Alan Shepard

An Authentic American Hero
by Colin Burgess.

Colin Burgess is the author of many books and articles on spaceflight and space history.

Inevitably, there are times in a nation's history when its hopes, fears and confidence in its own destiny seem to hinge on the fate of a single person. One of those moments occurred on the sun-drenched Florida spring morning of 5 May 1961, when a 37-year-old test pilot squeezed into the tiny Mercury capsule named Freedom 7, ready to ride a rocket into the beckoning skies. Navy Captain Alan Shepard was trained to the hilt and more than ready to become the first American into space.

NASA Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. (Photo: NASA)

Achieving this flight was an incredible honor that Shepard had relentlessly pursued following his selection as a Mercury astronaut two years earlier. Despite this, a hollow feeling pervaded his excitement. Whatever accolades he might receive later that day, they would never make up for what he had deemed to be an ever greater glory. Renowned for his cocksure determination and a wicked sense of humor, he had pressed himself to the limit to become the first person to fly into space, but to his chagrin would fall just twenty-three days short of his dreams. Instead it had been a beaming Soviet cosmonaut named Gagarin who claimed that prized niche in history.


Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., who could trace his New England ancestry back through eight generations to the Mayflower, was born on 18 November 1923 in Derry, New Hampshire, the son of a banker. He showed an early interest in airplanes and took on work at a nearby airfield while still in high school. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1944 he saw action in the Pacific aboard the destroyer Cogswell. Post-war, he gained his aviator's wings and went on to become a skilled, unflappable test pilot before his eventual selection as an astronaut in April 1959.


On the afternoon of 19 January 1961, a day before the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the chief of the Space Task Group, Dr. Robert Gilruth, had called the seven Mercury astronauts together to announce who would fly the prized first mission. He wasted little time, announcing that Alan Shepard had been selected. There was a stunned silence in the room. "I did not say anything for about twenty seconds or so," Shepard later recalled. "I just looked at the floor. When I looked up, everyone in the room was staring at me. I was excited and happy, of course, but it was not a moment to crow." The other six, although deeply disappointed, put smiles on their faces as they came over to congratulate Shepard.

Left: The Redstone rocket with Freedom 7 lifts off from the pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Right: Mercury astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. (Photos:NASA)

Shepard's Mercury-Redstone flight (MR-3) aboard Freedom 7 was originally scheduled for 24 March, but in late January the Kennedy administration received a damning report on spaceflight activities from a government science advisory group known as the Wiesner Committee, which supported an immediate delay in the first manned flight. Part of this argument was the unreliability factor of the Redstone booster. One of the committee's heads, George Kistiakowski, even declared that launching Shepard too early would provide the astronaut with "the most expensive funeral man has ever had."


The Wiesner Report heavily criticized many aspects of NASA's manned spaceflight program, which placed enormous pressure on the space agency's administrator, James Webb, and Robert Gilruth. They discussed the flight at length with key Mercury personnel, later advising Wernher von Braun and his rocket team (with considerable reluctance) that a further unmanned test flight, a so-called "booster development launch," would have to be scheduled for the date originally set aside for MR-3. If it proved successful then Shepard would fly on 25 April. Von Braun, who had already been pressing for another test of the Redstone launch vehicle, was not unhappy with the decision.


As an impatient Shepard waited, von Braun had his final proving launch. Nineteen days later, a triumphant Soviet Union successfully shot the first man into space. The news both shattered and infuriated Alan Shepard. "It was a big blow to everybody and a great disappointment," according to the astronauts' nurse, Dee O'Hara. "Gagarin's flight made us look like fools. Alan was bitterly disappointed, and I could understand that."


Despite losing the most coveted role in manned space flight history, Shepard subsequently flew an almost faultless, 15-minute suborbital mission aboard Freedom 7 on 5 May 1961. His first remark on squeezing out of the hatch on board the recovery carrier Lake Champlain was an exuberant "Boy - what a ride!"


The news of Shepard's safe recovery was greeted with a mixture of relief and jubilation across America. An elated President John F. Kennedy, who had watched the launch live on television in Washington, called Shepard on the ship by radio-telephone to offer his congratulations. Other congratulatory messages poured in, including one to President Kennedy the following day from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in which he said that this "latest outstanding achievement in man's conquest of space opens up unlimited possibilities for the study of nature in the name of progress." Meanwhile, Shepard's flight was being derided in the Soviet press, which used disparaging terms in comparing his 15-minute ballistic shot to the orbital mission of Gagarin.


Flown to Washington three days after his mission, Shepard was honored at the White House, where President Kennedy presented him with NASA's Distinguished Service Medal "for outstanding contributions to space technology."


Prophetically, Shepard called his flight aboard Freedom 7 "just the first baby step aiming for bigger and better things," but it always galled him that an overdose of caution had cost America (and him) the chance to be first in space. His suborbital flight might seem inconsequential when compared with today's spaceflight activities, but it galvanized and united Americans at the time, giving them a renewed sense of pride and achievement. It also set in motion mankind's greatest-ever scientific undertaking. Just twenty days after Shepard's triumphant return to earth, the President stood before Congress and committed America to landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

Once astronaut Virgil (Gus) Grissom had virtually replicated Shepard's flight with a second ballistic mission in July, NASA decided to press on with orbital missions. This was first achieved by John Glenn aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962. Another two manned orbital flights followed, and then it was announced that Gordon Cooper's 22-orbit flight in May 1963 would end Project Mercury.

