Apollo Expeditions to the Moon
WHAT HAPPENS TO EX-ASTRONAUTS?
The exclusive-story gambit almost ended when the Kennedy Administration took
over, and Kennedy's press secretary actually announced there would be no more
contracts after Mercury ended. But John Glenn went sailing with the President one
summer day in 1962 and enumerated the costs and risks that came with fame. The
President relented and more contracts were signed after the Second Nine entered, this
time with not only Life but also Field Enterprises. But as more astronauts were
selected, the pie sliced thinner until finally each astronaut was receiving only $3000
per year for his literary output. One last surge came with Life's European syndication
of the stories of Apollo 8 through 11 in 1969, which brought about $16,000 for each
of sixty astronauts and widows.
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Desert survival training
was part of the regular
program of what-ifs. If
any flight had ended with
an emergency landing in
a desert, sun-protective
dress and tents could
have been fashioned from
spacecraft parachutes.
The astronauts were
taught the best tricks for
survival in the desert. Left
to right, seated: Borman,
Lovell, Young, Conrad,
McDivitt, White. Standing:
training officer Zedehar, Stafford, Slayton,
Armstrong, and See.
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A principal advantage of the contracts was the insurance, $50,000 worth from
both Life and Field for each astronaut, and the widows of the accident victims were
left with nest eggs. Congress might have been able to provide extra income and extra
insurance, but the Vietnam War got in the way, and who was to say a man dying in
space was more deserving than one who stepped on a land mine in a jungle path?
Unfortunately, this easy money led, directly or indirectly, to money acquired less
scrupulously when the Apollo 15 astronauts sold 400 unauthorized covers to a German
dealer in exchange for $8000 each (the dealer got $150,000). The three returned
the money, and were subsequently reprimanded. It also turned out that each of fifteen
astronauts had sold 500 copies of his signature on blocks of stamps for $5 apiece,
without saying anything to bosses Slayton and Shepard about it (five of the fifteen
gave the proceeds to charity). Deke and Al were incensed, but threw up their hands.
If a man has a claim to owning anything, it is his own signature. Nevertheless NASA
put a stop to this business and also placed heavy restrictions on what astronauts
could and could not carry into space.
Homogeneous the astronauts never were. Frank Borman learned to fly a plane
before he was old enough to get a driver's license, and so did Neil Armstrong, but at
the same age Dick Gordon was considering the priesthood, Mike Collins was more
interested in "girls, football, and chess" than in planes, and Jim Irwin had never flown
until he rode a commercial aircraft to begin flight training.
John Glenn went into politics and, after several disappointments, was elected
U.S. Senator from Ohio on the Democratic ticket in 1974. Alan Shepard's $125,000
from the Life and Field contracts became the egg that hatched a fortune in real estate.
Borman, success-prone as always, spent a semester at Harvard Business School, went
to work for Eastern Airlines, and became its president. For several years Donn Eisele
served as director of the Peace Corps in Thailand, which was as different from Dick
Gordon's executive job with the New Orleans Saints football team as was Mike Collins's
directorship of the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum. Armstrong
became a professor of engineering at the University of Cincinnati, Ed Mitchell
founded an organization devoted to extrasensory perception, and Jim Irwin became a
fundamentalist evangelist. Jim McDivitt became an executive of Consumers Power
Company in his home town, Jackson, Mich., and Jim Lovell stayed put with the
Bay-Houston Towing Company.
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Saying a few words to
a sea of friendly faces
was the lot of the Apollo
11 astronauts, whose
world tour aboard Air
Force One took them to a
dizzying 24 countries in
45 days.
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Children of Kinshasa
dance a special welcome
for the men from the
Moon. Tact, diplomacy,
an iron constitution, and
a knack for public speaking
were what the astronauts
needed on tours.
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Once in awhile some them still turned up on television or radio: Schirra plugging
the railroads, Aldrin Volkswagens, Armstrong and Carpenter banks, and Lovell insurance.
Collins was offered $50,000 to advertise a beer but he turned it down, "although
I like beer". Lest he appear too upright, Collins did confess that he once made an
unpaid commercial for U.S. Savings Bonds, although he had never seen one in his life.
If the astronauts sometimes dwelt in an aura of public misconception, they
nonetheless performed dazzling feats with skill and finesse. You may search the
pages of history in vain for deeds to match theirs, and many years will pass before
similar feats occur again. All hail, then, to these daring young men who married
technique to valor and in barely a decade transformed the impossible into the
commonplace.
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