Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight (6 page)

Neil Armstrong and his stubbed-wing X-15 rocket plane. (NASA)

Top pilots from military ranks welcomed the NASA recruiters. After weeks of tests that froze, roasted, shook, and isolated them in chambers so quiet their own heartbeats boomed like the loudest drum in the parade, NASA selected seven. April 9, 1959, the agency introduced them in a news conference in the nation’s capital.

They were called the Mercury Seven: Malcolm Scott Carpenter, a Navy lieutenant from the Korean War; Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr., an Air Force test pilot who flew the hottest jets at Edwards; John Herschel Glenn Jr., a Marine lieutenant colonel and fighter pilot from two wars; Virgil “Gus” Grissom, a flyer of 100 combat missions for the Air Force over Korea; Walter M. “Wally” Schirra, a Navy lieutenant commander, veteran of 90 fighter-bomber missions in Korea; carrier and test pilot Alan B. Shepard, a Navy lieutenant commander; and famed Edwards Air Force test pilot and veteran of 63 World War II combat missions over Europe and Japan, Donald K. “Deke” Slayton.

*   *   *

Four days after the Mercury Seven were announced the Armstrongs had an announcement of equal importance. Karen Anne became Janet and Neil’s second child on April 13, 1959. They spoiled her, loved her, and Neil nicknamed her Muffie. Muffie brought a world of happiness into their mountain cabin.

For the next two years Karen grew into a happy toddler demanding much of big brother Ricky’s time while their father Neil flew his X-15 higher and higher. The Mercury Seven astronauts hopped and jumped across the country, training and helping engineers develop and perfect the hardware they needed to reach orbit.

Cape Canaveral became America’s early astronauts’ favorite port. Its hard beaches were perfect for jogging, and if you were forever learning and training, where better to do it than in a warm winter sun, while those building your spaceship and rockets shivered in northern climes.

Falling in love with the Cape was not difficult. Even on the few occasions Neil’s work brought him there he found the Florida spaceport’s isolation equal to Edwards’s.

There were the Cape’s stand-alone complexes, thousands of electrical arteries, and a finely woven network of state-of-the-art computers, underground cable, and transmitters through which flashed the impulses and vital messages necessary for launching.

The astronauts loved it. They loved their beachside hideaway, and with the persistent mosquitoes, their smaller cousins the sand fleas, and other biting and crawling creatures under control, air-conditioning and tropical libations simply made the hot days and balmy nights a pilot’s paradise.

But there was this continuing gnawing question: Who would fly first?

Then the day with the answer finally arrived.

The Mercury Seven waited at their desks. It was January 19, 1961. President-elect John F. Kennedy would be sworn in the next morning. But for the moment Robert Gilruth was more important to the Mercury Seven; he ran Project Mercury. “How about hanging in after quitting time, guys?” he called out to the men. “I have something to tell you.”

John Glenn jogs on Cocoa Beach’s hard sand beach. (NASA)

There it was. He’d decided, and the astronauts were grateful Gilruth got right to the point. “What I have to say must stay with you. You can’t talk about it, not to anyone, not even to your wives.”

He hesitated only to take a breath.

“Alan Shepard will make the first suborbital Redstone flight, Gus Grissom will follow Alan, and John Glenn will be the backup for both missions.”

Six hearts sunk as the seventh raced ahead with pride.

John Glenn stepped forward and shook Shepard’s hand. The other five moved in and offered their congratulations.

But before Alan Shepard would fly, there was a chimpanzee to launch. It was necessary to convince overly cautious officials that all was ready.

*   *   *

Ten thousand miles to the east on the steppes of Kazakhstan they did not take caution to its final step.

A man was trying to sleep. For a long time he had been drifting between slumber and wakefulness. This is how it had been for hours. He fidgeted with his thoughts, of what awaited him. He tried to escape by filling his mind with sights and sounds, with pleasing memories of his father—a carpenter, a skilled craftsman who had worked long hours to build their wooden home in the village of Klushino.

Those were the welcome memories, but he could not forget the nightmares—sights and sounds of a frightened boy covering his ears and eyes to block the memories of great guns blasting, shells exploding, the ground beneath his feet shaking from the rumble of the German tanks followed by even louder sounds. Airplanes. The high-pitch squeal of bombs falling toward them, exploding, taking lives, destroying homes.

At first it was only German planes. Then others came, planes with red stars on their wings—faster planes. The fighting was now up there, between the aircraft, and their fighting grew even louder while on the ground more tanks pushed into Klushino—Russian tanks. And finally when it seemed there was nothing left to kill, the war ended. But not the sadness, not the hunger—the memories of his parents foraging for food in the fields near their home, picking here and there to find a root or a missed morsel. He knew then the only way he could escape such a life would be with wings—wings like those with the Red Star.

Slowly the hunger and worthlessness were gone and peace and dignity returned. A young Yuri A. Gagarin was a permanent fixture in school and under the study lamp until he qualified to be a flight cadet.

In 1955 he entered flight training. Two years later he was wearing the wings of a jet fighter pilot. He became an expert parachutist as well, and after serving in operational squadrons and flying special flight tests, he volunteered in 1959 for an exciting new program.

Cosmonaut!

Four days earlier Yuri had been told, “You will be the first. You will be the first to fly in space.”

