“I’M GOING TO HAVE MY MOST EXPERIENCED MEN DOWN THERE WITH ME,” SAID COMDR. SCHMIDT. “SURE, IT’D BE GREAT TO BE TOPSIDE AND SEE THE BIG SHOW.
“BUT THE ENGINE ROOM GETS PAID FOR RUNNING THE SHIP. IT’S A THRILL FOR US TO HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO PLAY A VITAL ROLE IN THE RECOVERY OF THE FIRST MEN ON THE MOON.
“THOSE THREE GUYS WILL BE UP THERE BUSTING THEIR REARS TO DO A GOOD JOB. THE LEAST WE CAN DO IS RECIPROCATE IN KIND. THEY’RE DOING THEIR JOB. WE CAN DO OURS.”
IT’S A CASE OF MISSING BEING AN EYEWITNESS TO THE RETURN OF THE FIRST MEN FROM THE MOON BY BEING THE CREAM OF THE CROP IN THE ENGINE ROOM.…
DURING THE RECOVERY EXERCISE THAT BEGAN AT 2 A.M. MONDAY, SQUALLS, WIND AND HIGH SEAS CAUSED A DELAY IN RECOVERING A REPLICA OF THE COMMAND MODULE.
SHARKS CAUSED A BRIEF SCARE AS SWIMMERS SCRAMBLED BACK ONTO THEIR RAFT UNTIL THE SHARKS DISAPPEARED.
BUT THERE WAS NO SWEAT ABOUT THE TIME FACTOR IN RECOVERING THE MODULE. “WE ARE IN NO HORSE RACE OUT HERE,” SAID DR. DONALD STULLKEN, HEAD OF THE NASA SPACE RECOVERY TEAM, WHO DESCRIBED THE RUN-THROUGH AS A SUCCESS.
THE SHIP’S TV, “HORNET TELEVISION CHANNEL 3,” FAR OUT OF RANGE FROM COMMERCIAL STATIONS, FEATURES NIGHTLY MOVIES, “LOCAL” TALENT AND SPECIAL MESSAGES SUCH AS THE ONE FROM THE CAPTAIN.
THERE’S ALSO A RADIO STATION STAFFED WITH HORNET DISC JOCKEYS; A SHIP’S NEWSPAPER, “THE STRAIGHT SKINNY” (NAVY JARGON FOR “GENUINE TRUTH”) EDITED BY JOURNALIST 2ND CLASS ROBERT REED, 24, OF YUBA CITY, CALIF.
MANY OF THE CREW HAVE THEIR OWN PERSONAL RECORD PLAYERS FOR ENTERTAINMENT, EVEN PERSONAL POPCORN POPPERS.
POPCORN IS ALSO A POPULAR ITEM AT 5 CENTS A BAG AT THE GEEDUNK (SODA POP) STAND.
A SMOKE SHOP FEATURES CIGARETTES AT 11 CENTS A PACK. THERE’S A CANDY STORE, CLOTHING STORE AND A SMALL-SIZED DEPARTMENT STORE. THERE’S EVEN AN ESCALATOR THAT RUNS FROM THE HANGAR DECK TO THE FLIGHT DECK.
THE SHIP HAS A DIAL TELEPHONE SYSTEM BOASTING MORE THAN 1,000 PHONES—A TELEPHONE FOR EVERY OTHER MAN ON SHIP’S COMPANY.
JOGGERS RUN AROUND THE FLIGHT DECK WHEN AIR OPERATIONS ARE SECURED. VOLLEYBALL AND BASKETBALL ARE PLAYED ON THE HANGAR DECK.
FOR THE BULL’S-EYE IN THE PACIFIC THIS TIME, THE ASTRONAUTS WILL HAVE A FLOATING CITY WAITING TO GREET THEM ON THEIR JOURNEY BACK TO EARTH. END OF MESSAGE SENT 1734/JC
ABOARD THE HORNET—PLANNING A FLIGHT TO THE MOON SOON? IF SO, BETTER GET YOUR RESERVATIONS IN AT THE EARLIEST FOR HELICOPTER 66.
NOT THAT YOU’D BE FLYING TO THE MOON IN “OLD 66.”
