A Man on the Moon

The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

By Andrew Chaikin

For years the media had tried to break the code of Slayton’s crew selections, theorizing that he must be picking the best astronaut for each mission, carefully matching crewmen for some combination of skills and temperaments. Slayton also knew that some NASA managers wanted him to hand-pick crews. And he had always resisted. He knew anything other than an orderly crew rotation would make a shambles of Astronaut Office morale. But what about the first lunar landing-was that important enough to put the very best astronaut in command? NASA’s upper echelon had always considered Jim McDivitt and Frank Borman as prime candidates for that mission, and in truth, both men were highly regarded by Slayton late in 1968, Slayton reasoned that as the only veteran lunar crew, Borman’s team would have an edge that might make the difference between success and failure. And on the chance that Borman did not succeed, Slayton was ready to put McDivitt’s crew right onto Apollo 12 instead of Pete Conrad’s. Slayton knew he’d face a firestorm of protest from the pilots waiting in line-no astronaut had ever been ushered directly from one prime slot to another but he was willing to put up with that. But Slayton’s plan fell by the wayside in the fall of 1968 when Borman turned down the offer.

Many years later, the myth would endure that somehow NASA had hand-picked Neil Armstrong to command the first lunar landing mission. In one version it was because he was the best test pilot among the astronauts; in another, because he was a civilian and NASA was eager to avoid any connotations of militarism on the first landing. Both theories were wrong. In truth, the crew for the ultimate test flight was chosen not by design, but by chance, just as Slayton had always said it would be.

(Chaikin 2007, 137-138)

… Buzz-the nickname came from his baby sister, whose efforts to pronounce “brother” came out “buzzer” …

(Chaikin 2007, 139)

Three hours after they had left Antares Shepard and Mitchell returned with their precious cargo of rocks and film. By now they were both very tired, but Shepard had something to take care of before the moonwalk ended, a little “gotcha” for the TV audience. He’d dreamed it up one day during training, when Bob Hope came for a tour of the space center. Shepard and Deke Slayton were escorting Hope, and they took him over to the one-sixth g rig they used to simulate walking on the moon. Hope carried a golf club with him everywhere he went as if it were a pacifier, and he refused to let go of it even when they had him on the rig. There he was, bouncing around with that golf club in his hand, and that’s when Shepard, also an avid golfer, said to himself, There has to be away. …

Now Shepard stood before the TV camera. “In my left hand,” Shepard announced, “I have a little white pellet that’s familiar to millions of Americans

… In his right hand, he held the handle from the contingency sample collector, now slightly modified: it had a genuine six-iron at the end of it. His pressurized suit was so stiff that he had to swing his makeshift club one-handed. His first swing missed, and on the second he shanked the ball. Dropping another ball to the dust, he swung once more and made contact, and as the ball sailed away into the black sky, arcing over the craters in slow motion, Shepard announced, “Miles and miles and miles!”