Bruce brought his snake all the way back to Houston, where he donated it to the zoo. But first, he had to get it through the customs and agriculture inspection. The customs officer, not keen on dealing with a venomous creature, asked his supervisor across the room to make the inspection. Looking in his rule book, the supervisor found out that the regulations required a “visual inspection for external parasites.” Staying far on the other side of the room, he warily eyed the snake for a moment, then called out, “Looks good to me from here!” And so Bruce’s snake became a U.S. citizen.
I received my first real assignment at NASA that first year. With the Gemini program at an end by late 1966, NASA was gearing up to fly the first Apollo missions. The plan was to land on the moon by the end of the decade, and the clock was ticking. NASA would first fly a simpler version of the Apollo command module spacecraft known as Block I, before progressing to more complex missions with a more sophisticated version, Block II. The program was trying to hustle; NASA pushed ahead without waiting for Block II to be ready for all missions. I was assigned to work in Downey, just south of Los Angeles, where North American Aviation was building the Apollo command module. I was already familiar with their work; I’d been flying the airplanes they built for years.
The assignment quickly grew into something even more important. Ed Mitchell, Fred Haise, and I became the first of our group to be assigned to help with a mission. Each Apollo flight had a prime crew of three astronauts who flew the mission and a backup crew who were ready to fly if the prime crew could not. Then there was the support crew: three more astronauts assigned to help with any other jobs the prime and backup crews didn’t have time for. In November, the three of us were named as the support team for the second manned Apollo flight. It wasn’t a seat on a space mission—not yet—but it was the beginning of working into a system that could place me on a backup and then a prime crew. To get a foot in the door this early in the Apollo program meant that I must have been doing something right. I saw this posting as a sign that my bosses, especially Deke, were happy with me.
It made sense to assign a test pilot with an engineering background to this job. Even though every Apollo flight was, in a sense, a test flight, the plan wasn’t to go up into orbit and only then find out how a spacecraft performed. Instead, astronauts would fly in space the way they had been trained in simulations on the ground: the way the flight plan told them to. The procedures in each flight plan would be well defined, and created through careful engineering analysis and testing. We had to know exactly what each spacecraft would do long before we sent it up. That would be my job: as part of a team, to thoroughly test the Apollo command module while it was built.
My test pilot experience proved useful, because it gave me the right mental attitude to do the job. We were in new territory, flying a vehicle that no one had ever piloted before. However, my engineering background was even more important, because it allowed me to understand the spacecraft’s fiendishly complicated systems.
Unlike the cramped Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, the Apollo command module was a spacious Cadillac. Yet it was still pretty small for three people. If you want to get a general idea of what it was like to be inside, climb into a Volkswagen Beetle with two of your buddies, lock the doors, and don’t come out for two weeks.
The command module was just one of three spacecraft sections making up the entire Apollo assembly that would fly to the moon. Behind the command module was the service module, also manufactured by North American, which carried all of the electricity, water, oxygen, propulsion and communication equipment for the flight. It was a little like hauling a big trailer behind your car, with all the supplies you need for a long trip but don’t wish to bring back home. It also had all of the little thrusters for small maneuvers, and a big engine on the back for large maneuvers such as heading back to Earth from lunar orbit.
Then there was the lunar module, designed specifically to operate on and around the moon. It was built using the most lightweight materials possible. If you imagine a helicopter without rotor blades or a tail, balanced on a jet engine that pointed down, it will give you a general idea of this odd flying machine. The lunar module was something I would like to have flown—it would have been a kick—but it was built by a different company, Grumman, way over on the East Coast, so I didn’t have much to do with it. I never worked directly on the Block I command module either, only Block II. Before the first generation of Apollo spacecraft had even flown, I was working on the next generation.
To get to Downey and other places around the country, we flew ourselves in Northrop T-38 Talon jets. They were, in effect, our personal vehicles. Not only did they get us around much faster than commercial travel, they also kept our piloting skills sharp. We had about the same number of T-38s as astronauts; I could almost have put my name on one of them. It was the greatest transportation in the world. The agency placed a lot of trust in us. There was an urgency to what we did, so it didn’t seem unusual that we flew ourselves around the country like this. Everyone at NASA wanted us to be in the right place at the right time so that the program could keep moving. One phone call got me an airplane in an hour, ready to go. I’d drive out to the airfield, put my bag between the two seats, and head skyward.
We were a competitive group, of course, so a lot of these cross-country flights turned into races. I recall leaving Houston at the same time as the Continental nonstop flight to Los Angeles. Just for kicks I hot-rodded it to El Paso, Texas, refueled, headed back up to the best altitude as fast as I could, and beat that LA flight. To save time I had to hot-refueclass="underline" that is, pump gas with the engines still running. We weren’t supposed to do this with our airplanes, but every astronaut did it, and it saved a few precious seconds.
It was wonderful flying performed by a bunch of elite aviators. Yes, some of the astronauts made piloting mistakes here and there. But overall my colleagues were all extremely skilled, knew exactly what they were doing, what risks to take, and what not to do. Every now and then we may have pushed it a little—such as pressing on to Houston even if the weather was bad there—but we knew how to handle those conditions and were comfortable in the air.
Unless, of course, we had partied too much the night before.
Very early in my tenure at NASA, I was working at the Cape on the same night as a big Gemini postflight party. One of the Gemini astronauts had a little too much to drink, decided he could fly without a spacecraft—and prepared to jump from the third-floor balcony of the Holiday Inn. His colleagues locked him in a closet for the rest of the night so he couldn’t hurt himself. Guess who had to fly with him to Downey the next morning?
We set off in two separate aircraft; I piloted a T-38, while he flew my wing in a T-33 Shooting Star jet. At least, he tried. We began in close formation, but soon he wandered off about a mile before drifting back to my side. He kept this up all the way to Houston, where we landed and left the T-33. He headed home to change his clothes while I stayed at the airport with the T-38. When he reappeared I told him, “Get in the back seat. I’m not letting you fly today. You had way too much to drink last night.” He didn’t object. In fact, he looked relieved and climbed in behind me.