In addition to these questions, which we hoped Gemini would answer, there were also a number of hazards involved in going to the moon. For one thing, it was simply a long way off, and that meant all our machinery had to be very reliable. If something broke in earth orbit, we could be on the ground within an hour. But if the same thing happened on the moon, it might take three days to get home. For example, every once in a while the sun releases a burst of deadly energy, called a solar flare. These particles speed out from the sun, and would go right on through the walls of a spacecraft and through the bodies of the astronauts. If severe enough, a solar flare could cause the crew to become sick, and perhaps even die. Here on the surface of the earth, we are protected against solar flares by our atmosphere, which prevents most of the radiation from reaching the ground. Meteorites are another source of worry. In 1964 we didn’t know how many of them there were in space, or what to do if one hit a spacecraft, but we did know from studying the moon that meteorites in the past had caused millions of craters (some of them huge) as they struck the moon.
The moon’s surface also was the subject of great debate in 1964. Some people thought that, except for a few boulders, it would be hard and flat—and they turned out to be right. But other scientists thought there was a layer of dust on the surface which in places might be thirty or forty feet thick! If a spacecraft came down there, it would be in great trouble, sinking down out of sight. Other scientists thought that static electricity would cause whatever dust there was to cling to the windows of the spacecraft, blocking the astronauts’ view and causing them to crash on landing.
Other people worried about the zone of constant sunlight between the earth and the moon. In earth orbit, a spacecraft hides from the sun for a portion of each orbit, when it is in the earth’s shadow (we call that night). But on the way to the moon there is no place to hide, and the sunlight is continuous, twenty-four hours a day. Wouldn’t the side of the spacecraft facing the sun get too hot, and the side in the shade get too cold? What would it be like inside under these conditions? No one knew whether it would be too hot or too cold inside. Also, what would the humidity be? If it got too moist, we were afraid that the moisture would condense on the coldest equipment, just as a pitcher of ice tea on a hot summer day gets dripping wet on the outside. We didn’t want that to happen anywhere near our electronic equipment, because the moisture might cause short circuits, which in turn would cause our radios to fail.
Radio failure was especially worrisome, because if the astronauts couldn’t talk to anybody they would have to do all the navigating back from the moon, without help from radar tracking stations, and computers on earth. Navigation instruments were being designed, but no one really knew how accurate they would be, and they had to be very, very precise. For example, as it approaches the earth, a spacecraft returning from the moon must be within a very narrow zone about forty miles high. If it misses this zone on the high side, it will skip the earth entirely and keep on going past; on the low side, it will hit the atmosphere at too steep an angle, and burn up. Hitting a forty-mile target from a distance of 238,000 miles is about like trying to split a human hair with a razor blade thrown from a distance of twenty feet.
My gray desk began to fill up with papers and my shelves with books as I learned more and more about all these problems. In addition to reading on my own, I attended a school which had been arranged especially for us “new boys”—the third group of astronauts. I’m not fond of schools generally, but I thought this was a good one, for several reasons. First, there were no grades, and that is always nice. Second, it was only a few hours a day for a couple of months. And third, I figured this was the last school I would ever have to attend. We studied a number of subjects, some complicated and some simple. We studied astronomy, aerodynamics, rocket propulsion, meteorology, guidance and navigation, and digital computers—to name just a few. We also studied a lot of geology, which I didn’t expect. Geology is the study of the origin, history, and structure of the earth. Since the earth is made up mostly of rocks, geology is mostly the study of rocks. We didn’t have any moon rocks to study, so we studied earth rocks instead. The idea was that when and if we finally reached the moon we would have a much better idea of what to look for, and what kinds of rocks would be best to bring back.
Houston in 1964 was an exciting if somewhat strange place. Granted, studying rocks wasn’t exactly thrilling, but look where it might lead! A space walk? A moon walk? Who knew? Even if I never got to the moon, I was finally an ASTRONAUT*!!-WOW! Now I just had to get assigned to a space flight.
