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

the Mercury-Redstone lifted off. There was even some incredible deceptive plan about bringing all three of the astronauts to the pad dressed to fly, with hoods over their heads. That way not even the launch team would know who had climbed in the Mercury spacecraft to be first.
    I ran into Gilruth in the Holiday Inn. I told him I had heard about this deception, and I asked him a simple question: “Why?”
    He stared back and finally muttered, “It’s my business.”
    I jumped in his face. “No, it is not your business,” I said bluntly. “It’s the American taxpayer’s business. NASA is a civilian, open agency. You want secrecy, join the CIA.”
    He was not pleased. He walked away without another word.
    No one in the know cared for Gilruth’s cover-up, but it was a minor irritation compared with the fact the chimpanzee was flying first. All that animal would do was bang levers and push buttons and get jolted with electricity if he didn’t perform as trained. The astronauts protested, but the medical folks insisted. There were too many unknowns about space flight to risk a human life without first sending up a chimp as a possible sacrifice. The fact that a chimpanzee is a highly intelligent anthropoid, an animal closely related to and resembling a human, didn’t matter. Killing one’s animal cousin appeared to be acceptable.
    Of the seven candidates that came to the Cape for final flight training, a chimp named Chang was considered to be prime, and Elvis was the backup. The only problem was that Elvis was a female, so named because of her long sideburns. In order to cause no offense, the names had to be changed. Chang became Ham and Elvis was christened Patti. Ham stood for “Holloman Aero Med,” his home in New Mexico, and (known to just a very few) Patti stood for “Patrice Lumumba,” the African tyrant, because the chimps came from the French Cameroon.
    NASA selected the newly crowned Ham, and on January 31, 1961, the astronauts gathered to watch the launch. The flight turned out to be a bit more interesting. Redstone had a “hot engine.” It burned all of its fuel five seconds early. The control system sensed that something waswrong. Instantly it ignited the escape tower hooked to the Mercury capsule, and it blew the spacecraft away. This sent Ham higher, faster, and farther. The chimpanaut landed 122 miles beyond his target and came down hard, hitting the ocean with a teeth-jarring stop.

    Space chimp Ham, looking worn from his near drowning and harrowing suborbital flight, is greeted by the captain of his recovery ship. (NASA) .
    The rough splashdown was followed with the stomach-churning motion of six-foot waves, and by the time the recovery choppers showed up, Ham’s capsule was on its side. More than eight hundred pounds of water had rolled in and they had a sputtering, choking, almost-drowned chimp on their hands.
     
    A lan Shepard reviewed Ham’s flight. He knew he could have survived it, but he also knew his own flight was in deep trouble. If only the damn chimp ride had been on the money, then he would have been off the launch pad in March.
    But Ham’s flight wasn’t on the money, it was a disaster, and Dr. von Braun was worried. He had the responsibility for the astronauts’ lives. “We require another unmanned flight,” he said soberly.
    Working with the engineers, Shepard confirmed that the problem with Ham’s Redstone had been nothing more than a minor electrical relay. The fix was quick and Shepard said, “Even von Braun should be satisfied with what we found!”
    Shepard was wrong. Dr. von Braun stood fast. “Another test flight.”
    The March 24 repeat Redstone launch was perfect. Shepard could have killed. He knew he should have been on that flight. America would now have the first astronaut in space.
    Over drinks, he told me, “We had them, Barbree. We had the Russians by the gonads and we gave it away.”
    “Maybe not,” I said, trying to resurrect hope. “You could still