by Robert Stone
After leaving the Kennedy administration and his position as chairman of the FCC in early 1963 to return to practice law in Chicago, NEWTON MINOW served as the co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, where in 1976 he was instrumental in bringing about the first televised presidential debates since the Kennedy–Nixon campaign of 1960. He served as chairman of the Public Broadcasting Service and the Carnegie Corporation and in 2016 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
For her work on the return of Apollo 13, POPPY NORTHCUTT was a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom Team Award. After leaving the space program, she served on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women and was named by the mayor of Houston as the city’s first women’s advocate. She spent more than four decades on the front lines of the feminist movement, earning a law degree in 1984 and working as a prosecutor in the Harris County district attorney’s office, and later had her own private practice specializing in issues of inclusion and reproductive rights.
HERMANN OBERTH traveled to the United States to witness the launches of Apollo 11 and, sixteen years later, the space shuttle Challenger. He remained interested in occult ideas and collaborated on books with a psychic who claimed she had received messages from extraterrestrials. More controversial, he became an idol of the German far right and briefly supported the radical National Democratic Party. During one of his visits to America, Arthur C. Clarke observed Oberth in a small group of visitors receiving a tour of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Oberth was unrecognized by the young NASA scientists working there, who Clarke suspected were unlikely to even recognize his name. He lived to be ninety-five.
Following his departure from NASA in 1970, THOMAS PAINE returned to General Electric as a vice president and group manager and subsequently served as president and chief operating officer of the Northrop Corporation. In the 1980s he chaired the National Commission on Space for President Ronald Reagan, with an assignment to look ahead fifty years in order to establish space-program goals for the coming two decades. Paine had never been an enthusiast for the chosen design of America’s space shuttle, which he likened to a “space truck with a mission no more glamorous than carting a load of toothpicks to Topeka.” He died at age seventy, not long after serving on President George H. W. Bush’s U.S. Space Policy Advisory Board.
The unofficial eighth astronaut of the Mercury program, COLONEL JOHN “SHORTY” POWERS spent the latter part of the 1960s endorsing commercial products, not only the long-running ad campaign for Oldsmobile but also Tareyton cigarettes and Carrier air conditioners. His syndicated “Space Talk” column appeared in hundreds of newspapers in the late 1960s, and his familiar cadence provided the voice-over narration for the 1966 Jerry Lewis space-themed sex comedy, Way…Way Out. After Apollo 11, Powers argued for diverting money from the Pentagon budget and giving it to NASA, reasoning that the technological advancements resulting from defense contracts could just as easily come from space research. When he died in 1979, he was only fifty-seven.
Less than a year after leaving NASA, astronaut WALLY SCHIRRA signed a reported hundred-thousand-dollar contract to appear with Walter Cronkite during CBS News’s broadcast of Apollo 11. The network promoted the pairing as “Walter to Walter coverage,” and they appeared together on space-related broadcasts through the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Schirra subsequently achieved additional media fame as a spokesperson for Actifed cold tablets, in a long-running series of television and print ads stemming from his battle with a head cold during Apollo 7. He authored an autobiography, Schirra’s Space, published in 1988. He passed away in 2007 at age eighty-four.
Shortly after the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, JULIAN SCHEER was forced out of his position as head of NASA public affairs as a result of political pressure from the White House and some in Congress. He subsequently served as press secretary during North Carolina governor Terry Sanford’s brief 1972 presidential campaign, as a Washington-based book scout for New York publishers, and as a vice president of LTV Corp. Over the decades he maintained a second career as an author of children’s books, including Rain Makes Applesauce, a Caldecott honor book written while at NASA. He died in 2001 at age seventy-five.
Sidelined due to a heart condition prior to his scheduled 1962 Mercury flight, DEKE SLAYTON was finally cleared to fly into space a decade later. In 1975, at age fifty-one, he was one of three American crew members of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the last flight of the Apollo command-and-service module, and the culmination of Richard Nixon’s initiative to use space to achieve rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Slayton retired from NASA in 1980 and, two years later, as president of Space Services Inc. of America, became instrumental in successfully launching the first privately financed rocket into space. Slayton died in 1993 at age sixty-nine.
The only one of the original seven Mercury astronauts to walk on the Moon, ALAN SHEPARD returned to full-flight status in 1969, following surgery for an inner-ear disorder. As the commander of Apollo 14, Shepard, at age forty-seven, became at that time the oldest man to fly in space. Nothing he did during the entire mission garnered more attention than his brief attempt to hit two golf balls from the lunar surface. Though it stimulated new public interest in one of the later Apollo missions, Norman Mailer thought Shepard’s golf stunt was in poor taste and dismissed it as a boorish celebration of locker-room culture. Shepard was one of the few men to have become wealthy while serving as an astronaut in the 1960s, largely as a result of his smart investments. He died in 1998 at age seventy-four.
