Falling to Earth (16 page)

On Friday night, I’d head back to the airport and fly home. If I were very careful how I flew, and if the winds were right, I could sometimes make it all the way back from LA to Houston without refueling. When attempting that nonstop flight, I couldn’t perform a normal takeoff using my afterburner. I had to begin my journey without it and use a lot more runway, then get high enough to catch the wind.

A couple of times, I got pretty low on fuel. It was a surreal feeling: my world contracted to that tiny fuel gauge needle, as I calculated and recalculated how much time I had left, and if it was enough to get me to Ellington. The worst thing I could have done would be to eject from an airplane because I hadn’t figured my fuel right. I would lose an expensive government airplane for no good reason, possibly ruin my career—and feel like a dumb shit for the rest of my life.

The hairiest moments were when the weather was bad at Ellington, but I would have no choice when I was low on fuel—it was the closest airfield. It didn’t matter how strong the wind was blowing, it was my only hope. Locking on to Ellington’s radio guidance beacon, I flew through thick clouds, unable to see a thing. Right next to the runway, somewhere in the murk, was a huge water tower, and if my approach were off by a fraction I could plow right into it. If my instruments weren’t calibrated correctly, I might make a direct hit. Each T-38, in theory identical, had its own little quirks, and we flew so many that we never had time to get a feel for them all. Today might be the day I found this one had a defect.

Scared as shit, I would hope like hell my engines didn’t flame out, focus on my instruments, and finally break out of the bottom of the cloud only seventy-five feet above the ground. I would be level with the water tower and only three seconds from landing when I’d finally catch my first, blessed glimpse of the welcoming lights of the runway. I’d be ready to veer over if necessary, but luckily the lights would be right below me. My instruments were fine. I would taxi down the runway, open the canopy, and take my first deep breath in a long time. I am alive, I would exult, and life is great!

The next thing to do after such a landing is to bury your feelings deeply. As I walked into the hangar, if anyone had asked me about a landing with low fuel in bad weather, the last thing I would have done is admit I’d flown myself into a dangerous corner. “The flight was fine, nothing to worry about,” I would reply, even if I was still mentally chastising myself for flying such a dumb-shit stunt.

Most of the astronauts flying out to Downey would stay at the Tahitian Village, a cute local hotel dressed up in mock–Polynesian Tiki style, with fire dancer shows most nights and a lively bar. We became good friends with the manager, and I don’t think we ever stayed at another hotel in that city. I remember arriving there one evening after some grueling desert survival training in Spokane, Washington. I had to be in Downey for some testing early the next morning, so I flew the long trip from the top to the bottom of the country without bothering to clean myself up. By the time I reached the hotel, I was exhausted and ready for a long night’s sleep. I passed the other astronauts in the bar with only a quick hello, grabbed my hotel key, unlocked the door, and the room was completely empty—no bed, chair, television, or dresser—nothing. The only thing left in the room was an unsigned note, which made some joking reference to survival training.

I was the victim of a prank, or “Gotcha,” as we called them, but I wasn’t going to let the guys in the bar win. I knew they were now waiting for me to return and accept their taunts. Instead, I found a telephone and called Ruby, the switchboard operator at the Downey facility. The quintessential “little old lady,” Ruby knew everyone at the North American plant and could solve any problem. Her house was just down the street. I borrowed a sleeping bag, some pots and pans and other camping equipment. I bagged up some ashes from her fireplace, and also collected some rocks and tree branches. Then I snuck back to the hotel and made up the room with a sleeping bag in the corner, rocks and ashes in the middle of the room arranged like a campfire, and a cooking tripod made out of branches assembled over it. I hung a can of beans from the tripod as the final touch. Next, I went to the Tiki-style tropical ponds that dotted the hotel complex and caught a dozen frogs. After placing the frogs in the room and closing the door, I cleaned myself up and nonchalantly strolled down to the bar.

Of course, all of the guys in the bar were waiting for my reaction and were puzzled that I acted so normal. After a couple of minutes, the questions began. “How do you like your room? Is it comfortable for you?” I replied that yes, it was perfectly fine. Not satisfied, they asked, “Can we go with you to see your room?” So we all trooped up there, I opened the door and let them in. You should have seen their faces as they took in the campsite in the room, while frogs hopped out the door and back toward the ponds. I left them to it while I calmly strolled away, requested a key for an alternate room and had a well-deserved rest in a comfortable bed. Gotcha!

The Downey facility was fascinating. I would spend most of my time in the enormous “clean room,” where even the air was scrubbed to surgical operating room standards to ensure that the spacecraft built inside were immaculate. To enter that area I put on a protective white overgarment with a hood, walked across sticky pads to remove anything stuck on my shoes, and passed through an area where large fans blew away any remaining dust particles. Only then was I granted admittance. It felt like entering a science-fiction movie, especially when I saw the line of gleaming Apollo command modules, all in different states of construction. In this room, North American built spacecraft to go to places only previously imagined in movies and novels. Now, we were going to do it for real.

If I wasn’t in the clean room, I was in another manufacturing area, busy creating procedures for a crew to follow if their spacecraft malfunctioned in flight. One astronaut perk was access to the “Golden Trough,” as the executive dining area was nicknamed. Getting to know all of the senior managers at North American, as well as working with all of the engineers, was very useful. We astronauts had someone to talk to at every level of the company if we had problems or concerns, from Ruby all the way up to the company president. I spent most of my time, however, with the technicians, because I was busy working in a spacecraft as it was built and tested.

