Dee had a comeback for everything. “I know this is your first launch, rookie,” she added, “so you might want to try and find a spot that is up high. You’ll get a better view.”
Dee was exactly what I needed that morning to make me laugh, but our time together was all too brief. I headed to the room next door, where a barber gave me a quick haircut. Who knows why—it was part of the pre-launch protocol, and I just went along with it. Perhaps we would see some strange aliens up there and we had to look our best.
It was time to join Dave and Jim for breakfast around a big table, along with Deke and our backup and support crews. Everyone else was dressed by then, but I stayed in my bathrobe. I was about to put my spacesuit on, so why dress just to undress again? A meal of steak, scrambled eggs, and toast was a good way to start the morning, but it was also a carefully designed menu. Our low-fiber diet meant we could delay taking a crap in space as long as possible. I washed it down with a last cup of hot coffee.
Soon enough we had to walk over to the suit room, where we dressed in our spacesuits. First, however, we strapped on biomedical harnesses to keep track of our breathing and heart rate. Then a urine collection device, so we could take a leak in the hours ahead without removing the suit. Next, a pair of long johns, followed by the bulky spacesuit. Once the suit was all zipped and buttoned up, the suit technicians put on my helmet. I was now in my own enclosed world. It was odd for me to think that the next time I took my helmet off, I would be up in space.
After the technicians ran a pressure check on my suit, I settled in a reclining chair and started to breathe pure oxygen. I lay there alongside Dave and Jim while we purged the nitrogen from our blood just like deep-sea divers. The ceiling lights bothered Jim, so he asked for a towel to be placed over his helmet. With nothing else to do but lie there, all three of us soon dozed off.
It didn’t seem long before we were awake again, as the calls came in from the launch control center. Everything looked good for an on-time launch. We each grabbed a portable ventilator, headed along the hallway to the elevator, and descended to where a transport van awaited us. The hallway was crowded with well-wishers from the flight crew quarters, all waving good-bye and wishing us good luck. With my helmet on, I couldn’t hear them well—only the sound of my own breathing. And in my bulky spacesuit, that hallway felt pretty narrow. I was excited and flashed a quick V-for-Victory sign to the cameras.
As I came out of the doorway of the building and over to the van, I had a nice surprise. Some of my family were there, along with Deke Slayton. My father and I exchanged grins, and he held out his hand. I didn’t even have time to break step, we were on such a tight schedule, but I grasped his outstretched hand as I passed him and gave it a quick squeeze. My sisters and brothers were there too. I don’t know how they got out there—it wasn’t where families normally stood—but I suspect Deke worked it out for them. He was very good to my family in the days around the launch.
The seven-mile drive to the launchpad dropped us off two and a half hours before liftoff. Through the van windows, we could see the crowds of people lining our route. It looked chaotic, and we were glad to have a police escort. We joked that if the liftoff was scrubbed, we had better find a different way back, because we didn’t want to run that gauntlet in reverse. Especially if some of those people were upset that we hadn’t launched.
I was pleased so many people were there. If public interest in Apollo was tailing off, you couldn’t tell that day. Tens of thousands of people were gathered inside the space center perimeter, including more than five thousand specially invited guests. Outside the center, the press reported that around a million people had gathered to see the launch, and the nearest vacant hotel room was more than fifty miles away.
It looked like we wouldn’t disappoint them. The weather was perfect for launch. As I stepped out of the van, I looked at the clear blue sky and grinned. Up close, the Saturn V looked amazing—it gleamed in the morning sunshine. I thought back a couple of nights, when we had all driven our Corvettes out to the launchpad. The white rocket had been lit up by bright spotlights; it looked spectacular against the black sky. In the morning it was still gorgeous, but I always thought the most impressive sight was at night, lit by all those spotlights.
The weather was humid, which was not unusual for a Florida summer. The Saturn V had been filled the night before with supercold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, and some of that deep chill had spread through the rocket walls to the outside. The humidity in the air stuck to the skin of the rocket and froze, so when the three of us arrived we could see ice everywhere.
The rocket was huffing as puffs of vapor vented from it; the tanks were continually topped off. The Saturn V reminded me of a tethered animal pawing at the ground, ready to run. It no longer seemed like a large chunk of metal—it appeared to fume with frustration, ready to be unleashed, unrestrained.
We stepped into the elevator for the long ride to the top of the rocket, hundreds of feet up. It was the equivalent of taking a ride to the thirty-fifth floor of a skyscraper. The elevator rose and rose. Wow, I thought, it is a long way down to those engines.
When we reached the top, I gazed down the beautiful coastline, and observed the distant buzz of spectator activity. As I looked down the immense rocket, I saw chunks of ice rain down as they sloughed off its skin. It was a weird surreal effect, like a science-fiction movie.
We walked across a metal catwalk to the spacecraft; a difficult task for some, the pad engineers told me. Other astronauts had looked down at their feet, saw the distant ground through the metal mesh, and that was it. Their hands went out to the handrails, and the pad engineers had to come and convince them to keep moving. Some had to have their fingers pried from the handrails.
I wasn’t too surprised at that reaction. We were a hell of a long way up. And it didn’t matter how skilled we were flying aircraft, it felt very different in a jet. If you stand on a launchpad that high, your stomach naturally does flips when you look over the edge.
At the end of the catwalk, a little temporary structure kept birds and any other contamination out of the command module. Called the White Room, this was the domain of Guenter Wendt, the pad leader who saw off all the manned flights. We knew he’d take care of the final details, ensuring we entered the spacecraft smoothly and the hatch closed correctly.
Vance Brand, my backup for the mission, was inside the spacecraft when we arrived. Vance had been great to work with. A quiet fellow, he had just done his thing and not made any waves. He now checked all of the switch settings inside Endeavour, and prepared to help us slide inside. In the meantime, Guenter cracked some jokes with us over the radio headsets and generally eased the tension. But I was so focused on my job I don’t recall what he said.
It was a tight fit inside the spacecraft in those bulky suits. Each of us had to slide through the hatch into our individual collapsible couches, which were made of hollow steel and covered in fireproof cloth. Dave and Jim entered first, while Vance remained inside to help them. Engineers connected their oxygen hoses to the spacecraft, and tightened their couch straps. Then Vance exited, and I slid into the center couch. The engineers could then connect me and strap me in just by reaching through the hatch.
Guenter ran the process like clockwork, and soon it was time for the technicians to close the hatch. The last face I remember seeing was Guenter’s, smiling and waving an enormous crescent wrench at me. Then the heavy hatch closed with a deep thunk. That was it: we were truly on our own, cut off—committed.