Moon Shot

by Jay Barbree

  “They took in a show in town, and Frank Sinatra was on stage. No sooner had Gus, Ed, and Roger appeared in the room than Frank had them brought up to a front table. They were wearing their astronaut flight jackets, and Old Blue Eyes took a shine to Gus, mission patches and all.

  “Well, Gus, he just said, ‘Here, take it,’ and gave the jacket to Sinatra. Sinatra was so moved he cried before his audience. Ten days later, he cried a lot more.”

  Gus Grissom was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Rifle volleys split the air, a bugler sounded the mournful, stirring notes of taps, and jet fighters thundered overhead in a final salute. Six men in uniform stood stern and rigid, at attention. They had been seven, the original team of American astronauts. After eight years of bold accomplishment, tragedy had removed one of their proud number. The president of the United States, grieving families, men and women high in government and in the space program stood with them.

  Three hours later, there was again the salute, the bugler’s plaintive notes, the roar of jets as Roger Chaffee went to rest at Grissom’s side. On the same day, Ed White went to his final destination on a bluff overlooking the broad Hudson River at his beloved West Point.

  It was over.

  Now there was to be a new beginning.

  Deke and Alan knew that with so many new astronauts in the business and newcomers about to join the ranks, neither of them could exhibit an excess of emotion at the loss of Gus and the men who had died with him. “When you’re in the flying business,” Deke said to the other astronauts, “you run into this. I’ve been through my share. I’ve watched midair collisions, aircraft downed by flak and fires. An aircraft goes haywire, and you lose a fellow pilot, a friend. It’s a tough break, but it’s part of the business. But an accident on the pad like this, when suddenly everything goes to hell—it’s so goddamned inexcusable! You’re not supposed to get killed on the ground when you’re a test pilot. Still, you shrug it off and continue flying. You just hope you’re not the next to go.

  “It’s like being a bit paranoid, I guess. You keep looking over your shoulder to be sure they’re not gaining on you. But never forget to look ahead.”

  Vast changes swept through the ranks of the space administration. The director of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia was told by Jim Webb to immediately set up a board of review to “find out what the hell really happened.” Floyd L. Thompson nodded, and brought in some of the toughest investigators and specialists in the business. Among them, representing the astronauts was Frank Borman, who’d flown two weeks in Gemini 7. They put together a team from government and industry of fifteen hundred dedicated men and women, and they began the grisly task of examining the charred remains of Apollo 1. They studied everything from chafed wires to solidified blobs that had been molten metal. They traced through fifteen miles of wiring and began to sort out literally thousands of dials, switches, tubes, and connections. They built a duplicate of Apollo 1, swallowed hard, and set it ablaze. It shook up many of those involved so badly they went home to stare at walls. It was all too real, too painful. But they were learning. And they were changing the heart and the nature and substance of Apollo so that what had happened on Level 8 in January could never happen again.

  From the outset of the aftermath, heads rolled at the top reaches of the space hierarchy. The search for failure, incompetence, disregard for safety, became a meticulous, driving force.

  NASA knew it must succeed, because hanging over the agency’s head was a genuine possibility that the Apollo program could be cancelled. The Apollo 1 fire had sparked a national debate over whether the country should be spending an estimated twenty-four billion dollars to send men to the moon when it had so many other problems to address: Vietnam, rising taxes, civil rights, and the environment. Public opinion polls found more and more Americans asking: Is this trip really necessary? The critics said the program cost too much, that the race to the moon was a political stunt. Many prominent scientists argued that less expensive unmanned probes could learn more about the moon than astronauts.

  Apollo’s proponents said the project’s price tag was realistic. President Johnson said it would cost each American $120 over nine years. He said Americans spent much more a year on cigarettes and alcohol. The defenders said the program would produce untold scientific and technological benefits and would demonstrate the nation’s ability to lead in an age of technology.

