Moondust (46 page)

“There was lots of dust. We decided that, next Saturday, we would go to the zoo.”

Scott also admits to “a pang of nostalgia” when he looks up to the Moon and his eye picks out the largest circular marking on its surface, the Mare Imbrium, or Sea of Rains, on the eastern edge of which he spent “the three most memorable days of my life.”

In the flesh, he talks about all this with a curious lack of urgency or engagement, as if debriefing a group of computer experts. At times he's amusing, as when he recounts waking after the first rest period to open the shutters and suddenly remember, “Oh my God, we're on the Moon!” Most of the time, he's repeating stories from the book, the idea for which he claims to have presented to a literary agent with the words, “I'd like to do this, but I don't want to do any work.” Only when Scott sits back down and Pillinger opens the floor to questions does the evening liven up. There are still a lot of platitudes and things I've heard before, like, “I sort of look upon it [the Moon] as an old friend,” and, asked about the view of Earth, “It's an oasis, very, very precious, and we've got to take care of it … we're doing a lousy job …” and, regarding millionaire space tourists like Dennis Tito, “I think people who have that much money should sponsor a fund to send an artist or a poet up there.” Someone raises a hand and says:

“My five-year-old son would like to know what's it like to walk on the Moon?”

To which Scott offers a prosaic description of its pristine appearance which will have had as much purchase on a five-year-old's imagination as a command to tidy his bedroom.

He's better on solid stuff, like his excitement for Armstrong when he touched down (“that was a
tough
mission”) and the way he joked to Pete Conrad, whom he backed up on
Apollo 12,
that “if Neil doesn't make it, you'd better watch your legs,” because if anything happened to the
Apollo 12
commander prior to the flight, Scott would take his place. He strains to be diplomatic about the Bush plans for Mars, but his skepticism shows through.

“The problem is where do you freeze the technology?” he asks. “By the time you're ready to go, the technology you're using is ten or twenty years old. It's a difficult problem and I don't know how you deal with it.”

Then there's a change in the mood, with someone raising a hand to ask: “How did life change for you after the Moon?” As Scott fumbles and fudges about its not changing that much and his search for “new challenges,” I'm wondering whether the question was innocent or loaded. Moments later, I know, as another young questioner smirks: “Is it possible to buy one of the envelopes?”

Scott leans lower to the table, pretending he hasn't understood, while Pillinger, with a look of merry amusement on his face, leans back and expands with the exaggerated ceremony of a quiz show host proffering a clue. He just manages to get out: “I
think
he
means
the
stamps,
David …” before the now puce-faced astronaut cuts him off with a rapid “No, they're all gone,” then turns and mutters something which I can't hear, but which a startled-looking Pillinger certainly does, because he snaps forward as if the back of his chair has just bitten him and sings, “Okay, let's have another question.” Even now, here, there is no peace for Scott.

I decide to help out. The
Apollo 15
commander spent two days drifting home from the Moon with a man who had (or felt he had) heard God calling to him there – Jim Irwin – and I want to know whether the crew discussed this at all?

The reply comes quickly.

“No, there wasn't really time, we were too busy doing the science.”

And through the pause which follows, I'm thinking, “Oh well, I tried.” But then Scott continues.

“That's an interesting question, though, because Jim was deeply affected. For instance, before the Moon, he was a good speaker, but afterwards he was a great one. He really believed. Something real happened to him.”

He then speaks about something which he called his “left seat–right seat” theory, referring to the fact that the commander stood to the left in the lander with the Lunar Module pilot on his right. He sounds reflective for the first time as he notes:

“The six guys in the left seat went down paths you'd have expected, but the six in the right seats went off in all kinds of unexpected directions.”

And I suddenly recall Ed Mitchell saying something similar. In fact he had a name for it. I'd asked whether he thought some of the Moonwalkers had been more open to the experience than others and he answered:

“Well, one thing to note is that most of the guys who were vocal about the depth of the experience were Lunar Module pilots. It's known phenomenon, from military studies, that the guy in the rear seat of a two-seater aircraft and the guy actually doing the flying have different experiences, because they're focussed on different things. It's the
command phenomenon
. The view of the guy who has to be alert and on top of things is different from the guy who's just along for the ride. So those of us coming back from the Moon who were LM pilots, we weren't just along for the ride – we had chores – but we didn't have major responsibilities, because the spacecraft was functioning well. We could take it in and contemplate what we were doing more thoroughly.”

He further added:

“I think that was also true for people back home on Earth, though obviously in a different way. Those pictures of the Earth from the Moon are the most published pictures in the world. And so one has to ask the question: Why is that so? What is that?
And to me, it's because they speak to that spirit of quest that humans have. And to the question ‘
Who are we?
'”

Yes. Now Scott is talking about Ed and his noetic quest, and Buzz Aldrin with his postflight breakdown … and Alan Bean with his
Close Encounters
Moon art … and of course Charlie Duke and Jim Irwin, who were directly or indirectly led to their faiths by the Moon. Only Jack Schmitt followed a straight and normal path, and then only if you consider a desire to enter the Senate normal. And for the first time, I fall to reflecting on my own encounters with these men; on the LM pilots' eagerness to communicate what they'd felt up there and the way it seemed to still live inside them, as against the by-turns maddening and amusing imperviousness of the surviving mission commanders. Armstrong, Young, Cernan, Scott: I can admire them all in different ways, but wouldn't want them near me if I were a talk-show host or composer of sonnets. Afterwards, I go to find Scott, because I want to know whether he thinks this postflight divergence is attributable to the different experiences of the Moonwalkers – as he seemed to be implying – or whether Deke simply assigned them roles according to character type, with focus and singularity seen as the stuff of leadership.

Disingenuous to the last, he pretends not to remember me, while being unable to suppress the spark of recognition in his eye. He nevertheless confirms the first view straightaway.

“No, character doesn't come into it,” he says.

Really?
I ask, but he shakes his head firmly.

“Character was never an issue.”

So he agrees with Ed Mitchell that there was something primal in the experience, at least for those who had the time and mental space to be affected by it?

“I think so. Yes.”

He leaves a short gap, as though considering this for the first time.

“It's interesting, isn't it?”

Yes, I agree, it is – even though by this stage of my travels I can no longer believe it to be true. I think Deke Slayton chose his commanders precisely for their rarefied focus and tightly reined imaginations; for their relative immunity to doubt, ambivalence
and vacillation – states that arise from sensitivity to one's situation, but might also delay decisions by the split second that turned success to anguish. What Slayton wanted was impregnability. Many of the commanders appear to be fine men, but it seems to me unlikely that they were ever going to become painters or preachers or poets or gurus, or have much to say about the metaphysical resonance of their journey.

There was another, bigger, surprise waiting for me when I got back from Portugal. Before I went, I'd finally made myself write to Neil Armstrong, expecting no more than a polite brushoff. Now, trawling through my e-mails, I came across a message from an unfamiliar address which suggested another piece of spam. I opened it and giggled like a schoolboy. The name at the bottom hit me first, sitting solid and square, as if carved on a tablet of stone, avatar of an alien world.
Neil Armstrong.

He told me that he received lots of requests from people writing books and making films, but he could see that this was a different kind of story about Apollo. He asked me to expand on what I wanted to talk about, to tell him who this thing was for and to provide a few sample questions so that he might decide whether he could “make a meaningful contribution.” By this stage, I knew that he had agreed to allow an Alabama history professor who specializes in aviation to produce a first biography. The academic had spent three years courting him and I was surprised by his assent until I read that what he'd sanctioned was “a biography about [his] involvement in the evolution of flight.” Gene Cernan told me that “Neil's not one to share his personal feelings with people he doesn't know, so I think his book'll have a lot of technical stuff in it about things he did, and his opinions on them, but I don't think he's gonna tell you about how his heart beat faster when he stood there and looked up at the Earth. Neil's just not like that.” Charlie and Dotty Duke had said that trying to get Armstrong to speak or even turn up anywhere is “painful!” and when I'd asked why they thought that was, Charlie had told me:

“I never asked him why. I know he just doesn't like the public
eye. And I think he made a decision that ‘I'm not gonna use this for any aggrandizement … it's part of my life, it's over and I'm going to be private.' He's a really nice guy, we're good friends and I really like him. But he's just private.”

Desperately unsure of how to respond to the First Man's request, I called Al Reinert, who told me that while the exastronaut had been supportive of his
For All Mankind
film, he had resolutely refused to add his voice to the others. A space writer whom I met in Houston recalled speaking to him briefly on the phone for a technical book about a particular airplane, and the answer to his first question being a barked, “Look, if you're just going to ask me questions you could find the answers to in other books, I'm wasting my time.” Then Andy Chaikin, who put together his account of the first lunar landing with Armstrong's cooperation, told me:

“The thing you need to know about Neil is that he sees himself and his career in the context of the history of aviation – that's what he's interested in. He also thinks that interviews are not the most efficient way of getting information across.”

The implication for me was that if I wanted to sit down and speak with Neil Armstrong, the best bet would be to persuade him of my interest in the X-15's landing gear. I'd done this kind of thing many times before. It's understood in the modern media and the modern world that everyone has something to sell: you talk to them about whatever that is, then guide or drag them on to the things you really want to know. Except that Armstrong isn't trying to sell anything. Even in Reno, I'd felt this – that his eyes are like windows on a lost age. What's more, by a curious coincidence I stopped off on the way back from Portugal to see that other reticent but ubiquitous Neil, Neil
Young,
showcasing a new album at the Apollo Theatre (of all places) in London. Young's late work has tended toward whimsy, but
Greendale
turned out to be an angry collection of songs about intrusion in the modern world, and a particular line about the right to “freedom of silence” had lodged in my mind. Doubly disquieting was my knowledge that the Moon has been a potent symbol for Young throughout a solo career which began the year of the first landing, figuring in no fewer than twenty-six of his songs. I
spent a long time thinking about what to do.

The truth is that this coincided with some strange feelings I'd begun to have about Apollo anyway. From the start I'd been aware of a tension between the sepia attachments of my childhood and the curiosity I felt to see beyond them, to discover what would be left of the freaky adventure if I removed bright sun and thyme-scented hills and Credence on the radio from the picture, and let reason wash through it. The issue was simple: Without its cloak of childish wonder, was Apollo worth the costs? Was it
good
? Knowing what I know now, could I have voted for it? I let the question in and immediately knew I was in trouble.

If I close my eyes and think of the lunar programme, the first image I see is of the Saturn V rocket towering over the launchpad at night, illuminated by a battery of spotlights whose beams skitter and spear into the sky at wild angles, diamondlike and imperious. Yet, over time, the image has evolved in my mind and acquired new meaning, until each beam has seemed to represent another of Apollo's contradictions – the first and most fundamental of which being that this cornerstone of the war against tyrannical Soviet communism was designed and built by a Nazi. Wondering whether I had too blunt a view of this, I e-mailed Dennis Piszkiewicz, whose biography of Wernher von Braun (
The Man Who Sold the Moon
) provides as detailed an account of his life as any has so far. I wanted to know how he'd felt about von Braun after spending so much time with him, whether he'd grown to empathize with the maverick rocket scientist by the end?

In reply, Piszkiewicz spoke of watching the German on the
Disneyland
TV series and being inspired and impressed by this prophet of modernity. He eventually learned about the V-2 and von Braun's wartime past, but no one seemed worried about this, so he didn't worry about it either. Then he addressed my question head-on.