” Shepard would confess years later. “But there were some butterflies.”

  At 2 A.M. Alan called Louise once more. She had been waiting to hear from him and told him to wave when he took off. Alan laughed and told Louise that he loved her. Then he squeezed into his tight silver space suit—an exhausting process that took 15 minutes, due to all the zippers and complicated connections on the twenty-pound rubber and aluminum-coated nylon creation. (The suit would surround his body with pressurized oxygen; without such protection, the low-pressure atmosphere of space would cause his bodily fluids to literally boil up through his skin.) Finally, Shepard strapped on his helmet and attached a hose to his suit, the other end of which connected to a portable oxygen and air-conditioning unit that he carried in his hand, like a briefcase.

  The adrenaline began pumping—“there were butterflies in my stomach again,” Shepard said later—as he and Douglas left Hangar S and climbed into an awaiting transport van. As Shepard rode out to the launch site, leaning back in a reclining chair, he seemed to relax a bit. Adopting his pitiful Spanish accent, he tried a bit of a José Jiménez routine. Gus Grissom sat beside him during the short drive out to his rocket.

  “Hey, Gus, you know what it really takes to be an astronaut?”

  “No, José, tell me.”

  “You should have courage and the right blood pressure and four legs.”

  “Why four legs, José?” Grissom asked, accustomed to the part.

  “Because they really wanted to send a dog, but they decided that would be too cruel.”