I was at Downey one Friday in late January 1967. Only a few hours remained until I could fly home for the weekend, and I was looking forward to the break. I’d worked all day with the Apollo crew of Tom Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan, who were training in a Block I command module. At the same time, the crew of the first planned Apollo flight, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, was running some tests inside their Block I spacecraft, which sat on top of an unfueled rocket on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. Liftoff was planned for the following month.

I was in the astronaut offices at the plant when I received an urgent phone call from Deke Slayton. There had been a fire inside the spacecraft at the Cape, he told me, and all of the crewmembers were dead. Stafford, Young, and Cernan needed to get out of the near-identical spacecraft at Downey, and all further testing was canceled. Deke was terse and businesslike: there would be a lot of work to do and funerals to attend, so the four of us needed to get back to Houston as soon as possible.

Racing to the control room, I called down to the spacecraft test area, where a technician put Stafford, the crew commander, on the phone with me. He didn’t want to believe that our three colleagues in Florida were dead. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to either. Once the news sank in, Stafford hurriedly told Cernan and Young. Then the four of us met in an office where I shared what else I had been told.

I explained to my stunned colleagues that Gus was inside the spacecraft with his crew when a fire had broken out. Despite heroic attempts, the spacecraft hatch had not been opened in time to save them. I’d been an astronaut for less than a year, and other than racing cars with Gus, I had not had time to get to know any of the three men. Nevertheless, as we prepared to hustle back to Houston, I found myself imagining the screams of the trapped crew as they died.

After racing back to the airport, John Young and I sped back to Houston in one T-38, while Tom and Gene flew another. We arrived around midnight.

Pam was at home when I unlocked the door. She had heard the news, of course. Days like this were what she always feared. My career dreams had brought me close to danger and death many times, and it could easily have been me in that fire. On this night, was Pam scared or angry, or both? I am sorry to say I don’t know; we didn’t discuss it. My mind was somewhere else entirely. I was more concerned that the program might die, and with it all the work that I had done.

Thinking about it now, with regret, I can see that Pam and I had no place left to comfort each other. We were both shaken up, but for completely different reasons. And without the ability to help each other on those darkest of days, our marriage was doomed.

Instead of talking, I busied myself for work the next morning, knowing it would be an extremely tough day. In fact, for all I knew, it might have been the beginning of the end for NASA. Politicians and administrators respond to death in a different way than pilots. As I went to sleep, I wondered if the loss of Gus and his crew might lead to the cancellation of the entire Apollo program.

CHAPTER 5
THE FIRE

T
he morning after the fire, most people I talked to were still in shock. Many of my colleagues knew those three guys well and found it tough to believe that they were gone. The astronaut corps, however, felt a particular kind of angry frustration. For civilians and taxpayers, the astronaut deaths were distressing and unexpected. But military pilots were familiar with death, and we also felt angry. Even though many aviators die in flying accidents, Gus, Ed, and Roger died conducting tedious tests in a spacecraft that never left the ground. To perish this way seemed doubly wrong. But we all needed to put our emotions to one side, regroup, and try to find the cause of the fire and the reason our colleagues could not get out in time to save their lives.

It turned out that there were multiple reasons, and everyone involved with that spacecraft shared the blame. The fatal test was performed using pure oxygen under high pressure, which meant a fire could spread quite easily. NASA management, the spacecraft manufacturers, and the astronaut corps all allowed materials to be used in the spacecraft that could catch fire without much difficulty. In addition, loose wiring inside the spacecraft was vulnerable to kicking and chafing.

But it quickly became evident that the spacecraft hatch was the major cause of my colleagues’ deaths. Had just one of them been able to open it up, they would have survived. The hatch design was a disaster: it sealed from the inside, so the greater the interior pressure, the tighter the seal. For keeping a spacecraft airtight in space that design made sense, but it was lethal during a pressurized test on the ground. It was an example of a system designed by nonpilots; safety was not the most important factor.

North American Aviation built the spacecraft and naturally shouldered much of the blame. But the accident was more complicated than that. I believe there were too many people involved for one specific group to be responsible. Others blamed the tragedy on the intense pressure to fly Apollo to the moon before the end of the decade. Yes, there was pressure, but personally I don’t think it directly led to any oversights. The cause of the fire was tougher to swallow. The fault belonged to all of us: how can you blame any one person or group for something that everyone had overlooked?

No one had taken the time to consider that an electrical spark in the spacecraft, while unlikely, would be disastrous. For three dangerous ingredients to come together like this—flammable material, sparking wires, and pressurized pure oxygen—a lot of details must have been overlooked by a lot of people, and not just those at North American. These details were probably missed because, until January of 1967, everything had worked fine, so we were overconfident. No one wanted to stop and think about potential problems. In this instance, it killed three men.

I later heard talk about shoddy workmanship on the Apollo spacecraft by North American and accusations that this problem may have contributed to the fire. But in the months before the fire, I saw just the opposite. North American’s engineers were very particular, detailed, thorough, and determined to do a good job. I was especially impressed with how well they kept records. Initially, I thought the amount of paperwork they required was too much. But one night we were checking a spacecraft and found that one particular wire inside a large bundle did not work—it had chafed and exposed raw wiring. The company went back to their records and diagrams, and within days had replaced not only that particular wire, but every piece of that faulty batch of wire in every part of every spacecraft it had assembled. Damn impressive.