Magnificent Desolation (12 page)

How could I have gone almost overnight from being on top of the world to feeling useless, worthless, and washed up? I wanted to resume my duties, but there were no duties to resume. There was no goal, no sense of calling, no project worth pouring myself into. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I had started drinking more. Life seemed to have lost its luster. On some days I couldn’t even find a reason to get out of bed. So I didn’t. Something was wrong; something within me was beginning to crack. I only hoped that I could figure it out before I broke down completely.

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N
ASA
CONTINUED TO KEEP ME BUSY GIVING SPEECHES AND
making other public appearances, and I always enjoyed challenging people to think beyond the stars, to reach for their own “moon” or “outer space,” whatever that might imply for them. Yet for me personally, by the autumn of 1970, there was a growing frustration and anxiousness at the center of my being that I could not resolve. I had hoped to continue working at NASA on future space developments, but came to realize that I would never be able to go back to “business as usual” in light of my moonwalker status. Public interest in the space program was waning, the Apollo program was ending, and NASA would soon be retreating for a period before refocusing on space activities confined to orbiting the Earth. Simply put, I was without a career, and I was feeling the aftereffects of it all. As always, I was standing by, ready for liftoff, but I needed to realign my direction and find a new runway.

I even made an oblique mention of my concerns in a speech at a conference of aerospace doctors in St. Louis. I reminded them that a huge amount of time, money, and effort had been applied to determining the effects of space travel on the human body. All of the astronauts, and perhaps especially Neil, Mike, and me, were closely monitored medically after journeys into space. (To this day, forty years later, I still
go back to NASA every year for a medical checkup.) Surprisingly, however, nobody from NASA and no medical or scientific study group has ever analyzed the emotional aftereffects of space travel, especially the effects of instant celebrity and the pressures of a public life on those who were pilots or scientists.

Becoming a public personality may sound like a laudable and rewarding goal to some people, and today I actually enjoy my public life for the most part. But at the time, the impact of Apollo 11 and the instant celebrity brought to us by the lunar landing took a toll on everyone in my immediate family. Besides my own frustrations and the increased tension between Joan and me, we could see the residual effects trickling down in the lives of all three of our children. Jan and Andy, although proud of their daddy, preferred their anonymity. Mike, our oldest, became obstinate and argumentative in his teens, displaying much more than the usual know-it-all attitude many teenagers adopt. Joan and I realized that he was crying out for love and attention, and with my being away so much, that created even more stress in our home. When Mike began developing chronic severe headaches, we sought medical help.

After examining Mike, the doctor quietly informed Joan that the attention Mike needed might be better received from a psychologist. Dr. Robert Prall began working with Mike and Joan, and at the doctor’s suggestion, I started attending the weekly sessions as well. Within six months, Mike’s issues—many of which stemmed from five years of age, when he had been separated from Joan and me for months, as we both were hospitalized with hepatitis—were fairly well resolved. But Joan and I continued to meet with Dr. Prall in an effort to grapple with some of our own problems. Eventually, Dr. Prall focused on me as the primary source of the problems. I was becoming increasingly moody and dismissive of other people, including Joan and the kids. A volcano was seething within me, below the surface of my life, the pressure building more with each passing week. The only relief I found was in another shot of Scotch—and then another.

When NASA asked me to consider an opportunity that would require
my visiting Sweden, the land of my ancestors, I thought that perhaps turning it into a family vacation might help. We spent fourteen days in Sweden, and while there I received the Swedish Order of the Vasa, an honor presented to Swedish-Americans who had accomplished a great achievement. I guess going to the moon qualified. And in some ways this trip made up for the fact that we did not visit Sweden during the worldwide Apollo 11 goodwill tour.

Because it was a technology-oriented trip rather than a diplomatic one, I spent some time speaking at various engineering and aeronautical functions, but I tried to focus on my family more than on official groups. And to some extent we were successful. Our youngest son, Andy, and I went scuba diving down to a sunken ship in the harbor; Mike found a new pet, a borzoi puppy that we ended up shipping back to Houston; and Jan, Joan, and I enjoyed getting to know more about my relatives in Värmland, where my grandfather had been born.

While in Sweden, I had been scheduled by the U.S. State Department to meet with King Gustaf VI, but just prior to leaving, I received a notice that the king had to cancel. The suggested date for rescheduling was five days after we planned to leave the country. That was a bit of a disappointment, but not an inconvenience. Then we received word from the State Department that the meeting with the king was not optional. Our trip was extended by five days, and King Gustaf VI and I had a pleasant visit. But it bothered me that I was once again being moved around as little more than a pawn in a diplomatic chess game, with little regard for how it inconvenienced my family, our hosts, or me.

Moreover, the NASA protocol officer who had accompanied us to Sweden and was supposed to facilitate our trip proved inefficient and a constant source of irritation. It may have been unfair to do so, but I took his inattention and insolence as a reflection of NASA’s attitude toward me. Had I not given them eight years of my life? Could they not find someone better than this fellow to help take care of my family and me on a foreign trip? I felt deserted. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.

Back home in Houston, as I reviewed our trip, I slowly slid into the doldrums. I found myself spending most of the day or evening staring at the television set. Joan and the children didn’t know what to do for me, and I passed off my blues as fatigue from our trip. Nobody mentioned that the family had been just as tired as I had been, and they were functioning just fine.

