Falling to Earth

honored.

The hearings could have been worse. I’d been prepared to be taken out and shot. The committee seemed much more annoyed with our bosses than with Dave, Jim, and me. And with the hearings over, we parted ways as a crew. We’d planned on being in the history books—and we’d succeeded—but we’d never imagined our partnership would end on this low note.

I flew back to Houston that evening. Dee O’Hara was at Ellington Field to meet me, along with Beth Williams and her daughters. They were the only people in town still talking to me. I felt emotionally drained and seeing them there cheered me up. We chatted over hamburgers and Cokes before I climbed back into a T-38. I was heading to California to prepare for my move there.

By mid-September, NASA released its last official statement on the covers issue. In addition to repeating statements about our poor judgment, it added that “some of the management communication lines within NASA were weak, and that certain administrative procedures were deficient.”

In the meantime, NASA’s investigators discovered that twenty astronauts had previously signed postal items for Sieger in exchange for money. Kraft briefly suspended a number of them, although some had already left NASA service. Each astronaut had signed at least five hundred stamp blocks; some had signed more. Many had given the money directly to charity, but not all. One guy lost a spaceflight assignment because of it. But no one was fired.

Astronauts on prior flights gathered up their flown covers and put them in safety deposit boxes for a couple of decades. Would you like to know how many covers flew on missions prior to Apollo 15? I doubt you ever will. Once Deke returned all the PPK lists, the trail went cold for the government investigators.

The brief public glimpse into Al and Deke’s management techniques was also closing. By November, that door was firmly shut. Alan Shepard, in his role as the chief of the astronaut office, wrote a public letter to an American stamp-collecting group who felt they should have been included in selecting postal items carried to the moon. “I cannot believe that your group would deny the astronauts the privilege of carrying whatever items they desire, including philatelic material, for their personal, non-commercial use,” he wrote. In short, none of your damn business.

By then, however, I was gone. Moving out of Houston was a bittersweet experience. I had little to hold me there anymore. My apartment was rented. I’d even traded in my white Corvette that symbolized our Apollo 15 crew’s teamwork and leased a new model. I hooked a trailer on the back and loaded up my possessions.

Only two things made me want to stay: my daughters and a relationship.

Merrill and Alison were very upset I had to leave town. They lived only half a block from me, and with the flight over I’d been able to spend more time with them at last. They were old enough to understand a lot of the covers scandal, but they didn’t care about that. They didn’t care too much about flying to the moon either— everyone’s dad at school did that, or worked with someone who did. They did care that I had to move to California. They were heartbroken, and so was I. But Houston wanted me gone.

I’d fallen in love again, too. I hoped this lady would want to come with me to California. But her life was in Houston, so she didn’t. With much regret, we ended the relationship. It was another blow to add to my deep sense of failure.

Heading down the street to leave my neighborhood, I had to pass the space center. They didn’t want me anymore. No one had said good-bye. It was as if I were a ghost. Some of them, like Deke, never spoke to me again.

I’d arrived in Houston six years earlier feeling I’d gained the greatest job in the world. I left wondering if life were still worth living.

CHAPTER 13 REDEMPTION

To the outside world, it appeared that NASA had happily transferred me. But when I arrived at Ames Research Center, it seemed evident that I still had to go through a period of penance for daring to stay with the agency. Hans Mark assigned me to a tiny office at the very end of an enormous hangar, with crumbling paint, smudged walls and one little window that looked out on to the hangar floor. It hadn’t been used, or cleaned, in years. No one knew I was there. My boss in the airborne science division insisted that I give him everything I wrote for him to sign and pass up the chain of command. I sat in that office day after day and felt more alone than ever.

The center announced that they would host a meeting on space shuttle simulation work, and “an astronaut” would be in attendance. Unlike at Houston, this wasn’t an everyday occurrence, and a number of Ames workers grew excited. It turned out to be Karl Henize, who had yet to fly in space. It felt peculiar to see Karl lauded as the astronaut. No one at Ames seemed to think of me that way.

But the hangar was a good place for Hans to bury me while all the media interest about the covers ebbed. And the work was really interesting. It was a combination of the science experiments I had come to enjoy on Apollo 15 and rewarding flying time in a variety of aircraft. The airborne science group had a couple of Lear jets and an enormous Douglas DC-8. But they were dwarfed by the C-141 Starlifter. This specially modified airplane had a huge infrared telescope built in, and our research pilots flew it to the highest possible altitude, rolled up an opening on the side, and wearing oxygen masks, helped astronomers with their discoveries. We modified a Lear jet to do the same, installing a smaller infrared camera in the side. My workday often began at two in the morning, but the night flying was beautiful.

In December 1972 I did sneak back to the Cape for the launch of Apollo 17, the very last manned mission to the moon. It was a bittersweet moment. If it hadn’t been for those covers, I would have been strapping the crew into the spacecraft. Instead, no longer an astronaut, I watched as just another spectator. I went to a couple of the parties in Cocoa Beach, and Deke Slayton was there, but I didn’t try to speak to him. I felt a little awkward around him.

After about a year of hiding me in the deepest bowels of NASA, Hans promoted me. He quietly moved me over to an administration building and put me in charge of the futures forecasting division. Hans gave me forty talented people to manage, each of whom could look at cutting-edge science and engineering developments and report on how they might fit into NASA’s future plans. It was exciting work. Similar forecasting groups had tried to work in Washington, D.C., but they had found too much political pressure there to make objective reports. Out in California, away from the spotlight, technologies were much easier to assess fairly.

Hans was friendly, supportive, and seemed impressed with my work. After a couple of years, he put me in charge of the entire airborne sciences group. In addition to the astronomy work, we flew the Lear jets in zero-G parabolas to perform biological measurements. It felt nice to be weightless again. I also had three Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance airplanes. The U-2 had formerly been used as a spy plane to overfly the Soviet Union. We flew ours over agricultural areas instead. NASA used satellites to examine land use and gather crucial information about global food supplies. We proved that U-2s could provide information that was both clearer and cheaper.

Ames was a fascinating place—full of smart people who did impressive work, from cutting-edge flying to searching for evidence of alien life. But I was always curious about what was taking place in Houston. Dee O’Hara kept me in the loop. She never judged me or abandoned me. And a couple of years after I left, she was also growing restless. With the moon landings over there was little to do in Houston, she told me. The space shuttle was delayed; it would be years before it flew. Why not join me at Ames, I suggested? There was plenty going on there in the field of life sciences, her specialty. I helped set up an interview with our medical operations team, and they loved her.

I flew to Houston and drove Dee and her belongings—including her dog—out to California. It was the middle of the energy crisis, so we drove as long as we could, then waited in long lines at the gas stations until we could scrounge more fuel. It was a fun adventure, and we eventually made it to Ames. Dee has never left. She still works