'Rocket Men,' by Craig Nelson
NONFICTION REVIEW
Reagan Upshaw, Special to The Chronicle
Published 4:00 am, Thursday, July 16, 2009
Rocket Men
The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon
By Craig Nelson
(Viking; 404 pages; $27.95)
No one under age 50 can really have any idea of what it felt like to follow the race to the moon. The Soviet space program's success with launching Sputnik in 1957, coupled with the abysmal test records of American Vanguard, Thor and Jupiter missiles, was a cause for much soul-searching among citizens of the United States.
Was our status as a superpower about to be downgraded? When John F. Kennedy in May 1961, told the nation, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," it was by no means certain that the United States would be the first nation to do so.
Craig Nelson's "Rocket Men," published on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, is a fitting tribute to that achievement. Nelson draws on older material, much of it declassified since the 1960s, and, most important, he has used the numerous interviews with former employees conducted in the past 10 years by NASA's Oral History Project.
The range of voices in the selections Nelson quotes, from German scientists with still-haphazard English, to fact-spouting engineers, to laconic test pilots, gives this sky-gazing book its solidly grounded air. (Nelson, who occasionally reveals a wry sense of humor, describes NASA jargon as "a vernacular that combined the studied flair of pocket-protecting engineers with the delicate nuance of Pentagon bureaucrats.")
Kennedy has gotten most of the credit as the instigator of the lunar landing program, but Nelson reveals the president to have been far from certain that the race would be worth the cost. At least part of his motive was an attempt to inspire the nation after the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs. It is not often remembered today that Kennedy initially saw the exploration of space as a multination affair and invited Nikita Khrushchev to partner with us in developing the technology. It was only after the Soviet leader turned him down that Kennedy decided the United States had to go it alone.
The unsung hero behind the government's support of the space program, Nelson argues, was Lyndon Johnson. While he was still a senator, Johnson told his colleagues, "I'll be damned if I sleep by the light of a Red Moon ... soon they will be dropping bombs on us from space like kids dropping rocks on the cars from freeway overpasses." Made point man on the space program by Kennedy, Vice President Johnson pushed hard for funding for the program. When questioned about the expense, he would reply, "Would you rather have us be a second-rate nation, or should we spend a little money?"
As president following Kennedy's assassination, Johnson considered the lunar landing program a tribute to his predecessor that he was honor-bound to bring about. The Vietnam War, the Great Society, the War on Poverty - nothing would prevent Johnson from using his unmatched political skills to get the space program the money it required.
Nelson has a novelist's skill at weaving a compelling narrative, beginning his book with the 1969 launch, then going back to the beginnings of rocketry with Robert Goddard in the United States during the 1910s and 1920s and with German and Soviet scientists during the 1930s. Nelson deftly sketches his leading characters: the visionary Goddard turning bitter and reclusive after ridicule in the press; Wernher von Braun, an amoral scientist with masterly survival instincts, serving first Hitler, then the American military; and Sergei Korolyov, chief designer of the Soviet missile program, who had earlier lost all his teeth and nearly died from scurvy in the gulag after being arrested during Stalin's Great Terror.
The astronauts of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions generally fit a pattern. Of the 30 men selected, 22 were the firstborn in their families and five more were eldest sons. A psychiatrist who worked with them said, "They're aggressive, competitive people. They've got very good opinions of themselves, for one important reason; the good opinion is based on reality. ... Perhaps they're not very imaginative; you don't get poets up there." Of the Apollo 11 team, only Michael Collins cooperated with Nelson on "Rocket Men," and his comments are insightful. Buzz Aldrin has written much about his Apollo and post-Apollo experiences, and Nelson quotes from them liberally to produce a portrait of a complex individual.
The mystery man, now as much as then, remains the commander of the mission, Neil Armstrong, an intensely private person, yet capable of real eloquence. His first words on stepping onto the moon's surface, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," have been engraved in the history that Nelson's book eloquently captures.
More about the moon Other books of note marking the moon landing: "Apollo: Through the Eyes of the Astronauts," by Robert Jacobs(Abrams; $24.95)
"Magnificent Desolation: The Long Road Home From the Moon," by Buzz Aldrin, with Ken Abraham (Harmony Books; $27)
"The Book of the Moon," by Rick Stroud (Walker & Co.; $27)
"Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys - 40th Anniversary Edition," by Michael Collins (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; $16 paperback)