Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight Read online

  From the day Karen Anne was buried he could never pass Joshua Memorial Park without stopping, without visiting her grave. And yet in time Neil would come to accept the fact that science simply wasn’t there when he needed it. No one on January 28, 1962, knew how to rid a body of an inoperable brain tumor. He didn’t like it, but Neil reached a place where he could live with the fact that there wasn’t anything more he could have done to save his little girl.

  Eight years later during Neil and the Apollo 11 crew’s postflight visit to London, a two-year-old girl who came to see the spacemen was nearly crushed against a barrier by the adoring throng. Neil went to her rescue, then gave her a kiss. He clutched her safely until she could be returned to her mother.

  The crowd of more than 300 cheered that moving moment. The next morning a London newspaper carried the headline, “2-Year-Old Girl Bussed by Moon Man.”

  Neil seldom spoke of this overwhelming heartache in his life. But others close to him were convinced Karen Anne’s death was the single most important reason he would submit his name to become an astronaut. Her death gave him a new purpose. A few months before Neil’s own passing I asked him, “Is there something of Muffie’s on the moon?”

  I read his smile to mean yes.

  * * *

  Only 23 days following his daughter’s death the sun was coming into view at 6:47 A.M. at the Armstrongs’ cabin in California. Three thousand miles to the east it was 9:47 A.M.—the sun was already shining brightly.

  John Glenn sat atop his Mercury-Atlas ready to become the first American to rocket into orbit. Neil Armstrong sat before a television set. With the recent passing of his daughter he found it difficult to think about anything else. He had no way of knowing he was about to watch one of his future best friends soar into history.

  John Glenn boards Friendship 7. (NASA)

  “Godspeed, John Glenn!” the voice of astronaut Scott Carpenter boomed from the television. Neil leaned forward.

  “Five, four, three, two, one, zero!”

  Voices everywhere fell silent.

  John Glenn’s rocket was ablaze.

  “Roger, the clock is operating,” the marine reported to Mercury Control, “We’re under way.”

  The sunlit Atlas-Mercury climbed from Cape Canaveral’s famous rocket row as Neil focused on the spacecraft Glenn had named Friendship 7. It rested atop the flaming rocket and he could see the gimbals on the booster’s main engines working in concert with the vernier rockets. He heard John say, “We’re programming in roll okay.”

  Glenn quickly settled into his climb and just as quickly he and Friendship 7 flew into Max-Q. Pressure squeezed his Atlas. The steel belt around his rocket’s girth held. The marine fighter pilot reported, “It’s a little bumpy along here.”

  He flew on into space. He was feeling what had been felt by Gagarin, Shepard, Grissom, and Titov. He now wallowed in weightlessness. He told Mercury Control, “Roger, zero G and I feel fine. Capsule is turning around. Oh”—Glenn shouted—“that view is tremendous!”

  Glenn’s Atlas-Mercury heads for orbit. (NASA)

  America was in orbit and John Glenn settled in for three planned trips around Earth.

  He knew the taxpayers who had sent him there wanted desperately to know what he was seeing.

  Only minutes after reaching orbit he was witnessing his first sunset. He issued a glowing report. “The moment of twilight is simply beautiful,” he told the millions listening. “The sky in space is very black with a thin band of blue along the horizon.”

  His eyes became acclimated to the universal darkness, and he turned down his cockpit’s lights. He was now moving through the unbelievable black velvet, seeing so many firsts: a defined blanket of the brightest, most clearly defined residents of the universe; glorious stars, billions and billions of them; swirling galaxies, constellations, quasars, nebulae with their luminous, dark clouds and sprinkles of dust. And there were the planets, bold in the blackest of black skies. He could only stare in wonder at his first run through Earth’s night side.

  John Glenn launches from rocket row. (NASA)

  John Glenn reports, “The moment of twilight is simply beautiful.” (NASA)

  Glenn flew through the majority of his flight without a problem, but as he sailed through his third orbit consoles in Mercury Control lit up with a Segment 51 warning signal. It was telling flight controllers Friendship 7’s heat shield could have come loose. If so, extreme heat during reentry could cremate John Glenn.

