Light This Candle: The Life & Times of Alan Shepard--America's First Spaceman

by Neal Thompson

  Shorty Powers had arrived with two cameramen who were trying to set up their gear to film some behind-the-scenes footage of Cooper. They found that none of the overhead lights was working and none of the electrical outlets had power. It took Shorty fifteen minutes to discover that someone—apparently someone with too much time and energy on his hands—had cut the wires to the electrical outlets, removed all the overhead lightbulbs, put thick tape into the sockets, and then replaced the bulbs. Shorty also noticed that Shepard seemed to be hovering around, wearing “a grin that is typical of him when he has a mouse under his hat.” Shepard never admitted to being the culprit, but Shorty knew one of Shepard’s gotchas when he saw one. He even admitted the gag was a fairly creative “tension reliever,” although maybe a little mean-spirited.

  At dawn Cooper climbed into his capsule. On the seat he found a suction-cup pump called a “plumber’s friend.” Etched into the metal handle was an inscription: “Remove before launch.” It was a small gift from Shepard, a joke about the new urine-collection system they’d placed in Cooper’s capsule, a system that would allow him to urinate without having to void into his suit and become a “wetback” the way Shepard had.

  Finally Shepard took his seat at Mission Control, and as Cooper blasted off and entered the first of a scheduled twenty-two orbits, Shepard radioed Cooper, telling him “everything looks beautiful.” And for the first twenty orbits, the flight was beautiful. At one point, as Cooper passed above Cape Canaveral, he reported to Shepard that he was using very little oxygen (which he’d later attribute to being one of the few nonsmoking astronauts), and Shepard joked that he could “stop holding your breath and use some oxygen if you like.” The flight was going so smoothly, Shepard had no instructions for his colleague. “You son of a gun, I haven’t got anything to talk about,” Shepard said. “We’ll let you have some quiet time. Have a good ball.”

  Cooper then ate a brownie, fruitcake, and some bacon, followed by the first nap in space. He transmitted the first TV images of the earth, pictures so clear that Shepard radioed he could see the fly on Cooper’s nose. In a dig at the psychologists who once fretted about astronauts experiencing “separation anxiety”—a psychotic wish to stay in space forever—Cooper reported that he was “thinking very much about returning to earth.” He then whispered a touching prayer into his microphone: “Father, we thank you, especially for letting me fly this flight. Thank you for the privilege of being able to be in this position, to be in this wondrous place, seeing all these many startling, wonderful things that you have created.”

  But despite the prayer, his flight soon devolved into a mess.

  During his sixteenth orbit, after a full day in space, a green light on the control panel that measured the earth’s gravitational pull blinked on, indicating that Cooper was reentering the earth’s atmosphere, which he was not. Mission Control expressed its alarm that Cooper had prematurely begun the reentry procedure. “Like hell,” Cooper responded.

  While Mission Control searched for an explanation for the light that had blinked on, other systems began malfunctioning, one after the other. First, Mission Control reported that Cooper’s telemetry—the data electronically relayed from his capsule back to earth, which showed the position and speed of his capsule on Mission Control computer screens—was blinking on and off their screens. Mission Control sent instructions for Cooper to try flipping switches and resetting the computer system, but then an electrical inverter short-circuited, killing power to the automated control system that would guide him back through the atmosphere. He would now have to steer the capsule home manually, just as Scott Carpenter had, with near-deadly results.

  Moments later the cooling system bit the dust, causing temperatures and—more dangerously—carbon dioxide levels to rise. Because the cooling system also filtered out the carbon dioxide of Cooper’s exhaled breath, those gases would begin to fill the capsule and in no time could cause Cooper to black out.

  Next, the gyroscopes, which helped control the angle of the capsule, went dead. Seconds later his clock stopped—no small matter on a space flight in which every maneuver is timed down to the second. Little by little his capsule was dying, but Cooper remained calm. “Well, things are beginning to stack up a little,” he said in his laconic Okie drawl, and then listed all the potentially fatal problems in his wounded capsule, including the fact that the carbon dioxide level had already risen to the maximum. “Other than that, things are fine.”

