NASA, I thought Al Shepard was a real jerk.
Whatever the office politics, none of my group would fly in space for a while. First, we had to train. We spent most of our first year in classes, designed to teach us the basics of orbital mechanics, trajectories, rendezvous, docking, and other skills. The trouble was, our teachers were giving us only the practical user information about how the spacecraft and rocket parts worked. We were learning how to operate equipment, but there was no discussion of the theories or engineering behind them. As Jack Lousma said at the time, it was like reading the manual for a new car so you can learn
After about a week of study, Ed Mitchell, Charlie Duke, and I got together to talk. The three of us had been through the intense courses at Edwards, and I had even taught some of them. We agreed that we could teach these subjects better.
It was a little gutsy for three brand-new guys to track down Al Shepard and tell him, “We know more than our instructors. Let us teach these courses instead.” Yet Shepard had no objections, and we were soon leading the classes. Jack Lousma jumped in, too, and taught the physics of rocket propulsion, which had been his specialty in graduate school.
As I also got to know other astronauts from the earlier groups, I became particularly good friends with C.C. Williams. A marine corps test pilot and real top-notch guy, C.C. wasn’t a blowhard like some of the others; he just humbly did his job. I got to know him, his wife, Beth, and his daughter well, and used to borrow his truck whenever I needed to move something heavy, such as gravel, for my yard.
Mike Collins, whom I already admired from his piloting at Edwards, became my role model and my hero. He still is. Mike was not only very smart, but also aware and astute in ways that the rest of us never quite attained. I was also a little jealous that Mike had made it into the program earlier than me. I didn’t care that the earlier spacecraft were more primitive. Pilots like Mike, chosen for the third group of astronauts, flew some amazing missions.
I would have given anything to be one of the original seven astronauts, because they ruled the roost. The second group of astronauts selected by NASA, however, was even more experienced and impressive. By then, NASA was homing in more specifically on the kind of pilots they needed and brought in people like Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, and Tom Stafford, some of the best pilots I’d ever seen.
Stafford was a renowned test pilot whose exploits were part of the legends of Edwards. Aviators there, using their most impressive pilot-talk, described an incident when Stafford was making only his third flight in the YT-38A jet. He entered the air base’s traffic pattern landing sequence and was turning from downwind onto the base leg at approximately one thousand feet, which is at right angles to the runway. At that moment, the aircraft’s flap interconnect drive mechanism failed and exploded through the bottom of the fuselage. The YT-38A rolled dangerously until the wings were vertical. Stafford threw full opposite aileron control against the roll, but the jet continued to slowly roll past vertical toward an inverted position. So he immediately kicked in full top rudder and slammed on both afterburners. The aircraft skidded back to level flight about two hundred feet above the runway. He then retracted the one working flap and worked the aircraft back level for a successful high-speed landing. All of this happened in a few seconds. Damn, I thought, that was quick thinking. When I arrived at NASA, my first thought when I saw guys like Tom was, “Wow, there’s the guy who made that incredible maneuver I heard about.”
The second group of NASA astronauts flew the most, both in the Gemini program and commanding missions to the moon. They entered the line at the right time and flew as much as they wanted to. All I got to do during the Gemini program was watch a launch. NASA was wrapping up that program by the time they selected me, and the liftoff I saw was one of the last. It was also the first manned launch I had ever seen in person, and I was thrilled, thinking “Hey, there go a couple of guys I know, and, God willing, I’m going to make the same trip some day.”
I wasn’t just getting to know my fellow astronauts in the workplace; we also did fun things together on weekends. Some were activities that NASA didn’t always look kindly upon, but they had little control over our personal time. As long as we didn’t embarrass NASA, we were given the freedom to do what we wanted. I found out that two of the original seven astronauts, Gus Grissom and Gordo Cooper, were racing-car enthusiasts. They teamed up with Jim Rathmann to enter two cars in the Indianapolis 500 race, under the team name of GRC— Grissom Rathmann Cooper. After tinkering with cars so much as a teen, I was naturally intrigued by the speed and power of these race cars. I volunteered to work for the team’s pit crew.
It was fun to be back working on cars, although we did not have much luck in the competition. Our main problem: we had a driver and car that couldn’t stay on the track. The first day testing the carburetor, our driver took the car out of the pit row and drove it straight into a wall. We had to drag the car back to the pit, tear it apart, x-ray all of the parts to check for cracks and bends, repair the chassis, and put it all back together again for the next day. That process took all day and all night. The next day, that driver started the engine and drove the car right into the wall again. After that, we gave up. We had been awake for almost forty-eight hours, and enough was enough.
Most astronauts had some kind of outside interests while they were in the program, and many were in the business world. My interests never went in that direction; instead, I was engrossed with car racing. Eventually, Rathmann put together a Sports Car Club of America team. We had three Formula Vee cars, which we took to racetracks in Florida. The open-cockpit vehicles looked just like Formula One racers, but they were much smaller and powered by 1200cc Volkswagen engines. It was a fun weekend activity, and I was joined by fellow astronaut Pete Conrad.
Pete was great fun to be around; he had an endless stream of jokes and stories to tell. Somehow he managed to be the center of attention wherever he went and was always laughing about something. He was a tiny little guy, but it made no difference. He commanded attention as if he were seven feet tall. Pete was already one of the exalted few who had flown two space missions, and he ended up flying four. He flew his first with Gordo Cooper, who probably got him into racing. Together with Gus Grissom, we were the four astronauts who raced sports cars.
Like Pete, Jim Rathmann was fun: one of the world’s great practical jokers. He owned a large trailer that could transport three race cars, and we would head out to a racetrack, stay there Friday and Saturday nights, and race Saturday and Sunday. The Sports Car Club of America was a fun organization, full of great people who would all help each other. There was always a lively fireside party on Saturday nights. As it was a weekend activity, it didn’t really affect anybody when it came to work. We did, however, take a slight gamble on getting injured in a crash, but considered it a low probability.
I don’t ever recall asking NASA for permission to race cars, but I don’t think I kept it a secret either. It was just something I did when I had the free time. Everyone knew that the four of us raced, and neither Deke nor Al ever said anything to me. The feeling was that we were all big boys, and while racing was not against the rules, they expected us to be careful.
Later on, when I was assigned to a backup crew for a space mission, Deke did tell me, “Don’t do anything that will take you out. Don’t hurt yourself. When you get to a point where you think you are doing something too dangerous, then get out of it.” He was right: it was more important to stay healthy and on a crew than to have fun on weekends.
Perhaps I should have listened earlier; I finally did have an accident at a racetrack. There was a driver we used to race against all the time who also worked as an undertaker. He would come to all the events with his race car inside the back of a hearse. He had a hard time staying away from other cars on the track and had bumped or wrecked a car in each of his last three races. We all hoped we wouldn’t be the next driver he’d crash into. The morning of one race he came up to me and said, “Al, I have a feeling that today is your day.” That was an ominous thing to hear, but I decided to race anyway.
The track was an old World War II runway, which had been surfaced with a mix of asphalt and seashells. Over the years the seashells had worked loose, and they formed a loose, slippery coating on the top of the track. If you stayed on the main track it wasn’t too slippery, but toward the edges it was easy to skid. As the undertaker and