  Flight Director Chris Kraft and his team gave the warning priority attention. How could they save the astronaut? One idea quickly emerged. Survival might lie with the straps holding down the retro-rocket package.

  The retropack contained six rockets. Three small ones had fired to separate Friendship 7 from its spent Atlas rocket during orbital entry. Three larger rockets remained to decelerate Glenn’s spacecraft, slow it so it would fall out of orbit.

  The flight program was specific. The retros fired, the Mercury capsule slowed to start its reentry, then a signal was to be sent to break the metal straps. This would separate the retropack from the spacecraft’s heat shield.

  But what if you did not send the signal to break the metal straps? Would this not in turn hold the heat shield snuggly in place?

  Flight controllers bought the plan. They had to do something to keep the first American to orbit Earth from returning as ashes.

  John Glenn could see Florida and Mercury Control dead ahead. (Composite photographs, NASA)

  Once back over the Cape and Mercury Control, Alan Shepard was Glenn’s capsule communicator and he gave the whole explanation to John for retaining the retropack. The marine understood the decision and told Alan Shepard to pass on his thanks.

  “Roger, John,” Shepard told him. “Hang tight, Marine. Navy has your back.”

  Friendship 7 and John Glenn raced around Earth on their final orbit, and when Friendship 7 reached the California coast, the three retro-rockets fired. Glenn felt a triple thud and reported, “I feel like I’m going back to Hawaii.”

  Instantly, Glenn could sense the heat buildup. Friendship 7 swayed. There was a bang behind him: part of the retropack breaking away. He called the Texas station. They couldn’t hear him. He was plowing through an envelope of superhot ionized air. No signals could leave his spaceship. None could come in. All John Glenn could do was hold tight.

  John Glenn rides through the life-threatening heat of reentry. (NASA)

  America’s first in orbit was cocooned inside a growing fireball. Glenn stared out his window at the flames devouring his ship. A strap from the retropack was burning freely, hammering against his porthole’s glass. It burst into fire along with more flaming chunks that whirled away into space.

  Then, he felt gravity forces building. He could have hugged them. That meant it was all holding together. He called Alan Shepard. He was feeling great, but there was no way to get through the ions. Not yet.

  The heat shield on John Glenn’s back was staying put. It was 4,000 degrees outside—toasty and comfortable inside. He now could smile.

  * * *

  In Mercury Control all listened intently as Alan Shepard continually called John Glenn. No response. He just couldn’t get through. Notre Dame engineer Bob Harrington stood behind Alan Shepard, pleading, “Keep calling, Alan.”

  “Friendship 7, this is the Cape. How do you read? Over.”

  As instantly as they had come, the ions were gone and Shepard’s call finally reached the Mercury capsule.

  Glenn’s reply was a simple mike check. “Loud and clear, Cape. How me?”

  “Roger,” Shepard acknowledged. “Reading you loud and clear. How’re you doing?”

  “Oh, pretty good,” Glenn replied, “but that was a real fireball, boy!”

  Mercury Control broke out in cheers and handshakes, and Harrington broke out with the Notre Dame fight song.

  There was dancing in the aisles, but only for a moment. They had an astronaut and a spacecraft to land
. Friendship 7, the little champ that it was, landed perfectly on waters near its recovery ship, Noa.

  John Glenn gives President Kennedy a tour of his Cape launch site. (The White House)

  John Glenn had returned a hero of Charles Lindbergh’s stature. He had lassoed a share of the Russian lead, and President John Kennedy met him at his Florida launch site.

  John Glenn receives a hero’s welcome with a ticker-tape parade in New York City. (NASA)

  When Glenn reached New York City, four million screaming, cheering people showered him, his wife Annie, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson with a tumultuous ovation, plus a hero’s traditional ticker-tape parade.

  * * *

  Neil Armstrong leaned back in his chair. His low spirits from his daughter Karen Anne’s death were lifted somewhat by Glenn’s success. John, he thought, had taken another major stride needed for America to reach the moon. Neil was now certain that he wanted to be part of possibly history’s greatest journey. He would, of course, continue to fly his X-15 assignments with his fingers crossed that he wasn’t too late to join Glenn and the ranks of the astronauts.