During my periods of melancholy, I again pondered my future. What was I going to do? I was barely forty years of age; I couldn’t continue this way. I pulled myself together and decided to go to Washington, D.C., to meet with the Air Force chief of staff to consider my possible return to the Air Force. Although I had several business interests, nothing challenged me enough to want to pour myself into a career, so resuming my status as a colonel in the Air Force seemed a viable option.

Meanwhile, NASA was moving ahead with preliminary plans for developing the space shuttle program that would follow the Apollo program. When NASA asked me to be part of a committee to assess the design of the shuttle, I willingly took on the task. Perhaps there still was a way to continue my activities at NASA, and work on concepts that would contribute to the future of manned space exploration. So I dived into the project. We were looking at the features of a fully reusable spacecraft system in which
both
the shuttle and the booster rockets that had separated after liftoff would fly back to Earth for a runway landing. These rocket boosters used liquid propellant, as we had on the Saturn V, in keeping with Wernher von Braun’s premise that we should never launch human beings on boosters with solid propellant because of the associated hazards. But squabbles arose between NASA’s flight centers as to whether the rocket boosters should be manned or unmanned. I probably surprised a lot of people by supporting the unmanned booster, and a number of the committee members agreed. After all our discussions, however, our plans were tabled. Ultimately, due to funding restrictions, NASA would opt for the cheap fix over the costly runway-landing reusable liquid boosters, and use solid propellant boosters for the shuttle that are then dropped in the ocean to be recovered and refurbished for further flights.

Ordinarily such debate wouldn’t have affected me greatly; since my days at MIT, I was accustomed to the give-and-take of rocket science. But for some reason the futility of these discussions sent me back into a negative mindset again. Even today it is one of the few regrets I have from my time at NASA, since our space program would be much different if we had stuck to liquid rocket boosters, rather than adopting the solid rockets that have caused so many problems with the shuttle, including the first shuttle mishap, the
Challenger
explosion in 1986.

Fortunately for me, in October 1970, NASA gave me an assignment that I thought I might enjoy. Two Russian cosmonauts, Andrian Nikolayev and Vitaly Sevastyanov, were coming to the United States, and NASA wanted me to join them on their tour of American space centers. This was years before the Cold War had ended or the Berlin Wall had been torn down, so to have two cosmonauts poking around in U.S. space centers was not like taking them on a trip to Disneyland. Nevertheless, America has always operated its space program out in the open, with success or failure readily seen by the world. Thanks to our tremendous technological expertise, and a little luck, we have had far more successes than failures. The Soviets conducted their space program as clandestinely as possible, which always gave rise to questions about their intentions, whether they viewed space exploration as something to help mankind or merely as another weapons-delivery system in their already dangerous arsenal. Unquestionably, part of what motivated President Kennedy and succeeding presidents to pursue the “space race” was to make sure that the Soviet Union did not gain a military or technological advantage over us.

Yet, despite our suspicions, the American astronauts and the Soviet cosmonauts shared an explorer’s mentality. We wanted to know what the other side knew. I felt great appreciation for what the Russians had accomplished, and we actually got along quite well, although we had to communicate through an interpreter. We invited the Soviets to view our entire operation, including our launch facilities at Cape Kennedy, but the Soviets refused, knowing that if they accepted a tour of our launch facilities, it would be almost obligatory to invite Americans to
tour their launch center in Tyuratam, and the Soviets were not open to doing that.

We did tour the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as well as the Space Center in Houston, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and many American tourist sites. We consumed a great deal of vodka, and the trip was considered a huge step forward in space cooperation on both sides. Although when the Soviet cosmonauts were asked in a press conference before their departure why they hadn’t visited the Kennedy Space Center, they replied with a straight face through an interpreter that they hadn’t been invited to visit the Cape. So much for our new openness!

Nevertheless, with the acknowledged success in my favor, I returned to Washington, D.C., and met with Secretary of the Air Force Robert Seamans, and several top generals. Secretary Seamans was a friend of my father’s from MIT, and I felt I had an ally in him for making my return to the Air Force more amenable.

Two jobs in the upper echelons of the Air Force held potential: one was the commandant of the Air Force Academy in Colorado. This position especially appealed to me since I felt that I could be a positive role model for the cadets at the Academy. Secretary Seamans seemed to indicate that he thought this position might be a good fit for me, too.

The second interesting possibility was that of commandant of the USAF Test Pilot School, to be renamed the Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. When I’d first applied at NASA to become an astronaut, I was turned down because I had not attended a test pilot school, so the possibility of heading up such a facility was intriguing. Either of those positions would most likely lead to a promotion to brigadier general, and that piqued my interest as well. I indicated my desire to return to the Air Force and resume my career as an officer, although I asked that a move not be made until the end of our children’s school year in June 1971. The Air Force brass was delighted.

When the Air Force extended its offer to me, however, the only position
on the table was commandant of the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The position at the Air Force Academy was not even an option. I learned later that the Academy’s new commandant would be the son of the legendary Air Force general Hoyt Vandenberg. Although the job at Edwards would be challenging, and they were training pilots for the future shuttle flights, my spirits sank once again. I had allowed my heart to get set on the Air Force Academy, and Joan was already mentally packing and planning our move.

Nevertheless, on Tuesday morning, January 14, 1971, I was back in Washington, D.C., to announce officially that I was leaving NASA and the space program in June, and would be returning to the Air Force to serve as the commandant of the test pilot school at Edwards. I tried to put the best light on my new responsibilities, noting that heading up the school would be a new learning experience for me.

Although I could not have imagined it at the time, I was about to learn more than I ever wanted to know.