"Live From Cape Canaveral": Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today Read Online Free PDF Page B

physiological, psychological, and leadership tests at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. NBC thought that, being a pilot, I should crawl in these same horror chambers. But there was a difference. There was no way I was going to ride a temperamental rocket, and I could not think of a single reason why I should put my cowardly body through such torture.
    But NBC did not agree, and I headed north to join Jim Kitchell. Kitchand crew were at Wright Patterson shooting a Chet Huntley Reporting , a thirty-minute news show aired Sunday evenings. For the next four days I held a microphone in my hand, trying to say something that made sense while I was frozen, roasted, shaken, and isolated in chambers so quiet my own heart sounded like the loudest drum in the parade.
    I survived, NBC got its twelve “How I Became an Astronaut” reports for our old weekend radio show Monitor , and later that week, April 9, 1959, the Mercury Seven astronauts were named—names that would, within a few short years, become legendary.
    There was Malcolm Scott Carpenter, a navy lieutenant from the Korean War; Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr., an air force captain who flew the hottest jets; John Herschel Glenn, a marine lieutenant colonel—a fighter pilot from two wars; Virgil “Gus” Grissom, an air force captain with one hundred combat missions over Korea; Walter M. “Wally” Schirra, a navy lieutenant commander, a veteran of ninety fighter-bomber missions in Korea; carrier and test pilot Alan Bartlet Shepard, a navy lieutenant commander; and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, an air force captain who flew fifty-six combat missions over Europe and seven combat missions over Japan in World War II.
    NASA announced their selection at a high-profile news conference in the nation’s capital. Since we happened to be in Dayton, Jim Kitchell decided to see if any of the seven were stationed at Wright Patterson. We were in luck. Gus Grissom’s home was a short drive, and we were off to interview his wife, Betty. Mrs. Grissom was most gracious. She invited us in and as the camera rolled, I asked, “How do you feel about your husband going into space?”
    Betty smiled, and nodded toward her and Gus’s sons. “The two boys, Scott and Mark, and I have been living with a test pilot,” she began. “I don’t really feel flying into space is going to be all that different. We feel it will be risky, but if that’s what Gus wants to do, then we’re all for it.”
    It was the perfect sound bite, and we were off to our television network affiliate in Dayton to develop the film. It was quick and dirty but we got our report on Huntley-Brinkley , and we were grateful. I had been a reporter long enough to predict much of the men’s future. The astronauts were instant celebrities, and I knew none of the families was remotely ready for what lay ahead. None had a clue that their privacy would soon be a fond memory.
     
    F or the next two years, the Mercury Seven would be hopping and jumping across the country, training to be astronauts while engineers were working to develop and perfect the Mercury space capsule.
    Cape Canaveral would soon prove to be their favorite homeport, as the Florida sand spit had been an attractive stretch of land for settlements throughout its history. Here, bear shared the natural habitat with alligator and deer, and Indians buried their dead on sacred mounds. Later, some would try to hack out small patches of black, sandy earth for farming while a few went after the rich harvest of seafood. There were trappers, too, but taming the Cape was tougher than expected. It wasn’t only the persistent mosquitoes but rattlesnakes—rattlesnakes as long as gators—that had driven mostof the early pioneers away.
    Citrus growers followed, but by 1960 beneath the launch gantries, the blockhouses, the hangars, and the offices, there were thousands of electrical arteries, a finely woven network of underground cables through which flashed the impulses of