In public he remained the stout defender, and when he flew down to Canaveral to see the majestic machine in place on the launch pad, even his most secret doubts were brushed away and he told the press in complete honesty. “This thing will fly. It’ll open a new age of space exploration.”
[729] When the date for launch was fixed, Friday at dawn, 10 April 1981, he moved to the Bali Hai, where the Quints entertained him and the other NASA personnel with great meals and much good talk. Former astronauts Cater and Pope flew in for a reunion with Hickory Lee, who would serve as CapCom at the Cape before handing control over to Houston, once the launch was successful.
When all was in place and prognostications were positive, Mott almost relaxed, but his engineering background warned him that things could still go wrong. Those damned tiles could break away, leaving the great ship vulnerable, so he did not rest easy on the evening before the launch.
He rose at two on the culminating day, looked out at the dark sky and muttered, “Thank God, it isn’t raining ... or blowing.” Things looked very good, all down the line, but when he and two others from NASA headquarters got in their car to drive north to the launch site, a distance of only a few miles, they encountered a traffic jam of awesome proportions, and when they finally inched their way to where a policeman stood, he said, “I’m powerless. Maybe a million people descending on us. All those who missed the Apollo shots want to catch up.”
At 0500 his car was surrounded in every direction by impacted vehicles and it seemed unlikely that he would even get to Canaveral, let alone the launch site, but he took solace in the fact that from where he was immobilized he would be able at least to see the distant launch, but then traffic inched ahead, and as the time for launch approached he found himself in a depression behind trees and tall buildings, without any chance of even seeing the shoreline where the Shuttle waited.
“We’re going to miss the whole show,” he said resignedly to his partners, and one who had a transistor radio kept him advised as to the swift passage of time. It was a fiasco, the last in a long line, and Mott wondered again: Is this whole thing snake-bit?
Then came the good news! There would be a slight delay in the launch because of minor trouble with one of the five computers, and this might give them just enough time to break through the jam and get to the launch area. At this moment a larger car with several NASA personnel came [730] rushing by with a police escort, and some of the passengers recognized Dr. Mott: “Fall in behind!” And the chain of VIP cars drove across lanes, across lawns, and made it into the launch area.
It was a bright, perfect Florida morning made notable by that dazzling white spacecraft poised at the edge of the Atlantic. Mott and his men were in the stands closest to the launch, but even so, they were five and a quarter miles away, a distance dictated by the requirements of safety; if the rocket went wild, it would probably miss an area so far removed.
It seemed to Mott that everyone he had ever known was there to watch as America resumed its assault on space: past administrators who had fought budget battles, past engineers who had devised the great machines, past scientists who had charted the way to the stars, and good friends from Congress who had supervised the whole. But some of the best were missing: Lyndon Johnson, who had maintained such a steady perspective, was dead, and so were Mike Glancey, who had done the yeoman work, Wernher von Braun, whose boyhood imaginings had made it possible, and John Kennedy, who in a time of national malaise had had the courage to utter the magic words: “I believe ... before this decade is out ... landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth ...”
But after the greetings ended, the empty minutes began to grow very long, and people began to fret, and old doubts resurfaced. One scientist tried to brighten the gloom by telling of the television network, one of those best informed on space, which had built itself a Shangri-la kind of headquarters from which to observe this launch: “Must have spent ten thousand dollars. But they built it facing the wrong way. When the crew got here from New York they said, “Hey, we can’t see a thing but swamp.” We lent them a big crane, picked their building up, and swung it around the right way. They can screw things up, too.”
By 0900 it was obvious that the launch was not going to take place; the obstinate fifth computer refused like a petulant child to talk with the other four, so the gruesome announcement had to be made: “The launch is scrubbed.”
Now the vast collection of cars reversed itself and the traffic jam back to the Bali Hai was even more tedious [731] than the earlier one, but when the cavalcade finally reached there and disappointed men filed into the Dagger Bar, a phone call awaited Dr. Mott: “Can you please come over to the press room at the Hilton? Two television crews would like to interview you.”