It hadn’t seemed real, but it was true. His backup Gherman Titov and the doctors came in, and everything went smoothly through breakfast before final medical checks. Sensors were attached to his flesh. He donned his pressure suit and heavy helmet. Gagarin was fully protected from the loss of atmosphere. Titov helped him into the bright orange coveralls that would help helicopter recovery crews see him clearly when he parachuted onto the vast steppes.

The sun was up. It was bright. It bathed the huge rocket waiting to haul him into Earth orbit.

Yuri walked outside. It was April 12, 1961. He stopped and stood quietly for a long moment to study the enormous SS-6 booster. Then he waved and stepped into the elevator and rode it to the top of the gantry where his
Vostok 1
spacecraft awaited.

Technicians assisted him through the hatch, and once he was seated properly in his contoured couch they secured his harness and hoses and remaining connections. The cosmonaut waved a hand signaling he was ready. They closed the hatch, sealing Yuri Gagarin’s destiny.

The countdown moved normally. Technicians took care of small problems that developed time and again, and then Yuri smiled. They had reached the final minutes that would end his waiting.

He relaxed his muscles when he felt motors spinning. The gantry was moving. Tall steel arms were pulling away and the launchpad was taking on the appearance of a huge metal flower. He felt the bumps and thuds of power cables ejecting themselves from their slots, leaving the SS-6 booster to draw power from its own internal systems.

The final seconds rushed away and Yuri heard the final word of the countdown:
“Zazhiganiye!”

He needed no one to tell him his booster had ignited. He felt it. Twenty powerful main thrust chambers and a dozen vernier control engines ignited in an explosive fury of nine hundred thousand pounds of thrust—it shook him to his toes.

The mighty SS-6 rocket strained, explosive hold-down bolts fired, and the powerful booster was set free—the first human to head for Earth orbit was on his way.

It was mid-morning on the steppes of Kazakhstan. It was past midnight in a sleeping America. Only a select few at CIA listening posts heard Yuri Gagarin’s jubilant cry, “Off we go.”

Broad smiles grew into uncontrolled happiness inside the Baikonur launch control center as many whose duties were finished rushed outside to see the cosmonaut’s rocket climbing into morning brightness. On board Yuri Gagarin was fully aware that he was now traveling faster than any pilot in history. Despite his weight being increased constantly by the pull of gravity, the first human headed into space maintained steady reports until he heard and felt a sudden loud thump, then a series of bumps and bangs as the protective shroud covering his spacecraft was hurled away. Now he could see clearly through his porthole. A brilliant horizon appeared, offering only blackness above; explosive bolts holding the central core of the SS-6’s rockets fired, releasing the final stage to complete its job of hauling
Vostok 1
and Yuri into Earth orbit.

Suddenly with the SS-6’s powerful first stage no longer firing, Yuri found he could now relax somewhat on his ride into orbit. He tried looking outside, but as he began trying to twist his body into position to see out the porthole, he heard the final stage fall silent, followed by more booms and thuds, and he knew
Vostok 1
was separating from its spent rocket.

Suddenly the miracle was at hand.

A human was traveling in space. He was moving through orbit at more than 17,000 miles per hour. As soon as computers on the ground caught up, he would learn that his orbit’s perigee (its lowest point) was 112.4 miles soaring to a height of 203 miles at its apogee (its highest point).

Those on the ground listened in wonder at Yuri’s matter-of-fact reports. He wasn’t the least bit nervous, but they could not know that he was feeling like a stranger in his own body. He was not sitting up or lying down. In fact up or down no longer existed. He was suspended—no pressure from any direction on his body. He was floating, and only his harness strapping him to his contoured couch held him loosely in place. He was experiencing the magic of weightlessness—it appeared all about him in the form of papers, a pencil, his notebook, and other objects drifting, responding to the gentle tugs of air from his life-support system fans.

He caught himself drifting from his duties and he quickly turned his attention back to his schedule. He reported his instrument readings, but those on the ground were more interested in where he was.

“Tell us what it is you see comrade Gagarin?”

He smiled. “The sky is very, very dark. The Earth is bluish. You can see the atmosphere. It’s like a blanket covering all the world,” he told them, adding, “and all above it is black, dark black.

“The Earth below is mostly water,” he continued, “but I can see some land. Most of it covered with clouds, but I can see no cities.”

He thought to himself that from where he was he could see no evidence of humans ever having touched Earth. And then he raced into a sunset, into the darkest night he’d ever seen, with stars so abundant he could have never seen them all through the atmosphere. And he raced on, into the brightest sunrise he could remember, so bright he had to turn his eyes.

Suddenly he realized the passage of time. He was nearing the end of his one and only trip around Earth. He had to remind himself that he would only touch the controls if there were an emergency. He was more an observer than a pilot, but he would remain both physically relaxed and mentally vigilant as he monitored the automatic systems that were turning his
Vostok 1
around to fire its deorbit rockets.

Suddenly, he felt a kick that seemed to be sending him backward, that rammed him hard into his couch. But he wasn’t going backward. It was the deorbit rockets blazing, slowing his speed, and he smiled with the full body blow. It meant everything was working. He had become a meteor plunging through the atmosphere across Africa.
Vostok 1
’s heat shield absorbed the high heat, and though he was inside a fireball he was cool and comfortable.

Then he was through reentry. The first spacecraft carrying a human had been slowed to subsonic speed, and at 23,000 feet
Vostok 1
’s escape hatch blew away. Yuri Gagarin was looking at blue sky, a flash of white clouds as small separation rockets sent him and his contoured couch flying away from the ship that had just carried him through an orbit of Earth.