by Jay Barbree
SOVIETS SEND MAN INTO SPACE;
SPOKESMAN SAYS U.S. ASLEEP
NASA officials were all over the seven astronauts before dawn. “We need a clear-cut statement for the press.”
The astronauts allowed they were disappointed but made certain to offer sincere congratulations to the Soviets for a terrific technical feat. Once again John Glenn galloped to the rescue. He had a secret. Be blunt and truthful.
“They just beat the pants off us, that’s all,” he told the press. “There’s no use kidding ourselves about that. But now that the space age has begun, there’s going to be plenty of work for everybody.”
John went over like rich cream. The press lapped it up. His candor only helped convince the remaining holdouts that John Glenn had been picked to be the first American in space.
The charade continued.
In the long run, the question of who was the first astronaut in space would never mean that much. When the first man flew, the guesswork would vanish and that would be the end of it. But would he, Alan Shepard fly? Given Gagarin’s flight and the overwhelming power of the Soviet boosters, there were suggestions in Washington that the U.S. man-in-space program be canceled. The dark mood had as its banner the feeling that the United States could never catch the Russians now, so why waste the time and effort and money to run second best?
In the White House, the country’s young new president was bedeviled with the reality of Soviet superiority in powerful rockets. At first he seemed reconciled that space belonged to the Russians. In fact, John F. Kennedy emphatically told a news conference after the Gagarin flight that the nation would not try to match the Soviet achievements in space, choosing instead “other areas where we can be first and which will bring more long-range benefits to mankind.”
But Kennedy was not comfortable with that stand. Only a few short months before, he’d pledged to “get this country moving again.” In his election campaign against Richard Nixon, he had made major issues of the missile and space gaps between the U.S. and USSR. He had campaigned eloquently that America belonged in space because “space is our great new frontier.”
How could he allow the United States to simply quit? No matter that for the Russians space was most certainly their great new frontier. America had come from behind before, and it must do it again.
Kennedy didn’t have any help from the head of his Science Advisory Committee, Jerome B. Wiesner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wiesner wanted to gut the whole national space program. Rip NASA down to bare bones and reorganize from the ground up. Concentrate on aeronautics and yield the space race to the Russians. End the Mercury program quickly with Kennedy’s signature on a cancellation document, because if Mercury failed, if lives were lost, the country would blame Kennedy for the failure. Wiesner suggested the U.S. should expand its leadership in science, communications, and military satellites. “Go with the winners,” was his forceful recommendation.
Kennedy knew the American people better than that. He rejected that first sign of quitting. He called the vice president into his office and told Lyndon B. Johnson that from that moment on, Johnson, a strong backer of the space program, would run the National Space Council and get things moving. Then he called James E. Webb, a tough-willed North Carolina attorney who knew the routes through government, industry, executive, and political pastures. Kennedy got right to the point. “Jim, I want you to run NASA.”
These were forceful moves, and yet not until Yuri Gagarin sped about the earth did Kennedy move in the direction of a powerful national space advocacy. Until then he had been preoccupied with a flagging economy, communist incursions throughout the world, and the takeover of Cuba by Fidel Castro.
Gagarin changed all that. Two days after the cosmonaut finished his flight, Kennedy had Johnson, Webb, and Wiesner in his office. The president wanted answers to how the U.S. could catch up with the Russians. Johnson and Webb both shared the same view: “Catch up, hell. Let’s pass ’em.”
With the advent of the Mercury program, there had been discussions among scientists, explorers, and in the press that man might one day be rocketed to the moon. “What about the moon?” Kennedy asked. “Can we do it? And can we beat the Russians to it? Find out and get back to me.” Johnson and Webb were gung ho for the idea. Wiesner mumbled and fumbled that all was lost, space belonged to the Russians, and the U.S. might as well become accustomed to it.
