Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight

by Jay Barbree

  Apollo was next. America was on a roll, moving fast to fulfill President Kennedy’s promise to send a human to the moon before the 1960s ended.

  But in only days beyond the holiday season, NASA would learn it was moving too fast. America would pay a terrible, heartbreaking price to be first on the moon.

  Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee suited up for their Apollo 1 launchpad test. (NASA)

  TWELVE

  TRAGEDIES GROUND SPACEFLIGHT

  With the successful conclusion of Project Gemini, NASA’s future appeared bright but that wasn’t altogether so. Grumblings in the halls of Apollo could be heard as astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were boarding on its launchpad the first problem-filled copy of Apollo. It was to be an important but hurried ground test.

  At the same time five astronauts including Neil were reporting to the White House for glad-handing duties. President Lyndon Johnson had invited Neil, Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, Jim Lovell, and Dick Gordon to the country’s first home to witness the signing of an international treaty, one with too long and too complicated a name for anyone to remember. It was simply called the “non-staking-a-claim treaty.”

  The agreement was also being signed simultaneously in other world capitals including London and Moscow. It stated simply that those signing agreed not to claim any land on the moon, Mars, or any other heavenly body. It also guaranteed the safe and cordial return of any Homo sapiens flying through space who landed unexpectedly within the borders of another country—a clause Neil greeted warmly, remembering Gemini 8’s landing trajectory could have brought him and Dave Scott down in China.

  Following all the jawing and official doings, Neil and the other astronauts attended a reception in the White House Green Room.

  Each astronaut held a glass of wine—or something a bit stronger—and smiled with proven pleasantries. They rubbed elbows with many of Washington’s movers and shakers including foreign dignitaries such as Russia’s Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. Then Neil watched the Russian diplomat hurriedly leave the reception after being approached by a whispering aide.

  The same types of hushed conversations were spreading around the White House Green Room—especially among NASA’s top brass. Neil gave little notice, pleased to see the reception end precisely at 6:45 P.M. as promised.

  Scott Carpenter left for the airport while Neil and the other astronauts took taxis to the Georgetown Inn. They arrived about 7:15 P.M. going directly to their rooms where they found their phone’s red message light flashing.

  Each had an urgent call. The message gave them a number to phone. The person answering in the Apollo Program Office told Neil there had been a fire on pad 34 and most likely the Apollo 1 crew hadn’t survived. The details were still sketchy and he and the other astronauts shouldn’t talk to the media or anyone. The person strongly suggested Neil and the others disappear until further word.

  Neil stared at the phone, and then hung it up. He had heard all the stories about the first Apollo being a shoddy piece of crap and that Gus had hung a lemon on its simulator. He quickly phoned a friend involved in the test.

  The friend told him apparently somewhere beneath the seat of Gus Grissom there were unbundled live wires that had been walked on by technicians again and again and one had apparently been chafed. Its insulation was worn and torn. The wire lay bare in a thick soup of 100 percent oxygen and the wire’s flammable materials exposed to an ignition source were extremely dangerous.

  Pure oxygen had been used in the Mercury and Gemini without trouble. But the amount of pure oxygen filling a ship as large as Apollo was another story and Neil shook his head in disbelief.

  Gus Grissom had apparently shifted his body for comfort.

  His seat moved the bare wire and a surge in voltage followed.

  The wire must have sparked.

  Flames filled Apollo 1, feeding on the rich oxygen-soaked flammable materials surrounding the astronauts.

  The crew needed one-and-a-half to two minutes to open Apollo 1’s hatch but the fire took the crewmen’s lives in a matter of seconds.

  “Damn,” Neil cursed. “To die in a ground test?” he shouted aloud. “It’s bad enough to die in flight, but to die in a ground test?” Neil didn’t hide his disgust. “Hell, that’s an indictment of ourselves. That sort of thing shouldn’t happen on the ground,” he insisted. “We should get it right before we expose ourselves to any such risks.”

  He was mad at everyone yet at no one, and picked up the phone again. He tried to call his wife. There was no answer.