He looked about the bar, spotted Pope and Cater in disgusted isolation and asked them to join him-“Let’s show a brave face to the slobs”-and they came eagerly. Several critics said later that it was by far the best show in the whole misadventure: “It allowed us to see a real-life reflective scientist and two forthright astronauts who were not bright-eyed kids.”
Mott conceded nothing, and John Pope also demonstrated firmness in his support of the program, but it was salty Ed Cater from Louisiana who again and again brought the discussion back to practicalities: “I’ve had more trouble with my Oldsmobile Toronado than they’ve had with the Shuttle. I’d fly in it tomorrow if they’d invite me. It can do so many things our Apollos couldn’t do. I’ve walked on the Moon, it’s fun, but now we have to tend our housekeeping chores. That Shuttle will take off Sunday morning like gangbusters, and if I know John Young, and I flew with him for a hell of a lot of hours, he’ll land it in California like a careful farm wife bringing in a basket of eggs.”
Mott, Cater and Pope spent the rest of that day in the Dagger Bar talking of past times and secretly keeping their fingers crossed. At nightfall Hickory Lee joined them, and they invited no one else, for they were the professionals, the ones with their necks on the line, and they prayed passionately that their bird would fly.
Mott could not sleep Friday night, and on Saturday, after another long day in the Dagger Bar, he wondered if he ought to take some sleeping pills, but the thought of lying in bed inert while the Shuttle took off was too depressing, and he lay awake till two, when he dressed, got in his car, and with three NASA passengers, fell in behind a police escort that whisked them right into the launch area. In the dark, while women filtered in to tend the refreshment stands, he met with his associates and assured them: “This bird is going to fly. It’s going to amaze America.”
[732] At dawn the excitement was intense, and when the final countdown started on the radio Mott found himself breathing at an intolerable rate, and he thought: I hope those fellows up there are taking this easier than I am.
A roar! A flash of immense light! A thunder coming across the empty swampland! And then the slow, purposeful rise of the huge machine, an explosion of mist and fire as water rushed in to dissipate the extraordinary heat, and finally the Shuttle soaring majestically into the air.
Stanley Mott almost collapsed in his canvas chair. His energy had been drained away as if a siphon had been injected into his guts, and he could not speak, for he knew that now the real agony was beginning, never to end until those two men brought that spacecraft back to Earth with its tiles intact, and even as he was experiencing the first pangs of this uncertainty, a television commentator was announcing: “When the doors to the bay opened, the astronauts could see that several tiles were missing.”
He flew with several others out to Los Angeles and then by a small NASA plane to Edwards Air Force Base in the desert, where he assembled with other scientists and a group of former astronauts. Two television stations asked if he would make himself available for interviews about the missing tiles, but since he could not risk displaying his anxiety in public, he declined, and he heard one announcer say, “High officials of NASA have refused to comment on this perilous condition.”
He knew from briefings that just about now Young and Crippen would be making their final decision far above the Indian Ocean; they would cross Australia and speed toward California, descending as they came. In a few minutes they would begin to penetrate the heavy atmosphere at Mach 24.5, when the heat would become so intense-The loudspeaker interrupted: “Columbia has now entered the zone of silence. Heat is so intense that radio [733] communication becomes impossible.” Oh, Jesus, Mott prayed, keep those tiles in place.
This was the moment which the men aloft and those monitoring them below had to take on faith. When men have ventured toward the stars it is not easy to come back to Earth.
Mott almost stopped breathing. The men around him grew silent. What was happening up there? Then came the joyous, rattling sound of a human voice, no excitement, no panic: “This is a great way to come back to California.”
Then one of the ordinary planes keeping watch in the sky sent television shots of the great spacecraft coming back, the first ever to fly its way home intact. Men began to shout, for they could see the Shuttle as it appeared in real time. It came to Earth like an everyday commercial airliner winging in from Australia, and Mott cheered as if he were a child at some game.
