by Jay Barbree
By late January 1961, events were coming down to the wire. As flight time neared, the fun and games faded away. A serious tone settled over the launch, support, flight, and recovery teams. Redstone was working well, and Shepard’s flight was just over the horizon.
But the charade to mislead the press and the public as to who was going to lead the way continued. The astronauts hated the roles Glenn and Grissom had to play: pretending they were still in the running for the first flight. The media’s general consensus was that John Glenn would be chosen. The secrecy surrounding the selection continued right up to launch day, with Bob Gilruth deciding that Shepard’s name would be made public only after the Redstone lit off and was flying. “There was even some incredible dumb talk,” Shepard said, “about bringing all three of us out to the pad on launch day, all of us dressed to fly, with hoods over our heads! That way not even the launch team would really know who was numero uno.”
The charade left a sour taste in the astronauts’ mouths, but it was minor compared with the knowledge that the chimpanzee was still going before a man could fly. All that chimp would do was go along for the ride and bang levers and push buttons in the capsule, and get jolted with electricity if he didn’t perform his tasks properly. Despite the astronauts’ protests that the whole concept was ridiculous, the medical teams and psychologists insisted there were too many unknowns about space flight, especially weightlessness and what could be unexpectedly high g-forces, to risk a man’s life without first sending up a living, breathing creature as a possible sacrifice.
So the chimps trained to go into space. It was a great circus act. Scientifically it was a huge waste of money, time, and manpower. Rube Goldberg could have designed the machine intended to test simian skills. In the box-shaped gadget, when a certain color light or series of lights flashed, the animal was trained to push either a right or left-hand lever. If he performed as commanded, he was rewarded with a banana pellet funneled to his mouth through a dispenser. If the chimp failed to push the right lever, he was whacked with a slight electrical jolt to his foot.
This was the culmination of many years of research, the effort of hundreds of engineers, and the expenditure of several million dollars. Banana pellets and electric shocks to be administered by a madcap space-borne slot machine. It was about as close to insane as the astronauts could imagine.
Yet the effort went forward, and NASA selected one ape, crowned him Ham, and on January 31, 1961, the Mercury Seven gathered to watch the momentous liftoff of the slot-happy chimp. The flight turned out to be a bit more interesting than planned. The Redstone had a “hot engine” and consumed all its fuel five seconds ahead of schedule. The automatic control system sensed that something was wrong. Instantly it ignited the escape tower above the Mercury, and it blew the spacecraft away from the rocket with a great shriek of flame that sent the craft much higher and faster than it was intended to go.
The medics figured the ape would be squeezed by eight times gravity, when, in fact, Ham experienced more than twice the original estimate. Teeth bared, he was one unhappy ape when he didn’t get his reward. The on-board equipment failed, the electrical system and light tests went haywire and, drifting weightless, Ham was banging on every lever he could. He did everything right, and for his efforts was rewarded at every turn with a nasty shock instead of a banana pellet.
He also sailed 122 miles farther down range than the planned 300 miles. He came down with crushing deceleration, the parachute opening slamming him about in the capsule, and he hit the ocean surface with another ear-clamoring bang. Then began the stomach-churning motion of rolling sea. By the time the recovery choppers showed up to lift the craft out of the waves, it was on its side, filled with so much water they had a sputtering, choking, near-drowned chimp on their hands.
They returned Ham to the Cape. NASA went through some idiotic official greeting, but Ham came out of the capsule biting anything, human or otherwise, that came near him.
Alan Shepard reviewed the telemetry tapes and records of the Great Chimp Adventure, as Ham’s flight came to be known. He knew he could have survived that trip, but he also knew immediately his own planned flight was in deep trouble. If only the damn chimp ride had been on the mark, then Alan would launch in March.
But Ham’s flight had been miserable, and in Huntsville, Alabama Wernher von Braun was showing signs of a new conservatism he had developed, as his responsibility for men’s lives factored into his decisions. Dr. von Braun, to the utter dismay of Shepard and the rest of the Mercury pilots, said simply, “We require another unmanned Mercury-Redstone flight.”
