First Man

by James R. Hansen

  “I didn’t have any difficulties with any of the Mercury astronauts,” Neil recalls. “Some of them I knew to be quite able fellows with good experience. So, no problem in my mind.” Only the three Mercury astronauts who had already made their spaceflights—Al Shepard, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn—had actually flown farther out of the atmosphere than Armstrong had in the X-15; and Neil was the only one in the entire group who had ever flown a rocket plane or won the Octave Chanute Award. Male ego and competitive spirit abounded at the Houston get-together, to be sure, but every pilot there respected the other men’s flying credentials.

  While Mike Collins and others have admitted to keeping “lookout for any abnormal behavior that might indicate someone had heard good news from NASA,” Armstrong quietly concentrated on his regular duties back at Edwards. He flew nearly every workday during the three-week stretch prior to Deke Slayton’s call, including chase for Bob Rushworth’s X-15-2 flights on August 20 and 29.

  Neil arrived at Houston’s Hobby Airport late on Saturday, September 15,1962. “There was nothing,” Neil remembers. “It was completely quiet. Nobody was to know that we were coming in or that it was going to be announced. Leaks weren’t as common in those days as they are now.” To the extent that the dutiful men and women of the fourth estate knew anything about the upcoming NASA announcement, as Neil explains, “they protected the institution.”

  As instructed by NASA, Neil checked into downtown Houston’s stately Rice Hotel under the code name “Max Peck.” All eight of the other new astronauts did the same. “Everyone checked in as Max,” Armstrong recalls, smiling ruefully. “I’ve been told that there really was a manager named Max Peck at that hotel.” Armstrong was the last of the nine to arrive: “My recollection is that I got in pretty late that evening, but I did meet a couple of the other guys that night—some of them I recognized.”

  The next morning at Ellington, NASA’s new class of astronauts first assembled under Slayton’s direction. According to Armstrong, “It was a meeting where we officially got to know each other, got to know some of the other NASA people there.” Walt Williams, the head of flight operations, ran the men through their job description. Bob Gilruth, the balding, reedy-voiced director of the Manned Spacecraft Center who had headed the Space Task Group from its inception, told them that with eleven manned Gemini flights on the schedule, at least four Block I Apollos (to be launched on the Saturn I), and a still undetermined number of Block II Apollos, including the one that would make the first lunar landing, “There’ll be plenty of missions for all of you.” Slayton warned them about some of the new pressures and temptations they would be facing. He told them to be careful about accepting gifts and freebies, especially from companies competing for NASA contracts. “With regard to gratuities,” Deke added, according to some of the astronauts there, “if there is any question, just follow the old test pilot’s creed: anything you can eat, drink, or screw within twenty-four hours is perfectly acceptable.” Gilruth flushed noticeably and shook his head at this brazen pronouncement, while Walt Williams choked out, “Within reason, within reason!” Shorty Powers, NASA’s public affairs officer, ended by briefing the astronauts on the upcoming press conference. He then organized the nine men for the first of what in the following days became an interminable sequence of photo shoots.

  The University of Houston’s 1,800-seat Cullen Auditorium was filled to capacity for the early afternoon announcement. Reporters and camera crews from all three of the major television networks, from the major radio broadcasting systems, from the wire services, from dozens of newspapers and magazines not just from all over America but overseas as well crammed into the theater’s best vantage points, anxiously awaiting to learn the identities of America’s new astronauts. Back on April 2, 1959, the newborn NASA had been taken by surprise by the public sensation surrounding the announcement of the original seven astronauts in a ballroom of Washington’s Dolly Madison Hotel, near the White House. This time the more seasoned agency and its expanded public affairs operation were much better prepared for the media blitz. So, too, were the astronauts themselves.

  The “New Nine”—Neil Armstrong, Air Force Major Frank Borman, Navy Lieutenant Charles Conrad Jr., Navy Lieutenant Commander James A. Lovell Jr., Air Force Captain James A. McDivitt, Elliot M. See Jr., Air Force Captain Thomas P. Stafford, Air Force Captain Edward H. White II, and Navy Lieutenant Commander John W. Young—were a truly remarkable group of men. In the opinion of key individuals responsible for the early U.S. manned space program, it was unquestionably the best all-around group of astronauts ever assembled. Certainly, Deke Slayton felt this way, as did Bob Gilruth, Chris Kraft, George Low, and many others both inside and outside the agency. Mike Collins has baldly declared that “this group of nine was the best NASA ever picked, better than the seven that preceded it, or the fourteen (Collins’s own group), five, nineteen, eleven, and seven that followed.”

  The educational level of the second group was dramatically higher than that of the Mercury Seven, and with exactly the emphasis on rigorous engineering that NASA’s astronaut selection panel had sought. A 1950 graduate of the military academy at West Point, Frank Borman had earned a master’s degree in science in 1957 from the California Institute of Technology. Pete Conrad was the first astronaut from an Ivy League school—a 1953 graduate in engineering from Princeton University. Jim Lovell studied engineering for two years at the University of Wisconsin before moving on to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he graduated in 1953. Jim McDivitt finished first in his engineering class of 1959 at the University of Michigan. Elliot See, the only other civilian in the group besides Armstrong, was a 1949 graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy; just months before becoming an astronaut, he finished a master of science degree at the University of California at Los Angeles. Tom Stafford graduated in engineering from Annapolis in 1952 (then chose to be commissioned, not in the navy, but in the air force). Ed White completed a master’s in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1959, seven years after graduating with distinction from West Point. John Young earned his engineering degree in 1952 at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Armstrong had everything but his thesis completed toward a master’s in aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California.

