The Right Stuff (48 page)

As a matter of fact, she was correct. Scott had come through the atmosphere in good shape. The capsule began rocking violently in the dense atmosphere below 50,000 feet, and he had to release his parachute early and by hand, the automatic system being out of fuel. The capsule had overshot the target area by some 250 miles. A reconnaissance plane found him in about forty minutes, but throughout that period the impression created on television was that he might be dead. When a rescue aircraft reached Scott, they found him bobbing contentedly on a life raft beside the capsule. He was very pleased with the whole adventure. When he reached the aircraft carrier
Intrepid
, he was in terrific spirits. He talked and talked into the night. He wanted to stay up and keep talking about the grand adventure he had been through. He was really pleased about all the experiments he had been able to do, despite the overcrowded checklist he had, and about solving or at least greatly narrowing down the mystery of the "fireflies." He hadn't determined precisely what they were, but he had proved that they were produced by the spacecraft itself; they were not some extraterrestrial material, and so on… He could have gone on all night… He was content… a job well done… He felt that he had helped create one of the most important roles in astronautics : man as scientist in space…

Over the next two weeks Scott received a hero's homage. It was not on the scale of John's, which was understandable, but it was sweet enough. There were parades in the East and parades in the West. He rode in a motorcade through Boulder, his old hometown, and through Denver, which was just down the highway. It was a great day. The sun was out and it was a light fluffy Rocky Mountain day in May, and Rene was beside him, sitting up on the ridge of the seat back in the convertible, wearing white gloves, like a proper Navy wife, and smiling and looking absolutely beautiful and radiant. Well, Scott thought he had just shot the moon.

Back at the Cape, Chris Kraft was telling his colleagues: "That sonofabitch will never fly for me again."

Kraft was furious. The truth was, he had been quietly put out before… about the seven brave lads. As he saw it, Carpenter had ignored repeated warnings from capcoms all around the world about wasting fuel, and this had almost resulted in a disaster, one that might have done irreparable damage to the program. As it was, Carpenter's performance had cast doubt on the capability of the Mercury system to carry out a long flight such as Titov's seventeen orbits. And why had this catastrophe nearly occurred? Because Carpenter had insisted on comporting himself like an Omnipotent and Omniscient Mercury Astronaut. He didn't have to pay attention to suggestions and warnings from mere groundlings. He apparently believed that the
astronaut
, the passenger in the capsule, was the heart and soul of the space program. All of the resentment that the engineers had about the top-lofty status of the astronauts now crept out of its cage… at least within NASA. Outside of NASA, publicly, nothing was to change. Carpenter, like Grissom before him, was an exemplary brave lad; just a little dicey scrape at the end of the flight, that was all. Very successful flight; go ahead, let him have his medals and his receiving lines.

And now that the wound had been opened, there were those who were only too pleased to see the following line develop concerning the Carpenter flight: Carpenter had not merely wasted fuel while up there playing with the capsule's attitude controls, doing his beloved "experiments." No, he had also become…
rattled
… when he finally realized he was getting low on fuel. The evidence for this was that he forgot to turn off the manual system when he switched to fly-by-wire and thereby really blew his fuel supply. And then he…
panicked!
… That was why he couldn't line the capsule up at the right angle and that was why he couldn't fire the retro-rockets right on the button… and that was why he hit the atmosphere at such a shallow angle. He nearly skipped off it instead of going through it… he nearly skipped off into eternity… because… he
panicked
! There! We've said it! That was the worst charge that could be brought against a pilot on the great ziggurat of flying. It said that a man had lost whatever stuff he had in the most awful manner. He had funked it. It was a sin for which there was no redemption. Damned eternally! Once such a verdict had been pronounced, no judgment was too vile. Did you hear his voice on the tape just before the blackout? You could
hear
the panic! In fact, they could hear no such thing. Carpenter sounded very much the way Glenn had sounded and a good deal less excited than Grissom. But if one wanted to hear panic, especially in the words that a man had to force out after the g-forces built up, if that was what one was after… then you could hear panic. But, then, Carpenter never had the right stuff to begin with! That much was obvious. He had given up long ago. He had opted for multi-engine planes! (Now we know why!) He had only two hundred hours in jets. He was here only through a fluke of the selection process. And so forth and so on. Certain objective data had to be ignored, of course. Carpenter's pulse rate remained lower,
during the re-entry
as well as during the launch and orbital flight, than any other astronaut's, including Glenn's. It never rose above 105, even during the most critical point of the re-entry. One could argue that pulse rate was not a dependable indication of a pilot's coolness. Scott Crossfield had a chronically rapid pulse rate, and he was in the league with Yeager. Nevertheless, it was inconceivable that a man in
a state of panic
—in a
life-or-death
emergency—in a crisis that did not last for a matter of seconds but for
twenty minutes
—it was inconceivable that such a man would maintain a heart rate of less than 105 throughout. Even a pilot's heart rate could jump to more than 105 for nothing more than the fact that some cocky bastard had cut into line ahead of him at the PX. One might argue that Carpenter had mishandled the re-entry, but to accuse him of
panic
made no sense in light of the telemetered data concerning his heart rate and his respiratory rate. Therefore, the objective data would be ignored. Once it had begun, the denigration of Carpenter had to proceed at any cost.

It served many purposes at once. It made the rest of them seem like
real pilots
after all and not mere riders in a pod. A man either
had it
or he didn't… in space as in the air. As every pilot knew in his secret heart—deny it, if you wish!—it required washouts to make your own righteous stuff stand out. So was Carpenter, by implication, to be designated
the washout
? Logic no longer mattered—especially since none of this could be talked of openly in any case: publicly there were to be no flaws in the manned space program whatsoever. Sheer logic would have raised the question: why pick Carpenter and not Grissom? Grissom had
lost the capsule
and had then come back with the classic pilot's response to gross error: "I don't know what happened—the machine malfunctioned." The telemetry showed that Grissom's heart was on the edge of tachycardia at times. Just before re-entry his heart rate had reached 171 beats per minute. Even after Grissom was safe and sound on the carrier
Lake Champlain
, his heart rate was 160 beats a minute, his breathing was rapid, his skin was warm and moist; he didn't want to talk about it, he wanted to go to sleep. Here was the clinical picture of a man who had abandoned himself to panic. Then why was not Grissom designated
the washout
—if anybody cared to find one? But logic had nothing to do with it. One was in the area of magical beliefs now. In his everyday life doughty little Gus
lived
the life of the right stuff. He was a staunch bearer of the Operational banner. Here Gus's fate and Deke's fate came together. Deke had said all along: You need a proven operational test pilot up there. Gus and Deke were great pals. For three years they had flown together, hunted together, drunk together; their children had played together. They were both committed to the holy word:
operational
. Schirra was with them on this particular commitment, and Shepard threw his weight toward them, too, as did Cooper.

Deke had plenty to be thankful to Shepard for. One day Al had gotten the other boys together and said, "Listen, we've got to do something for Deke. We've got to do something to give him back his pride." Shepard's suggestion was that Deke be made a sort of chief of the astronauts, with an office and a title and official duties. They all went for the idea and took it to Gilruth, and in no time Deke had the title "Coordinator of Astronaut Activities." There may have been people at NASA who figured this would be a supernumerary make-work job for the fallen astronaut; if so, they underestimated Deke. He was a far shrewder and more determined individual than his Wisconsin tundra manner let on. The job gave him something to channel his tremendous thwarted energy into. The NASA hierarchy was still a political vacuum, and Deke set about filling it… with a vengeance, as it were. Soon Deke was a power within NASA, a man to be reckoned with, and his motivation never varied: the more powerful he became, the better his chances of reversing the decision that prevented him from flying. Justice, simple operational justice… in the name of the right stuff.

Operational;
the word had new clout now, and a corollary to the theory of the Carpenter flight began to develop. Carpenter's flight agenda had been loaded with Larry Lightbulb experiments. The scientists, lowest men in the NASA pecking order up to now, had been given their heads on this flight… and the results were there for your inspection. Carpenter had taken all this Mad Professor stuff seriously, and that was what led to his problems. He became so wrapped up in his various "observations" that he fell behind in the checklist and became rattled and then blew it. All this science nonsense could wait. Just now, in the critical operational phase of the program, the crucial period of real
flight test
, it wasn't just ding-a-ling stuff, it was dangerous. There were too many goddamned
doctors
involved in this thing, too. (Look what they did to Deke!) On top of that, they had the two psychiatrists to contend with. They were nice enough men personally, Ruff and Korchin were, but they were…
in the way
! What the hell was all this pissing into bags and hitting little circles with a pencil… after you've just hung your hide out over the edge in a space flight? They hadn't even picked up the fact that Carpenter had
panicked
. They found him exhilarated, alert, full of energy, ready to take off and do it all over again… The two men were not invited to continue with the program after the move from Langley to Houston. Thanks a lot, gentlemen, and don't let the doorknob hit you in the butt.

Here the outlook of Grissom, Slayton, and Schirra coincided with that of Kraft and Walt Williams. Kraft and Williams also felt that non-operational experiments should be kept to a minimum at this stage of the space program. From now on, whenever anyone said otherwise, one had only to roll his eyeballs and turn his palms up and say: You want another Carpenter flight?

On August 11 and 12 the mighty Integral struck again, and now there was absolutely no stopping the
operational
theory. On August 11 the Soviets launched
Vostok 3
on what at first looked as if it would be a repetition of Titov's day-long flight. But no! Exactly twenty-four hours later the Chief Designer sent up
Vostok 4
, and the two craft flew together, in tandem, within three miles of each other. Within three miles of one another in the infinity of space! The Soviets spoke of a "group flight," as if the two cosmonauts, Nikolayev and Popovich, were flying in formation. In fact, neither could change his flight path in the slightest, and their proximity was due solely to the precision with which the second
Vostok
was launched as the first came orbiting overhead—but even this seemed to be a feat of incalculable sophistication. The Genteel Beast and many congressmen seemed to be on the edge of hysteria! Entire
formations
of Soviet space warriors, hurling thunderbolts at Schenectady… Grand Forks… Oklahoma City… Once again the Chief Designer was toying with them! God knew what his next surprise would be… (It would be a big one.) Well, that settled it. No more densitometers and varicolored balloons and other White Smock accessories. (No more pilots with non-operational stuff!) Which explained the singular nature of Wally Schirra's flight on October 3.

Schirra named his capsule
Sigma 7
, and there you had it. Scott Carpenter had named his
Aurora 7
…
Aurora
… the rosy dawn… the dawn of the intergalactic age… the unknowns, the mystery of the universe… the music of the spheres… Petrarch on the mountain top… and all that. Whereas
Sigma… Sigma
was a purely engineering symbol. It stood for the summation, the solution of the problem. Unless he had come right out and named the capsule
Operational
, he couldn't have chosen a better name. For the purpose of Schirra's flight was to prove that Carpenter's need not have happened. Schirra would make six orbits—twice as many as Carpenter—and yet use half as much fuel and land right on target. Whatever did not have to do with that goal tended to be eliminated from the flight. The flight of
Sigma 7
was designed to be Armageddon… the final and decisive rout of the forces of experimental science in the manned space program. And that it was.

Schirra cut the jolly fun-loving figure so well that people sometimes failed to notice how formidable he could be. But his emphasis, after all, was on maintaining an
even
strain. His pranksterish, rib-shaking, wild-driving gotcha intervals gave him plenty of slack when the time came to wind things up tight and get tough. Every bit as much as Shepard, Wally had the instincts of an Academy man, a leader of men, the commander, the captain of the ship. He merely operated in a different fashion. He was cool; he had "the uncritical willingness to face danger," but he wasn't afraid to show his feelings when strategy seemed to dictate it. If it was going to be his show, he insisted on running it; and he was shrewd enough to recognize the political outlines of a situation. Having seen four nights from up close, Wally couldn't help but have noticed that the secret of a successful mission lay in a simplified checklist with white space between tasks. The fewer tasks you had, the better chance you had for a one hundred percent performance. Not only that, if you could control the checklist, then you could give your flight a theme, a clear-cut goal that everyone could immediately appreciate and respond to. Wally's theme for this flight was Operational Precision, which, being translated, meant conserving fuel and landing on target. Now that the operational forces were lined up shoulder to shoulder, it was possible to keep offboard most novel items that engineers or scientists had dreamed up for the flight.