And finally the electric moment came when the beautiful machine triumphantly touched the gravel, settled down like an eagle returning to its nest, raced along the runway, and braked to a halt. Never had a major exploration ended so well when so many had expected it to fail.
Mott looked around for something to sit on, for he was afraid he might faint.
On the day after the Shuttle landed in California, Rachel Mott received in her Washington apartment a surprise gift from Huntsville. It came from the Kolffs and contained a handwritten note: “Please can you call me and give me some advice? Dieter.” When she opened the package it contained two records produced and played by young Magnus Kolff; both were by an ensemble, which he had organized, called the Boston Brass, consisting of eleven of the top brass players from the Boston Symphony plus five men from other orchestras. The first record contained four classic pieces which Magnus had transcribed from the shorter ones of Vivaldi, Schumann, Beethoven and Brahms, and the rich sustained notes cascaded out with the joy these men had shared in playing music when they, and not the violins or the soloists, were the stars. Rachel could not detect when Magnus played, for he did not give precedence to the three trumpets, and certainly not to himself.
[734] The second record was going to prove the more popular, Rachel predicted, for it contained Christmas carols played with a sweet verve that was bewitching. On the second side Kolff, who served as director of the group, had run out of carols and had filled in with three short pieces that Rachel had loved as a child before her tastes became refined: Handel’s Largo from Serse, the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, and the wonderful Agnus Dei of Bizet, which one rarely heard these days but which Caruso had sung with such overpowering effect.
She played both records twice, delighting in the rich tones that young Kolff’s men had produced, and then she called Huntsville to determine what problem the older Kolff might have. The message astonished her:
“Rachel, I’m delighted it’s you. I trust your judgment. It concerns my grandson Wernher. Magnus’ boy. Did you get the records? Aren’t they splendid sound? He conducts the group, you know.
“The problem is this. Magnus lives here in Huntsville, and young Wernher-named after Von Braun, as you might guess-well, the boy’s old enough for serious studies now and Magnus thinks we must send him to Germany for his education. So do I and Liesl. What’s your opinion? ...
“Why? For a very good reason, Rachel. There’s a fierce movement in Alabama to stop the teaching of evolution, geology, everything in science. A minister named Strabismus is leading a crusade and all decent teaching must stop. I think no boy of promise should be denied access to the full range of science. How could Von Braun have invented the rocket if-”
She broke in: “Dieter, send your grandson to Germany immediately. If America insists on retreating to the dark ages, we may have to educate our brightest children in China and Germany. Sneak them out to discover the real world, then sneak them back in to keep learning alive.”
“That’s exactly what I told Magnus. Young Wernher could be a new Von Braun. He could be a bank clerk. How did I ever produce a boy who can play the trumpet like [735] an angel? Who knows? But the boy must have a chance to know the truth, whatever he becomes.”
Liesl Kolff, sixty-five now and somewhat bewildered by the tenor of things in Alabama, came on the phone to ask, “You think we’re right, Mrs. Mott?”
“Send him on the next plane, Liesl. The safety of his soul is at stake.”
“Will you have Dr. Mott call us, please? I’m still an old German. I like to hear it from the man.”
When Stanley returned home and learned how his wife had advised the Kolffs, he was distressed and called Huntsville immediately: “Dieter, I think Rachel gave bad advice. I see no reason to send your son to Germany. America is a free republic and its citizens are allowed to do any crazy thing they want. Like trying to rescind geology.”
“How do we refute such nonsense?”
“With data. With logic. With new developments. We protect science with science. Just as we protect faith with faith.”
“But they’re starting to pass laws, Stanley. Our Wernher will not be allowed to learn the truth.”
“They pass laws, and then we knock them out, and they aren’t laws any longer. I have great faith in this nation.”
“Millions of people had great faith in Germany, and look what happened.”
“Keep the boy in school, Dieter. Give him good books to read. And this summer, if you can afford it, send him to Germany ... for a visit ... to see for himself ... to check on what they’re teaching there. He’ll come home better for it.”