SIXTY-SIX IS THE “CHOPPER” THAT PLUCKED ASTRONAUTS FROM THE SEA FOLLOWING THE LAST TWO MOON SHOTS AND WILL DO THE JOB JULY 24 WHEN APOLLO 11 SPLASHES DOWN IN THE PACIFIC.…
SIXTY-SIX FLIES SEA RESCUES BACK IN CALIFORNIA AND KEEPS IN SHAPE FOR HER PRIME MISSION TO SEEK OUT AND DESTROY, IF EVER NECESSARY, ENEMY SUBMARINES.…
“OLD 66” IS THE PROPERTY OF HELICOPTER ANTISUBMARINE SQUADRON FOUR—A BUNCH OF FLYBOYS THAT CALL THEMSELVES THE BLACK KNIGHTS.…
WHEN YOU WATCH THE BIGGEST TV SHOW IN HISTORY NEXT THURSDAY, YOU’LL SEE “OLD 66” BIG AS LIFE HOVERING OVER THE SPACESHIP AFTER SPLASHDOWN.
THEN YOU’LL SEE THE ASTRONAUTS HOISTED UP INSIDE “OLD 66” IN A BILLY PUGH RESCUE NET. FINALLY CAMERAS WILL PICK UP THE CHOPPER AS SHE FLIES THE ASTRONAUTS TO THE HORNET’S FLIGHT DECK AND DISAPPEARS ON AN ELEVATOR TO THE HANGAR DECK.
WHO KNOWS, “OLD 66” MAY GET AN EMMY FOR HER PERFORMANCE.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
FROM RALPH DIGHTON ABOARD THE USS HORNET
THERE ARE AT LEAST SIX NOT-TOO-IMPLAUSIBLE WAYS APOLLO 11 ASTRONAUTS COULD CONTAMINATE EARTH WITH LUNAR MATERIAL—AND SOME ENVISION SITUATION AS DRAMATIC AS A MOVIE SCRIPT.
ANY ONE OF THEM COULD CONCEIVABLY TEAR HOLE IN NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION’S QUARANTINE PROCEDURES, MOST OF WHICH ASSUME ASTRONAUTS BE PICKED UP BY THIS CARRIER, THE PRIMARY RECOVERY SHIP.
SUPPOSE EMERGENCY IN FLIGHT FORCED COMMAND MODULE TO RETURN TO EARTH AT A POINT FAR FROM RECOVERY FORCES IN PACIFIC OR ATLANTIC. RESCUE THEN BE UP TO NEAREST VESSELS OR “SHIPS OF OPPORTUNITY” AS NASA CALLS THEM.
CAPTAIN OF SUCH A SHIP BE FACED WITH SOUL-SHAKING DILEMMA. EVEN IF HE COULD REACH SPACECRAFT IN TIME, WOULD HE DARE BRING ASTRONAUTS ABOARD?
WOULD ASTRONAUTS ALLOW HIM TO DO IT?
RECOVERY SHIPS CARRY LARGE QUANTITIES OF GERM-KILLING SOLUTIONS WITH WHICH ASTRONAUTS AND SPACESHIP ARE SCRUBBED. THEY HAVE DOCTORS AND TECHNICIANS THOROUGHLY TRAINED IN DECONTAMINATION PROCEDURES.
A “SHIP OF OPPORTUNITY” PROBABLY WOULD NOT. TRAINED MEN AND QUANTITIES OF DISINFECTANT COULD BE AIR-DROPPED, BUT WOULD TAKE HOURS.
WHAT IF FLIGHT-ABORTING EMERGENCY WERE DISABILITY OF AN ASTRONAUT—AN ILLNESS OR INJURY REQUIRING IMMEDIATE ATTENTION?
– “THAT WOULD BE ROUGH,” DR. WILLIAM CARPENTIER, NASA PHYSICIAN WHO WILL BE ISOLATED WITH ASTRONAUTS DURING 21-DAY QUARANTINE AFTER RETURN FROM MOON, SAID FRIDAY IN INTERVIEW. “A LOT OF THOUGHT WOULD HAVE TO GO INTO SUCH A DECISION, BUT I’D SAY THE CAPTAIN WOULD HAVE TO TREAT THE ASTRONAUTS LIKE CARRIERS OF AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND KEEP THEM IN QUARANTINE UNTIL HELP ARRIVED.”
