Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon(20)

A few months later, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. Borman couldn’t imagine a bigger blow to national pride, or a clearer indication that America was losing the Cold War. Already a staunch anticommunist, Borman now believed the United States to be facing an existential threat. From that point forward, his thinking changed. If he could do anything to be part of the fight America needed to bring against the Soviet Union, he would do it. Even if the United States needed him to drop an atomic bomb, he wouldn’t have hesitated for a second. He didn’t want to kill anyone, let alone innocent civilians, but his faith that his country would always act as a force for good in the world trumped all.

In 1960, Borman applied to and was accepted by the Air Force’s exclusive Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. It was in the skies, he thought, that the fight against the Soviets would be decided; technology would determine how high and how fast.

He began training in a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, flying at 1,600 miles per hour, more than twice the speed of sound. Much of what he did at Edwards was experimental and untested, making it dangerous in ways one couldn’t train for, and in ways that he never discussed with Susan.

Borman graduated first in his class academically and second in flying and won the award for best overall student at Edwards. (He would have been first in flying but for a momentary failure to raise a landing gear, a slipup that would bother him for years.) He then signed on to establish a new program at Edwards, the Aerospace Research Pilot Graduate course, designed to prepare future astronauts to fly. He and four other top pilot-engineers would create a curriculum, making sure it best positioned a man for selection by NASA. It did not escape his notice that as an instructor, NASA might consider him to be among the best candidates of them all.

In March 1961, Borman came to a crossroads. NASA was looking to bring on a second group of astronauts and asked top Navy and Air Force pilots to apply. If he had any interest in going into space, now was the time to strike.

Borman didn’t thrill to the idea of riding on rockets or exploring the cosmos or even stepping on the Moon. The instant celebrity conferred on astronauts seemed a distraction to him. And yet only NASA could deliver him onto a new battlefield, where technology and futuristic flying machines could help determine whether democracy or Communism prevailed. With the Cold War growing hotter every day, he could think of no more important place to do his part than on the frontier of space.

He talked to Susan. He told her he had a chance to help America, and to make history, but it would require undertaking a new life and unknown risks. Susan answered as she always had: They were a team and she would support him. A short time later, he submitted his application to NASA, joining more than two hundred other highly qualified hopefuls. He endured exams—physical and psychological—and several rounds of cuts as NASA trimmed its list of finalists to about eighty, then to thirty-two. Finally, in the fall of 1962—eighteen months after he first put his name in the hat—Borman became one of the agency’s nine new astronauts, selected from America’s best to go where mankind had only dreamed of going.



* * *



—

NASA introduced its second group of astronauts to the public at the University of Houston on September 17, 1962. Soon to be dubbed the New Nine by the press, they included James Lovell and Neil Armstrong. All nine had been test pilots and had studied aeronautical engineering. All were married and had children. From the moment he stood beside these men, Borman could tell he was among a rare group, talented and competitive beyond any he’d met.

The new astronauts became instant celebrities. As with the Original Seven, each received a contract with Life magazine and Field Enterprises that paid him $16,000 a year for exclusive access to his and his family’s personal stories. For her part, Susan would be obliged to speak at luncheons and urge young mothers to buy World Book encyclopedias (published by Field Enterprises) for their families.

NASA assigned each new astronaut to a specialty. Borman’s was boosters, the rockets that lifted spacecraft off Earth and into orbit and beyond. His focus would be on a crucial aspect—the crew safety and escape systems. Borman and his colleagues would spend hundreds of hours in classrooms, visiting contractors, and on field trips, learning everything from astronomy to meteorology to flight mechanics to computers to spacecraft construction. If America was going to reach the Moon by President Kennedy’s deadline, now just seven years away, the astronauts had to learn in gulps, not sips.

That applied to public relations, too. Meet-and-greets became commonplace, black tie functions the norm. Everyone in America, it seemed, wanted a piece of the astronauts. Once, Borman and Susan shared a limousine with a celebrity on their way to a gala sponsored by a wealthy Texas oilman.

“I’m Tony Randall,” the man said.

“So nice to meet you,” Borman said. “I really enjoyed your song ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco.’?”

The actor did not appreciate being mistaken for the singer Tony Bennett. Borman did not appreciate the arrogance in Randall’s indignation.

“To hell with him,” Borman whispered to Susan.

As Borman settled in at NASA, it became clear to peers and management that he was a different breed, even among these unique men. He did not dabble in reflection, showed no patience for shades of gray. Mission came first, always, and if he sensed you were unqualified for a job or, worse, a bullshitter, he got your ass out of the way. He seemed unconcerned with NASA politics, blew smoke up no one’s posterior, superiors included, and would not say, or do, anything he did not believe in. Some astronauts considered him arrogant or hard-headed, but all respected him, and few would have disagreed with Borman’s own assessment—that he was among the best of the astronaut corps.