Falling to Earth Read online

  NASA left us in the large, arid deserts of eastern Washington State for around five days, giving us spacecraft parachutes and a basic survival kit, but not much else. Working in groups of three just like an Apollo crew, we’d make tents and clothes out of the parachutes, and construct solar stills to collect water. More exciting, however, was when they sent us down to the air force’s survival school in the jungles of Panama.

  In the classroom for our initial briefing, I surveyed the room. Dozens of stuffed animal heads were mounted on the walls. Studying the decorations a little closer, I spotted something odd: some of them were moving. Each one had a live boa constrictor wrapped around it. This training would be quite an experience. The day grew even odder when the instructors grabbed one of the boas, then skinned and cooked it. This, we were told, was our lunch.

  After some classes on edible jungle plants and animals, a helicopter dropped us off in the rain forest with some air force survival instructors, and we set up camp for a couple of days. The jungle turned out to be quite different from my expectations. A real jungle doesn’t have any undergrowth, because little sunlight makes it through the thick tree canopy. The trees were nearly a hundred feet tall, and we could see for more than half a mile under them.

  Once again, we only had the same equipment stowed on an Apollo spacecraft. We made hammocks, slung between two trees to keep us off the wet ground. Not surprisingly for a rain forest, it rained on us a lot, which made conditions pretty miserable. Soon we all stripped down to our long johns; we must have looked pretty amusing. We ate emergency rations and monkeypod tree seed pods, which had a sweet edible pulp.

  On the last day, we broke camp and trudged down a path to the nearby river. On the way, one of our instructors showed us how to milk the venom from a fer-de-lance snake, which is an extremely venomous creature. Lord knows what he was thinking, but Bruce McCandless then grabbed the snake and stuffed it in a burlap sack.

  We put on life preservers, jumped into rafts and floated downstream to a Chocó Indian village, with Bruce still holding his bag. The Chocó put on a grand welcome. We made our way up through the bamboo houses to the chief’s hut. Four live iguanas, their legs tied behind them so they couldn’t move, lay in a corner. Guess what we had for lunch? The roast iguana was actually very good; it tasted exactly like chicken. The meal was better than I thought it would be, and a suitable feast to end our time in Panama. The survival practice was a learning experience we hoped we’d never have to carry out for real. Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun, an escape from the technical work we did back in the States.

  Bruce brought his snake all the way back to Houston, where he donated it to the zoo. But first, he had to get it through the customs and agriculture inspection. The customs officer, not keen on dealing with a venomous creature, asked his supervisor across the room to make the inspection. Looking in his rule book, the supervisor found out that the regulations required a “visual inspection for external parasites.” Staying far on the other side of the room, he warily eyed the snake for a moment, then called out, “Looks good to me from here!” And so Bruce’s snake became a U.S. citizen.

  I received my first real assignment at NASA that first year. With the Gemini program at an end by late 1966, NASA was gearing up to fly the first Apollo missions. The plan was to land on the moon by the end of the decade, and the clock was ticking. NASA would first fly a simpler version of the Apollo command module spacecraft known as Block I, before progressing to more complex missions with a more sophisticated version, Block II. The program was trying to hustle; NASA pushed ahead without waiting for Block II to be ready for all missions. I was assigned to work in Downey, just south of Los Angeles, where North American Aviation was building the Apollo command module. I was already familiar with their work; I’d been flying the airplanes they built for years.

  The assignment quickly grew into something even more important. Ed Mitchell, Fred Haise, and I became the first of our group to be assigned to help with a mission. Each Apollo flight had a prime crew of three astronauts who flew the mission and a backup crew who were ready to fly if the prime crew could not. Then there was the support crew: three more astronauts assigned to help with any other jobs the prime and backup crews didn’t have time for. In November, the three of us were named as the support team for the second manned Apollo flight. It wasn’t a seat on a space mission—not yet—but it was the beginning of working into a system that could place me on a backup and then a prime crew. To get a foot in the door this early in the Apollo program meant that I must have been doing something right. I saw this posting as a sign that my bosses, especially Deke, were happy with me.

  It made sense to assign a test pilot with an engineering background to this job. Even though every Apollo flight was, in a sense, a test flight, the plan wasn’t to go up into orbit and only then find out how a spacecraft performed. Instead, astronauts would fly in space the way they had been trained in simulations on the ground: the way the flight plan told them to. The procedures in each flight plan would be well defined, and created through careful engineering analysis and testing. We had to know exactly what each spacecraft would do long before we sent it up. That would be my job: as part of a team, to thoroughly test the Apollo command module while it was built.

  My test pilot experience proved useful, because it gave me the right mental attitude to do the job. We were in new territory, flying a vehicle that no one had ever piloted before. However, my engineering background was even more important, because it allowed me to understand the spacecraft’s fiendishly complicated systems.

  Training inside the Apollo command module

  Unlike the cramped Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, the Apollo command module was a spacious Cadillac. Yet it was still pretty small for three people. If you want to get a general idea of what it was like to be inside, climb into a Volkswagen Beetle with two of your buddies, lock the doors, and don’t come out for two weeks.

  The command module was just one of three spacecraft sections making up the entire Apollo assembly that would fly to the moon. Behind the command module was the service module, also manufactured by North American, which carried all of the electricity, water, oxygen, propulsion and communication equipment for the flight. It was a little like hauling a big trailer behind your car, with all the supplies you need for a long trip but don’t wish to bring back home. It also had all of the little thrusters for small maneuvers, and a big engine on the back for large maneuvers such as heading back to Earth from lunar orbit.

  Then there was the lunar module, designed specifically to operate on and around the moon. It was built using the most lightweight materials possible. If you imagine a helicopter without rotor blades or a tail, balanced on a jet engine that pointed down, it will give you a general idea of this odd flying machine. The lunar module was something I would like to have flown—it would have been a kick—but it was built by a different company, Grumman, way over on the East Coast, so I didn’t have much to do with it. I never worked directly on the Block I command module either, only Block II. Before the first generation of Apollo spacecraft had even flown, I was working on the next generation.

  To get to Downey and other places around the country, we flew ourselves in Northrop T-38 Talon jets. They were, in effect, our personal vehicles. Not only did they get us around much faster than commercial travel, they also kept our piloting skills sharp. We had about the same number of T-38s as astronauts; I could almost have put my name on one of them. It was the greatest transportation in the world. The agency placed a lot of trust in us. There was an urgency to what we did, so it didn’t seem unusual that we flew ourselves around the country like this. Everyone at NASA wanted us to be in the right place at the right time so that the program could keep moving. One phone call got me an airplane in an hour, ready to go. I’d drive out to the airfield, put my bag between the two seats, and head skyward.

  We were a competitive group, of course, so a lot of these cross-country flights turned into races. I recall lea
ving Houston at the same time as the Continental nonstop flight to Los Angeles. Just for kicks I hot-rodded it to El Paso, Texas, refueled, headed back up to the best altitude as fast as I could, and beat that LA flight. To save time I had to hot-refuel: that is, pump gas with the engines still running. We weren’t supposed to do this with our airplanes, but every astronaut did it, and it saved a few precious seconds.

  It was wonderful flying performed by a bunch of elite aviators. Yes, some of the astronauts made piloting mistakes here and there. But overall my colleagues were all extremely skilled, knew exactly what they were doing, what risks to take, and what not to do. Every now and then we may have pushed it a little—such as pressing on to Houston even if the weather was bad there—but we knew how to handle those conditions and were comfortable in the air.

  Flying the T-38 jet, our main form of transport

  Unless, of course, we had partied too much the night before.

  Very early in my tenure at NASA, I was working at the Cape on the same night as a big Gemini postflight party. One of the Gemini astronauts had a little too much to drink, decided he could fly without a spacecraft—and prepared to jump from the third-floor balcony of the Holiday Inn. His colleagues locked him in a closet for the rest of the night so he couldn’t hurt himself. Guess who had to fly with him to Downey the next morning?

  We set off in two separate aircraft; I piloted a T-38, while he flew my wing in a T-33 Shooting Star jet. At least, he tried. We began in close formation, but soon he wandered off about a mile before drifting back to my side. He kept this up all the way to Houston, where we landed and left the T-33. He headed home to change his clothes while I stayed at the airport with the T-38. When he reappeared I told him, “Get in the back seat. I’m not letting you fly today. You had way too much to drink last night.” He didn’t object. In fact, he looked relieved and climbed in behind me.

  Up at high altitude on the way to California, I grew a little concerned: I hadn’t heard from him for about an hour, “Hey,” I asked on the radio, “are you okay back there?” No response. I looked in the mirror on the canopy rail above the windshield. His head was bowed. Wonderful—it looked like my copilot fell asleep. I concentrated on my flying once more.

  Then I felt a sharp jolt on my control stick, and the jet shuddered. What the hell? Had we hit something? No, we were flying fine. After working through any possible problems with the aircraft, I could only conclude that my sleeping copilot had bumped his control stick.

  We flew on to a smooth landing in Los Angeles and climbed out of the jet. I was ready to ask him about the stick, but as soon as I saw his face I didn’t need to. One of his eyes was bright red, no white visible. He’d fallen asleep so soundly that his head had forcefully slumped right onto his control stick. I was surprised he hadn’t dislodged his eye. The guy walked around for weeks afterward with a gruesome red eye, while his bosses pretended not to notice.

  Fortunately, dumb behavior like this was pretty rare. I flew to Los Angeles for my work at Downey so often, the fifteen-hundred-mile journey became like a bus ride for me. I’d leave Houston, stop in El Paso to refuel, and head on to California. At El Paso, I’d open the canopy and the Mexican flight line chief would hand me an enchilada to munch on while I waited.

  I soon had a new work routine: I would leave Ellington Field at dusk on Sunday and land at Los Angeles airport. I’d park the airplane at the North American Aviation ramp on the south side of the field; a rental car would be waiting for me. Some astronauts, not content just to race airplanes, also raced their rental cars from the airport over to Downey. I would throw my gear in the back, drive east down the highway to Downey, and arrive at a hotel around nine o’clock, local time. That left me enough time to get some sleep and go to work early the next morning.

  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.