WUI007 NASA 007 PRESS PD FROM WUI PRESS CENTER ABOARD USS HORNET 13
COOK-UPI
ABOARD USS HORNET—A NASA OFFICIAL SAID SUNDAY IT WAS HIGHLY UNLIKELY THERE COULD BE A BREACH OF THE QUARANTINE PROCEDURES ON THE HORNET FOR THE APOLLO 11 ASTRONAUTS—AND THAT IF IT OCCURRED WHILE PRESIDENT NIXON WAS ABOARD HE PROBABLY WOULD BE OUT OF JEOPARDY ANYWAY.…
“HE [THE PRESIDENT] IS ALWAYS SEPARATED ADEQUATELY SO WE COULD GET HIM COMPLETELY OUT OF JEOPARDY,” STULLKEN SAID. “I DON’T EVEN SEE WHY WE HAVE TO DISCUSS THIS THING,” HE SAID, “IT’S ONE OF THOSE REMOTE POSSIBILITIES. WE MIGHT JUST AS WELL WORRY ABOUT GETTING A TSUNAMI [TIDAL WAVE] DOWN HERE.”
III
There in the fever of summer, his children restive at his side, Aquarius watched Nixon chat through a microphone while the astronauts smiled at him from the rear window of their new trailer (called the Mobile Quarantine Facility) on board the Hornet. Dressed in dark-green biological isolation garments, they looked rested and pleased. Nixon was fair in mood and genial indeed.
NIXON: Neil, Buzz, and Mike. I want you to know that I think I’m the luckiest man in the world. And I say this not only because I have the honor to be President of the United States, but particularly because I have the privilege of speaking for so many in welcoming you back to earth. I could tell you about the messages we received in Washington. Over one hundred foreign governments, emperors and presidents and prime ministers and kings, have sent the most warm messages that we have ever received. They represent over two billion people on this earth, all of them who have had the opportunity through television to see what you have done.… I called the three of, in my view, three of the greatest ladies and most courageous ladies in the whole world today, your wives. And from Jan and Joan and Pat, I bring their love and their congratulations. We think that it is just wonderful that they could have participated at least through television in this return; we’re only sorry they couldn’t be here. And also, I’ve got to let you in on a little secret—I made a date with them. (Laughter). I invited them to dinner on the thirteenth of August, right after you come out of quarantine. It will be a state dinner held in Los Angeles. The governors of all the fifty states will be there, the ambassadors, others from around the world and in America. And they told me that you would come too. And all I want to know—will you come? We want to honor you then.
ARMSTRONG: We’ll do anything you say, Mr. President. Just anything.
NIXON: One question, I think, all of us would like to ask. As we saw you bouncing around in that boat out there. I wonder if that wasn’t the hardest part of the journey. Was that—did any of you get seasick?
ARMSTRONG: No, we didn’t. And it was one of the harder parts, but it was one of the most pleasant, we can assure you.
NIXON: Yes, well, I just know that you can sense what we all sense. When you get back now—incidentally, have you been able
to follow some of the things that happened when you’ve been gone? Did you know about the All-Star game?
ARMSTRONG: Yes, sir. The Capsule Communicators have been giving us daily news stories.
COLLINS: They daily post us.
NIXON: Were you American League or National League?
ARMSTRONG: I’m a National League man.
ALDRIN: I’m nonpartisan, sir.
COLLINS: That’s right.
NIXON: There’s the politician in the group, right?
ARMSTRONG: We’re sorry you missed that game.
NIXON: Yes, well—you knew that, too.
ARMSTRONG: We hear that—
NIXON: The rain—
ARMSTRONG: The rain. Well, we haven’t been able to control the weather yet, but that’s something we can look forward to as tomorrow’s challenge.
NIXON: Right, right. Well, I can only summarize it because I don’t want to hold you now. You have so much more to do. And gee, you look great; do you feel as good as you look?
ARMSTRONG: Oh, we feel just perfectly, Mr. President …
NIXON: Well, just let me close off with this one thing. I was thinking as you know, as you came down and we knew it was a success, and it had only been eight days, just a week, a long week. But this is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation. Because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger infinitely, and also as I’m going to find on this trip around the world and as Secretary Rogers will find as he covers the other countries and Asia, as a result of what you’ve done the world’s never been closer together before. And we just thank you for that. And I only hope that all of us in government, all of us in America, that as a result of what you’ve done, we can do our job a little better. We can reach for the stars just as you have reached so far for the stars. We don’t want to hold you any longer. Anybody have a last request? How about promotions, do you think we could arrange something? (Laughter).
ARMSTRONG: We’re just pleased to be back and very honored that you were so kind as to come out here and welcome us back, and we look forward to getting out of this quarantine—
COLLINS: Great.