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Before I could fly in space, however, there were still a thousand things I had to learn. Some of them I could absorb by sitting in my little office in Houston, but others required trips to far-off places. For example, in our study of geology, we could go only so far by looking at rocks in a laboratory. Beyond that, we had to see those rocks in place, to appreciate how they had been formed. Craters on the moon can be caused either by the impact of meteorites or by volcanic action. To recognize the differences between the two, we studied an impact crater in Arizona and volcanoes in Hawaii. We visited other unusual rock formations in Oregon, New Mexico, and Texas—and even spent one night at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
The Grand Canyon trip was the first geology trip I took, and it was also the most impressive. The Canyon has been created by the Colorado River flowing through the Arizona desert and digging an ever deepening trench, which is now nearly a mile deep and many miles across. As you walk down a narrow pathway that zigzags back and forth, you can see the history of the region in the various layers of rocks. The young rocks are on top, but as the river digs deeper, it exposes older and older layers. The age of some rocks at the bottom of the Canyon has been estimated at over two billion years. Not million, but billion. That is nearly half as old as we believe our solar system to be. The trees and plants also change greatly as you descend the Grand Canyon. There is one zone, high up in the shadows, that is cool enough to allow the growth of fir trees usually found only much farther north. Then, near the bottom, there is cactus of the same variety found in the deserts to the south. It is quite a contrast, of rocks and plants, like a slice of Canada piled on top of a piece of Mexico. The animals are equally varied, ranging from mountain goats to horned toads. Not to mention the burros, the most stubborn creature known to man. These burros were not wild ones, but had saddles on them, and we rode them back up the Canyon wall after spending the night in an inn at the bottom.
I picked my burro because he looked young and strong and eager, but he was the worst loafer in the bunch. Every time I stopped kicking him, he stopped walking, so I got more exercise riding him up than I had the day before, walking down.
In addition to geology, there were a number of other reasons for us to take trips. For example, we were concerned that one of our spacecraft might have to get back on the ground in a big hurry and might come down in a remote area of the ocean or the jungle or the desert. We didn’t have to worry about very cold regions, because, whether returning from earth orbit or from the moon, our flight path stayed near the equator, where the climate is warm. If we came down unexpectedly in the ocean, we had no choice but to stay with the spacecraft until rescued, but in the desert or jungle there are a lot of ways to keep alive, and they had to be learned. To learn about the jungle, we spent nearly two weeks in Panama. The first couple of days we spent in a classroom, studying an Air Force manual designed to help pilots who made emergency landings in strange places. I thought the manual itself was kind of strange. It started by saying that “anything that creeps, crawls, swims, or flies is a possible source of food.” While I was thinking that statement over, it went on to say that “people eat grasshoppers, hairless caterpillars, ant eggs, and termites.” Ugh! You’d have to be pretty hungry to eat a caterpillar, with or without hair. Couldn’t we please find something a little nicer to eat? The manual continues: “Look on the ground for hedgehogs … porcupines … mice … wild pigs; in
the trees for bats, squirrels, rats, and monkeys …” Anyone for mouse pie, bat stew, porcupine soup, or squirrel soufflé? Apparently there is no peanut butter and jelly in the jungle. About the only advice from the manual with which I agreed a hundred percent was: “Don’t eat toads.” Now that is a promise I shouldn’t have any trouble keeping!
In addition to animals which one hunts for food, there are others—according to the manual—that should be avoided: “ … Tigers, rhinoceroses, elephants—are rarely seen and best left alone … Avoid many-legged insects … Scorpions are real pests, for they like to hide in clothes, bedding, or shoes.” I can just see it now, getting up in the morning and looking for a dozen scorpions. Let’s see. Here’s one in each shoe, two in my hip pocket, three trying to hide in my hairbrush. I wonder what happened to the rest of the gang. Oops! There’s one now, trying to sneak into my box of waterproof matches—and another, peeking out the arm of my sweater!
As these thoughts ran through my mind, I decided that the classroom wasn’t such a bad place after all. There were plenty of scorpions and snakes here, but they were all dead, floating in bottles filled with alcohol. After a couple of days, our instructors decided it was time to see the real jungle, not just talk about it, so they loaded us into helicopters and landed us in a small jungle clearing. We were to spend three days by ourselves, in teams of two, learning to live off the land.