  John and Annie Glenn are honored with a parade in their hometown of New Concord, Ohio. (NASA)

  Meanwhile the word went out from NASA. It’s a long way to the moon. Keep the astronauts flying. Next in line Deke Slayton said, “Let’s go.”

  But there were rumblings. There was a rumor about Deke’s heart.

  Presidential science advisor Jerome Wiesner, without a doubt the biggest hard-ass in the Kennedy administration, was at it again. The chief meddler spoke with the NASA boss. “Jim,” he told Webb. “The White House has heard about Slayton’s heart irregularity, and sending him into orbit could be a terrible mistake.”

  “How,” Webb quickly asked? “He’s been cleared by the flight surgeons and he’s been flying … hell, he’s been test-flying with this irregularity for years. What’s the problem?”

  “I know,” Wiesner agreed. “But if something should go wrong, anything, and the word got out that Slayton had an erratic heart, who do you think they would blame?”

  “The president,” Webb agreed.

  “That’s right, Jim. Take Slayton off the flight.”

  Webb nodded.

  Deke had idiopathic paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, a disturbance of the rhythm in the heart’s muscle fibers in the upper chambers. The NASA chief called for a medical panel to review the facts. The panel agreed with Wiesner. The job of telling Deke was handed to his friend, flight surgeon Bill Douglas.

  “Goddamn it, Bill, those sons-a-bitches can’t do this to me,” Deke shouted. “No one was concerned about this during selection. Hell, I’ve been flying the hottest jets out there—no big thing.”

  “I know,” Douglas agreed, “But it’s all about appearances. If something should go wrong, reporters would have JFK’s ass.”

  “Instead it’s my ass.”

  “Right! There’s more bad news,” the flight surgeon told him.

  “What the hell now?”

  “I know the rules call for the backup pilot to slip into the seat of an astronaut unable to make a mission,” Douglas said, “but Wally won’t be going.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Bob Gilruth decided Scott Carpenter, Glenn’s backup, has more time in the Mercury simulator than Schirra, so Carpenter will be going.”

  Deke turned away disgusted. NASA gave him a few minutes with reporters who had gathered. Deke did what was expected of him. He put the best face possible on possibly the worst news of his life. He took one for the team, then got the hell out of Dodge.

  * * *

  In the coming weeks Deke waged a fierce battle to return to flight status, and his fellow Mercury Seven astronauts rallied round him.

  John Glenn stepped forward. “We’re a team,” he told the others. “Deke’s still part of our team and we must give him his pride back.”

  “Yeah, man,” Gus Grissom agreed.

  “Let’s make him chief astronaut,” said Gordo Cooper, “but we’ll have to hurry.”

  “Why’s that?” Wally Schirra asked.

  “The word is they’re bringing in a general to take charge of us,” Cooper told them.

  “Like hell they are,” Shepard, the future admiral, snapped.

  “Let’s take a vote and stand firm,” Scott Carpenter suggested.

  They all agreed that standing together would work, and they went to see the boss. “We have three recommendations for chief astronaut,” John Glenn told NASA administrator James Webb. “Deke Slayton, Deke Slayton, and Deke Slayton.”

  Webb smiled. The message was clear. He turned a thumbs-up, and Deke became chief astronaut.

  * * *

  Alan Shepard said it was like turning a switch. Deke’s pride was back and first on his list was a new group of astronauts for the Gemini and Apollo projects.

  Deke began reading applications and was pleased one was from Neil Armstrong. He smiled. He was going to have the horses he needed to ride to the moon.

