I also needed to talk with Dave Scott, which was equally nerve-wracking. He was a straight-arrow guy, who I feared might frown on a divorce. I never wanted to give him any reason to think less of me, either for my work or my personal life. But, like Deke, Dave was supportive. He soon proved that he would protect me on this particular issue.
There was a neighborhood party going on right after my divorce became official, and I heard that some astronaut wives didn’t want me there. I talked to Dave about it, and told him, “I am not sure I want to go, because I don’t think some of the wives are really happy about my divorce. I think it is because if I can go through a divorce and everything goes alright for me, they are going to think, ‘Oh, shit, I’m next.’ Their marriages might be in jeopardy, too. It could happen to them.”
Dave sat me down, and with the calm words of a born commander said, “Al, you cannot let that bother you. You go to that party, you look them in the eye, and just be yourself. The worst thing you could do is not show up.” Dave was right. I went to the party and was glad I went.
A couple of the wives continued to disapprove of me for years. One of them was Deke’s wife, Marge, which was always a little frightening, because I imagined Deke hearing all about it when he was at home. And yet, over time, the wives came to understand that I was no threat to them, and in fact Marge eventually became one of my biggest advocates.
When Pam and I split up we took apartments across the street from each other and sold our beloved home. We now lived even closer to the space center than before: I only had to come out of my front door, walk one block, and I was at NASA’s front gate. The kids came over to stay with me on the weekends, and seemed to do fine with the separation. In many ways, nothing much changed for them, as I had always been away during the week. Pam was well liked by the other astronaut families and stayed in town, but she left the astronaut family circuit. That was, after all, what she had wanted to get away from all those years.
The divorce had been smooth and civil, with no allegations of wrongdoing, and little in the papers. It seemed that I hadn’t disappointed Deke or Dave, because events moved very quickly after that. Apollo 12 flew in November 1969. The next month, my divorce was final. And about a week later, Deke called us into his office and told us that we were going to be the prime crew for Apollo 15. We had to wait until March of 1970 for an official, public announcement. It was possible the decision could have been reversed in that time, but it never felt like that would happen. Dave, Jim, and I were elated. This was the big one. We were in. We were going to the moon.
CHAPTER 6
UNVEILING THE MOON
A funny thing happened when Pam and I divorced. It seemed that once she didn’t have to worry about me dying in a jet or in space, we could be friends again. Living across the street, with our kids going back and forth between us, our interactions became easier and more relaxed.
As a newly single astronaut, I think people assumed that I would burn through women quicker than rocket fuel. Astronauts were like rock stars back then; groupies were everywhere, and you could take your pick. Friends advised me not to jump back into a relationship and a second marriage, but to take the time to sort out my life. The same well-intentioned friends tutted that it was a shame about Pam: she would probably never marry again.
And yet, a couple of months after our divorce, Pam came over to my apartment and introduced me to her new boyfriend. His name was Jim and he liked to work a nine-to-five job, come home, put on his slippers, and smoke his pipe. The day Pam brought him over, Jim and I sat and talked all afternoon, laughed, and got on great. She called me the next day, telling me that she couldn’t handle how weird it was, her new boyfriend and her ex-husband getting along so well. She didn’t allow him to spend much time with me after that.
Pam had found happiness at last; she and Jim married within a year. On the other hand, it was a long, long time before I married again. Although I will always regret that my marriage to Pam did not work out, once it ended I saw I never could give her what she needed in life. She wanted stability and comfort. That wasn’t me.
My new apartment was small but suited me just fine. I put up with jokes about my “bachelor pad,” but in truth I worked so much that I was hardly ever there. It was more of a community apartment for visiting friends and family members, plus a host of secrecy-minded married astronauts who sometimes asked to borrow my key. They likely saw more action in my so-called bachelor pad than I ever did.
First, I had to furnish the place. All of the family furniture went to Pam in the divorce, so I started from scratch. I found a couple of interior decorators in town, who decided that a newly-single Apollo astronaut needed a hip black-and-white fiberglass sofa with black cushions, and a grand piano. They covered and constructed almost everything else from silver Mylar and glass. Even my bed, surrounded by black-and-silver walls, had a Mylar canopy. A thickly-carpeted circular staircase dominated the place. Although very hip for the time—in truth, too hip for me—it was a little too edgy for comfort. But I was amused by the buzz in the papers and magazines, which appeared to be more excited about the single astronaut and his “spacey” apartment than I was.
If I needed a reminder of the dangers of my job—and I didn’t—one came right after our formal announcement as the Apollo 15 prime crew. Just a month later, in April of 1970, Apollo 13 launched. It was the third manned lunar landing. That was the plan anyway. I had my own mission to train for now and wasn’t involved at all in Apollo 13. I was sitting on my spacey sofa in my apartment watching TV two days after the launch when Jules Bergman, the ABC channel’s space commentator, interrupted the show with a news flash.
I listened to his hurried report with alarm. I thought I heard Bergman report that there had been an explosion in the spacecraft en route to the moon, and the crew only had three hours to live. It was a confusing, shocking moment. What the hell was going on?
I sped over to mission control, a block away, joined a growing crowd of other concerned astronauts, and quickly learned that although the crew had escaped to the lunar module and had enough oxygen to survive for a short time, they were losing spacecraft power fast. It still wasn’t clear what had happened to the command and service module, but it was something bad.
The command module pilot on the flight was Jack Swigert. I knew him well, of course, from our intense collaboration on spacecraft emergency procedures following the Apollo 1 fire. He had been the Apollo 13 backup command module pilot until just a couple of days before launch. After a possible exposure to German measles, NASA pulled Ken Mattingly from the prime crew. Jack took his place, demonstrating why backup crewmembers must always be fully prepared. Jack was prepared. But now he was aboard a crippled spacecraft alongside Jim Lovell and Fred Haise, speeding toward the moon.
Jack had had little time to practice the mission with his two new crewmates, but it didn’t matter much once the flight plan was scrapped. The mission was now to get home alive, and for that task Jack needed to know the spacecraft systems inside out. I was completely confident in his hard-earned knowledge of the command module. But the situation was dire, and my heart was still in my throat. Would I ever see my good buddy alive again?