  The group’s experience as pilots and record in the world of flight testing was equally impressive. Borman had accumulated 3,600 hours flying time in jets (the most of any of the nine); at the time of his NASA appointment, Frank instructed in the air force’s aerospace research pilot test school at Edwards AFB. Conrad had flown more than 2,800 hours, including 1,500 hours in jets; a graduate of the U.S. Navy test pilot school at Patuxent River in Maryland, Pete rose quickly through the ranks to become a flight instructor and performance engineer at the navy’s Pax River establishment. Lovell had a total of 2,300 hours in the air, including 1,600 in jets; Jim was serving as a flight instructor and flight safety officer at the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia when his call came from Slayton. Jim McDivitt was an experimental flight test officer at Edwards who had logged 2,500 hours flying time, about 75 percent of it in jets. Elliot See flew as a civilian experimental test pilot for the General Electric Company; he had amassed more than 3,200 hours flying time, including 2,300 in jets. Stafford’s last assignment was as chief of the performance branch of the air force’s experimental test pilot division at Edwards. Tom was at the Harvard Business School when he was picked to be an astronaut. Some 2,500 of his 3,500 hours in the air had been in jet aircraft. Young finished training at the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School in 1959; for the next three years, John piloted a number of different experimental aircraft at the Naval Air Test Center at Pax River, including evaluations of the Crusader and Phantom fighter weapons systems. In 1962, prior to reporting to NASA, Young set world time-to-climb records to 3,000-meter and 25,000-meter altitudes in a Phantom. Of his 2,300 flying hours, 1,600 had been in jets. Finally, there was Armstrong, with his seven years as a NACA/NASA test pilot at Lewis a
nd Edwards. By the time he became an astronaut, Neil had amassed 2,400 hours of flying time, about 900 of it in jets. Plus he was the only one of the nine who had done any flying in rocket-powered aircraft.

  The new astronauts were born in seven different states: two each from Ohio (Armstrong and Lovell) and Texas (See and White), and one from California (Young), Indiana (Borman), Pennsylvania (Conrad), Illinois (McDivitt), and Oklahoma (Stafford). The group’s average age was thirty-two and a half, compared to thirty-four and a half for the seven Mercury astronauts when they were selected in 1959. The new astronauts weighed slightly more than did the first group—161.5 pounds per man as compared to 159 pounds—and their average height of five feet ten inches was two-tenths of an inch taller. At five feet eleven and 165 pounds, Armstrong was slightly above average size for his group, for one of the first times in his life.

  All of the men were married, none of them had ever been divorced, and all of them had children. Frank and Susan Bugby Borman had two boys, and Pete and Jane DuBose Conrad had four boys. Elliot and Marilyn Jane Denahy See had two daughters, as did Tom and Faye Laverne Shoemaker Stafford. The homes of Jim and Marilyn Lillie Gerlach Lovell and of Jim and Patricia Ann Haas McDivitt both counted one boy and two girls. Ed and Patricia Eileen Finegan White and John and Barbara Vincent White Young both had one child of each gender. The Armstrongs, after the loss of Karen, had only Rick, but Mark would soon be on his way, born in April 1963. The oldest of all the children was Borman’s son Frederick, who was eleven. The youngest were Christopher Conrad and Patricia McDivitt, both two. Of the twenty-one children in all, thirteen of them were six years of age or under when their fathers became astronauts. Over the coming years, none of these children would see nearly as much of their father as they would have liked.

  Clean-cut and attired for the press conference in conservative dark business suits (except Conrad, who stood out in a white linen suit), the New Nine looked, to one observer, “more like junior executives on their way home to Scarsdale than spacemen who hope to set foot on the Moon.” In response to questions from reporters, none of them gave answers worthy of quotation, but that did not matter. In 1962 America, astronauts were heroes in a league with Hollywood actor John Wayne. Anything they said was worth writing down.

  “Gentlemen, what drew you to apply for the job?” came the first question from the press. Since he was first in line alphabetically, Armstrong was forced to give the initial response: “It was the general challenge of the unknowns of the program,” Neil said haltingly, “and the general alignment of this part of it with our national goals.”

  The fact that none of the other answers were any better put than Neil’s did not stop the audience in Cullen Auditorium from applauding after each man’s comment. “I like to be on the first team,” uttered Borman. “I want to be part of it,” agreed Pete Conrad, an also-ran three years earlier when NASA selected the Original Seven, “I made up my mind years ago that if I ever had a chance, I’d volunteer for this.” Jim Lovell felt the same way: “I’ll have to agree with my compatriot. I’ve been interested in space work for a number of years.” Elliot See commented, “I feel this is the most interesting and the most important thing I could possibly do.” “It’s a real honor to be a representative of one hundred eighty million American people,” added Tom Stafford. “I felt I had something to give to this program,” said Ed White, ironically, for what Ed ended up giving to the program was his life. Last to answer was John Young, who drew a loud laugh when he muttered, “I agree with those other eight guys,” then adding seriously, “I couldn’t turn down a challenge like that.”