However Alan Shepard was keen to fly again, and if it meant using a little of his renowned tenacity then he was prepared to give it his best shot. He knew a spacecraft (15B) had already been assigned to a possible last Mercury mission and it had been substantially upgraded, making it capable of operating a prolonged flight. Because the other astronauts were now engaged in assignments specifically related to Projects Gemini and Apollo, he and Cooper were the only astronauts still actively involved in Mercury training. As Cooper's backup for the MA-9 mission he would have automatically slotted in as prime pilot for an additional flight, with Cooper performing backup duties.

Shepard resolutely proceeded with his plans for MA-10, to the point of renaming spacecraft 15B Freedom 7 II, and having that logo painted on its shingled exterior. By this time NASA had virtually decided to scrap plans for a final one-man flight, so in a typically audacious move Shepard went above his NASA bosses and tried to enlist the personal support of the President for an open-ended mission to complete Project Mercury. Kennedy, however, told the astronaut the final decision rested entirely with NASA Administrator James Webb.


Due to pressing arguments for another Mercury flight, Webb had carefully weighed up all the options, but when he stood before the Senate Space Committee in June 1963, he began by stating in part: "There will be no more Mercury shots." He went on to explain that Project Mercury had satisfactorily accomplished its goals, and there should be new priorities. All the energies of NASA and its contractors, he said, should now be fully employed in focusing on the Gemini and Apollo missions. As it turned out, even if Shepard had realized his unlikely goal of an assignment to a second one-man flight, it was a mission he was destined never to fly.

Some early consolation came for Shepard when he was selected to fly the first Gemini two-man flight, with rookie Tom Stafford as co-pilot. Early in 1964 they had begun preparatory training in the simulators, when Shepard was suddenly struck down by a serious ailment that threatened to end not only his astronaut career, but also his days as a pilot. He had woken one morning feeling a little giddy, and collapsed when he tried to stand up. Shepard was not overly concerned, believing it to be just an isolated incident. Five days later he suffered another sudden bout of dizziness, began vomiting uncontrollably, and had a loud, recurring ringing in his left ear.

After these attacks had struck him down several times, Shepard finally realized it wasn't something he could simply tough out, and reluctantly made an appointment to see the flight surgeons. Following extensive tests a panel of NASA doctors recommended he be removed immediately from the flight rotation.

The ailment proved to be Ménière's Syndrome. "The problem is not considered very significant for an earth-bound person, but it sure can finish you as a pilot," he said during a 1970 interview for Naval Aviator News. "I convinced myself it would eventually work itself out, but it didn't. Tom Stafford had told me about Dr. House, out in Los Angeles, who could perform an operation on this particular kind of inner ear trouble. At first it sounded a little risky but, in 1968, I finally decided on having it done. With NASA's permission I went out to California. In order to keep the whole business quiet, Dr. House and I agreed that I should check into the hospital under an assumed name. It was the doctor's secretary who came up with it. So, as Victor Poulis, I had the operation, and six months later my ear was fine."

Although his surgery was successful, Shepard had lost his chance to fly on Gemini, and there were serious doubts that he would ever fly into space again. Earlier, in order to remain part of the astronaut cadre, he had accepted an interim appointment as Chief of the Astronaut Office, which made him a major force in the training and assignment of his fellow astronauts. Eventually his never-say-die attitude would see him regain active astronaut status, and he quickly began a determined campaign for a slot aboard a manned Apollo lunar mission.

Almost a decade after his pioneering flight aboard Freedom 7, 47-year-old Shepard made a second and final trip into space as commander of Apollo 14, launched on 31 January 1971. In doing so, he became the oldest of the twelve men whose footprints still remain embedded in the lunar soil. He spent thirty-three hours traversing and exploring the Fra Mauro area together with Edgar Mitchell, and freely admits shedding tears of wonder and joy when he stood on the moon's surface for the first time beneath Lunar Module Antares.

At the end of their final lunar excursion, Shepard impishly pulled out a club head he had secretly brought along and clipped it onto the shaft of a soil-sample scoop. He then dropped a golf ball onto the surface of the moon and began a modified one-armed backswing. "Unfortunately the suit is so stiff I can't do this with two hands," he reported back to Earth, "but I'm going to try a little sand trap shot here." Using only his right hand he whacked the first of two balls for what he later described with a wide aviator's grin as "miles and miles."

Alan Shepard on the lunar surface, Apollo 14 (Photo: NASA)

Once, in an interview for the Hall of Science and Exploration, Shepard was asked what he would nominate as his proudest accomplishment, and he said it was being chosen to make the first manned American flight into space. "That was competition at its best," he stated, with his usual unapologetic candor. "Not because of the fame or the recognition that went with it, but because of the fact that America's best test pilots went through this selection process down to seven guys, and of those seven, I was the first one to go. That will always be the most satisfying thing for me.

"During the actual process of flying aircraft, or flying the Spirit of St. Louis, one doesn't think of oneself as being a hero or historical figure. One does it because the challenge is there, and one feels reasonably qualified to accomplish it." After a pause he added, "I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all."

On Tuesday, 21 July 1998, the world lost America's first astronaut in space to the insidious disease leukemia. He had fought a typically stoic and mostly private two-year battle against the tenacious cancer, but it was a fight even he could not win.

Rear Admiral Alan Shepard, an authentic twentieth century hero, passed away in his sleep at the Monterey Community Hospital in California. He was 74 years old.


© Colin Burgess
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