When he hung up, Rachel asked, “Was I hysterical? Am I wrong in fearing that the Neanderthals will win?”
“I’m sure they’ll try, and I’m sure people like us will fight to knock them back.”
“Will we succeed?”
“We’ve been succeeding for the past six million years-with setbacks now and then of a thousand years or so.”
The three most dangerous airports in the world were in southern Florida: Miami, Fort Lauderdale just to the north and Palm Beach International. The chances of death here, if one’s plane took off or landed after dark, were [736] grotesquely greater than at an airfield in some backward country like Burma or rural Indonesia.
The Florida airfields had the best electronic equipment, the best-trained air controllers and big, broad landing strips, but still the danger mounted. Partly it was because the landing strips were so spacious; with tarmac going off in all directions, they constituted a temptation.
Smugglers, attempting to bring into the States huge cargoes of marijuana or smaller, more valuable ones of heroin or cocaine, loaded their small, illegal planes, often stolen from private owners, in Colombia, Ecuador or Mexico and flew them north at sunset. Keeping low over the Gulf of Mexico to avoid radar detection, they approached the western shore of Florida in darkness, dipped across the peninsula and came roaring in without lights, permission or radar assistance to land secretly at one of the big southern Florida strips.
How did they land? By sheer luck, hoping that the runways would be wide enough to accommodate them, no matter how they approached, trusting that no big commercial planes were landing or taking off. One airline pilot who had flown against the Japanese Zeros at Guadalcanal said, “Landing a plane at Fort Lauderdale is the hairiest thing I’ve ever done in the pilot’s
seat. Radar gives you clearance. The field lies dead ahead. But what you don’t know is whether some smuggler is choosing that minute to land his stolen plane down the middle to where the fast cars are waiting.”
Practiced travelers who knew of the clandestine landings refused to fly into or out of these airports after sunset. A German businessman who lived half the year in Palm Beach because of the advantageous exchange, said, “In Berlin we have the Baader-Meinhoff Gang, sixteen or seventeen people who make life hell for the rest of us. But over here you have sixteen or seventeen hundred trying to use the airports after the sun goes down. They’re the real revolutionaries.”
In June 1981, when the nights were shortest and therefore least helpful to the smugglers, a pair of daring aviators held secret sessions in West Palm Beach with a gang of resolute ground men whom the leader of the smugglers, Chris Mott, had met when serving time in the local jail. [737] His plan was bold: “Jake and I know a field in Louisiana where we can lift a Lear jet without too much trouble. We’ve had four dry runs to see if we could make it, and the owner is so damned careless we could take it out in a tractor trailer. He runs a fish-canning business, chowder and the like.
“Jake and I will fly it directly to a place called Las Cruces north of Medellin in Colombia, where our people will load the Lear with the biggest haul in the history of the Caribbean. We calculate that with a good wind we can make it straight in to this airport. We’ll land about 0230, a good confusing time. Jake says he can bring it west-to-east, keep it off to the southern side away from the airport buildings, and you fellows will be waiting on Route 98 just off the tarmac, and of course you’ll head straight for Orlando, where John will be waiting with a legal plane, at the far end of that runway.”
It was a neat plan, one that required timing and skill and not a little courage, for the flight from Las Cruces to Palm Beach just about represented the range of the Lear jet they proposed to steal. Jake, the pilot, said he was prepared to take the risk if the several ground crews would provide the fast cars, the legal plane at Orlando and the outlets in New York and Boston. But the central courage, the hard brains of the planning, lay with Chris Mott, who, at the age of thirty-one, was fire-hardened and prepared for the all-or-nothing hazard: “There could be eleven million dollars in this, and we take our risks evenly. The guys in Colombia, they get only six cents on the dollar unless we can sell the stuff in the big cities. Jake and I get peanuts unless you men succeed. And you get nothing unless we get the stuff to Palm Beach. Comprendo, amigos?”
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