  Finally Mission Control determined what was happening: a total power failure. The only thing to do was bring Cooper home as quickly as possible, but no previous astronaut had reentered the atmosphere with such a disabled capsule. Without his automatic control system, he would have to reenter using manual controls. But without his gyroscope and clock, he would have no electronic information telling him whether he was lined up at the correct angle. He would have to use the earth’s horizon to align himself, by looking out his window and using a horizontal line etched across it. Once he had the capsule lined up horizontally, he would use a star in the distant sky to align the capsule vertically. It was the spaceman’s equivalent of a dead-stick landing on an aircraft carrier, except Cooper was surrounded by poisonous gas, with the temperature in his pressure suit now at 110 degrees, traveling seventeen thousand miles an hour in a dying capsule. Cooper was about to prove the astronauts’ argument that the best people for such dangerous missions were steely, highly skilled test pilots.

  John Glenn kept Cooper apprised of the exact time, and Cooper used the second hand on his wristwatch to count down to the precise moment for firing his retro-rockets. After the rockets fired, Cooper twitched his hand control slightly, back and forth, front to back, to keep the capsule stable and aligned at the right angle. Glenn, stationed on a ship in the Pacific, asked Cooper about the capsule’s attitude, and Cooper reported that it was “right on the old gazoo.”

  Cooper managed to keep his cool and manually fly the capsule through the atmosphere, keeping it aligned at the required 34-degree angle. Because of the damaged electronics system, he had to reach up and pull the parachute’s toggles himself and moments later splashed safely into the ocean. Incredibly, he landed only four miles from the USS Kearsage—the closest any astronaut had ever landed to the recovery ship.

  The problem, they learned later, had been Cooper’s piss. He had taken many sips of water during the flight; Shepard had once asked if he passed any urine, and Cooper responded, “Boy, did I ever!” But at some point late in the flight the urine collection system sprang a leak. Blobs of urine floated up behind the capsule’s control panel and little by little short-circuited the electronics.

  Walt Williams—“my nemesis,” Cooper had called him— was waiting for him when a helicopter delivered Cooper to Hawaii. “Gordo,” Williams said as he shook his hand. “You were the right guy for the mission.” But it would not be the last time NASA would have to decide between Gordon Cooper and Alan Shepard.

  Following Cooper’s flight, the astronauts were invited once again to the White House. It was another morning of ceremony, with Cooper parading through Washington’s streets, meeting with congressmen, and receiving a medal from President Kennedy. During the White House ceremony Jackie Kennedy pulled Louise aside and asked if she and the other wives had any plans that night. “Why don’t you all drop by for cocktails this evening, since you’re in town,” the First Lady said.

  The president invited the astronauts, too. That night Shepard—drink in hand, man to man—would take his quest for another space flight to the highest authority in the land.

  During Cooper’s flight, NASA’s new administrator, Jim Webb, had announced that Cooper’s would be the last of the Mercury flights—even though many NASA engineers were hoping to launch one of the three Atlas rockets they had left. That was Shepard’s hope, too, and before going to the White House that night, Shepard stopped by Webb’s house in suburban Washington to argue his case.

  Shepard’s idea was to set a new record, an
endurance flight to leap far ahead of the Russians and impress the nation with NASA’s ability to keep an astronaut in space for more than a day. Shepard knew it was blatant politicking, but it might be his last chance for a flight anytime soon. “You know, Mr. Webb, we could put this baby up there in just a matter of weeks. It’s all ready to go,” Shepard explained in Webb’s living room. “Just let me sit up there and see how long it will last. Get another record out of it.”

  Webb listened but said no. He felt that Project Mercury had run its course. He was anxious to move on. Shepard then told Webb that he’d be seeing his friend the president in a few hours and he’d like to mention his idea for another Mercury flight. Well, Webb said, at least “tell him my side of the story, too.” Shepard agreed.

  After a few drinks—Shepard called it “getting some of our taxpayers’ money back by drinking at the White House”—Shepard saw an opening to corner Kennedy and explain his plan. “Maybe two, maybe three days,” he said, adding that it would be one way of jumping ahead of the Russians. Kennedy listened, feigning interest—especially in the beat-the-Russians part.

