Rocket Men Read online

  Having survived the inquest, NASA approached Borman with an extraordinary offer: Take temporary leave from the astronaut program to head up the team tasked with implementing design changes to the command module. He accepted on the spot. He and others worked to make the new version of the capsule the most advanced, and safest, spacecraft ever built.

  Borman could only hope there hadn’t been another tragedy as he landed his jet at Ellington Air Force Base and made his way to Slayton’s office. He suspected something unusual was afoot when he was asked to close the door behind him. Slayton addressed him without even sitting down:

  “We just got word from the CIA that the Russians are planning a lunar fly-by before the end of the year. We want to change Apollo 8 from an Earth orbital to a lunar orbital flight. A lot has to come together. And Apollo 7 has to be perfect. But if it happens, Frank, do you want to go to the Moon?”

  The idea startled Borman. Apollo 8 was meant to fly in December, just four months from now, but certainly not to the Moon. Apollo 8 was a conservative mission designed for low Earth orbit, perhaps at 125 miles altitude. It was one of several essential steps leading up to a manned lunar landing, hopefully before the end of 1969. Everything went in steps at NASA. Everything.

  But Slayton meant exactly what he said. He wanted Borman to change missions and fly to the Moon. At a distance of 240,000 miles. In just sixteen weeks. Slayton didn’t discuss the fact that the lunar module couldn’t possibly be ready by then. He didn’t discuss any of the other myriad reasons NASA couldn’t be ready to fly men to the Moon by year’s end. In fact, Slayton gave very few additional details. He didn’t even ask if Borman cared to talk things over with his wife or crew.

  Borman would have been justified in taking days, if not weeks, to consider such a proposition. And yet Slayton needed an answer, and he needed it now. Borman understood the urgency. If the Soviet Union sent men to the Moon first—even if those men didn’t land—it would score a major victory in the Space Race and deal a devastating blow in the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. The mission Slayton was proposing would be exquisitely dangerous. But it also had the power to change history. Now, suddenly, it all depended on the decision of Frank Borman and his crew.

  ON THE MORNING OF SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1957, the world awoke to headlines announcing that the Soviet Union had launched the world’s first satellite. The shiny silver ball, a little more than twice the size of a basketball, was called Sputnik, Russian for “satellite” or “fellow traveler.” It was launched by a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and orbited Earth every ninety-six minutes at altitudes between about 140 and 590 miles. Never before had human beings managed to hurl an object out of Earth’s atmosphere with such speed that it became part of the cosmic realm. It hardly seemed real. Man had made his own moon.

  At first, Americans marveled at the accomplishment, and the best part was that they could witness it for themselves. The Soviets provided radio frequencies on which Sputnik broadcast a beep every three-tenths of a second, along with the satellite’s overhead location. Anyone with a shortwave radio could listen to Sputnik. Anyone with a pair of binoculars (or good eyes) could see it, or more likely its carrier rocket, streaking overhead. Millions of Americans gathered outside or by their radios to take in this flash from the future.

  But as Monday came, America’s weekend of wonderment gave way to darker realities.

  The United States was the most technologically advanced nation in the world; twelve years earlier, it had helped end World War II in dramatic fashion when it used the nuclear bomb it developed in strikes against Japan. It should have been the first to put a satellite into orbit. Instead, on the same night that Sputnik launched, CBS aired the debut episode of Leave It to Beaver, a sitcom about a squeaky-clean family living in picket-fenced suburbia with all the modern conveniences. To many, it seemed America had been caught fat and happy—becoming Cleavers—while the Soviets had leaped ahead.

  And who were the Soviets, anyway? To most Americans, they comprised a technologically backward people living in an all-gray country with a peasant economy and prewar tractors. Yet overnight, they’d made one of history’s great scientific breakthroughs. That changed the balance of power; anyone could see it.

  “If the Russians can deliver a 184-pound ‘Moon’ into a predetermined pattern 560 miles out in space,” wrote the Chicago Daily News that Monday, “the day is not far distant when they could deliver a death-dealing warhead onto a predetermined target almost anywhere on the Earth’s surface.”

  Stories like that whipped the nation into a frenzy. The pitch increased on Tuesday when it was learned that the Soviets had detonated a newly designed hydrogen bomb, one more powerful than any they’d ever tested. Already frightened, many Americans flew into a panic.

  Five days after Sputnik’s launch, President Dwight Eisenhower, the legendary general and hero of World War II, gave a press conference in which he seemed uncharacteristically out of his depth when asked about the Soviet satellite. He spoke haltingly, sounding little like the man who, five years earlier, had said, “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.” Texas senator Lyndon Baines Johnson was more direct about the threat posed by Sputnik. Soon, he said, “the Russians will be dropping bombs on us from space, like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses.” The nuclear physicist Edward Teller, considered to be the father of the hydrogen bomb, said on television that the United States had “lost a battle more important and greater than Pearl Harbor.” His warning was echoed by other experts as Sputnik continued to orbit overhead, passing over American airspace, impervious to gravity and democracy and all the fears of the greatest nation on Earth.