ARMSTRONG: —and talking without having glass between us.
NIXON: And incidentally, the speeches that you have to make at this dinner can be very short. And if you want to say fantastic or beautiful, that’s all right with us. Don’t try to think of any new adjectives; they’ve all been said. And now, I think incidentally, that all of us who—the millions that are seeing us on television now, are seeing you, would feel as I do that in a sense our prayers have been answered, and I think it would be appropriate if Chaplain Plirto, the chaplain of this ship, were to offer a prayer of thanksgiving. If he would step up now. Chaplain, thank you.
CHAPLAIN: Let us pray. Lord God, our Heavenly Father, Our minds are staggered and our spirits exultant with the magnitude and precision of this entire Apollo 11 mission. We have spent the past week in communal anxiety and hope as our astronauts sped through the glories and dangers of the heavens. As we try to understand and analyze the scope of this achievement for human life, our reason is overwhelmed with abounding gratitude and joy, even as we realize the increasing challenges of the future. This magnificent event illustrates anew what man can accomplish when purpose is firm and intent corporate. A man on the moon was promised in this decade. And though some were unconvinced, the reality is with us this morning, in the persons of astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins. We applaud their splendid exploits and we pour out our thanksgiving for their safe return to us, to their families, to all mankind. From our inmost beings, we sing humble, yet exuberant praise. May the great effort and commitment seen in this project, Apollo, inspire our lives to move similarly in other areas of need. May we the people by our enthusiasm and devotion and insight move to new landings in brotherhood, human concern and mutual respect. May our country, afire with inventive leadership and backed by a committed followership, blaze new trails into all areas of human cares. See our enthusiasm and bless our joy with dedicated purpose for the many needs at hand. Link us in friendship with people throughout the world as we strive together to better the human condition. Grant us peace beginning in our own hearts. And a mind attuned with goodwill toward our neighbor. All this we pray as our thanksgiving rings out to thee. In the name of the Lord, amen.
COLLINS: Amen.
The anthem was played. The astronauts stood at attention. It had ended. It was done. Armstrong’s face looked remarkable. Never as at this hour on television had it had so much of the shriven and scourged look of that breakfast food face which smiles in innocence at us from every billboard. A truly American saint. Of course, the Devil has power to assume a pleasing shape. Aquarius thought of that moment eight days before when Armstrong, carrying his Portable Life Support System, had passed through the fenced-off throng of passionately adoring photographers and journalists at Cape Kennedy and entered a van to drive off to the launch. Then, his head in his helmet, he had had the hard flat-eyed egocentric look of a kitten, eyes hardly cracked, who will be someday a cat. It had been a moment to suggest that in the mysteries of Armstrong’s makeup, there might be a bona-fide devil in one soul if a saint in the other—assume he was twin-souled, yes—and if Aquarius had a glimpse of him as a mystic, he could see him now again as a cat-technician who would tamper with the rain. “Haven’t been able to control the weather yet, but … tomorrow’s challenge.”
IV
He did not know if he learned any more when word came back to him of the splashdown parties. Like a true journalist he was on the phone for full sessions with his informants, and the accounts had that essential wonder which speaks of the exaggeration of the journalist overcome by the exaggeration of events. In deference to the mission it had been a quiet week in Nassau Bay until splashdown—night after night it was as if no one connected with NASA dared to get too drunk for fear of fudged responses in the morning. A few hours after splashdown, however, the parties began; they had begun in effect from the moment technicians from the Staff Support rooms began to fill the Mission Operations Control Room, and people wet cigars and waited for the astronauts to come in on the helicopter and land on the carrier, and when they did, little flags came out and were waved in everyone’s hand. The aisles jammed between the consoles with scores of personnel who now were crowding in the door.
From there, parties spread in all directions. Out through the computer-designed suburbs around the Manned Spacecraft Center spread the celebrations, and up the highway to Houston. There was a large and formal ball in Houston that night at the Marriott Hotel from seven to nine, put together by the twenty-five main contractors in the Apollo Program, North American, Grumman and General Electric to lead the rest, a huge orchestration and libation with paté de foie gras, pigs in blankets, shrimp and eggs and olives, and ice carvings on the tables of antelope, pumpkin and dolphin tails, plus two thousand guests, the cream (selected by the twenty-five corporations) of nabobs from NASA, king contractors, and bona-fide River Oaks Houston. It was a proper party, and the bar closed at nine-thirty. There were even ladies wearing red-white-and-blue Ed White scarves (autographed by every astronaut) which were sold by astronauts’ wives to make money for the “Ed White Memorial Fund.”
