by Jay Barbree
There was no way the neighborhood could not see and hear the uproar from the front lawn of the Shepards’. Mrs. Clark, whom Louise knew, remained in the safety of her home next door, but sent her son, Sumner, to investigate the commotion and report back.
Sumner walked across to the Shepards’, and pushed his way into the crowd of reporters and photographers. His eyes widened with what he heard. It couldn’t be! But it was, and the moment he was certain of the news he ran home.
He burst through his front door. “Mom! Mom! You gotta hear this! Mr. Shepard’s going to the moon!”
Mrs. Clark gaped, but only for a moment, and then she shook her finger at her son. “Sumner, you are not a bit funny.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Training
HEROES!
Deke Slayton shook his head in disbelief. “How the hell had seven guys suddenly become heroes without doing a damn thing?” he asked as the Mercury Seven were off from bright lights and accolades moving their families to their new homes and headquarters at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
For the next two years they would train to be astronauts while engineers worked to develop and perfect the Mercury spacecraft they would ride into earth orbit. “And back again safely,” they reminded reporters at every turn.
Deke put it as candidly as he could. “None of us know a damn thing about being an astronaut,” he said. “Spaceflight is science fiction. We don’t yet have the big picture. We’ll learn together. We’ll fly together.”
Langley was their home base, but they traveled widely. They studied the Mercury spacecraft then under development at the McDonnell Aircraft plant in St. Louis, where each of them received a visual reminder that, as Deke put it, “the thing ain’t got no wings!” Then it was off to Convair at General Dynamics, where the intercontinental ballistic missile Atlas, still tricky and unproven, was being modified—its usual hydrogen bomb warhead replaced with the bell-shaped, blunt-edged Mercury. More important to the astronauts was the fact the Atlas was being man-rated, made as safe and reliable as humanly possible, with three or more redundant systems being built in to do the same job. If one system failed, another would take over and protect the astronaut. Finally, the Mercury Seven flew to the launch complex at Cape Canaveral on the east coast of Florida, where it would all happen.
The Cape Canaveral peninsula had been at the forefront of settlement in Florida in years past. Here, bear shared undeveloped land with alligator and deer, and Indians buried their dead on sacred grounds. Later, other men would come to hack out farmland. But taming the Cape was tougher than expected; snakes and an infuriating number of persistent mosquitoes had driven most of the humans away. Now, beneath the palmetto scrubland and sand, the rows of launch towers and blockhouses and hangars and offices were connected by thousands of invisible electrical arteries, a finely woven network of underground cables through which flashed the impulses of energy, vital messages, and electronic commands that would ignite the rockets and launch the Mercury Seven into space.
The astronauts had multiple roles to play. Among them was hand-holding. Members of Congress, government officials, and industry leaders came to Cape Canaveral with little knowledge of the technological challenges at hand, expecting that the dollars they had allocated would guarantee immediate success. Putting a man on the moon wouldn’t be quite that easy, and it would take time. The Mercury astronauts mixed with the powerful visitors, who were shocked when the first Atlas, topped with an unmanned Mercury spacecraft, was launched on a tail of fire into the clouds.
Where it promptly blew itself all to hell and beyond.
Congressmen looked at the astronauts as the Atlas tumbled to earth in flaming chunks. “You’re going to get on top one of those things?” they asked.
It wasn’t just the Atlas that failed to perform as expected. Charlie Chaplin couldn’t have provided a better script for one Mercury-Redstone launch when the astronauts and a visiting congressional delegation watched as the rocket ignited and failed to rise from its pad when an electrical problem shut off the Redstone’s engine. The visitors observed the escape tower rocket atop the Mercury capsule, the rocket needed to snatch the astronaut and spacecraft to safety, do its job. It ignited and raced into the sky over the cape, forgetting one very important thing. The Mercury spacecraft it was suppose to pull to safety. Instead, it left the Mercury sitting atop the Redstone on the pad. The sight of an out-of-control escape tower belching fire brought loudspeakers blaring warning for everyone to take cover immediately. It was a sight unprecedented in the new space age at Canaveral as astronauts, congressmen, generals, engineers, and reporters dived beneath bleachers and behind anything to gain cover from flames shooting above the launch pad. Then, while the huddled crowds watched, befuddled and amazed, the top of the capsule popped open, and the drogue parachute, the main parachute, then the reserve parachute, all unraveled and spilled down the side of the booster. The escape tower then crashed about four hundred yards from the pad after scooting to a height of four thousand feet.