  * * *

  —

  The United States and the Soviet Union had been allies during World War II, but their cooperation began to collapse after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945. The bomb was America’s effort to end the war in the Pacific Theater, but the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin saw it as more than that: To him, it was a sign of America’s intention to dominate the world. Just fourteen days after Hiroshima, Stalin issued a secret decree ordering the urgent development of Russia’s own nuclear weapon.

  The idea seemed a pipe dream. Twenty-seven million Soviet citizens had died in the war, and the nation’s industries had been decimated. Cities and villages lay in ruin. People were left homeless, and food was scarce. An atomic bomb required cutting-edge technology and the marshaling of vast resources and great scientific minds. The Soviets could hardly build a good car.

  But the Soviet Union still had the biggest army in the world. And it had proved itself able to sustain massive casualties in war. So American diplomats paid attention in 1946, when Stalin blamed World War II on capitalism and promised that the Soviet Union would overtake the West in science and technology. By now it was clear that good science made good weapons.

  This was a new kind of conflict, one that would be fought not with bodies on a battlefield, but with propaganda and threats, military buildups, and the formation of alliances—a cold war. Perhaps most important, it would be a race to see which side could harness technology to achieve things that, until now, had seemed unimaginable.

  In August 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb—three years sooner than American experts had believed possible. Memories of bodies burned at Hiroshima and piled at Auschwitz remained fresh in the American psyche. No one had to imagine what a mass annihilation looked like, or to wonder whether human beings were capable of inflicting it on each other—they remembered it all too well.

  It was around this time that Americans learned to protect themselves—or at least try to survive—during a nuclear attack. In 1952, in schools across the country, a film featuring Bert the Turtle showed children how to “duck and cov
er” when they “saw the flash.” “We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous,” the friendly narrator said over footage of children hiding under their desks. “Since it may be used against us, we must get ready for it.” By 1954, atomic bomb drills were being run throughout the country.

  Most people in the mid-1950s expected nuclear bombs to be delivered by airplanes like the B-29 Superfortress that had dropped atomic bombs on Japan, or the new B-52 Stratofortress. But these planes suffered the same vulnerability as World War I biplanes: They could be shot down by the enemy. A better delivery system was needed. And both the American and Soviet militaries knew what it was.

  The rocket.

  It had been used first in combat by the Nazis, when they fired their V-2 rockets at London and other targets in September 1944. The V-2 had a range of only two hundred miles and was too little too late to change the direction of Hitler’s war. The technology, however, was full of potential. Ten years later, both the United States and the Soviet Union were working on missiles that could traverse oceans.

  Now, one of those missiles had delivered Sputnik into orbit. America knew it had to answer, and fast, by getting its own rocket and satellite to the launchpad. A space race had begun.

  * * *

  —

  Less than a month after Sputnik, the Soviets launched another satellite, only this time it carried a passenger—a dog known to the world as Laika (the Russian word for “barker”). An eleven-pound Samoyed mix, Laika won hearts the world over as she circled the globe. But Laika was no publicity stunt; she was the first step toward sending a man into space, there was no other reason to do it. But there was every reason to try.

  A country that could fly men into space was on its way to learning to migrate them off Earth, colonize the solar system, and station soldiers in space. If putting a satellite into orbit gave a nation an advantage on Earth, the ability to populate outer space with citizens and armies gave a nation an advantage in the universe.

  And there was another reason to send human beings into space. If man could leave Earth’s atmosphere, he could reach the Moon. Forever it had hung there, beautiful and mysterious, calling to man yet always beyond his grasp. The Moon controlled tides, guided the lost, lit harvests, inspired poets and lovers, spoke to children. The nation that first sent a man to the Moon would have done more than make a giant leap in science and technology; it would have fulfilled a longing that seemed to originate not just in the mind but in the soul.

  * * *

  —

  A few days after Laika was launched, it became apparent that the Soviets hadn’t designed the satellite to return safely to Earth. Western impressions of Communist cold-heartedness only worsened as Laika waited to die.

  Embarrassed again by a Soviet satellite, the United States pushed to launch its own. On December 6, 1957, two months after Sputnik, a Vanguard rocket, carrying its grapefruit-sized satellite, counted down on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Unlike the Soviets, who conducted space operations in secret, the United States was broadcasting this launch to the entire country on live television.

  On ignition, the Vanguard’s liquid-fueled engine spat orange flames and the rocket began to rise, but just a few feet up it hesitated, tilted slightly, then sank back to the pad, incinerating in a huge explosion. About all that remained of Vanguard in the aftermath was its tiny spherical satellite, somehow thrown free from the blast and lying nearby, beeping like it had made it into orbit.

  The humiliation began even before the cinders had cooled. Media around the world called the project “Flopnik,” “Kaputnik,” and “Stayputnik,” while the Soviets took the chance to revel in America’s embarrassment, offering the Americans a helping hand through a United Nations program designed to provide technological assistance to primitive countries.