Word was out, however, of another party which had begun in the Nassau Bay Motor Inn, the motel off NASA Highway Number 1 with the round red velvet beds where Aquarius had stayed weeks before. There everybody was welcome—$1.50 bought barbecue beef and drinks were $1.15 if you did not bring your own. Three thousand people came not in beards and not with sideburns, rather in short-sleeve shirts with neckties, the ladies in cocktail dresses, scarce were the ladies in décolletage and miniskirts and pants suits—it was a regiment of office workers, engineers, technicians, secretaries, and people wandering in off the highway, the sun burning the pool until nightfall, then the night itself with all of young NASA-land driving into the great trough of all-out recreation, rebel yells finally tearing the Texas
air. At seven-thirty in the evening two men threw a blond into the pool. A man followed immediately. The heats of the party were on. A go-go dancer got up on the diving board and worked to the gut rhythm of a band called the Astronauts—six Blacks. The Blacks were finally at NASA. Men climbed up the diving board, went flying past the go-go girls and into the pool, beer cans followed, and broken whisky bottles, chairs and shoes and pieces of clothing, bodies thumped in with the splat of mortars, and toilet paper was slung over the bushes and the lawn. A bouncer with a fire extinguisher went prowling the corridors in the main body of the inn looking for teeny boppers who had jammed the elevator. It went on until four in the morning.
Listening to his informants, Aquarius had a pang for not being there, as if some knowledge more revelatory than the rest might have come his way, some better sense of what resided in the computer men of the windowless walls, but he did not really know that it would have mattered any more than being on the Hornet. What did it matter finally if one were anywhere but on the moon for this story? God or Devil at the helm—that was the question behind the trip, and any vulgarities or fine shows of spirit on the good carrier Hornet, any verdict decided by the detritus in the pool on the morning after, would hardly reveal the core of the event. That core was buried in the nerve ends of everyone’s life. One might as well judge the event from an armchair, for a species of apocalypse was upon us. This was, after all, repeat, the year in which a couple had fornicated on the stage and we had landed on the moon, this was the decade in which we had probed through space, and who knew which belts of protection had been voided and what precisely they had protected. A revolution was in the air which could overthrow every living establishment, an organization of society was also building which might march men daily through aisles monitored by computer probes, there to measure the individual deviations and developments of the night. That was equally on its way. We had contracted for a lunar program in 1961 and what a decade had followed! The times were loose, and no scientist alive could prove that the moon was wholly a dead body any more than they could show that death was a state of being totally dead. Teddy Kennedy’s car went off the bridge at Chappaquiddick with Mary Jo Kopechne and the hopes of the Democratic Party went with them as a proper end to a period which had begun with the suicides of Ernest Hemingway and Marilyn Monroe; the younger brother of Martin Luther King was found dead in his swimming pool the day after men walked the moon. And Provincetown was like a province of the moon in these days of a moon-crazy summer through which he was obliged to work, marriage with Pisces foundering around him, Provincetown, where Eugene O’Neill had lived in the dunes and Anna Christie’s father cursed “that ole debbil sea.” Did the seagulls call these bronze mornings of August dawn with a special fright across the long flats? He could not rid himself altogether of the thought that the moon might be a resting place for more than the hounds of the tide. Perhaps the mysterious magnetosphere had been designed to hold back all those streams of ignoble dead who did not deserve the trip, perhaps the belts of protection were now being voided in all of afterlife, and so anomalies were rising from hell—he was obliged to wonder if man had finally become a cancer in the forms of the Lord. Yet, equally, the fullness of the moon in Provincetown these nights after the landing was more radiant with lunacy than ever. What if the moon had been drawing us to her for years, what if the plastic amphitheaters of NASA were nothing less than the intimations of her call? It was obvious that if he were without compass to the designs of the Father, then of course he had no clue to the nature of the moon: she could be a disguise of Heaven or as easily the Infernal Shades. For another man, such thoughts might have been dangerous, as dangerous as for Aquarius to drive a sports car with a loose wheel down a mountain road, but it was his profession to live alone with thoughts at the very edge of his mental reach. If brooding over unanswered questions was the root of the mad, however, and sanity was the settling of dilemmas, then with how many questions could one live? He would answer that it was better to live with too many than too few. Rave on, he would. He would rave on.