"Live From Cape Canaveral": Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today by Jay Barbree Read Free Book Online

I’m about to tell you,” Gilruth continued, “is the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make. It is essential this decision be known to only a small group of people. We’ll make it known to the public at the appropriate time.”
    He hesitated only to take a breath.
    “Alan Shepard will make the first suborbital Redstone flight, Gus Grissom will follow Alan on the second suborbital flight, and John Glenn will be backup for both missions.”
    Six hearts sunk as the seventh raced ahead with pride.
    Alan Shepard understood the other guys’ disappointment, but they all knew from the beginning that one would go, six would watch.
    John Glenn stepped forward and shook Shepard’s hand as the other five moved in and offered their congratulations before quietly leaving the room. Shepard knew this was a time to keep his feelings inside, but as he went through the door, he permitted himself one little click of his heels.
    We reporters were kept in the dark, but within days I learned the selection committee had picked Shepard because he was judged to be the smartest. The committee selected Grissom because of his engineering skills and Glenn because he always brought his plane back no matter how badly it had been shot up.
    None of this did me any good as a reporter, for I had received the information off the record. The other astronauts knew the smart guy would be in the seat for the unknown, the engineer would be there to analyze and fix any hardware during the second flight, and the third guy would push the envelope. If he pushed it too far and they got into trouble, well, somehow Glenn would bring the ship home.
    They also knew that if Shepard’s flight came off as planned, thenall of them would have their turn. They had no fight with one another. Their struggle was to develop safe hardware and come home alive.
     
    T he Mercury Seven returned to Cape Canaveral on a mission to get rid of what the press was calling “AstroChimp.”
    As a precaution, NASA had decided to send a chimpanzee into space first. The astronauts to a man thought the chimp was unnecessary.
    “The only way for us to go,” Alan Shepard told the others, “is to stay in the faces of those making the decisions. They must understand the chimp isn’t needed and they must know we’re ready. We gotta work hard and play hard. What about it?”
    There was a chorus of, “Yeah, let’s do it.” The Mercury Seven grabbed hands, and from that day forward they worked hard, played hard, and “gott’er done.” But there still was a problem—a “stinking” problem.
    The astronauts’ crew quarters in Hangar S were smelly, military, uncomfortable, and too damn close to the chimpanzees’ colony. They spent their nights listening to the squat anthropoid apes hoot and holler and howl, and besides all this punishment, the astronauts had to step aside for one of the dung flingers to go into space first.
    The Mercury Seven took a vote and decided they might have to follow one of these anthropoids into space, but they didn’t have to live with them, and the Homo sapiens abandoned Hangar S. They took up residence in their favorite motel on Cocoa Beach.
    The Washington bean counters mumbled something about cost, but the astronauts gave them the silent finger. They felt human again and would spend hours jogging along the hard ocean sands, drinking in the fresh salt air while racing with pelicans and scattering hundreds of sandpipers.
    Each astronaut had his own room at the Holiday Inn, run by Henri Landwirth, who as a boy had been one of Hitler’s guests in a concentration camp. Somehow the Belgian-born youngster survived the horrors and made it to the United States with two shirts and a pair of trousers. His one pair of shoes held up just long enough for him to apply forAmerican citizenship, after which he settled in Florida and became an innkeeper.
    If the astronauts or anyone gave Henri or his staff trouble, he would throw them out. With his melodious Flemish