Gagarin’s solo orbit of the earth capped a series of events that rocked the new administration. The Russians were now the pioneers of successful manned flight around the earth and challenged America to catch up. It would be like the race between the tortoise and the hare. If one nation made a misstep or faltered along the way, its opponent would catch it and race on ahead. Not a shred of doubt existed that this new race for space would be a high-flying competition, played out in full view of the world.
Far more disturbing than the Soviet achievement in space was the simmering cauldron of communism in neighboring Cuba, where Fidel Castro’s tyranny spawned a growing anger among Cuban exiles in the United States and in Cuba’s neighboring countries—exiles who were determined to overthrow him by force of arms. Kennedy was in the thick of a complicated political situation not of his own making but inherited from the Eisenhower administration. President Eisenhower approved a CIA-sponsored covert operation in Cuba that would train, finance, supply, and equip an invasion force to assault Cuba. The operation was a covert one as Kennedy and his predecessors avoided the appearance of interfering in the political processes of Latin countries.
In truth, Kennedy wanted nothing to do with such a politically hazardous and morally questionable invasion. His aides, and the exile leaders, swore to him that the invasion would spur the Cuban people to an uprising against Castro. The Cuban exiles’ army was ready. All that would be required for a successful invasion, they assured him, would be the support of American air power to crush the communist jets and other fighters that would be sent to intercept the attacking bombers.
Guatemalan airfields echoed with the thunder of twin-engine B-26 Invader bombers whose crews had been rehearsing for months. They would strike strategic targets throughout Cuba. A thousand miles away, the swampy environs of southern Florida bristled with scores of Cubans training for invasion landings and hill-fighting in their native land. They were ready. If the invasion did not proceed now, as planned, the opportunity to overthrow Fidel Castro might be lost forever.
The Cuban exiles begged for air cover. Kennedy assented and promised that an American aircraft carrier would be stationed off the Bay of Pigs to provide air support for the invasion. The invading army of Free Cuba insurgents would swarm ashore behind the devastating cannon, rockets, and bombs of American jets.
The fanfare surrounding Gagarin’s flight faded in the tense hours before the predawn invasion on April 17. While sixteen B-26 bombers readied to attack airfields at San Antonio de los Baños and Santiago, John Kennedy fidgeted with indecision. Making a decision his closest aides and advisors would never understand, Kennedy abruptly ordered that the force of sixteen bombers be reduced to eight. Aware that their lives were seriously imperiled, Free Cuba’s finest pilots commenced their strike against the communist airfields.
Cuban fighter planes counterattacked, reducing the insurgents’ planes to broken, flaming wreckage. Screaming with their last breath, the pilots begged for the American air cover that had been promised them by Kennedy.
On the ground, the invading army troops slogging ashore at the Bay of Pigs were cut to bloody shreds by machine-gun crossfire from Castro’s defensive positions.
On the offshore American aircraft carrier, planes loaded with bombs, rockets, and cannon were poised for takeoff. Engines running, they were only moments away from smashing Castro’s defending army. The orders came forth from the White House.
“Stand down your aircraft. Do not attack. Repeat. Do not attack.”
The few who miraculously emerged alive from the slaughter of thousands
of men at the hands of Castro’s guns hurled hateful invectives at the American president. Kennedy was denounced as a coward, a liar, a man whose word was nothing, and a man whose lack of nerve and leadership ability had cost the lives of thousands who died needlessly.
The press had their own field day with the ghastly photographs, television footage and eyewitness accounts from those who had survived the broken promises of John F. Kennedy. The young president’s standing with the American people would never be lower.
If ever Kennedy needed a bold new step, now was the time. He rested his case solidly on the future of the U.S. in space. LBJ answered his summons and heard a no-nonsense president talking. “I want you to tell me where we stand in space. Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting up a laboratory in space—or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man? Is there any other space program that promises dramatic results in which we could win?”
