The Right Stuff (30 page)

NASA engineers and technicians at the Cape were pushing themselves so hard in the final weeks people had to be ordered home to rest. It was a grueling time and yet the sort of interlude of adrenal exhilaration that men remember all their lives. It was an interlude of the dedication of body and soul to a cause such as men usually experience only during war. Well.. this
was
war, even though no one had spelled it out in just that way. Without knowing it, they were caught up in the primordial spirit of single combat. Just days from now one of the lads would be up on top of the rocket for real. Everyone felt he had the life of the astronaut, whichever was chosen (only a few knew), in his hands. The MA-1 explosion here at the Cape nine months ago had been a chilling experience, even for veterans of flight test. The seven astronauts had been assembled for the event, partly to give them confidence in the new system. And their gullets had been stuck up toward the sky like everybody else's, when the whole assembly blew to bits over their heads. In a few days one of those very lads would be lying on top of a rocket (albeit a Redstone, not an Atlas) when the candle was lit. Just about everybody here in NASA had seen the boys close up. NASA was like a family that way. Ever since the end of the Second World War the phrase "government bureaucracy" had invariably provoked sniggers. But a bureaucracy was nothing more than a machine for communal work, after all, and in those grueling and gorgeous weeks of the spring of 1961 the men and women of NASA's Space Task Group for Project Mercury knew that bureaucracy, when coupled with a spiritual motivation, in this case true patriotism and profound concern for the life of the single-combat warrior himself—bureaucracy, poor gross hideously ridiculed twentieth-century bureaucracy, could take on the aura, even the ecstasy, of communion. The passion that now animated NASA spread out even into the surrounding community of Cocoa Beach. The grisliest down-home alligator-poaching crackers manning the gasoline pumps on Route A1A would say to the tourists, as the No-Knock flowed, "Well, that Atlas vehicle's given us more fits than a June bug on a porch bulb, but we got real confidence in that Redstone, and I think we're gonna make ft." Everyone who felt the spirit of NASA at that time wanted to be part of it. It took on a religious dimension that engineers, no less than pilots, would resist putting into words. But all felt it.

Whoever had possessed any doubts about Gilruth's powers of leadership dismissed them now. He had all phases of Project Mercury coming together in a coda. His calmness was all at once like a seer's. Wiesner, who had become Kennedy's Cabinet-level science advisor, had ordered a full-scale review of the space program and its progress, meaning of course its lack of progress, and he and a special committee under his jurisdiction kept sending queries and memoranda to NASA about careless planning, disregard of precautions, and the need for an entire series of chimpanzee flights before risking the life of one of the astronauts. At Langley and at the Cape they treated Wiesner and all his minions as if they were aliens. They ignored their paperwork and didn't return their telephone calls. Finally, Gilruth told them that if they wanted that many more chimpanzee flights, they ought to move NASA to Africa. Gilruth seldom said anything cutting or even ironic. But when he did, it stopped people in their tracks.

The launch procedures were now rehearsed endlessly and with great fidelity. The three of them, Shepard, Glenn, and Grissom, were staying in motels in Cocoa Beach, but they would get up early in the morning, before dawn, drive to the base, to Hangar S, have breakfast in the same dining room where Shepard would eat on the morning of the flight, go to the same ready rooms he would use on that morning for the physical exams and for putting on the pressure suit, have the biosensors attached and the suit pressurized, get into the van at the door and ride out to the launch pad, go up in the gantry elevator, get into the capsule on top of the rocket, and go through the procedures training—"Abort! Abort!"—the whole thing—using the actual instrument panel that would be used in flight and the actual radio hookups. All of this was done over and over. They were now using the capsule itself for simulation—just as the chimpanzees had. The idea was to decondition the beast completely, so that there would not be a single novel sensation on the day of the flight itself.