  Armstrong’s recollection “is that the questions at the press conference were typical, fairly unsophisticated questions—with answers to match.” This two-pronged comment—the second part self-denigrating—illuminates much about what later became the misunderstood character of Armstrong’s attitude toward the press.

  NASA expected Armstrong to be at Cape Canaveral along with all the other new astronauts for Schirra’s Mercury launch, but that was not scheduled until October 3. Leaving most of the preparations for the family’s move to Texas in Janet’s hands, Neil went right back to his job at Edwards. He flew every working day right through the end of the month: “I realized that in Houston I was not going to have the variety of aircraft available to fly whenever the opportunity presented itself, and so I was having a good time and enjoying the last weeks.”

  If his new bosses in Houston had known the risk factors of one particular experimental vehicle, they might have stopped Armstrong from flying it. That machine was the Paraglider Research Vehicle, known as the Parasev.

  Back in the summer of 1960, Armstrong and fellow FRC test pilot Milt Thompson had heard a talk by a brilliant aeronautical engineer from NASA’s Langley Research Center by the name of Francis M. Rogallo. A kite enthusiast, Rogallo explained the advantages of using a controllable paraglider rather than the customary parachute for the recovery of space vehicles. Armstrong and Thompson asked FRC director Paul Bikle for permission to build a simple research vehicle to test Rogallo’s concept. When Bikle refused, citing the pilots’ commitments to the X-15 and to other approved NASA programs, Armstrong and Thompson continued working on the design in their free time. “Our original idea was to make a ‘rag wing’ having a delta or triangular shape. We were going to hang it from a bicycle frame and control the center of gravity by how we pedaled. But wiser heads prevailed and we arrived at a Parasev design that had a little platform slung beneath it.”

  Flying a Cessna L-19 on June 28, 1962, Armstrong first took off with the Parasev in tow over Rogers Dry Lake and turned so sharply at the edge of the lake that the towline went slack, causing Thompson to crash-land on one of the really small dry lakes east of Rogers. Armstrong was not even aware there was a problem until Bruce Peterson came into the pilots’ room and asked, “Where’s Milt?” “So we got in the C-47,” Peterson remembers, “flew out, and saw him sitting down there, shaking his fists at us.” Milt Thompson admits: “We encountered numerous problems developing a good flightworthy vehicle.”

  By this time, Bikle had authorized their Parasev work—in part due to a 1961 NASA objective to develop parawing prototypes as a possible landing system for the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft, though safety concerns may well have been a factor. Construction of the Parasev moved to Dryden’s shops, where simple light-aircraft fabrication techniques led to a functional prototype in a matter of weeks.

  The first free flight was made by Thompson on March 12, 1962, a day Armstrong was in Seattle on Dyna-Soar business. Although Armstrong had been involved in the Parasev project from the start, he first flew the unusual vehicle on Monday, September 24, five days after he returned from the astronaut announcement in Houston.

  “I would be leaving FRC for Houston in another week,” Armstrong remembers, but he went on to fly the Parasev on the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, and twenty-sixth of September. “They were short flights, but twenty flights.” Armstrong acknowledges that controlling the glider was extremely tricky: “The acceptable center of gravity box was pretty small, and the control forces could be surprisingly big. Its speed range was very narrow, and its L/D was substantially less than a pilot would like. Yet for a first effort, the paraglider was surprisingly successful.”

  Built and rebuilt several times, the Parasev eventually made more than one hundred flights at Edwards. Among the pilots who flew it was astronaut Gus Grissom, who, during a flight at Edwards on October 17, 1962, broke its nose gear on landing. The Rogallo parawing might have proved feasible for capsule reentry if there had been sufficient time to develop it fully. But the country’s schedule for going to the Moon “before the decade is out” necessitated not an elegant reentry plan, just a workable one. In 1964, with both the Gemini and Apollo programs committed to water landings, NASA canceled all of its paraglider work.

  Armstrong’s last flight as an FRC employee occurred on Friday, September 28, 1962. It was yet another low L/D flight in an
F5D. Following that weekend at home, Neil went by commercial air from Los Angeles, not to Houston, but to Orlando and thence on by car the short distance to Cape Canaveral, where he and the rest of the New Nine watched Schirra’s Sigma 7 Mercury flight go off without a hitch on Wednesday, October 3.

  The very next day Neil was back at Edwards, as his civil service orders called for his permanent change of station from the Flight Research Center to the Manned Spacecraft Center to be made not until between the eleventh and the thirteenth of the month. In two days’ time, he and L.A.-based Elliot See made the 1,600-mile (pre–Interstate highway) drive to Texas in See’s car. Neil rented a furnished apartment very close to Hobby Airport, on Airport Road just off the Gulf Freeway, then set off with the other new astronauts to inspect the manned space program’s contractor facilities nationwide.