  In recent discussions with advisers Kennedy had revealed his all-out obsession with reaching the moon, even if it came at the expense of other space-related projects. A few months earlier the Russians had launched two spacecraft, two days apart, each carrying two cosmonauts, including the first woman in space. Then the two spacecraft pulled within a few miles of each other—an orbital rendezvous of sorts, a maneuver at least three years away for the United States. The feat clearly gave the Russians the edge. Kennedy, it turned out, had little interest in another puny Mercury flight. His sole concern in the space race was now landing the first man on the moon. “I think everything that we do ought to really be tied to getting onto the moon ahead of the Russians,” Kennedy had told Jim Webb in a tense meeting at the White House.

  Still, the president listened to Shepard’s pitch, finally asking, “What does Mr. Webb think?” Shepard had to confess that Webb opposed the idea. Kennedy thought a few moments more, then said, “I think we’ll have to go along with Mr. Webb.” And that was it. The president thanked Shepard for his thoughts and walked away.

  But there was a consolation prize for not getting another Mercury flight. Deke Slayton had become head of the astronaut office, and among his duties was selecting the flight crews. He had decided—with NASA’s blessing—that the best man to kick off Project Gemini was the same man who had kicked off Project Mercury.

  In late 1963 Shepard was chosen to command the first Gemini flight, paired with Tom Stafford, who had established himself as one of the leaders of the Next Nine. Their mission, following two unmanned Gemini launches, would be a five-hour flight designed to test the maneuverability of the newer, larger, more sophisticated Gemini capsule. The flight would focus on having the astronauts use the control system to alter the orbit of their capsule—from, say, 100 miles above earth to 140 miles—which would become a crucial part of all future flights. Plans for Project Apollo—still on the drawing board, and often hotly debated—included launching two separate capsules atop a rocket, separating them, and then docking them back together while they orbited the earth, just as the Russians had done. Project Gemini would be a series of warm-up sessions for such tricky maneuvers.

  For Shepard, one benefit of being chosen for the first Gemini flight was that it set a precedent and put him—theoretically, at least—in line for the first Apollo flight as well. Furthermore, he was nicely poised for a shot at the moon. NASA had begun indicating a preference to have the crew of the first lunar landing include one of the Mercury Seven, which had now dwindled to four men. Glenn had retired to pursue politics, Slayton was sidelined with a heart murmur, and in 1964 Carpenter broke his arm in a motorcycle accident and was taken off the flight rotation (he would retire in 1967). With that possibility deep in the back of his mind, Shepard threw himself into Gemini training, which included many hours crammed into a training capsule. Shepard loved the two-seater Gemini capsule, which looked and felt like a snug little sports car. He and Stafford—a Naval Academy graduate who had transferred to the Air Force—hit it off well. But not so well that Shepard trusted his new partner with his little secret.

  Shepard had been trying—as all Christian Scientists do—to take care of his dizzy spells by himself. But he finally began visiting a private doctor, who prescribed medication (such as diuretics) and vitamins (such as niacin) that he hoped would do the trick. Meanwhile, for Project Apollo, NASA needed more astronauts, and by late 1963 another group of Max Pecks faced Shepard’s glaring eyes in the interview room at Houston’s Rice Hotel. Many of the candidates assumed that Shepard’s sole job on the committee was to be the bulldog, to ask the difficult questions and in so doing to weed out the weak.

  Despite the intense efforts of Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, the next group would not include an African-American or a female astronaut, even though the Russians had already launched a woman into space. NASA officials still valued scientific considerations above any social statements they might make. So for now Shepard’s colleagues would continue to be all white, all male, and mostly military—just as they had been for twenty years. They were men who had watched on TV in 1961 more than two years earlier as Alan Shepard rose from the launch pad, thinking, What a lucky son of a bitch.