  On January 31, 1958, the United States tried again. This time, the rocket climbed straight up, its whiplash of flames lighting the midnight sky, witnesses yelling “Go, baby!” as the fire grew distant and the sounds fainter. In a few minutes a 30-pound satellite called Explorer was in orbit around Earth. This was a warning shot that announced how quickly things could change when a country believed its survival to be at stake.

  A week later, President Eisenhower, the old general, waged his own battle on behalf of the Space Race. He created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, called ARPA, an innovation center for the military where researchers pushed the boundaries of science and technology. (In the 1960s, the agency would attempt to network computers across the United States, a project that became the Internet. In 1972, the agency would add the word “Defense” to its title and be renamed DARPA.) In September 1958, Eisenhower signed into law the National Defense Education Act, which provided billions of dollars for the education of young Americans in science and related subjects. And in October, he opened a space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, known as NASA, which took on the eight thousand workers and $100 million budget of its predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Many of its employees were young scientists, engineers, and visionaries.

  In December 1958, just about a year after Sputnik had launched, NASA announced Project Mercury, a program designed to put a human being into orbit around Earth and return him and the spacecraft safely. Seven brave men were chosen for the task from a pool of military test pilots. They would be known as astronauts—“star sailors”—and would explore the oceans of space.

  * * *

  —

  America elected John Fitzgerald Kennedy president in November 1960. He’d accused Republicans of being weak on defense and Communism, and Eisenhower of allowing the United States to fall behind in production of intercontinental ballistic missiles—a so-called missile gap. According to the nation’s new president, America could not afford to be second to the Russians in anything.

  On April 12, 1961, less than three months after Kennedy’s inauguration, tracking stations controlled by American intelligence picked up the flight of a Soviet spaceship and detected something startling inside. Minutes later, the Soviet government announced that they’d put the first man into space—whom they called a cosmonaut, or “universe sailor.” And he’d already made a complete orbit around Earth.

  For the first time, a man had broken the bonds of his home planet. Yet as the twenty-seven-year-old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin whirled around the globe, few knew the extent to which the Soviets had rushed the mission, the myriad risks they’d taken, or the critical tests they’d skipped.

  Near the 108-minute flight’s end, after reentering the atmosphere, Gagarin’s spaceship began spinning uncontrollably and plummeted toward Earth. He managed to eject and parachute down, unharmed but almost two hundred miles off course. He landed in a field near the tiny village of Smelovka, east of the Volga River in southern Russia, where he was discovered by a woman and a little girl. The girl ran away, startled by the sight of this alien being who had dropped from the sky, but Gagarin waved his arms and called out, “I’m one of yours, a Soviet, don’t be afraid.” He struggled to walk in his space suit but managed to reach the girl and reveal an incredible truth—he had just come from outer space.

  In 1945, the Soviet Union had lain in ruins. Now, sixteen years later, it had put the first man into orbit around Earth. Gagarin was given a parade in Red Square, an event as big as or bigger than the one held to celebrate the end of World War II. People cried in the streets and hung pictures of the cosmonaut in their homes.

  * * *

  —

  Gagarin’s flight dealt an even bigger blow to the United States than did Sputnik. “We are behind,” Kennedy admitted at a press conference. Soviet propaganda rained down from Moscow extolling the virtues of Communism and the superiority of Soviet science and technology, and it was hard to argue with any of it—the Soviets continued to do everything first, and biggest, in space. And that meant that no matter w
hat Khrushchev claimed about wanting peace, the Soviets were building their advantage in war.

  Kennedy needed to strike back. He asked his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, to find a long-term challenge that NASA might undertake, one that would allow sufficient time for the space agency to catch up to the Soviets, but one that was so difficult, and so spectacular, it could put America ahead in space for good. Kennedy needed something epic, and he needed to announce it soon.

  Just days after Gagarin returned from his trip, a group of about fifteen hundred Cuban exiles trained and armed by the Central Intelligence Agency launched a failed invasion of Soviet-backed socialist Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy, who’d approved the mission and then withdrawn his support, was devastated by the failure, knowing the damage it would cause to his reputation and that of the United States. “All my life I’ve known better than to depend on the experts,” he told Theodore Sorensen, his adviser and speechwriter. “How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?” To Khrushchev, the answer was simple: The young American president was indecisive and weak.

  Three weeks after Gagarin journeyed around the globe, Alan Shepard flew the inaugural Mercury mission. The former Navy test pilot became the first American in space. The fifteen-minute solo flight inspired ticker tape parades, but facts couldn’t be ignored: The astronaut had simply gone up and down, while the cosmonaut had made it into orbit—a significant difference in terms of the technology required. As always, the Soviets were far ahead, and with each victory they made a statement to the world, not just about the superiority of their political system and way of life, but about the future.

  On May 25, 1961, just a month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy addressed a special joint session of Congress on “urgent national needs.” He warned that a battle was being waged around the world between freedom and tyranny, one in which achievement in space could prove decisive.