My partner was Bill Anders, and he was great, because he knew a lot about camping. He had been a Boy Scout (I had not) and he loved to hike to remote fishing spots, in hopes of catching big trout from places no one else had been. Bill was also a finicky eater, which was nice too, as I will explain later. Our first job was to hike a couple of miles through the jungle to our assigned camping area. On the way I was really surprised—the jungle seemed empty. Where were all the hedgehogs, porcupines, pangolins, mice, and wild pigs we had heard about? Was it possible for a jungle to be empty? Not even a bird chirped. Maybe we were making such a tremendous noise as we crashed through the underbrush that even the oldest, slowest hedgehog was able to keep far ahead of us. In any case, what were we going to eat? Bill said he wasn’t hungry, but I sure was, and as night fell and the mosquitoes came out, I lay in my hammock and listened to my stomach gurgle, and felt sorry for myself. I was supposed to be on my way to the moon, instead of fooling around in the middle of an empty jungle.
The next morning I tried to catch some fish that I could see in a nearby stream. They were just minnows, but they looked edible, and I would have loved to eat thirty or forty of them for breakfast. But no such luck, and I wasted a couple of hours before I gave up, hungrier than ever. Bill and I decided that if we couldn’t catch any animals to eat, we should try for an edible plant of some sort. Palm trees were the only things around that we knew for sure were O.K. to eat, because our instructors had told us so. The part that you ate was called the heart, and it was a pale green crunchy stalk somewhat larger than a celery stalk. The only problem was that the heart of palm was inside the tree, and first you had to chop down the tree and cut it open. Furthermore, some varieties of palm tree had edible hearts and some didn’t. Unless you were a real expert, the only way to find out which was which was to chop one down and see for yourself. With just a small dull machete apiece, that would be a lot of work. Bill and I talked it over and decided it was our only chance for food, so we picked a likely-looking tree and started chopping. After what seemed like hours, it finally toppled to the ground. As soon as it did, ants began to pour out of it, and we could see that it was not a healthy tree inside, although it looked fine outside. The heart was discolored and looked rotten. The ants were everywhere, angrily running around looking for an enemy—us! We retreated, disgusted with our bad luck (or lack of skill in tree selection), and discussed what to do next. We finally decided that if we wanted to eat we had no choice but to try another palm tree. We picked a second one with great care and started hacking away. This time we hit the jackpot. When it finally fell, we could tell right away that the heart looked good, with not a single ant in sight. We cut out a piece of the tender heart, which was nearly two feet long and about five inches in diameter. Now we had enough salad to last for days. Of course, we didn’t have any dressing to put on the heart of palm, but we just munched it plain and raw, like chewing dry, tough celery. It wasn’t bad, with a flavor that reminded me a little bit of nuts, lettuce, and artichokes—all mixed together.
That evening our instructors took pity on us and gave us something else to eat: chunks of iguana. An iguana is a large lizard, and looks fearsome, very much like a miniature dragon. Actually, it is a shy, harmless creature. If I had not been so hungry, I might have felt badly about eating one, but instead I was delighted to half fill a large tin can with water from the stream and throw in the iguana cut into pieces the size of a small fist. We built a roaring fire and propped the can up over the coals. Pretty soon our makeshift pot was bubbling away, and the smell coming from it was actually delicious. It didn’t smell like an ugly old lizard at all. When it cooled down enough to taste, I tried a bite. It was good: tender flesh, with a taste somewhat like chicken, but still quite different. Bill Anders, however, wasn’t too happy about eating such a strange creature, and stuck to heart of palm. He graciously gave me his share of the iguana. That evening I sat close to the fire (which kept the pesky mosquitoes away), munching heart of palm and slurping down great chunks of iguana. Although it’s not polite, I burped loudly a couple of times, feeling quite contented. With a full stomach, I thought the jungle didn’t seem like a bad place at all.