By the early 1960s, the paper delivered in Barcelona by S. FRED SINGER about exploding an atomic device on the Moon had faded from attention. But it was far from the last provocative statement made by the noted atmospheric physicist during his long career. For more than four decades, Singer was quoted in national publications offering contrarian views on various policy issues, ranging from climate change (“global warming, if it occurs, is bound to be beneficial”) to the dangers from secondhand cigarette smoke (“the risk for lung cancer…is not statistically significant”). In 2010, Rolling Stone dubbed him “the granddaddy of fake ‘science’ designed to debunk global warming.”
After attending the launch of Apollo 11, JAMES WEBB watched the moon-landing coverage on television at his home in Washington. The former NASA administrator served for more than a decade on the executive committee of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as on corporate boards. He intentionally turned down positions on the boards of aerospace firms and refused lucrative offers to become a Washington lobbyist. A decade after his death in 1992 at the age of eighty-five, NASA renamed its Next Generation Space Telescope in Webb’s memory, honoring him for his work fostering scientific research while running the space agency.
Teenage Arthur C. Clarke’s interest in the possibility of human space flight was launched by the colorful dust jacket of the British edition of The Conquest of Space, which he glimpsed in a bookstore window.
Chesley Bonestell’s illustration showing the ignition of the third stage of a ferry rocket forty miles above the Pacific Ocean appeared on the cover of the first space-themed issue of Collier’s magazine in March 1952.
Wernher von Braun’s large Saturn C-1 rocket under construction at the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1961. In the foreground is a Redstone rocket used to launch the suborbital Mercury missions; behind it is the Jupiter rocket.
The seven Mercury astronauts pose in alphabetical order beside a Convair F-106B Delta Dart: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton.
Wernher von Braun’s Soviet counterpart was engineer and spacecraft designer Sergei Korolev, shown here on the right wishing cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin a successful flight prior to the launch of Voskok 1 on April 12, 1961.
Two days after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, astronaut John Glenn shows
President John F. Kennedy his Friendship 7 capsule outside Hangar S at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
President John F. Kennedy attends a briefing during his September 1962 tour of Cape Canaveral. Sitting with him in the front row are NASA Administrator James Webb, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Director of Launch Operations Kurt Debus, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.” President John F. Kennedy at Rice University in 1962.
A human settlement on the Moon in the year 2024, presented as part of General Motors’ Futurama exhibit at the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair.
Astronaut Ed White becomes the first American to walk in space during the June 1965 Gemini 4 mission. He and James McDivitt were the first NASA astronauts to prominently display the American flag on the shoulder of their space suits.
Astronaut Frank Borman prepares for Gemini 7 in 1965. A medical endurance mission, the flight would transport Borman and Jim Lovell on 206 orbits around the Earth during nearly fourteen days. Onboard was a paperback of Mark Twain’s Roughing It, but Borman never had enough free time to read more than two chapters.
Gemini 7 photographed from Gemini 6A during the first close rendezvous in space, December 1965. “It was like the Blue Angels at 18,000 miles per hour,” said Gemini 6A’s commander Wally Schirra. “I did a fly-around inspection….I could move to within inches of it in perfect confidence.”
Gemini 8 astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott wait to board the USS Leonard F. Mason after their emergency return from orbit. The original flight plan called for them to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean, but a secondary recovery area in the Pacific Ocean 500 miles east of Okinawa was chosen instead.
The crew of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, photographed near Pad 34 in January 1967, days before they were killed when a fire spread through the oxygen-rich atmosphere of their enclosed spacecraft.
The launch of the first Saturn V moon rocket on November 9, 1967. The creation of von Braun’s rocket team at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the Saturn V flew thirteen missions, ten with people on board.
With a neighbor providing support, Susan Borman (right) watches the ABC News coverage of the launch of Apollo 8. Her faith in the space program shaken after the Apollo 1 fire, she believed it unlikely her husband would return from the first trip to the Moon.
“Hey, don’t take that [photograph]. It’s not scheduled.” One of the most famous images of the twentieth century was the result of a lucky accident. Known as “Earthrise,” this single photograph was worth the cost of the entire Apollo program, said anthropologist Margaret Mead.
Neil Armstrong waves to the press as he leads the crew of Apollo 11 to the van that will transport them on the ten-mile journey to Pad 39A. It was 6:27 on the morning of July 16, 1969. An observer standing a few feet away likened it to “seeing Columbus sail out of port.”
From the press site located three miles from Pad 39, ABC News science editor Jules Bergman reports during the live television broadcast of the launch of Apollo 11. The weather that morning was very humid with temperatures already heading into the high 80s.
Prior to the lunar landing, Buzz Aldrin checks out the lunar module while it is still docked to the command-and-service module.
Neil Armstrong photographed in the lunar module after landing on the Moon.