  Wernher von Braun entered the debate, arguing Apollo was not just a project to land two men on the moon but to open the new frontier of space. “When Charles Lindbergh made his famous first flight to Paris,” he said, “I do not think that anyone believed that his sole purpose was simply to get to Paris. His purpose was to demonstrate the feasibility of transoceanic air travel. He had the farsightedness to realize that the best way to demonstrate his point to the world was to select a target familiar to everyone. In the Apollo program, the moon is our Paris.” The defenders won the debate, thanks mainly to the strong backing and clout of Lyndon Johnson.

  There would be delay, but there was still a chance of landing Americans on the moon before the end of the decade.

  On April 3, 1967, NASA’s Grumman Gulfstream executive personnel transport wheeled away from the terminal at Washington National Airport and began taxiing for takeoff. Its destination was Houston, and in the cabin, among other passengers, were Bob Gilruth and George Low.

  At this time Low was Gilruth’s deputy at the Manned Spacecraft Center. Austrian born, forty-one years old, educated in private schools in Britain and Switzerland, he had come to the United States with his widowed mother in 1938. He studied to be a systems engineer and in 1949 signed on with the old National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, NASA’s forerunner. He worked for a decade on esoteric aeronautic problems, then shifted to the world of space and helped design the Mercury spacecraft. Modest and unassuming, he was a methodical man who sought harmony and order.

  Jim Webb thought so much of Low’s leadership ability, he tapped him to chair the agency committee that placed on President Kennedy’s desk the report recommending a manned lunar landing. Low had met many times with Kennedy to answer questions about a moon program. His responses and candid explanations brought Kennedy to the national podium to commit America to the challenge of the century.

  Now, six years later, Low raised his brows as the Gulfstream slowed, began an unexpected turn, and taxied back to the gate. The tower had relayed a cryptic message to the pilot to get back to the terminal, unload passengers, and ask them to wait in the pilots’ lounge.

  “Soon,” explained Low, “there arrived administrator Jim Webb, his deputy Bob Seamans, George Mueller, the head of manned space flight, and Apollo program director Sam Phillips. Counting Bob Gilruth, everybody in the NASA hierarchy between me and the president was here.

  “Jim Webb, using fewer words than usual, came right to the point: Apollo was faltering, the catastrophic fire on January 27 had been a major setback. . . . Time was running out.”

  Then Webb hit Low with an unexpected blow. “I want you to take over the job of rebuilding the Apollo spacecraft.”

  Low was stunned. Webb wanted him to replace Joe Shea as head of the Apollo spacecraft program. He couldn’t think of a tougher job than raising the phoenix from its ashes. He ran through his mind the lay of the engineering land before him, the roads that forked left and right. Webb wanted him to perform a task that many people in his business now considered impossible.

  George Low wanted America to reach the moon. He would take the job.

  “No detail was too small to consider,” he said. “We asked questions, received answers, asked more questions. We woke up in the middle of the night, remembering questions we should have asked, and jotted them down so we could ask them in the morning. If we made a mistake, it was not because of any lack of candor between NASA and contractor or between engineer and astronaut; it was only because we were not smart enough to ask the right questions. Every question was answered, every failure
understood, every problem solved.”

  “What George Low did was instill a sense of dedication and purpose among those working under and with him,” Alan Shepard recalled. “In the astronaut corps we marveled at the new Apollo spacecraft taking shape. We were gaining confidence all the while that, yes, they’re creating something that will be safe for us to fly. After what happened to Gus, Ed, and Roger, that was saying a lot.”

  What really provided the momentum needed to get Apollo back on track was the stunning candor on the part of NASA in telling the nation—and the rest of the world listening—just what had gone wrong, and why it went wrong, and what it would take to make the fix. Seven days after George Low accepted the toughest job of his life, the Apollo Review Board issued its official report on the fiery death of Spacecraft 012. Critics had said NASA should not have investigated itself, and even they were amazed at the frankness of the report. The board chaired by Floyd Thompson did not mince words. It laid blame where it belonged.

  The report was 3,300 pages long and weighed nineteen pounds. Because of extensive damage, the cause of the fire could not be pinpointed precisely. The most likely source was given as an electric arc in defective wiring; investigators found that insulation on wires under a small trap door in the environmental control system might have broken or frayed by rubbing against the metal door. Nine other possible sources were listed, all involving electrical failings in the same area, under Gus Grissom’s couch.