Working with the engineers, Shepard confirmed that the problem with Ham’s Redstone had been nothing more than a minor electrical relay. The fix was quick and easy, and the Redstone was back in perfect shape. “For God’s sake, let’s fly. Now!” Alan implored NASA officials. “Even von Braun should be satisfied with what we’ve found!”
He was wrong. Dr. von Braun stood fast. “Another test flight.”
Shepard stalked off to the office of Flight Director Chris Kraft. He was steaming. “Look, Chris, we’re pilots,” he snapped. “When there’s a failure, dammit, we fix it.”
“I know, Alan,” he said. “I know where you’re coming from.”
“Well, what about it?” Shepard asked. “It’s an established fact that the relay was the problem, and it’s fixed.”
“Right.”
“So, why don’t we go ahead? Why don’t we man the next one?”
“Why waste time, right?” Kraft smiled.
“Right.”
“Because when it comes to rockets,” the flight director shook his head, “Wernher is king.”
“King?”
“King.”
“Forget it, right?”
“Right.”
Shepard walked away, brooding. The March 24 Redstone flight was an absolute beauty. Shepard could have killed. He knew he should have been on that flight. He could have led the world into space. He should have been floating weightlessly, looking down on a sharply curving horizon, while the Russians were still wrestling with a balky rocket booster. “We had ’em,” Shepard recalled. “We had ’em, and we gave it away.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
First in Space
FOR A LONG TIME HE drifted between sleep and wakefulness. It had been that way throughout the night. Floating between memories as sounds drifted through the walls of his room. Strange, he couldn’t tell if the sounds were from past memories or from the present, but he accepted the ones that reminded him of his father. A carpenter, a skilled craftsman who had worked hard to make so special their wooden home in the village of Klushino, near Smolensk of the western Soviet Union.
Harsher memories intruded. Great guns firing, shells exploding. Earth-shaking rumble of German tanks moving through his hometown. He was a wide-eyed boy then, watching his parents’ world coming apart as they fell under enemy occupation. They obeyed the Nazis, and whenever possible they foraged food from the fields and the scattered wreckage of their village. Another sound grew louder, and he seized it in his dream state. Airplane engines. At first only German. Then other planes came by with red stars on their wings, and there was terrible fighting and the tanks that pushed into Klushino were Russian. As quickly as that war ended, young Yuri A. Gagarin crammed day and night, in school and at home, so that one day he would qualify to become a pilot in the Red Air Force.
They moved to the larger town of Gzhatsk. Yuri completed school, completed special courses, and in 1955 entered the Air Force. Two years later he won the coveted wings of a jet fighter pilot. He had become an expert parachutist as well. For two years he served in operational units and then, in 1959, he volunteered for an exciting new program.
Cosmonaut! He swept through the rigorous training, excelling in everything he did. On April 8, 1961, only four days before this night of dreams, his commander gave him the news. “You will be the first to travel through space.”
Unreal. It all seemed u
nreal. But it was true. And his close friend, Gherman Stepanovich Titov, would be his backup. Today was the day. His door opened.
Sleep and dreams vanished. He met with Titov, technicians, doctors, engineers, the political commissar. Everything moved smoothly through breakfast, final medical checks. Sensors were attached to his body before he donned the pressure suit and heavy helmet. Fully protected from space, his teammates helped him into the bright orange flight suit that would aid the recovery crews in spotting him after landing.
Sunrise was still to come as he arrived at the launch pad. He stood quietly for several minutes, studying the enormous SS-6 ICBM that would send him into orbit. No warhead atop the big rocket. It had been replaced with the Swallow, the Vostok spacecraft of more than five tons.
Gagarin stood on a ramp part way up the stairs to the elevator. He turned to the select group who would witness the moment that would separate the past from the future. He spoke clearly to those men:
“The whole of my life seems to be condensed into this one wonderful moment,” he began. His audience stood silently transfixed. “Everything that I have been, everything that I have done, was for this,” Gagarin added. Yielding to the emotion of the moment, he lowered his head, regained control.
