Abstract
By 1970, the small cadre of veteran astronauts of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) found themselves a dwindling force in a mammoth bureaucracy that had long since grown well beyond their control. That year, the astronaut-friendly Robert Gilruth departed as steward of NASA’s human spaceflight program, leaving questions about the future of the effort, and about NASA’s astronaut leadership. Meanwhile, the turbulent labor dynamic that had emerged with the arrival of scientist-astronauts intensified, as growing flight rosters, increasing layers of civilian management, declining budgets, and public scandals brought astronauts new occupational challenges. The early 1970s saw some of NASA’s most dramatic successes in space—including the final Apollo flights to the Moon and the launch of the Skylab space station—but, for NASA’s astronauts, the decade was one of diminished celebrity and autonomy, uncertainty about the future, and adjustments to a new kind of space workplace.
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Notes
David Sington, “In the Shadow of the Moon” (Discovery Films, 2007).
See, generally, Stephen B. Johnson, The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
Francis French and Colin Burgess, In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965–1969 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 50–52.
Francis French and Colin Burgess, Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961–1965 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 236.
Donald H. Peterson, “Oral History Transcript (Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, November 14, 2002), 11–12.
Richard H. Truly, “Oral History Transcript (Rebecca Wright, Interviewer),” NASA Oral History Project (Golden, Colorado, June 16, 2003), 2.
Henry W. Hartsfield Jr., “Oral History Transcript (Carol Butler, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, June 12, 2001), 2.
Robert L. Crippen, “Oral History Transcript (Rebecca Wright, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, May 26, 2006), 3.
Donald K. Slayton and Michael Cassutt, Deke! U.S. Manned Space: From Mercury to the Shuttle (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 250–251; See also, generally, David J. Shayler, Skylab: America’s Space Station (Ch ic hester, UK: Praxis, 2001).
Hartsfield, “Oral History Transcript (Carol Butler, Interviewer),” NASA Joh nson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, June 12, 2001), 21.
Walter Cunningham, The All-American Boys (Revised Edition) (New York: ibooks, 2003), 294.
Howard Muson, “Comedown from the Moon: What Has Happened to the Astronauts,” New York Times Magazine, December 3, 1972, 139.
Al Worden, Falling to Earth: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2011), 245–248.
Donald Holmquest, “Letter to James C. Fletcher, Eisenhower Medical Center,” July 20, 1973. George M. Low Papers. Archives and Special Collections, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., Box 57, Folder 2, 3.
For example, Jerry Bledsoe, “Down from Glory,” Esquire, January 1973.
W. David Compton and Charles D. Benson, Living and Working in Space: A History of Skylab (Washington, DC: NASA, 1983), 221.
David J. Shayler, NASA’s Scientist-Astronauts (New York: Springer, 2007), 254.
Karol J. Bobko, “Oral History Transcript (Summer Chick Bergen, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, February 12, 2002), 9; George M. Low, “Handwritten Note to ADA Shapley,” September 25, 1972 (typed September 26, 1972), affixed to “Memo to George M. Low from Dale D. Myers Re: Skylab Medical Experiments Altitude Test Completion,” September 22, 1972, Folder 4, Box 50, George M. Low Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York.
George M. Low, “Memorandum to James Fletcher Re: Skylab Review in Houston,” August 2 1973, Folder 004157, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
Shayler, Skylab, 304–305; David Shayler, Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions, Spr inger-Praxis Books in A stronomy and Space Sciences (Chichester: Springer, 2002). Inthis exercise in counter factual history, amateur historians publishing on the Internet have done some impressive work, positing possible prime, backup, and support crews for each mission through the hypothetical Skylab 9 mission, based on the pool of available astronauts and the assignment conventions of the Astronaut Office. Mark Wade, “Your Flight Has Been Cancelled,” Encyclopedia Astronautica, http://www.astronautix.com/articles/youelled.htm (accessed April 4, 2010).
Cunningham, The All-American Boys (Revised Edition), 340–343; Slayton and Cassutt, Deke!, 304–305; Thomas P. Stafford and Michael Cassutt, We Have Capture: Tom Stafford and the Space Race (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), 193–194.
James A. Loudon, “Why We Really Want a Space Shuttle,” New York Times, March 28, 1972, 42.
“How on Earth did you ever—why would you ever think of this?” veteran astronaut T. K. Mattingly is said to have responded. Donald H. Peterson, “Oral History Transcript (Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, November 14, 2002),36.
For Haise, who, following Apollo 13’s return, had been badly burned (and according to Allen, nearly killed) in an airplane crash, the chance to fly Enterprise was particularly fortunate. Joseph P. Allen, “Oral History Transcript #2 (Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, March 16, 2004), 18.
Ibid., 54, Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004).
Christopher C. Kraft, “Letter to Elmer S. Groo,” April 15, 1977, Folder 008948, NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.
Andrew Chaikin, “George Abbey: NASA’s Most Controversial Figure,” Space.com, February 26, 2001.
R. Mike Mullane, Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut (New York: Scribner, 2006), 25, Carl Walz, “Astronaut Adventures” (paper presented at the Smithsonian Institution Folklife Festival, Washington, DC, June 26 2008).
Allen M. Steele, Orbital Decay (New York: Ace Books, 1989).
Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America (New York: Random House, 1970), 89, et seq.
Patricia A. Santy, Choosing the Right Stuff: The Psychological Selection of Astronauts and Cosmonauts (Westport: Praeger, 1994), 22.
Joseph D. Atkinson and Jay M. Shafritz, The Real Stuff: A History of NASA’s Astronaut Recruitment Program (New York: Praeger, 1985), 30.
Sheldon J. Korchin and George E. Ruff, “Personality Characteristics of the Mercury Astronauts,” in The Threat of Impending Disaster, Contributions to the Psychology of Stress, ed. George H. Grosser, Henry Wechsler, and Milton Greenblatt (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1964), 200.
Thomas Kenneth Mattingly, II, “Oral History Transcript #2 (Kevin M. Rusnak, Interviewer),” NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project (Houston, Texas, April 22, 2002), 5–6.
Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys (New York: Farrar, 1974), 462.
See, generally, Matthew H. Hersch, “Space Madness: The Dreaded Disease that Never Was,” Endeavour 36 (2012): 32–40.
Edwin E. Aldrin and Wayne Warga, Return to Earth (New York: Random House, 1973), 295, et seq.; Cunningham, The All-American Boys (Revised Edition), 168.
Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, “John H. Glenn Lecture: An Evening with the Apollo 8 Astronauts,” Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, November 13, 2008.
William Friedkin, “The Exorcist” (Hoya Productions, 1973).
William Peter Blatty, “The Ninth Configuration” (Warner Bros., 1980).
James B. Irwin, More Than Earthlings: An Astronaut’s Thoughts for Christ-Centered Living (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1983).
Ray Bradbury, “The Rocket Man,” in The Illustrated Man (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1951).
Byron Haskin, “Conquest of Space” (Paramount Pictures Corp., 1955).
Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955).
Nicholas de Monchaux, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (Cambridge , Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011), 51 (citing “The Bird and the Watcher,” Time, April 1, 1957: 8).
This particular joke has been decades in the making. See, for example, Thomas Mallon, “Satellite of Love,” New York Times, April 9, 2006, F7.
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© 2012 Matthew H. Hersch
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Hersch, M.H. (2012). The Man in the Gray Flannel Spacesuit. In: Inventing the American Astronaut. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025296_5
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