  Ready for launch, Neil Armstrong’s X-15 hangs beneath its B-52 drop aircraft. (NASA)

  FIVE

  PASADENA OVERSHOOT

  Dressed in his high-flight pressure suit Neil Armstrong was cocooned in his X-15’s cockpit. The hatch had closed down on him to the point of being oppressive. His windshield wrapped his head and shoulders with two almond eyes that were set in a covering of Inconel X, a black-painted nickel alloy to dissipate heat. He felt as if he was wearing the cockpit instead of sitting in it. It was so snug it was difficult to see inside or out as he and his rocket plane hung beneath a drop-and-launch B-52. They were cruising at 45,000 feet—about 8.5 miles above the desert below. It was April 20, 1962, and as he approached his drop, Neil left the puffy white clouds behind, entering a CAVU (Ceilings and Visibility Unlimited) day over the dome of the world—what pilots called the high desert test-flight area.

  The previous year Joe Walker, chief pilot for Neil’s group, flew above 60 miles earning him the first set of X-15 astronaut wings. A reporter asked Walker, “How does it feel to be the best test pilot in the world?”

  “Hey, I just flew a little higher than the rest,” Joe Walker answered. “You looking for who might be best, keep your eye on young Neil Armstrong.”

  Neil had flown the X-15 six times. This was number seven, and like his seventh combat mission over Korea where he had to eject, this number seven would prove equally unlucky.

  His flight plan called for him to take his X-15 to the edge of space, about 39 miles up, and test a new control system. They were now at that part of flight where things became tense—exciting—and if Neil Armstrong didn’t know this feeling well, who in the hell did?

  A clean and quick drop. (NASA)

  The ten-seconds-to-launch light came on.

  “Five, four, three, two, one, launch,” and the B-52 dropped Neil’s rocket plane, abruptly and with precision.

  This X-15, the third in the fleet, had the newest and biggest rocket engine—the XLR-99, and Neil threw the switch. He felt it! The new engine’s kick slammed him back in his seat.

  At the family’s mountain cabin Janet had the binoculars out. She could see the wide, sweeping contrails left by the B-52. She held her breath, wondering if Karen Anne’s death would affect Neil’s flying skills.

  Janet was not the only one wondering.

  Neil and his X-15 are on their way. (NASA)

  The X-15 was not the easiest in the sky to fly. It was a nasty 51-foot-long black bullet with stubby wings. Its new, most powerful rocket was pushing it faster and faster from Earth. Neil’s muscles tensed to handle the building G-forces. He was terribly busy, keeping everything under control while watching for the tiniest deviations.

  He didn’t have time to notice blue sky turn black, but when his big rocket shut down he knew he was moving—about 3,500 miles per hour, 1,500 miles per hour slower than the speed Alan Shepard had reached to rocket 112 miles into space. He would climb to less than 40 perc
ent of that height. Now he had time to look out.

  Neil’s X-15 moves into black sky. (NASA)

  The X-15 moved steadily upward on the energy it got from the XLR-99 rocket. This energy would push him through most of the atmosphere to where he could only see black sky above an extremely bright Earth below.

  It was all breathtaking and dazzling and Neil could not believe the horizon’s bands of color—colors that began with the deep blackness of space on top, then purple to deep indigo before settling into rich blues and bright whites, capping his planet’s brown earth and blue waters. Neil was on his way still wondering how high is up as he left atmosphere behind and reached a place seen only by few, a place where air was so thin it could not reflect light.

  The higher he climbed the less pull of gravity and sense of motion. He was now flying through the upper reaches of the sky—silent and weightless—an experience known only by those few who dared to sail over the top of the world.

  “It was the highest I’d ever gone—thirty-nine miles and the views were spectacular,” he later said, adding he was pleased with how well the X-15’s new flight-control system was performing during his moment of weightlessness.

  But soon the gravity grabbed him and his plane again, and started pulling them back to Earth. Neil was controlling his X-15’s attitude with tiny hydrogen peroxide jets near his rocket plane’s nose. When needed, he would fire these jets to hold the X-15’s attitude. Then, when he reentered enough atmosphere the X-15’s stubby wings and flight surfaces would again take over the duties of attitude control.

  Neil’s X-15 appeared to pass the sun on its way to a height of 39 miles. (NASA)

  It was all working well. So much so Neil momentarily diverted his attention to check the g limiter, a system he and other engineers had built to automatically prevent the pilot from exceeding five times his own weight. If it, too, worked, it could keep a flyer from blacking out.