“That was a hell of a mess,” said Flight Director Chris Kraft.
It was also the price tag for development. It has always been that way with fiery machines in need of maturing. Just part of the new school for astronauts.
Several months into the tests and training, a potentially sinister medical problem came knocking on Deke Slayton’s door.
Deke and the other astronauts were making routine runs in the NASA centrifuge, an enclosed cockpit at the far end of a giant metal arm that rotates fast enough to mash a man’s brains down into his throat. The centrifuge generates the forces a pilot feels in high-gravity maneuvers, such as very tight turns or sharp pullouts from a dive, increasing the gravity forces, or g-forces, on the man being slung around at the end of the centrifuge arm. If he’s pulling a 5g load, then suddenly he weighs five times his normal weight.
The idea was to see how long a pilot could hang in there before so much blood was drained from his brain that he would pass out. Deke was a whiz at it. Technicians called the centrifuge the “County Fair Killer,” and Deke handled g-loads that amazed even those running the machine.
But on the test that Slayton would never forget, the flight surgeon, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Douglas, was fastening sensors to Deke’s skin.
Suddenly Douglas stopped short.
“What is it, Bill?” Deke asked instantly.
“Not sure. What I think I’m getting is an irregular heartbeat.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Don’t sweat it,” Douglas said. “Could be the equipment.”
Douglas rechecked the sensors, adjusted the monitoring equipment, and called for a centrifuge run at 3g. Slowly the flight surgeon felt his heart sink.
Deke’s irregular heartbeat wasn’t in the equipment. It was in Deke’s chest.
Douglas ordered the centrifuge to a halt. One look at the doctor’s face and Deke had the bad news. Something was wrong. And Deke knew the score. If the medical tests showed any cardiac irregularity, it could be the end, right then. He would be grounded.
“We’ll get back to you, Deke,” Douglas told him.
Deke nodded.
A day passed. Then another. Still no answers.
Marge Slayton saw Deke’s jaw stiffen as he fought for patience. Immediately he quit smoking. He knocked off the coffee. He ran like a man possessed. Every day he pounded pavement, running along nature trails and dodging trees as he raced through the woods. He was challenging his own heart.
It didn’t help. The irregular beat would last for two, sometimes three, days, and then it would vanish from the medical tests. But no one was accepting a sudden cessation. The medical boys had plenty of time. Sure enough, an average of ten days after the irregularity slipped away, it came back.
How was this possible? Deke was in great shape. Physically his body was as close to perfection as the human body could be.
He knew, hating it, that his heart was like a rough-running engine. S
ometimes fast, sometimes slow. It wouldn’t give in and he wouldn’t give in, and now and then, like a dark shadow gaining mass in his chest, he could sense it. Mean, nasty, hateful.
The mystery was that no one knew just what was happening inside Deke’s body. Dr. Douglas spared no effort to find out. He called in several of the leading cardiologists in the country to examine Deke. They were baffled.
Deke wanted to chew nails.
The top specialists lacked answers, but their report left no doubt about how NASA should proceed. “Despite the irregularity, it is our opinion that this condition in no way affects the performance of astronaut Slayton. It is also our opinion that he should be accepted for space flight operations.”
Bill Douglas gave Deke the word, and the word was good, and Deke let out a war whoop of joy.
NASA accepted the doctors’ reports that Deke was healthy, and they subjected him to more rigorous and demanding tests with every passing day. He was slammed into deep pools in a sealed spacecraft so that he could become proficient in unhooking his harnesses, opening the hatch, swimming to the surface, and activating his escape-and-survival systems. All such tests were part of the routine of two years of training. What the astronauts experienced in centrifuge runs and weightless runs on board a specially equipped aircraft called the “vomit comet,” all paled alongside what the astronauts felt was the most punishing test of all, a “god-awful, unforgivable exercise” in Deke’s words.
Or survival training in the wild, as NASA called it. Men preparing for flight at eighteen thousand miles an hour more than a hundred miles above the earth were “dumped” in deserts, atop rugged mountains, in Panamanian jungles and other remote sites, and left to fend for themselves. NASA generously equipped each man with a small portion of water, his survival gear, and his wits. A sense of humor and a strong stomach willing to accept lizards, snakes, insects, and whatever else could be gleaned from the inhospitable surroundings were also essential.
The astronauts almost preferred the wilds to the frenzy of reporters who were after one thing above all: the inside word. The scoop. Newspaper and television editors and directors did everything but arm their media reps to get the one story they all wanted to release.
Who would be the first American to be launched into space? That was the name they sought.
But they weren’t sure which source to track for the inside story. So they went after everybody in NASA who might have the answer and who could be persuaded to give them the biggest news break of their careers.
But all their efforts failed. What the press did not know was that the issue of who was to be the first in space would ultimately be settled in a way the astronauts never expected.
It was the old story of the unexpected coming out of left field.
CHAPTER SIX
The Selection
DEKE SLAYTON LOOKED DOWN AT the aimless scribblings on the sheets of paper in front of him, and he was suddenly angry at having to wait. He crumpled the papers and flung them into the trash can.
It wasn’t just the waiting. Good Lord, a life in the military is primarily a life of waiting. It was the tension. It was so damn intolerable it was almost painful, and the seven Mercury astronauts fidgeted at the desks in their Langley office, doodling and making small talk.
Eyes kept returning to the clock on the wall: 5:15. Hell of a day. It was January 19, 1961. Tomorrow Jack Kennedy would be sworn in as president of the United States. But right now Robert Gilruth was more important to these men than a dozen Kennedys.
As chief of the Space Task Group, Gilruth ran Project Mercury. A brilliant engineer and manager, who had once directed Langley’s Pilotless Aircraft Program, he was the biggest name in the manned space flight business, the high priest with the final say on who would reach orbit.
Gilruth might have been King Arthur about to select one to be knighted and given the most trusted mission—the first to go. That afternoon he’d called the astronauts. “How about hanging in, guys, after quitting time?” It was an order instead of a request. “I have something important to tell you.”
The king would point his finger at one, and that one would be seared into the pages of history as the first in space.
Alan Shepard turned suddenly to Slayton. “Deke, what do you think?”
“I think I wish to hell he’d hurry up,” Deke said with a half-snarl.
Gus Grissom joined in from the sidelines. “If we wait much longer, I may have to make a speech.”
That eased the tension. Gus Grissom making a speech? The original tight mouth stringing words together? Aloud? His colleagues grinned.
Silence followed, tension began building again. The pilots each reviewed where they stood in the program. There’d been a big break in mid-December when a Redstone carried an unmanned Mercury capsule straight and true through its trajectory. That’s when Gilruth dropped the first shoe. “Everybody better start thinking about who goes first atop a Redstone.”
Okay. They thought. Then Gilruth threw them the other shoe. “I want you guys to take a peer vote. If you couldn’t make the first flight, select the man you think should go.” He smiled at their discomfort. “Write your choice on a piece of paper and drop it by my office.”
Mercury’s top man knew how to get their attention. The astronauts couldn’t determine whether Gilruth had really put the “who goes first” decision in their hands or if he was playing a clever game. Either way the team knew he could simply select the man he and his superiors wanted, and the astronauts would never be the wiser.
Clever or not it caught the pilots off balance, forced all of them to make a second choice because each wanted to be first, and Gilruth’s “request” for them to wait was in the right place for these hyped astronauts. No fancy customizing in these offices. Just bare GI steel desks and chairs. Walls cluttered with flight plans, diagrams, and pictures of spacecraft.
The astronauts gathered in these austere meeting rooms often to hold what became dreaded among the engineers as the “pilot séances” where they dreamed up innovations and changes that drove the engineers up the wall. Like putting a window in the Mercury capsule and—
Gilruth entered the office. He cut right to the point. “What I have to say to you is confidential. Keep it that way. Each of you has done an outstanding job. We’re grateful for your contributions, but you all know only one man can be first in space.”
Deke’s heart picked this moment to pound in his chest. He judged the others were going through the same cardiac drill. He ignored the pounding. “What I’m about to announce,” Gilruth continued, “is the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make. It is essential this decision be known to only a small group of people. We’ll make it known to the public at the appropriate time.”
He hesitated until the long pause threatened to bulge and burst about his captive audience. Gilruth was a master at working the clock. Again, without preamble:
“Alan Shepard will make the first suborbital Redstone flight,” he said, with all the emotion of a man driving his car to a gas pump. Every man except Shepard experienced deep shock. The odds were seven to one, but so what? Deke Slayton may have been the only one among the six not selected to be pleased it was Shepard.
Deke was in a quandary of his own making. His private list had his name first, Shepard second. Yet Alan’s selection still dealt a blow to Deke’s sense of self-worth.
Gilruth’s voice continued. “Gus Grissom will follow Alan on the second suborbital flight. John Glenn will be backup for both missions.”
Wham! Deke couldn’t believe that he wasn’t even among the first three. It didn’t matter that another three men were going through the same shock. Deke was at the point where he wondered if he was even included in the future flight program. Was it his heart flutter?
He made no bones about his feelings. “I was shocked, hurt, and downright humiliated,” he said later. “I looked at Alan. He was staring at the floor, his face blank. Then he managed a thin smile. In spite of my feelings
, I reminded myself that Shepard, other than being Navy, was one hell of a test pilot.
“Then reality walloped me right between the eyes. Of course! Politics! Gilruth, who had to play the strings of the congressional banjo in troubled NASA budget times, now had his Navy man, Shepard. Grissom wore Air Force blue. Capping off the trio was Glenn of the Marines. The Army had no test pilots. So none of the military services could fault Gilruth. Not even the incoming president. No way was it an accident that both Shepard and John Kennedy was Navy. Kennedy, the famed PT boat captain. Kennedy, the naval war hero. All true enough.”
Yet, intentionally or not, Gilruth had divided his astronauts. Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn were the real astronauts in as far as the press would tell the story. The rest of the group had begun their slide into the background.
Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, and Deke Slayton. Spear carriers. That’s how they described themselves. Soon after, NASA made it starkly plain that the astronauts were all required to go along with the public relations strategy that had been decided upon for the selection announcement.
It stated merely that Shepard, Grissom, and Glenn had been selected as candidates for the first Redstone flight. The three would continue training and, as the launch neared, one of them would be tapped for history. No mention that the pilot for that plum already had been designated. It was a charade.
Gilruth offered a lame justification for his approach. Secrecy about the selection would protect Alan Shepard’s privacy. It would prevent the press and public from focusing on one individual, perhaps crushing him under undue pressure. Considering the astronauts had an exclusive contract with Life magazine for their personal stories, and Life reporters and photographers were all over them, it was an unsatisfactory excuse from the get-go. But that was how Gilruth and his superiors were calling the shots.
It didn’t happen right away, but Deke Slayton was finally to discover just how the selection game was being played. All the pilots had assumed that the first guy to boost out of the atmosphere would be selected on his skills as a veteran flyer, the best “stick-and-rudder” jockey. Of that group, the consensus of opinion pointed to Deke.