  The searing part of the report was a frank indictment of NASA and North American Aviation. This team was criticized for poor management, carelessness, negligence, failure to consider the safety of the astronauts adequately. “The board’s investigation revealed many deficiencies in design and engineering, manufacturing and quality control . . . numerous examples in the wiring of poor installation, design, and workmanship,” as well as poor welding and soldering of joints that carried flammable coolant through the spacecraft, the report stated.

  NASA and North American Aviation officials agreed the report was fair, shouldered the blame, and answered to a new call to arms to bring a safe Apollo on the line. In addition to Low replacing Joe Shea, there were numerous shake-ups in NASA personnel. Top management of North American Aviation’s Space Division was overhauled.

  In the ensuing months, nearly a half billion dollars would go into the exhaustive redesign and rebuilding of Apollo, including a new hatch that a man could open in three seconds flat. The new spacecraft would also include extensive use of fire resistant materials, a redesigned electrical system, better protection for plumbing lines, and use of a combination nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere system when the spaceship was on the ground.

  What happened to the Apollo command module also could happen to the lunar module, so its builder, Grumman Aircraft, made extensive changes in that vehicle, too.

  Commenting years later, Flight Director Chris Kraft said: “It was unforgivable that we allowed that accident to happen. The other side of it is had it not happened, we probably would not have got to the moon when we did. We made a lot of changes to the command and lunar modules as a result of that experience. I think we would have had all kinds of trouble getting to the moon with all the systems problems we had. That terrible experience also brought a new resolve and a renewed commitment to get the job done.”

  Deke Slayton spoke from a different viewpoint. He represented the pilots who would fly inside a spacecraft that left earth moonbound on eight hundred feet of fire.

  “I’m convinced,” he said, “we would have ended up busting our ass in a number of ways before we got to the moon, and we may never have gotten there if it hadn’t been for Apollo 1. We uncovered a whole barrel of snakes that would have given us a lot of headaches later on. We would have fixed them bit by bit and probably knocked off a few people in the process of working our way through it. The fire forced us to shut down the program and make a real end-to-end sweep.”

  NASA officials had estimated after the fire that it would be a year before a redesigned Apollo would fly in earth orbit. But this time there was no rush; the job, orchestrated by George Low, was done with painstaking care and attention to detail, and that year stretched to twenty-one months.

  And while the recovery took shape, another incredible and terrible tragedy rushed to stage center. . . .

  Eighty-six days after the Apollo 1 fire, on April 23, 1967, Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was launched from Baikonur within a splendid new Soviet spacecraft, Soyuz 1. It was intended for a long future as an earth-orbiting craft, and it was the spacecraft that would be modified to take cosmonauts around the moon. Komarov’s mission called for him to spend a full day checking the Soyuz systems, and then watch another Soyuz lift off to join him in orbit and practice daring maneuvers culminating with a docking of the two ships (the word soyuz means union) and an exchange of vehicles by two space-walking cosmonauts, a capability the Soviets would need to reach the moon.

  Komarov raced around earth on a perfect first orbit, but the spacecraft almost immediately developed serious problems.

  Unlike the American spacecraft, which ran on battery power, Soyuz was built so that, once it entered orbit, two solar panels on each side of the ship would spread wide like huge wings and draw a constant supply of electrical power from the sun.

  The right panel extended.

  The left panel remained jammed in position. Nothing Komarov could do would release the panel he needed to operate all the systems. By the second orbit, mission control was on full alert in “emergency red condition.” Soyuz 1 was delivering barely half the electrical power Komarov required to control his ship.

  The shortwave radio transmitter failed. His ultra-shortwave radio backup remained operational, and he continued to communicate with controllers.

  He received instructions to change the altitude of Soyuz to gain maximum power for the opened solar panel. This might give him enough electrical “juice” to free the jammed panel. The maneuver failed. In the next three hours Soyuz “began to shred itself” with one grave failure after another.

  By the fifth orbit, mission control feared for Komarov’s survival. He could not properly orient the new Soyuz. His power was failing. Communications began to break up. He shut down the automatic stabilization system and went to manual control with his rocket altitude thrusters.

  The thrusters operated in balky spurts. Komarov felt the ship getting away from him.

  Controllers instructed the cosmonaut to let Soyuz go into a drifting mode. He would soon be moving through a series of orbits during which he would not be able to maintain voice contact with his flight controllers. Between the seventh and thirteenth orbits he would be away from tracking stations, completely out of touch with his control team.

  “Try to get some sleep, Comrade Komarov,” he was instructed. Then he moved out of radio range. He would be in the “radio dark” for the next nine hours.

  The time passed slowly. At the close of the thirteenth orbit they heard Komarov’s voice. His report sent chills through the control center. The electronic system for automatically stabilizing the spacecraft was gone for good. Manual control with sputtering thrusters was sporadic at best. Soyuz was rapidly becoming a careening, wobbling killer with its pilot trapped inside.

  Controllers cancelled the launch of the second Soyuz. They told Komarov they had to gamble to get him back to earth. He must fire his retro-rockets for reentry on the seventeenth orbit and use all his strength and knowledge to try to manually hold Soyuz on a steady course through the harrowing plunge.

  The flight control director said aloud what everyone knew. “He is out of control. The spacecraft is going into tumbles that the pilot has difficulty stopping. We must face the truth. He might not survive reentry.”

  The director picked up a telephone, issued orders. A powerful car pulled up before a Russian apartment complex. Two men rushed into the building, emerging moments later with a woman. The car roared off toward mission control.

  The woman was Valentina Komarov, the c
osmonaut’s wife and the mother of their two children.

  By the time she reached the control center, Soyuz 1 was tumbling through space. Komarov several times had become ill from the violent motions. He forced calm into his voice when flight control told him he could talk privately with his wife.

  They brought Valentina to a separate console and moved aside to assure her privacy. In those precious moments Vladimir Komarov bid his wife good-bye.

  Soyuz 1’s retro-rockets slowed his speed, but reentry began with Komarov having little control. He fought the spacecraft with his experience, skill, and courage. He judged his position by gyroscopes in the cabin. Incredibly, he aligned the ship properly and held it firm until building atmospheric forces helped stabilize it.

  First reports of the ship’s landing indicated it had touched down about forty miles east of Orsk. It seemed Komarov had accomplished the impossible, fighting his failed spacecraft all the way through reentry.

  But the Soviet officials had not witnessed what the farmers in the Orsk area observed as Soyuz fell to earth. Though Komarov survived reentry, he was fighting a ship spinning wildly out of control.

  The main parachute had failed. His reserve chute fell away from Soyuz, immediately twisting into a large, orange-and-white rag, which trailed uselessly behind Soyuz.

  At a speed of four hundred miles an hour, Soyuz smashed into the earth. Its landing system included powerful retro-rockets, which normally fired just above the ground to cushion the touchdown. But Soyuz slammed down hard and the rockets exploded, engulfing the capsule in flames. Farmers ran to the ship to throw dirt on the burning wreckage. An hour later they were able to dig through the smoldering ruins of the spacecraft to find the body of Vladimir Komarov.

  The Soviet space program, like the American, had experienced a stunning reversal and entered a period of reexamination. Russia did not fly another Soyuz for eighteen months.

  While the Apollo command and lunar modules were being redesigned and rebuilt, NASA’s unmanned rockets were busy propelling a series of probes to the moon to compile information. The surface properties were largely unknown, and some scientists speculated a spaceship might be swallowed in a deep layer of dust, that electrostatic dust might leap up and destroy a craft’s electronics, or that astronauts might fall into thinly covered crevasses. These questions had to be answered: How much weight would the lunar surface support? How steep were the slopes? Were there many rocks? And what size? Would the dust or dirt cling? Did the craters pose a threat? What was the precise size and shape of the moon? How strong was the gravity field into which the lunar module would drop?