  Fourteen new astronauts were chosen that fall of 1963, and as with the Next Nine, most were destined for lengthy, complicated space flights that would make Shepard’s Freedom 7 look like a high school science project. Just like the Next Nine, the only men among the next fourteen who would not shame Shepard’s space resume would die horrific deaths.

  As the astronaut ranks grew, a hierarchical law emerged: You weren’t an astronaut until you flew in space. Until then you were just a “candidate.” So while Shepard was technically a legit astronaut, his competitor-peers sometimes reminded him that he’d flown the shortest space flight in history. Slayton once joked that the only astronaut to fly less than Shepard was Slayton, who remained grounded by his heart murmur.

  Despite Shepard’s limited space time, many of the new astronauts respected him, even feared him. The twenty-two new guys were competitive, headstrong men but not above aspiring to mimic a hero such as Shepard. Some bought Corvettes. Some dressed like Shepard or wore their hair like him. In their eyes, he was everything an astronaut was supposed to be. He didn’t have to try hard; he just oozed style and sophistication. One astronaut called it his “oh-so-cool number-one leader shtick,” and said Shepard “epitomized cool—the sixties-style ‘swinger’ then coming into vogue.”

  As NASA continued to build its new headquarters south of Houston, beside Clear Lake (which was neither clear nor a lake), most of the astronaut families settled ten miles further south in a small Quaker-founded village called Friendswood. Texas had welcomed NASA with wide-open arms. A housing developer offered astronauts and their families free homes in his development. Car dealers tripped over each other to sell cars to the astronauts at low interest rates. The Chamber of Commerce held a welcoming parade. Bankers shook their hands. Everyone wanted a piece.

  Many of the families built new homes in the east Texas soil known as “gumbo,” a mix of mud, clay, sand, and crushed oyster shells. But neither Louise nor Alan had a taste for the muddy, swampy bayfront communities south of Houston, with their cement-hard beaches and brown, frothy waters. Louise preferred the shops, nice restaurants, and rough-edged sophistication of Houston to the astro club down in Friendswood. So they settled in a high-rise luxury apartment building downtown.

  It was not an easy transition for Louise. She had grown to love Virginia Beach. And after her distasteful sojourn in Corpus Christi sixteen years earlier, she had vowed never to return to Texas, to its dusty flatness, its punishing heat, and its hard-edged mien. Yet despite her initial concerns she and Alan would settle nicely into Houston’s society, more deeply than any other place they’d lived. It would become their home for the next thre
e decades. But in 1963 the life of an astro-wife was never as simple as Louise would have liked, and she often couldn’t help being pulled into the vortex of Alan’s celebrity.

  Louise’s handful of selected friends included Carol and Peter Vanderhoef. Peter was a Christian Science teacher and practitioner (similar to a priest, but responsible for the spiritual and physical health of church members), and the Vanderhoefs had two daughters close in age to the younger two Shepard girls. Alan and Louise sometimes left the girls with the Vanderhoefs overnight when they’d travel, and Peter Vanderhoef used to laugh watching Alan pull up with his three daughters—this famous test pilot and astronaut carrying an armload of dolls, tea sets, and dresses.

  The Vanderhoefs lived in an upscale section of Houston known as River Oaks, and the backyard of their lengthy rancher adjoined the backyard of George and Barbara Bush. Peter Vanderhoef, who was raised in Connecticut, had once dated Barbara, who grew up in nearby Rye, New York, and he was surprised to discover she was now his neighbor. At the time, in the mid-1960s, George was a successful oilman and aspiring politician—he would lose a run for the Senate in 1964 but win a U.S. congressional seat two years later.

  The Bushes had a trampoline in their backyard, and the Vanderhoefs often saw the heads of Bush kids—George, Jeb, and Neil—bouncing in the air above the fence separating the two yards. The Bush boys teased and flirted with the Vanderhoef and Shepard girls. When the Shepards had moved to town, George, the eldest, hosted a party for Laura Shepard, to introduce her to other Houston teens.

  Befriending the Bushes would be the first of many tactical steps Shepard would take toward positioning himself alongside Houston’s business, political, and social elite—a step toward life after NASA. Quite often, however, he wouldn’t have to take such steps—others sought him out.