Kennedy and Johnson were striking out for the future while elsewhere in Washington, Wiesner and his cronies wanted to put on the brakes. The first American-manned space shot was now on the calendar for May 2. A failure at this point could be devastating for national morale and prestige. On April 25 the American space program started to unravel. An Atlas booster lifting an unmanned Mercury capsule drifted off course, was blown up, and returned to earth in huge flaming debris. Three days later a Little Joe rocket boosting a Mercury spacecraft on a test of its emergency escape system spun out of control and was destroyed.
At a meeting the next day in the Oval Office, Wiesner told the president he must order a delay in the first manned liftoff. He recommended further that if Kennedy insisted on going ahead with it, the flight should be carried out later and in secrecy to avoid an over publicized fiasco should the mission fizzle.
The small group of officials who had convened wondered how NASA could carry out such a flight in secrecy, with hordes of news people aiming cameras at the Cape, looking down from airplanes and helicopters, and using their own special techniques for tapping into NASA control and communications lines.
Kennedy was resolved to make the United States a true spacefaring nation. There would be no secret launches of the manned civilian space program, he ordered. We will act in the open, for the public.
He received support from Johnson, who told the group the Atlas and Little Joe failures had no bearing on the reliability of the Redstone and Mercury spacecraft. The executive director of the Space Council, Edward Welsh, also stood up to be counted. He rattled off a list of Redstone reliability figures. “The flight will go,” he said. “And it won’t fail. The risks of failure are no greater than our crashing in an airliner between here and Los Angeles just because the weather isn’t perfect. So why postpone a success?”
Kennedy nodded. They had a GO.
The astronauts felt they had been sealed within a giant pressure cooker. The word was out that if the U.S. was to have a civilian manned space program, the first shot must succeed.
The entire team—astronauts, engineers, scientists, technicians, everybody—went on twenty-four-hour availability. Glenn and Grissom became Shepard’s alter egos, his shadows, always there to support him in every way.
They were still plagued by questions from the media about who would be first to go. They had enough to do without having to deal with that issue, but with Alan spending most of the time in the Mercury simulator, you didn’t need a crystal ball to judge that most likely he had the nod.
Three hours before scheduled launch on May 2, the name of Alan Shepard floated to the surface of the national media. The Associated Press even went with a confirmation of Shepard.
Alan Shepard regarded the news with relief. They could get that monkey off their backs and concentrate on the flight.
Alan was ready, the rocket was ready, and the range was ready. But Shepard did not lift off that day. Low cloud cover rolled in, and Walt Williams scrubbed the launch. The flight operations director was right. He wanted a clear view of that Redstone and its precious human cargo all the way through fuel burnout.
Alan Shepard moaned and groaned. “I guess I’m destined to stay forever on this planet.”
His flight surgeon, Bill Douglas, grinned at Alan’s discomfiture. “Not hardly, Al. That’s a departure we’ll all make someday. The difference is you want to leave and come back.”
Shepard offered a patient smile and went back to the simulator for more make-believe space flying.
Three days passed. Shepard felt the delay actually eased the tension that had been growing within him. Before the May 2 launch he’d been plagued with visions of rockets tumbling out of control or blowing up violently in the air. Understandable; he’d seen those actual sights.
He solved his problem in typical Shepard fashion. “I backed off and regrouped and hit it again,” he said. He recognized he was experiencing normal apprehension and not fear. The entire reasoning process was old hat to the test pilot. He knew how to turn off whatever gnawed at him.
He’d been through the drills and was amazingly calm as the new launch date of May 5 neared.
The night of May 4, however, the other astronauts and support teams brought their own tension onto the scene. Everyone except Shepard walked on eggshells. Despite the strong feelings about weather, rocket reliability, the escape system, anything and everything, no one dared to broach those subjects. The air became so thick Shepard left for his bedroom. He had some feelings of his own he wanted to share. He phoned his family in Virginia Beach.
On the first ring he heard her voice. “Hello.”
“Louise!”
“Hi, Alan.” Pause. “I was hoping it was you.”
“Yeah, it’s me. Tomorrow looks promising. I think we’ve got a go.”
“That’s wonderful.” Alan could feel her smile reaching him all the way down that telephone line.