He looked up again, smiling. “Of course I’m happy,” he said, his voice stronger. “Who would not be? To take part in new discoveries, to be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage in a single-handed duel with nature . . . ” His smile broadened. “Could anyone dream of more?”
His words spoken, he waved farewell and entered the elevator to the top of the support tower. There he climbed a short ladder to the platform alongside his Vostok spacecraft. Technicians and his close backup team assisted him through the hatch. They secured his harness to the specially designed seat. Gagarin nodded, signaling he was ready. The hatch closed and was sealed.
Countdown delays were as common in Russia as they were at the Cape. Gagarin received word that a faulty valve had been detected. “But it will soon be fixed. Be patient, Comrade Gagarin.”
Soon came the countdown phase he had been waiting for.
“Gotovnosty dyesyat minut.”
Two minutes more . . .
He felt motors whining. Excellent. He knew what the sounds meant. Moments later he ordered himself to relax. The gantry with the service level was pulling away. Tall towers leaned away and the launch pad took on the appearance of a huge steel-cabled opened flower. He felt the bumps and thuds of power cables ejected from their slots in the rocket. Now the powerful SS-6 drew power from its own internal systems.
The final seconds rushed away; a voice cried, “Zazhiganiye!”
Gagarin needed no words to tell him he had ignition as twenty powerful main thrust chambers and a dozen vernier control engines ignited in an explosive fury of nine hundred thousand pounds of thrust. Thirty-two engines strained, explosive hold-down bolts fired, and the first man to leave earth was on his way.
It was mid-morning on the steppes of Kazakhstan, midnight in New York. America slept, unaware of Gagarin’s jubilant cry, “Off we go,” from his climbing rocket, bringing smiles and grins to the crews in Baikonur launch control center. No sooner than the monster rocket had cleared its launch gantry, many of the men whose duties were finished rushed outside to see the rocket accelerating faster and faster. Binoculars showed them a dazzling ball of flame rising with increasing speed. In just those first few minutes of ascent, Yuri Gagarin was traveling faster than any man in history. Then, the booster was bending far above and away over the distant horizon, leaving behind a twisting trail of smoke as a signature of its passage.
Through the increasing g-loads Gagarin maintained steady reports. He was young and muscular, and he absorbed the acceleration punishment easily.
Gagarin heard and felt a sudden loud report, then a series of bumps and bangs as the protective shroud covering Vostok was hurled away by small rockets. Now he could see clearly through his portholes a brilliant earth horizon and a universe of blackness above. Finally the central core exhausted its fuel, and explosive bolts fired to release the final “half stage” rocket to complete the burn to orbital height and speed.
At last the final stage fell silent. More booms and thuds as the spent rocket was discarded.
The miracle was at hand. A human being was orbiting earth at 17,500 miles an hour. Gagarin in Swallow had entered orbit with a low point above Earth of 112.4 miles, soaring as high as 203 miles before starting down again.
Those on the ground listened in wonder at Gagarin’s smooth control, his reports of what he was feeling, and how his equipment was working. Then he went silent for several moments as a never-before-known sensation enveloped his body and his mind.
He felt as if he were a stranger in his own body. He was not sitting or lying down. Up and down no longer existed. He was suspended in physical limbo, kept from floating about loosely only by the harness strapping him to his contoured couch. About him the magic of weightlessness appeared in the form of papers, a pencil, his notebook, and other objects drifting, responding to the gentle tugs of air from his life-support system fans.
He forced himself back to his schedule, reporting the readings of his instruments. As critical as were those reports, there was even greater interest in what Gagarin felt and saw. He told those in ground control weightlessness was “relaxing.” He took precious moments as he orbited the earth, covering five miles every second, to report, “The sky looks very, very dark and the earth is bluish.” He waxed enthusiastic about the startling brightness of the sunlit side of the earth. He raced through a sunset and a sunrise and, almost before he realized the passage of time, he was nearing the end of man’s first orbital flight.