  What Neil didn’t know was that astronaut Alan Bean had already phoned Janet and asked her to go next door and stay with Pat White. “There’s been an accident at the Cape,” Al Bean told her. “We don’t know how bad yet, just stay with Pat if you can, Janet, until we know.”

  Janet had walked over to the White’s to find Pat not there. She had gone to pick up her and Ed’s daughter and son and Janet waited. Only minutes passed and Pat, with Bonnie and Eddie, drove into the carport. Janet told her as calmly as she could there’d been a problem and she helped Pat bring in groceries she had just bought.

  Meanwhile down the street neighbor astronaut Bill Anders was being sent by Deke to tell Pat there had been a fire on the pad and Ed, Gus, and Roger didn’t make it. They had been killed.

  Anders didn’t want the job, but someone had to do it, and he rang the doorbell. He told Pat as delicately as he could, and she instantly became distraught collapsing in his arms. Janet consoled her and the children and the neighborhood rallied with sympathy and full support.

  Other astronauts at the homes of Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee repeated the scene. It was a scene test pilots’ families knew only too well. It was part of the life they had freely chosen and Neil, back in his hotel room, was feeling the pain in his own private way.

  He stood before his hotel window looking out on the night’s lights illuminating official Washington. The country’s institutions and monuments were all lit but at the moment they commanded little of his attention. His thoughts and pain were back in the neighborhood, back with family. He wished badly to be with everyone remembering Ed and Gus and Roger.

  Neil had known Gus Grissom for a long time. They’d been friends as far back as Edwards, and he had grown close to Ed White with him being one of the best neighbors and friends he’d ever had. They had hunted, fished, flown together, owned their own plane together, and the night Neil’s house burned, how could he forget Ed White was the first there to help fight the flames and save Janet and his boys.

  Neil warmly remembered Ed taking on that big house fire with only a garden hose—in his bare feet no less. And when it came time to rebuild, Ed was there again. Stacking lumber, pushing a wheelbarrow, even pounding nails with a hammer. He remembered Ed pushing the wheelbarrow full of concrete and yelling, “Put that wheelbarrow down, White. You Air Force guys don’t know anything about machinery,” he joked.

  And there were other laughs—not all in his favor—such as the time in astronaut water-rescue training when Neil had gotten himself in over his head. Guess who saved Navy? Air Force, that’s who, the all-American athlete from West Point.

  Neil only wanted to remember the good about Ed, Gus, and Roger, but he couldn’t push aside the bad—the way they died. It hurt too damn much and he walked away from the window and headed to the door. He needed to get out. For once Neil Armstrong needed company and he headed into the hallway to find out what the other astronauts had heard.

  * * *

  Within hours the Apollo 1 crew was being remembered in America’s homes. In the home of Frank Sinatra the memories were fresh. Ten days before flying to the Apollo plant in California for simulator training they ran into problems with one of their T-38 jets. The official logs for the astronauts’ T-38s indicated an abundance of problems when the aircraft neared Las Vegas, and often they had to land at nearby Nellis Air Force Base for maintenance. Naturally, while their jets were being checked and serviced, the
astronauts had to take in a show on the Vegas Strip.

  On that particular day, Frank Sinatra was performing, and no sooner had Gus, Ed, and Roger sat down, Frank had them brought up front. They were wearing their astronaut flight jackets and Ol’ Blue Eyes took a shine to Grissom’s jacket. He was especially impressed with its mission patches.

  Gus grinned. He stood up, removed his jacket, and gave it to Frank. Sinatra was so moved he cried right there on stage.

  Tonight, ten days later, Frank Sinatra was crying even more.

  * * *

  NASA buried its dead—Gus and Roger at Arlington, Ed at West Point—and turned its attention to the red flags raised by the Apollo 1 fire.

  NASA Administrator James Webb got the message: Fix Apollo!

  John Glenn escorts Gus Grissom to his Arlington grave. (NASA)

  He gave the job to Floyd L. Thompson, director of the Langley Research Center in Virginia, who set up a board of review with members from the best sciences and best investigators in the country.

  “Nail the problem,” Thompson told them. “We must get to the moon.”

  Neil and the other astronauts in line to command an Apollo flight—Wally Schirra, Frank Borman, Jim McDivitt, Tom Stafford, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, Alan Shepard, and Gene Cernan studied thousands of dials, switches, transistors, and electrical connections while ripping everything that would burn from the Apollo spacecraft on the construction line. They replaced it all with fire-retardant materials. If it burned it didn’t go into the new Apollo, and they added a dual life-support system, which re-created Earth’s atmosphere. Inside the new spacecraft the crew could breathe normally and fire would burn normally. And they installed the best available fire-extinguishing systems and a quick-opening hatch. If they, or any other astronauts, had to fight fire on or while traveling to and from the moon, they would at least be dealing with fire under familiar conditions.

  To verify their findings and thinking, the astronauts, board members, and investigators built an exact copy of Apollo 1 and set it ablaze. The test shook them so badly some went home and stared at the walls. They badly wanted the heads of those responsible for the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Their search wasn’t at all difficult. The incompetence, inexperience, and laxity were right in front of their eyes, and the astronauts could swallow no more.

  “We need a no-nonsense ramrod running Apollo,” Neil Armstrong said flatly. “Gus, Ed, and Roger’s deaths have given us the gift of time. We didn’t want the gift, but by god we’ve got it. We have months to not only fix the spacecraft,” he added, “we must rethink all our previous decisions, plans, and strategies, and change a lot of things for the better.”

  Neil and the astronauts were throwing down the gauntlet, and NASA’s George Page, a veteran of the Mercury and Gemini programs, picked up the challenge.

  “I have your man,” Page told them. “He’s the guy that cleaned up the Atlas mess. He’s the one that launched John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, and Gordo Cooper in orbit.”

  “What’s his name?” Neil asked.

  “T. J. O’Malley,” George Page smiled. “He can make the trains run on time.”

  Wally Schirra and Alan Shepard’s faces lit up. “We know the altar boy,” Wally said. “Get ’im,” echoed Alan.

  Page reached for his phone. T. J. was in Quincy, Massachusetts, working for General Dynamics’ electric boat division, and the phone only rang once.1

  “O’Malley.”

  “T. J., this is George.”

  “Hey there, Mister Page.” O’Malley’s demeanor changed instantly. “How’s everything at the Cape?”

  “A mess,” George Page said flatly. “No, let’s make that a goddamn mess.”

  “How many asses have you hanged for that fire?” O’Malley grunted.

  “Not enough,” Page said. “If we hanged all we should, we’d run out of rope.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “That bad, T. J.” He paused before pleading, “We need you, old friend. We need you to come back and take charge of the Apollo spacecraft.”

  O’Malley grunted again.

  “How about it?”

  “Well, George.” T. J. turned serious. “I’m expecting a promotion here. In fact, I’m expecting it tomorrow, and—”

  “T. J., we’re in a terrible mess,” Page interrupted. “We need you,” he pleaded again. “The astronauts want you, the country needs you. If we’re going to make it to the moon—”

  “I’ll think it over tonight,” T. J. interrupted this time. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning, George. I promise.”

  The two close friends hung up and George Page spent the night with his fingers crossed.

  * * *

  That evening Thomas J. O’Malley turned to Ann and said, “Mrs. O’Malley, George says they need me at the Cape. He wants me to come down and see what I can do with that mess left by the launchpad fire.”

  “Tom,” she said lovingly, “no doubt they need you, and no doubt you’d be the man for the job, and you’ve always taken care of your family, and we could do no less than support you, and honey,” she winked, pointing at the snowbank on their lawn, “it’s your decision but it sure is nice this time of year in Cocoa Beach.”

  Thomas J. O’Malley returned to the rocket pads of Cape Canaveral exactly one year to the day after he had left, and was immediately hired as the vice president of Apollo operations by North American Aviation. He was given the job to get America to the moon before the 1960s were over. Experience and know-how suddenly counted, and T. J. O’Malley went to work that afternoon. By sunrise the next day, Tom O’Malley knew two things: George Page was right, and he wasn’t at all sure Page was his friend.

  The Apollo team was overloaded with retired military—colonels and generals—doing little more than flying on North American’s travel vouchers to military reunions and such. Each was buying his stuff—each only accountable to self. And experience? Hell, they had none of that.

  The whole thing smelled of military paybacks for aviation and aerospace contracts, and in the coming months while the review board investigated, while others were pointing fingers and protecting their own backsides, T. J. O’Malley put on his boots and began kicking ass and taking names.

  North American’s most qualified and experienced aerospace engineers got busy redesigning and rebuilding Apollo to the specifications of the astronauts, and Neil Armstrong got busy learning how to fly one of the redesigned Apollo spacecraft. He knew Gus, Ed, and Roger’s deaths had given them the gift of time needed and by god, if Neil A. Armstrong was to have a say, they’d get it right for three fallen friends.

  He also knew the crew selected to fly to the moon would be going on the backs of the Apollo 1 astronauts and he managed a smile. “Thanks guys,” he spoke quietly. “We’ll get ’er done.”

  * * *

  Neil and the other astronauts hadn’t a clue that Russia’s cosmonauts were about to run into their own tragedy dogging their efforts to also reach the moon.

  Less than three months after the Apollo 1 fire, Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov rode the first Soyuz spacecraft into Earth orbit. He had one comment: “Splendid.”

  The Soviet Union’s senior cosmonaut judged their all-new spacecraft as promising and following a day of testing, the plan was for a second Soyuz to join him in orbit. The two spaceships would then dock and their two spacewalking pilots would switch spacecraft. The feat would put Russia’s cosmonauts back on par with America’s astronauts—a capability Russia needed to reach the moon. But no sooner had Komarov settled in while racing around Earth than the all-new Soyuz developed serious problems.

  Unlike America’s Gemini and its future Apollo that ran on battery and fuel cell power, Soyuz was built to draw its energy from two solar panels.

  The right panel extended.

  The left panel did not. It remained closed. Nothing Komarov tried would release the solar wing.

  By the second orbit, Russia’s mission control,
located a few miles outside of Moscow, was on full alert. Soyuz 1 was receiving barely half the electrical energy needed. Its systems and controls were failing.

  Komarov’s shortwave radio transmitter died. His ultra-shortwave radio remained operational, but barely. He could only communicate with mission control sparingly and he received instructions to change the attitude of Soyuz’s face to the sun. The move could help pull in more power. It just might give him enough juice to free the jammed panel. It didn’t.

  By the fifth orbit the new Soyuz began shredding itself and mission control feared for Komarov’s survival. His power was failing. Communications began to break up. He shut down the automatic stabilization system and went to manual control with his attitude thrusters.

  The thrusters operated only in balky spurts. Komarov felt the ship getting away.

  Controllers instructed the cosmonaut to let Soyuz go, let it drift. He would soon be moving through a series of orbits during which he would not be able to maintain voice contact with his flight controllers. Between the seventh and thirteenth orbits he would be away from tracking stations, out of touch.

  This was the so-called daily “dead period” for Russian spacecraft and mission control instructed him to try to get some sleep. Then he moved out of radio range. He would be in a communications blackout for the next nine hours.

  The time passed slowly. At the close of the thirteenth orbit they heard Komarov’s voice. His report sent chills through the control center. The ship was dead. Manual control with sputtering thrusters was sporadic at best. Soyuz was rapidly becoming a careening, wobbling killer with its pilot trapped inside.

  Officials canceled the launch of the second Soyuz. They told Komarov they had to gamble to get him back to Earth. He would have to fire his retro-rockets for reentry on the seventeenth orbit and use all his strength and knowledge to try to manually hold Soyuz on a steady course. He would have to maintain attitude control through the fireball of reentry.