“Weather’s supposed to be good,” he said.
“It will be.” Not a doubt in the world. “It’ll be your good-luck day.”
“I do feel good about it. Everything okay at home?”
“Everything is just great, Alan. The folks are here.”
“I figured. I’d like to talk with them and then the girls.”
Several minutes later, Louise came back on the line. “We’ll be watching you on TV. Be sure to wave when you lift off.”
“Right,” he laughed. “I’ll open the hatch and stick out my arm.”
She chuckled, warm and loving. “You do that. Take care of yourself, sweetheart. Hurry home.”
“I will.”
“I love you.”
“Me, too, Louise.”
That was pure tonic, wonderful and soothing.
Flight surgeon Bill Douglas woke Alan early. Just like another day at the office, Shepard grinned to himself as he shaved and showered, and then polished off a breakfast of filet mignon, eggs, orange juice, and tea. He left the breakfast table to place himself at the tender mercies of the doctors, who did their usual poking, prodding, and measuring, and then they attached a battery of medical sensors to him. Shortly after 4:00 A.M., suited up, he departed Hangar S with Douglas and Gus Grissom for the launch pad. They rode in a transfer van, which Shepard likened to a “cramped cattle car.”
Shepard turned suddenly to Grissom. “Hey, Gus, do you know what it really takes to be an astronaut?” He asked the question in a parody of Bill Dana’s frightened astronaut Jose Jiminez accent.
“No, Jose,” Gus replied. “Tell me.”
“You should have courage and the right blood pressure and four legs.”
“Why four legs, Jose?”
“Because they really wanted to send a dog, but they decided that would be too cruel.”
The van stopped at the launch pad. Instantly everything changed. Alan Shepard stepped out into an alien world of glaring floodlights, banshee wails from a breeze blowing across super-cold fuel lines. He was a creature from another planet in his silvery space suit.
He looked up,
for the moment overwhelmed by the gleaming blue-white lights. Then he began the final walk toward the gantry elevator. “Up” was six stories above him.
Abruptly he stopped, almost mesmerized by another long look at what he considered the “awesome beauty” of the Redstone booster with its Mercury spacecraft. They had, he told himself, “an air of expectancy about them.” He watched plumes of vapor venting from the liquid oxygen tank. “I never again will see this rocket,” he said confidently.
He tilted his helmeted head up and back. He wanted to burn the scene permanently into his memory.
He moved into the elevator. The door closing behind him was an unplanned signal for applause and cheering by the men and women who’d worked day and night, always under the shadow of the great Russian boosters, to start America’s own high road into space. Alan turned, waved to his launch team.
He had the strangest feeling he was taking them along with him.
Alan started to call out to them. The words choked in his throat. He felt that if he tried to speak, his emotions would not let . . . he forced his attention to Bill Douglas.
“This is for you,” his flight surgeon said, handing him a box of children’s crayons. “Just so you’ll have something to do up there.”
Then he was in the sterile White Room that surrounded the capsule that would take him out of the world. John Glenn greeted him with word that everything was ready. The two gripped hands firmly, and Alan began the squeeze into his spacecraft.
The name Freedom Seven had been painted on the capsule’s side. Alan’s choice: Freedom because it was patriotic. Seven because it was the seventh Mercury capsule produced. It also represented the seven Mercury astronauts.
No streamlined space liner this. Mercury was a truncated cone ten feet high and just over six feet wide at the base of the ablative heat shield. Once Alan was shoehorned into his space chariot and all suit connections were completed, he could move his eyeballs and not much more. For this flight NASA had placed a parachute chest pack on a small ledge inside the capsule. The only time Shepard could use it was after his main parachute opened and then something went wrong that required an emergency exit. Then he’d have to clip on the chest pack, open the hatch, and wriggle his way out. Anyone who knew the tight quarters of the Freedom Seven knew the chute was along so that if the flight came apart, no one could say that the pilot never had a means of personal escape.