He would use his manual controls only in an emergency. Now he remained both physically relaxed and mentally vigilant as he monitored the automatic systems turning Swallow about for retrofire.
Rockets blazed. The sudden deceleration rammed him hard into his couch. He smiled with the full-body blow; everything was working perfectly.
It may have taken those a century ago eighty-eight days but he had circled the globe in eighty-nine minutes.
As he plunged across East Africa he began his return to earth, flying backward.
He knew he was feeling the first caress of weight from deceleration as Swallow arced downward into the thickening atmosphere. Now he was a passenger within a blazing sphere. Through the spaceship’s portholes he saw flames, at first filmy, then becoming intense blazing fire as friction from the atmosphere heated the ablative covering of Swallow to thousands of degrees. The protective coating burned away with increasing fury. He was in the center of a man-made comet streaking toward the flattening horizon. Though inside a fireball, he was cool and comfortable.
Then he was through reentry burn. The Swallow had slowed to subsonic speed. Twenty-three thousand feet above the ground the escape hatch blew away from the Vostok. Gagarin saw blue sky, a flash of white clouds. Small rockets within the spacecraft fired, sending the cosmonaut and his contour couch flying away from their spaceship.
Gagarin watched a stabilization chute billow upward from the seat. Everything worked perfectly. For ten thousand feet he rode downward in the seat. In the near distance he saw the village of Smelovaka.
Thirteen thousand feet above the ground he separated from the ejection seat and deployed his personal parachute. He breathed in deeply the fresh spring air. What a marvelous ride down!
On the ground, two startled peasants and their cow working in a field watched as a man wearing a bright orange suit, topped with a white helmet, drifted out of the sky. The man hit the ground running. He tumbled, rolled over, and immediately regained his feet to gather his parachute. Gagarin unhooked the parachute harness and looked up to see a woman and a girl staring at him.
“Have you come from outer space?” asked the astonished woman.
“Yes, yes, would you believe it?” Gagarin answered with a wide grin. “I certainly have.”
The shrill ringing penetrated the fog of his sleep—annoying, persistent. For a moment Alan Shepard remained confused, extricating himself from deep slumber. For only a moment. Then he reached for the clamoring telephone by his bed.
“What?” he barked.
The voice at the other end of the call was soft, polite. Considerate. “Commander Shepard?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah, this is Shepard.”
“Have you heard?”
He was sharply attentive now. He didn’t like those words. “Heard what?” he asked cautiously.
“The Russians have put a man in orbit.”
Shepard blinked. He sat straight up, rubbing his eyes. “They what?”
“They’ve put a man in orbit.”
The phone almost slipped from Shepard’s hand. He sat quietly another few moments to brush away the last fog of sleep from his mind. Then his disbelief found voice. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
The caller was a NASA engineer who knew Shepard. “I wouldn’t do that, Commander Shepard.” He appeared apologetic for being the messenger of shocking news. “They’ve done it. They really put a man in orbit.”
Shepard managed a courteous response, thanked the man, and replaced the phone in its cradle. A single phrase kept repeating itself over and over again in his mind: I could have been up there three weeks ago . . .
He turned on his bedside radio. Excited voices spoke of Vostok and orbit and Yuri Gagarin. Alan called the other Mercury troops. They’d heard. They were all glum. There wasn’t a race anymore.
It was bad enough for the astronauts to get the news in the middle of the night by telephone. It was worse for the United States to be seen falling behind the Soviet Union. It was worse that the public relations mouthpiece for the Mercury Seven, Colonel John “Shorty” Powers, didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut at a tense moment.
A reporter woke Powers and started asking questions. Groggy, befuddled, and angry, Shorty snarled into the phone, “If you want anything from us, you jerk, the answer is we’re all asleep!” He slammed down the phone. The moment was heaven-sent for a newsman out for the perfect cutline, and by morning the reporter’s newspaper headline shouted:
