by Jay Barbree
On the ground a surprised man and his wife working in their field were watching. They were amazed to see Yuri Gagarin floating earthward in his bright orange suit and glistening white helmet.
The cosmonaut hit the ground running, tumbled, rolled over, and smoothly regained his feet to gather his parachute.
“Have you come from outer space?” asked the disbelieving wife.
“Yes, yes, would you believe it?”
Yuri Gagarin answered with a wide grin. “I have.”
* * *
Neil Armstrong felt a definite kinship with Yuri Gagarin. He had no way of knowing how big the Russian cosmonaut’s contribution would be to his future. He only knew the world was jubilant over Yuri’s accomplishment, while American newspapers crucified NASA for its lack of progress. Neil and all those who flew saluted Gagarin. Pilots were simply pleased Yuri was one of them. They knew the desire was born not only from watching great birds fly but from building models and finally your own wings.
Yuri Gagarin is front-page news everywhere. (The Huntsville Times)
Not far from where Orville and Wilbur Wright had built man’s first successful airplane, Neil’s father had bought him a ticket for a ride in an old Ford Trimotor. But like most pilots his real interest in flying began when he was old enough to ride his bicycle to his neighborhood airport.
It wasn’t much of a bike. It had no fenders and he had to keep its tires pumped up, but it got him there—got him where he’d spend his spare time as a gofer for pilots who often rewarded him with a short, local flight. Some would even allow him to take the stick and fly short distances.
But that really wasn’t the beginning. Flying for Neil began the day the man landed a gleaming new Luscombe at Wapakoneta.
There was no one around to help him service his plane so he called to Neil, “Hey, buddy could you give me a hand?”
Neil stumbled in his haste to get to the little ship. It was beautiful and Neil ran behind the right wing and pushed on the strut. The Luscombe was light and easy to roll along the grass to the gas pump. Neil helped the pilot fuel his Luscombe and the man said, “Thanks,” and left for the flight line office to pay his bill.
When he returned he found Neil polishing the cockpit’s side windows. The man stood silently watching for a moment.
Neil swirled his rag here and there, polishing the glass with care and the man asked, “Would you like a ride, son?”
Neil’s grin answered, and once he was in the Luscombe’s right seat he took a deep breath and soaked in the freshness. It was new. Everything was clean and sparkling. The instrument panel dazzled. Neil ran his fingers with care over the rubberized grip of the control stick on his side.
A few minutes later they were at 6,000 feet, drifting lazily above white puffs of clouds. Neil hadn’t said a word, but his eyes were glued to every movement the pilot made. He couldn’t believe it when the man turned to him and said, “Want to take it for a while?”
Once again Neil’s grin answered.
The man laughed. “Remember, she’s sensitive. Handle her gently.”
Neil closed his fingers around the stick while the man held his hands up to signify passing the controls. Neil could not believe he was really flying the Luscombe. He soon realized he wasn’t. He was manhandling it, and the man took back the stick.
“Hang on to it gently,” the man instructed, adding, “Now, you follow my movements with your hand lightly on the stick. Let your feet rest on the rudder pedals.” The man smiled at Neil. “Just follow through with me until you get the hang of it.”
Neil nodded, and for the next few minutes he was feeling what flying was all about. He followed the gentleness of the man’s touch—sensitive and respectful movements. He learned the Luscombe only needed to be nudged for a response. That’s what the man was teaching him that day. Control the Luscombe with feeling, and for the first time, Neil felt like he could possibly be a pilot.
When the man was convinced Neil had the hang of it he asked, “You ever do any aerobatics, son?”
“No—no, sir, never did anything like that.”
“Okay, hang on,” and quickly the sky vanished. Neil was looking at the edge of the world. Where there’d been a horizon there were the green lands of Ohio, but only for a brief moment. The Luscombe was rolling around the inside of an invisible barrel until Neil realized the ground was up and sky was down. He tried to catch his breath when the nose went down and down, then up and up. An invisible hand pushed him gently into his seat as the engine protested, until the sun flashed in his eyes and Neil found himself on his back. The Luscombe had just soared up and over in a beautiful loop.