The next day we met an Indian chief named Antonio. He was a friend of our instructors and through an interpreter he told us a little about his life in the jungle. He was forty years old and a grandfather, we were told, but he looked much, much younger. He was short, with jet-black hair and a lean, muscular body. He wore only a loincloth; somehow mosquitoes didn’t seem to bite him, or if they did, their bites didn’t bother him. His face was unlined and he seemed completely carefree, not like the forty-year-old men I knew, most of whom lived in big American cities. I saw Antonio once again, years later, in Washington, D.C., but he seemed out of place there, all dressed up in city clothes. He belonged in the jungle, just as I belonged in Washington, where I felt comfortable.
In addition to our jungle trip, we also spent a couple of days living in the desert, but that wasn’t as much fun. If your spacecraft comes down in the desert, about all you can do is find a shady place and wait to be rescued. Water is all-important; with plenty to drink, you can survive for weeks; without it, you will be dead within a couple of days, no matter how determined or brave or intelligent you may be. The day I was dropped off in the desert, the sand temperature was 148° Fahrenheit, but my partner Charlie Bassett and I were able to dig into the side of a sandy hill and scoop out a shady spot that was a lot cooler than 148°. We also made our own clothes, from parachute cloth. Deciding what to wear is one problem that a downed airman never has, because he always has a parachute with him, with yards and yards of nylon material that can be made into trousers or jackets or sleeping bags or even tents. Charlie and I made hats and long, flowing gowns, trying to imitate the Arabs, but I expect we looked more like little girls wearing their mothers’ party gowns than like Arabs. But, anyway, the clothes kept us from getting sunburned, and they did help to decrease the rate at which we were perspiring. In the desert, the faster you perspire, the quicker you die, if you don’t have anything to drink. We were given a small amount of water, which helped, but we were quite thirsty when we were finally “rescued” and returned to civilization, which in this case turned out to be Reno, Nevada.
For me, civilization was usually Houston, Texas, but I discovered that there were plenty of trips away from Houston, in addition to the jungle and desert. For one thing, the various parts of the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft were manufactured in factories as far apart as New York and California, with places in between such as St. Louis, Missouri. We could learn a lot about these s
pacecraft by reading about them in our Houston offices, but beyond that there came a time when we had to see them actually being put together, and talk to the people who were building them.
Spacecraft are assembled in special rooms called “white rooms” or “clean rooms.” They are special because everyone tries very hard not to allow even one speck of dirt to enter the room. The air is carefully filtered so that it is free of dust, and every item of equipment must be carefully cleaned before it is allowed to enter. The reason for these precautions is that the machinery inside a spacecraft must work perfectly. Some of it is very delicate, and even something as small as a human hair might get stuck in the wrong place and cause a computer to give a wrong answer. The most difficult part of keeping a “white room” really clean is people, who are always dirty—even just after a bath. They have mud on their shoes, and lint on their clothes, and their hair falls out without their even knowing it. The “white room” must be protected from dirty people, yet it is full of people working on the spacecraft. The solution is to wrap them: their shoes are wrapped in plastic booties, their bodies in white nylon lint-free jump suits, their hair in nylon caps, and their hands in gloves.
Wrapped up like white mummies, we new astronauts were given our first peek at the Gemini spacecraft being built at the McDonnell plant in St. Louis. I was amazed at the care and attention given each machine. I thought it took a lot of care to assemble an aircraft, but they were just thrown together compared to the meticulous work being done inside the “white room” at St. Louis. It was also very helpful to see the spacecraft in various stages of assembly, so that interior parts were visible. Seeing and touching the actual machinery made it easier to understand what all these complicated parts did, instead of just reading about them in books. We also talked to the engineers who had designed the spacecraft, and exchanged ideas with them for improvements. We also found out that we astronauts were considered celebrities, and the workers at the factory wanted to meet us, and wanted us to sign things. The favorite thing to sign was a dollar bill. I don’t know what people did with them (I guess they saved them instead of spending them), but I was always a little embarrassed when anyone asked for my signature. I was especially embarrassed to sign a dollar bill which had already been signed by John Glenn or one of the other five astronauts who had actually flown in space. I thought a lot about the Russian system, which only considers people to be cosmonauts after they have made a space flight, not before. That made sense to me.
Flying to the Moon Page 3