All three of them were taking part, but naturally Shepard, as prime pilot (no other word was used now), had precedence. And he
took
precedence. The little group in Hangar S now saw Al in both his varieties… and both were king, both the Icy Commander and Smilin' Al. Usually he left the Icy Commander back in Langley and brought only Smilin' Al to the Cape. But now he had both installed at the Cape. As the pressure built up, Al set a standard of coolness and competence that would be hard to top. In the medical examinations, in the heat-chamber sessions, in the altitude-chamber runs, he was as calm as ever. By now the White House had become extremely jittery—fearing what the debacle of a Dead Astronaut would do to American prestige—and so some dress rehearsals were conducted on the centrifuge at Johnsville, with Al and his two charade hands, Glenn and Grissom, taking part, and Al was imperturbable. Likewise, in the eleventh-hour simulations atop the rocket at the Cape. Al showed only one sign of stress: the cycles—Smilin' Al/Icy Commander—now came one on top of the other, in the same place, and alternated so suddenly that the people around him couldn't keep track. They learned a little more about the mysterious Al Shepard here in the eleventh hour. Smilin' Al was a man who wanted very much to be liked, even loved, by those around him. He wanted not just their respect but also their affection. Now, in April, on the eve of the great adventure, Smilin' Al was more jovial and convivial than ever. He did his José Jiménez routine. His great grin spread wider and his great beer-call eyes beamed brighter than ever before. Smilin' Al was crazy about a comedy routine that had been developed by a comedian named Bill Dana. It concerned the Cowardly Astronaut and was a great hit. Dana portrayed the Cowardly Astronaut as a stupid immigrant Mexican named Jose Jimenez, whose tongue wrapped around the English language like a taco. The idea was to interview Astronaut Jimenez like a news broadcaster.

You'd say things like: "What has been the most difficult part of astronaut training, Jose?"

"Obtaining de maw-ney, señor."

"The money? What for?"

"For de bus back to Mejico, you betcha, reel queeck, señor."

"I see. Well, now, José, what do you plan to do once you're in space?"

"Gonna cry a lot, I theeeenk."

Smilin' Al used to crack up over this routine. He liked to do the José Jiménez part; and if he could get someone to feed him the straight lines, he was in Seventh Heaven, Smilin' Al version. Feed him the lines for his José Jiménez knock-off, and he'd treat you like the best beer-call good buddy you ever had. Of course, the Cowardly Astronaut routine was also a perfectly acceptable way for bringing up, on the oblique, as it were, the subject of the righteous stuff that the first flight into space would require. But that was probably unconscious on Al's part. The main thing seemed to be the good fun, the camaraderie, the closeness and blustery affection of the squadron on the eve of battle. In these moments you saw Smilin' Al supreme. And in the next moment—

—some poor Air Force lieutenant, thinking this was the same Smilin' Al he had been joking and carrying on with last night, would sing out, "Hey, Al! Somebody wants you on the phone!"—and all at once there would be Al, seething with an icy white fury, hissing out: "If you have something to tell me, Lieutenant… you will call me 'Sir'!" And the poor devil wouldn't know what hit him. Where the hell did that freaking arctic avalanche come from? And then he would realize that… all at once the Icy Commander was back in town.

Of course those few who knew he was the man who was going up first were in a mood to forgive him all… well, save for an astronaut or two… As for the NASA technicians and the military personnel assigned to the mission, they were in a mood of utter adoration of the
single-combat warriors
, all three of them, for one of them would be placing his hide on top of the rocket. (And our rockets always blow up.) Toward the end the three of them would enter a room for some sort of test… and the technicians and workmen would stop what they were doing and break into applause and beam at them that warm moist smile of sympathy. Without knowing it, they were bestowing homage and applause in the classic manner: before the fact. These little scenes pressed Glenn's powers as charade master to the limit. More of these warm beams would be aimed at him than at either of the other two. He was the one mentioned in the press as the most likely choice. Not only that, he was the warmest of the three, the most consistently friendly toward one and all when he ran into them. It was just about too much. He had to keep smiling and aw-shucking and playing Mr. Modest, just as if it might, in fact, be he who was going up on top of the rocket on May 2 as the first man in the world to risk the mighty shot into space.

And then the omnipotent Integral intervened… a practical joker to the end! Early on the morning of April 12, the fabulous but anonymous Builder of the Integral, Chief Designer of the Sputniks, struck another of his cruel but dramatic blows. Just twenty days before the first scheduled Mercury flight he sent a five-ton Sputnik called
Vostok 1
into orbit around the earth with a man aboard, the first cosmonaut, a twenty-seven-year-old test pilot named Yuri Gagarin.
Vostok 1
completed one orbit, then brought Gagarin down safely, on land, near the Soviet village of Smelovka.