Neil’s eyes were bright with delight and wonder and mostly knowing when the silver airplane whispered onto runway grass.
“That’s when,” Neil told me and Martin Caidin, “I really learned to fly.”
He kept learning and even helped the mechanics doing engine overhauls, getting his pilot’s license before he got his driver’s license.
Neil filled his logbook by flying what was called slow time—repetitive slow flights around the airport to check out the repairs on aircraft that were long in years. Some dated back to the 1930s and had been patched together with faded fabric, their engines dripping oil. They smelled of gasoline in flight as well as on the ground, but Neil didn’t care. He loved getting close to any aircraft.
He’d watch the pilots shouting “contact” to the mechanics, the plane’s wooden propellers swinging down suddenly and catching with a stuttering cough. He loved standing behind the ships when pilots revved them up for power checks. The air blast whipped back, throwing up dust stinking of oil and gasoline. It flattened the grass, blew strong and heady into his face.
Neil loved the clanking, wheezing machines that required a certain care. They were old and they were worn and they created in him the need to know what made them fly. They were the driving force that forged his studies for an aeronautical engineering degree and the desire to be a research test pilot. When it was all said and done Neil understood and loved the fact that Yuri Gagarin was, too, one of his kind.
He was not in the least jealous. Envious? Why hell, yes! “Any pilot would be. Any flyer would have loved to have been first to orbit Earth,” he said as he again questioned his decision not to file an astronaut application.
Deke Slayton filed his. Edwards never saw a better test pilot than Deke Slayton. He was a legend—at the top of his game—and he’d become a member of the Mercury Seven. And now with Gagarin’s successful flight, Neil was left with little doubt the astronaut corps was worth reconsidering.
What Neil did not know, the morning following Yuri Gagarin’s launch into Earth orbit, was that NASA was doing a lot of reconsidering, as well.
To quiet all the fuss over being beaten by the Russians again, NASA trotted the Mercury Seven out before the media. Saving face was obviously the plan. The astronauts showed their disappointment and offered sincere congratulations to the Russians for a terrific technical feat.
But once again it was honesty that saved the day.
John Glenn galloped to the rescue. He had a secret. Be blunt. Be truthful.
Neil smiled as he heard John tell reporters, “They just beat the pants off us. There’s no kidding ourselves about that. But now that the space age has begun, there’s going to be plenty of work for everybody.”
John went over like rich cream, but others weren’t buying it, especially a couple of second-guessers in the White House.
* * *
That morning John F. Kennedy was advised to forget about space. But the young president wasn’t comfortable with that advice. How could he allow the United States to simply quit? America had come from behind before, and could do it again.
Kennedy’s worst advice was coming from the head of his Science Advisory Committee, Jerome B. Wiesner from MIT. Wiesner wanted to gut the whole space program—cut NASA to its bare bones and reorganize from the ground up. Concentrate on aeronautics, he said, and yie
ld the space race to the Russians.
Neil regarded Wiesner as the founder of the never-finish-anything-you-start crowd. Neil was comfortable leaving it in the hands of the president. He believed John Kennedy knew the American people better than Wiesner.
Neil proved to be correct. The president instantly rejected quitting. He knew his vice president Lyndon Johnson was a strong supporter of the space program. He called Johnson into his office and told him that from that moment on he would run the National Space Council.
Kennedy and Johnson agreed they needed a tough-willed North Carolina attorney named James Webb to take over NASA. Webb would be the agency’s administrator. He knew how to navigate through government and industry and through executive and political pastures. Kennedy got right to the point. “Jim, I want you to run NASA.”
* * *
Three weeks after Yuri Gagarin was first to ride a rocket into orbit, Alan Shepard climbed aboard his Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7. He was adding the fourth and final cornerstone to Neil Armstrong’s structured destiny—a journey to the moon. Shepard was ready to become the first American and the second human in space.
Neil Armstrong was hanging onto every word coming from Mercury Control. None of NASA’s research test pilots flying the X-15 rocket plane had come close to flying to the heights Alan Shepard and his Freedom 7 spacecraft were about to reach. Neil was faced with the fact that if pilots were to fly through orbit and beyond as Yuri Gagarin had they would have to do so riding a spacecraft launched by a rocket.
Alan Shepard’s Mercury-Redstone lifts off to put an American in space. (NASA)
President John Kennedy with first lady Jackie along with Vice President Lyndon Johnson followed Alan Shepard’s televised launch into space. (The White House)
Neil clearly recognized Deke Slayton’s voice as he sang out, “Five, four, three, two, one, IGNITION!”
“Roger, liftoff, and the clock has started,” Shepard called back, instantly feeling the power. “This is Freedom Seven. Fuel is go. Oxygen is go. Cabin holding at 5.5 PSI.”
Neil knew Shepard was in his element. He was as a test pilot the most relaxed, most assured person involved in the launch.
A rocket powerful enough to carry Shepard into space was climbing, racing skyward to new heights, rolling a deep pure sustained thunder across Florida’s new spacecoast.
Neil was not the only one watching. There were in fact an estimated 45 million radio listeners and television viewers including some very interested spectators in the White House.
Aboard Freedom 7 Alan Shepard was alone. He was reaching for sky fast and he was pleased. The flight was smoother than he’d expected. He radioed Mercury Control, “All systems are go.”
America’s first in space rocketed to a height of 116 miles and flew some 300 miles across the Atlantic before a huge parachute dropped his spacecraft into the sea and recovery forces plucked Alan Shepard and Freedom 7 from the waves.
America still hadn’t reached orbit as Yuri Gagarin had, but the U.S. was in space. Neil applauded. He had a decision to make.
FOUR
THE MOON IS CALLING
Alan Shepard’s successful suborbital spaceflight had settled questions for President John Kennedy who accepted that Russian rockets and spacecraft were bigger. But he was coming to realize the Soviets weren’t better because their technology could only build large nuclear warheads. They needed monstrous missiles to carry their monstrous bombs, but not America. With the significant breakthrough in size reduction in America’s hydrogen bomb warheads, the same bang could be carried to any target by a rocket a third of the size. For this reason President Kennedy was convinced we were actually ahead of the Russians in rocketry, space vehicles, and the digital computer. He felt confident that in any technological race we could beat them. And Kennedy was ready to take what many considered a huge gamble.
Neil was in Seattle working on the Dyna-Soar project that day in May the president addressed Congress:
I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space, and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
There it was. Kennedy had thrown down the gauntlet of know-how and challenged the Russians. Congress leapt to its feet. Its members’ applause shook the walls of the Capitol, and Neil Armstrong instantly felt the call. Kennedy wasn’t just talking about astronauts orbiting Earth, he was talking about going somewhere humans had never been. He was talking about Columbus sailing to the New World, Lewis and Clark carving a trail to the Pacific Northwest, Byrd reaching for the North Pole. He was talking about exploration—stacking more wood on the stockpile of knowledge—and Neil instantly knew he would like to be a part of that challenge. But once again he was in the wrong place. Flying the X-15 to an altitude of 60 miles wouldn’t get the job done. He had to become an astronaut. Quietly and instantaneously he moved to join the Mercury Seven as the launch team on the Redstone pad renewed its efforts to keep moving.
Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 Mercury spacecraft was ready to fly. On July 21, 1961, the second American lifted off and flew an almost exact duplication flight of the first. The splashdown was perfect, but that’s where the duplication ended.
Gus was going through the drill of readying his capsule for recovery when an explosion blasted away his hatch.
Grissom’s hatch had been modified to use an explosive primer cord instead of the mechanical locks on Alan Shepard’s capsule. The primer cord inexplicably fired, and Gus saw waves coming into Liberty Bell 7. He scrambled out—swam for his life as frogmen tried to save his capsule. They failed but got Gus safely aboard the helicopter. Right away the experts began trying to determine the cause of the detonation. Some were sure the design of the capsule made an accidental explosion impossible. They insisted Grissom had to have hit the emergency plunger, which blew the hatch. “The hell I did,” Gus snorted. “The damn thing just blew.” The astronauts backed him all the way, and an accident review board cleared Gus of any wrongdoing. Four decades would pass before Liberty Bell 7 would be brought up from the ocean floor.
Gus was right.
* * *
Sixteen days after Gus Grissom’s flight Major Gherman S. Titov, who had backed up Yuri Gagarin, was sent into orbit. He stayed a full day.
Washington and NASA could only shake their heads.
It was obvious there was no longer a need to fly more Redstone suborbital flights. If America was going to reach orbit the same year as the Soviets and set foot on the moon by the end of the decade, they needed a bigger rocket to carry the Mercury spacecraft. It was time to bring Atlas to the launchpad.
The Atlas worked well boosting nuclear warheads 5,000 miles. But it was another story when it came to hauling astronauts. Atlas had no internal structure. Its strength was from inflation, much like a football. But its thin skin would collapse under the heavy burden of a Mercury spacecraft, much heavier than a nuclear warhead. It needed lots of fixing.
“Put a belt around its waist and it won’t collapse,” said famed rocket engineer John Yardley. Which they did: The steel belt held for chimpanzee Enos’s orbital flight and they moved John Glenn’s Mercury-Atlas to the launchpad while NASA went hunting for more astronauts.
With President Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon before the end of the decade the agency needed pilots to fly the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. The Mercury Seven simply couldn’t do the job alone.
The next group to be selected would be made up of nine astronauts. Like the Mercury Seven named for their spacecraft, the new group would be called the Gemini Nine.
Neil reached for an application, but as fate would have it, his small family was fighting a greater battle.
His infant daughter Karen Anne, who he’d doted over and nicknamed Muffie, was fighting an inoperable brain tumor. Neil and Janet h
ad tried every specialist, had Karen Anne in every available medical facility, sought treatment and hopefully a solution from every corner of the medical world.
Neil’s analytical and scientifically driven core would not permit him to believe there could not be a procedure to surgically remove the tumor. He searched everywhere, but as Christmas 1961 approached Karen Anne was becoming weaker. Neil and Janet got busy making their daughter’s third Christmas special.
They did, and even though Karen Anne could no longer fully stand, she enjoyed her third holiday season.
Neil and Janet refused to abandon their search to make her well. Despite their unrelenting hunt for what would save her, their devoted efforts could not keep tragedy away from their door.
On Sunday morning January 28, 1962, Janet and Neil’s sixth wedding anniversary, Karen Anne died. She succumbed to pneumonia and other complications brought on by the tumor.
The Armstrongs were devastated. Janet’s emotions were uncontrollable. Neil’s grief was a self-imposed quiet. Four-year-old brother Ricky was trying to understand. Friends and family gathered to comfort and help. They buried Karen Anne in the children’s sanctuary at Joshua Memorial Park in Lancaster, California. A poem rested among the flowers: “God’s garden has need of a little flower; it had grown for a time here below. But in tender love He took it above, in more favorable clime to grow.”
The small stone marking her grave read: “Karen Anne Armstrong, 1959–1962.” Between the two lines was carved, “Muffie.”
NASA’s High Speed Flight Research Center grounded all test flights the day Karen Anne was laid to rest.
Very seldom was Neil Armstrong not in control of his emotions. He would long for his daughter for years—no, for the rest of his life. He would never lose those special protective feelings he had for his little girl. Again and again he relived his inability to find the science, to develop it, to learn how he could have helped Karen Anne. In a large sense it came close to wrecking the man—a man who lived within the precise control of his abilities and limitations.