Men Don’t Die On Days Like This

Remembering the flight of Alan Shepard in Freedom 7 on 5 May 1961  

Portrait of Alan Shepard courtesy of Jackie Burns: https://1-jackie-burns.pixels.com/

It took guts to walk out to the waiting rocket – still in those days an experimental vehicle with an unproven lineage – not knowing if he was coming back. Did he think of all the similar machines that had detonated on the launch pad? Those very public failures captured by the news crews. All the “Kaputniks” and the “Flopniks.” Or did he prefer to place his faith in von Braun, a man who exuded confidence like a male pheromone, like a finely tailored hunting cloak draped across his burly shoulders. So much confidence that he – von Braun – already had his eyes on the ultimate prize – the Moon itself, convincedly sketching out his vision of modular spacecraft and wheeled space stations in the glossy pages of Colliers magazine and on TV. A possessed individual Norman Mailer described as a “rocketeer,” and “a man who had lived his life with the obsession of reaching other planets.” 

So if von Braun thought it would work then who was he to doubt the near religious certainty of the man’s convictions, which amounted to nothing less than an article of faith in the halls and corridors of a still fledgling NASA. If they were riding on the successes of the German rocket programme (all those camouflaged spires that had risen from the misty heart of so many hidden forests) wouldn’t the Russians have done the same if they’d gotten to von Braun first? Run their own version of “Operation Paperclip,” and smuggled the scientists into the Soviet Union to get a jump on their enemies. Which they’d done anyway, sending up first Sputnik and then Laika the dog and then Gagarin (a man in space!)  – while the Americans had watched from a place they’d seldom been obliged to occupy – the sidelines. Well, no more! Today would change all that.

He tilts his face up towards the sky as he nears the rocket, his faceplate already down, sweating a little inside the suit. Ahead a flight, a sub-orbital lob, little more than fifteen  minutes in duration. The rocket engines will scarcely be cold before he is back on the ground. But it will be enough. A home run, with more to follow. To show they could do it too, with more ambitious plans already on the drawing board: talk of a two man capsule so that future explorers wouldn’t have to venture into space alone, something that might even pave the way for a highroad to once unimaginable destinations.  

He looks again at the sky as he walks across the ramp at the top of the access tower and there it is – the Moon, like a sketch up in one corner of the sky. A delicate etching, almost translucent. Men don’t die on days like this, he thinks to himself, not when the sky is so blue, not with the Moon looking on.

As he enters the white room – that precarious eyrie at the summit of the tower, so like a ship’s crow’s nest swaying in the wind – and the technicians help him into a reclining position inside the capsule – it’s so small he’s almost wearing it – he knows he’ll be back. He’ll shake von Braun’s hand when it’s all over and brag a little about how easy it was to climb to the summit of that clear empyrium. And who then will care if it was all over before it had scarcely begun? The Moon will be just that little bit closer. They’ll reel it in like a fish on a line, a silver Moon-fish they’ll throw back each time they catch it, for that world belongs to no one – not even to those who’ll one day walk upon its surface. 

The White House looks on as Freedom 7 launches into space

Rescue and retrieval: the space traveller returns

Suggested further reading:

Of A Fire on the Moon by Norman Mailer

Moon Shot by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton

A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin