Falling to Earth

The phone call from Deke Slayton, NASA’s director of Flight Crew Operations, came in early April of 1966. Deke didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He told me straight out, if I were still interested, that he’d like me to come and work for him in Houston, starting the next month. I knew, at that moment, that my wife would never forgive me if I accepted. Nevertheless, I said yes. I was now at the top of the heap when it came to pilots. The most exclusive club of all: I was an astronaut.

CHAPTER 4 ASTRONAUT

Houston. When you think of NASA or astronauts, you probably think of Houston. But in reality the space center is well outside of town. To get there from downtown Houston, I would take the freeway southeast toward Galveston, then turn off and drive east. On that thirty-mile drive from Houston to NASA, I saw nothing but countryside, with fields full of oil wells. One of the roads that crossed my path went north to Clear Lake City, where it dead-ended. Along the way were a few businesses and restaurants, but no homes. Straight ahead were the space center, three hotels, a grocery store, and a couple of fast food places. That was all. If you make that journey today, it’s wall-to-wall congestion all the way, with strip malls and cheap restaurants. But in 1966, NASA was in the middle of nowhere. I became an astronaut only a few short years after the center opened, so the area had not had time to develop. It was the center of the universe for NASA, but pretty much nowhere for everyone else except us and some isolated ranchers and shrimpers. While we’d often go into downtown Houston, we spent much more time in the little towns close to the bayous and lakes around the space center, such as Dickinson, Kemah, and El Lago.

Those of us coming from Edwards rented rooms in a motel out by the freeway, until we got our feet on the ground. Although we were all friends and all making the same giant career leap, I can’t recall any conversations about our selection before we made the move from the desert. There were no big slaps on the back or late-night discussions. We just headed out individually to Texas. One of the guys found the motel and, after a few phone calls, the rest of us followed.

I guess I have always been this way: always a loner. Looking back now, I realize that running the farm from such an early age made me self-reliant and confident in my own abilities. This independence affected my dealings with my contemporaries, and I never grew socially close to them. I made friends with many of my fellow pilots, but we never became a band of brothers. This go-it-alone approach was a habit that had worked for me so far because it allowed me to go off in my own direction whenever I needed.

I like people. I am friendly to many, but I get close to few. And I never tried to be in a clique. In group endeavors—and NASA was always a group effort—I believed that my actions would speak for me much more than my network of friends. I watched my actions closely when at work and carried this attitude with me to Houston.

Nevertheless, I missed some guys from Edwards. Hank Hartsfield was one. A real whiz in academics and an equally gifted flyer, Hank could have been one of NASA’s brightest stars during the Apollo era. But instead, for three years, he was stuck in the air force’s MOL program, which never did fly. Eventually, he was transferred to NASA, but by then Hank had lost any chance of a moon mission. Timing, as they say, is everything. Hank had to wait until the shuttle was flying, at which time he proved to be a huge asset to the space agency. But his disappointment with MOL made me doubly thankful I didn’t take that route.

For those who did come to Houston from Edwards, our families stayed behind while we looked for permanent homes. I wanted to build a new house and contacted a developer in Nassau Bay, a pretty area across the street from the space center. At first, he drove me around and we looked at potential building sites right on the waterfront. But then he pointed to a tree with a mark on it eight feet up. That, he said, was the high-water mark from a recent hurricane. No thanks, I said, and asked to see sites two blocks from the shoreline, on higher ground. Even then, the builder had to sink concrete pillars deep into the soft clay to hold up the house.

I labored over house plans and shared my ideas with Pam. She wasn’t keen; she worried about money. How could we afford something as extravagant as a custom-built home? I knew something that she didn’t yet know, however: a perk going back to the original Mercury astronauts. Long before I came into the program, they had signed a contract with the Time-Life magazine company and Field Enterprises media group for the exclusive rights to personal stories and pictures. The reasoning was that this arrangement would keep the rest of the press from hounding astronauts and their families on their doorsteps. The original seven did very well out of that deal; the extra money from the stories allowed them to enjoy activities that they could not otherwise afford, such as boat and auto racing.

I was later told that there had been some debate within NASA and the White House about the ethics of such a deal. After all, the space program was taxpayer sponsored, and some argued that astronauts shouldn’t be paid extra for sharing their lives with the press. When Kennedy became president, he even considered canceling the contract renewal. After some candid discussions, however, the contract survived.

The discussion ended long before I joined. I was still officially in the air force, on assignment to NASA, and only received my basic military pay, which was much less than the salaries of civilian astronauts who had exactly the same job. So, in my mind, the Time-Life contract was a good deal. As I also came to realize, we were often away from home for weeks, working long hours. Whether we liked it or not, we were astronauts twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and never really off duty from our job. We more than earned that extra payment. My portion of the money was much less than what was offered in earlier years, since many more astronauts now had to share the deal. However, it was still a considerable amount.

The Time-Life deal was my first realization that the earlier astronauts had developed some interesting business arrangements. As a test pilot, I had routinely risked my life for my country. My colleagues who did not come to NASA were beginning to head to Vietnam and combat. But readers were not interested in routine heroism. They were interested in the promised moon landing and the men who might fly there. I could hardly object to the interest, however unfair. I had a beautiful house because of it.

I did hear later that NASA had also been extremely concerned about some of the other business deals the first astronauts wanted to take. There was discussion about the original seven being offered free cars and free homes in the Houston area, which some of them had wanted to accept. But the rulemakers said no. The agency also kept a close and disapproving eye on anyone offering the astronauts low-interest loans for houses.

Despite Pam’s worries about the cost of our new home, the developer went ahead and built a three-bedroom Western-style ranch house for us, with a separate garage. With white bricks and an arched front entrance, it looked very Mexican. Until the developer finished the house, we had to live in rented accommodations. It was nice when my family could finally move in. Surrounded by huge oak trees, our home was close—but not too close—to the water. In fact, after we finally sold that house, at least three other shuttle-era astronaut families lived in it.

It turned out that two other recently selected astronauts, Joe Engle and Owen Garriott, were also building homes on the same quiet cul-de-sac. I was glad to have them as neighbors. Owen ended up right next door, with Joe next to him. As the entire street was only about five hundred feet long, most of it was taken up by our three homes, facing each other in a semicircle.

My daughter Alison quickly made friends with Owen’s five-year-old son, Richard. They grew up together, and I would see him running around the neighborhood with her every day. It was, therefore, a proud but surreal moment when, more than forty years later, I watched Richard on TV, floating around inside the International Space Station. That little kid became a space traveler, too.

Finally, I was giving my family a permanent home and some security. We’d no longer move every year to a new city. But some things never changed. My job was just as dangerous and occupied all of my time. Would a new home, secure job, and extra money be enough to ease the tensions in my marriage? I didn’t know what else to do but hope, as I plunged into my new career.