Book Review : The Fate of Earth-Bound Astronauts

For All Mankind by Harry Hurt III (Atlantic Monthly Press: $22.95; 348 pages)

Can nearly 20 years have passed since human beings first walked on the moon?

It was Christmas Eve, 1968, when three American astronauts circled the moon and sent back live television pictures from lunar orbit, reading from Genesis along the way. And it was July, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on another world, and we sat riveted to our TV sets watching the fuzzy pictures of them doing it. Who among us will ever forget that sight?

Yet, like all events that were stirring at the time, they lose their luster with the passage of years. We remember that we were excited, but the excitement itself fades.

The lunar landings of 1969 to 1972 may be recalled by future historians as the outstanding moment of the 20th Century, but to us they have become just another scene in the panoply of entertainments that society parades before our eyes. The purpose of government is to give the people bread and circuses. Mostly circuses.

A Stunning Achievement

“For All Mankind” the story of the Apollo program, correctly views America’s voyages to the moon as a stunning and pioneering achievement that laid the groundwork for the future exploration of space and scientific advance.

Harry Hurt III, a Newsweek correspondent, tells the story of the lunar program largely through the eyes of the 24 astronauts who flew to the moon (12 of them actually landed on it), drawing on the books several of them have already published and on new interviews with all of them.

The story, including most of its details, is familiar. This can hardly be called new territory. Nor have the astronauts provided many new insights into what they did or their feelings about it. They were a fairly uncommunicative bunch to begin with, and they haven’t changed much in the intervening years. Don’t look here for stunning revelations.

Yet the book has more than a modicum of appeal. In the course of his story, Hurt manages to portray each of the astronauts as distinct individuals--no small accomplishment. There was bad blood between Armstrong and Aldrin, the first landers, which apparently continues to this day.

Nobody Remembers No. 2

Aldrin was annoyed then and is still annoyed now that Armstrong got to go down the ladder before him, becoming the first person to walk on the moon. As he knows full well, few people remember who was the second person to do something.

“Aldrin still wears the psychic scars on his chest,” Hurt writes, “for he is the only Apollo astronaut who appears at public functions with his Distinguished Service Medal pinned to his civilian blazer, as if he feels the need to remind the world of his claim to fame.”

Indeed, Hurt’s chapter on what has happened to the Apollo astronauts since their lunar voyages is the most interesting of the book--and the freshest. The astronauts are like professional athletes, whose greatest days are behind them by the time they are 40 but who still have half a lifetime to live after that. Very few athletes and very few lunar astronauts go on to do anything in the second half that rivals what they did in their youth.

Aldrin is the most interesting of the lot, having suffered considerable psychiatric distress since leaving NASA shortly after his trip to the moon. (Very few of the Apollo astronauts remained on active duty with NASA after their lunar flights.)

While Aldrin’s history is the most extreme, the pattern is familiar. Hurt writes:

“Aldrin has been a car salesman, a ‘free-wheeling rancher,’ a ‘consultant,’ and a science lecturer at the University of North Dakota. Having suffered through a second failed marriage, he has recently married for a third time. But at the age of 58, he still seems to be in search of a career goal worthy enough to snap him out of ‘the melancholy of all things done.’ ”

Hurt’s book is most successful on this very personal level, and I kept wishing there were more of it. The rest of the book is OK, if familiar, as is Hurt’s conclusion that the Apollo program was a great achievement with large benefits “for all mankind.” He gets no argument from this corner.

I’d have liked more about the astronauts themselves. Most of them (but not all of them) have been enigmatic figures, and perhaps it’s the case that there just isn’t any more to be said.

But it’s been clear for a long time that they were not interchangeable robots. Some found God, some went searching for Noah’s ark, and some conducted ESP experiments from outer space. They are all in Hurt’s book, but only as supporting players.