The omnipotent Integral! NASA had really believed—and the astronauts had really believed—that somehow, in the religious surge of
the mission
, Shepard's flight would be the first. But there was no putting one over on the Integral, was there! It was as if the Soviets' Chief Designer, that invisible genius, was toying with them. Back in October 1957, just four months before the United States was supposed to launch the world's first artificial earth satellite, the Chief Designer had launched Sputnik 1. In January 1959, just two months before NASA was scheduled to put the first artificial satellite into orbit around the sun, the Chief Designer launched
Mechta 1
and did just that. But this one,
Vostok 1
, in April 1961, had been his
pièce de résistance
. Given the huge booster rockets at his disposal, he seemed to be able to play these little games with his adversaries at will. There was the eerie feeling that he would continue to let NASA struggle furiously to catch up—and then launch some startling new demonstration of just how far ahead he really was.

The Soviets persisted in offering no information as to the Chief Designer's identity. For that matter, they identified no one involved in Gagarin's flight other than Gagarin himself. Nor did they offer any pictures of the rocket or even such elementary data as its length and its rocket thrust. Far from casting any doubt as to the capabilities of the Soviet program, this policy seemed only to inflame the imagination. The Integral! Secrecy was by now accepted as "the Russian way." Whatever the CIA might have been able to do in other parts of the world, in the Soviet Union they drew a blank. Intelligence about the Soviet space program remained very sketchy. Only two things were known: the Soviets were capable of launching a vehicle of tremendous weight, five tons; and whatever goal NASA set for itself, the Soviet Union reached it first. Using those two pieces of information, everyone in the government, from President Kennedy to Bob Gilruth, seemed to experience an involuntary leap of the imagination similar to that of the ancients… who used to look into the sky and see a clump of stars, sparks in the night, and deduce there from the contours of… an enormous bear!… the constellation Ursa Major!… On the evening of Gagarin's flight, April 12, 1961, President Kennedy summoned James E. Webb and Hugh Dryden, Webb's deputy administrator and NASA's highest-ranking engineer, to the White House; they met in the Cabinet room and they all stared into the polished walnut surface of the great conference table and saw… the mighty Integral!… and the Builder!—the Chief Designer!… who was laughing at them… and it was awesome!

In Washington, at Langley, and at the Cape, NASA was deluged with telephone calls from newspapers, wire services, magazines, radio stations—and most callers wanted to know what the astronauts' reaction was to Gagarin's flight. So the First Three, Glenn, Grissom, and Shepard, all prepared statements. Shepard cranked out something that said next to nothing at all; standard government issue. Privately he was put out with Gilruth and von Braun and everyone else for not sending him up in March, as it now appeared they could have.

As usual, it was Glenn whom the press quoted most. He as much as said: "Well, they just beat the pants off us, that's all, and 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." Glenn was considered especially forthright, gracious, and magnanimous. He was big about the thing, as the saying goes—and that seemed especially commendable, since he was still considered the American front runner for the flight that would have made him "the first man in space." He had swallowed his own disappointment like a man.

Alan Shepard finally got his turn on May 5. He was inserted in the capsule, on top of a Redstone rocket, about an hoar before dawn, with an eye toward a launch shortly after daybreak. But as in the case of the ape, there was a four-hour hold in the countdown, caused mainly by an overheating inverter. Now the sun was up, and all across the eastern half of the country people were doing the usual, turning on their radios and television sets, rolling the knobs in search of something to give the nerve endings a little tingle—and what suspense awaited them! An astronaut sat on the tip of a rocket, preparing to get himself blown to pieces.

Even in California, where it was very early, highway patrolmen reported a strange and troubling sight. For no apparent reason drivers, hordes of them, were pulling off the highways and stopping on the shoulders, as if controlled by Mars. The patrolmen were slow in figuring it out, because they did not have AM radios. But the citizenry did, and they had become so excited as the countdown progressed at Cape Canaveral, so ravenously curious as to what would happen to the mortal hide of Alan Shepard when they fired the rocket, it was too much. Even the simple act of driving overloaded the nervous system. They stopped; they turned up the volume; they were transfixed by the prospect of the lonely volunteer about to be exploded into hash.