Buzz Aldrin descends the lunar module ladder. NASA scientists contemplated the remote possibility that energy stored in the lunar surface particles might set off a combustible reaction when it came into contact with the astronauts’ boots. For that reason Armstrong was told to touch the surface lightly with his heel during his first step.
Aldrin deploys a seismic experiment package during the moonwalk. Less sophisticated than later nuclear-powered Apollo seismometers, this solar-powered device operated for less than a month. It was so sensitive that it picked up the motions of Neil Armstrong turning over in his sleep within the lunar module following the moonwalk.
The iconic image of Aldrin on the lunar surface, with Neil Armstrong reflected in the mirrored visor. Because Aldrin was assigned to take photographs of the landscape and the condition of the lunar module, there are few good images of Armstrong standing on the Moon.
For my mother, who awakened her ten-year-old son in the middle of an English midsummer night to watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin make history as they walked on the Moon.
—R.S.
For Charlie, older brother and teenage rocket scientist, who, as the youngest accredited journalist covering the launch of Apollo 14, backpacked and hitchhiked 1200 miles to Cape Kennedy.
— A.A.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
HISTORIAN ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR., predicted that if the twentieth century was remembered for any single event five hundred years from now, it would be as the century when human beings began the exploration of space. “The generation that came of age in the 1960s [is] the last earthbound generation. They saw in their own lifetimes the shift of man as a creature of a single planet to man beginning the exploration of space. It’s the most exciting and significant time in the history of mankind.”
A half century after the first footsteps were impressed on another planetary body, less than a sixth of the world’s population has a living memory of the event. Far fewer have a firsthand recollection of the circumstances that precipitated it. In not many decades, the events of the early space age—Sputnik, Vostok, Mercury, Gemini, Soyuz, and Apollo—will pass into a realm of history with no living witnesses walking the Earth.
To tell this story, we sought out participants, witnesses, and historians, who all provided hours of their time to record interviews used in the production of the six-hour Chasing the Moon documentary film and that also served as a foundation for this book. Conducted in private offices, homes, and conference rooms—one even took place in an airplane hangar—these extended audio discussions allowed for a casual intimacy that likely would have been impossible had film cameras been involved. We are indebted to Buzz Aldrin, George Alexander, Bill Anders, Valerie Anders, Joel Banow, Mark Bloom, Frank Borman, Ed Buckbee, Ed Dwight, Freeman Dyson, the late Theo Kamecke, Sergei Khrushchev, the late Jack King, Roger Launius, John Logsdon, Newton Minow, Poppy Nortcutt, and the late Leonard Reiffel for their generous willingness to tell their stories. Each meeting was an unforgettable encounter with living history.
Additionally, over the course of the four years during which the film and subsequently the book came into focus, we called upon the wisdom and assistance of many others who should be thanked: Tim Carey, Michael Chaiken, Marnie Cochran, David Cohen, Albie Davis, Dwayne Day, Margaret Lazarus Dean, Paul Dickson, Eric Fenrich, Ian Greaves, Al Jackson, Boris Kachka, Tom Lehrer, Richard Lesher, Gideon Marcus, Neil McAleer, Larry McGlynn, Sarah Meltzoff, Leslie Morris, Steven Moss, Luke A. Nichter, James Oberg, Susan Scheer, Suzanne Scheer, Piet Schreuders, Roger Straus III, and Teasel Muir-Harmony.
We should single out our debt to the work of four scholars whose pioneering biographies of Arthur C. Clarke, Willy Ley, Wernher von Braun, and James Webb proved an invaluable resource to construct this written narrative. In particular, we urge any readers looking to learn more to seek out Jared Buss’s “Willy Ley, The Science Writers, and the Popular Reenchantment of Science”; W. Henry Lambright’s Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA; Neil McAleer’s Odyssey: The Authorized Biography of Arthur C. Clarke; and Michael J. Neufeld’s Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War. Additional mention should be made of Eric Leif Davin’
s Pioneers of Wonder, with its invaluable chapter and interview with David Lasser; John Elder’s paper “The Experience of Hermann Oberth”; and Asif A. Siddiqi’s “Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia.”
This book would not exist if not for Scott-Martin Kosofsky and the creation of David Meerman Scott and Rich Jurek’s Marketing the Moon, which somewhat serendipitously and circuitously led to this project’s origin. Both David and Rich have been followers of this project since its inception, and throughout the writing of this book, Rich has offered invaluable insight and support, all while simultaneously working on the creation of his own pioneering biography of George Low.
The idea for this book was inspired by the initial research we did for what eventually became a PBS six-hour documentary miniseries of the same name. Producers Keith Haviland, Daniel Aegerter, and Ray Rothrock provided invaluable early support that allowed us to begin the research and to conduct the key interviews for the film. We are also incredibly indebted to executive producer Mark Samels, senior producer Susan Bellows, and the entire team at PBS/American Experience for making the film a reality.