Word: slaytons
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Fortunately, only the astronauts felt frozen. On their last night in space, they donned two pairs of thermal underwear apiece to ward off the chill; Lovell even put on his bulky moonwalking shoes to keep his toes warm. Because they had slept only fitfully, Deke Slayton, NASA's director of flight-crew operations, suggested that each crew member take two Dexedrine pills to keep him alert for busy and fateful moments ahead. Said Lovell: "It's going to be an interesting...
...replacing Mattingly with his back-up crewman, John Swigert, who was found to have immunity against rubella. But Swigert had trained only with the back-up crew and there was doubt that he could properly coordinate with Lovell and Haise on such short notice. Said Astronaut Chief "Deke" Slayton: "It was sort of like trying to put Glenn Miller into Tommy Dorsey's band. Both are great musicians, but each has a different style...
Dehumanized or not, the crew fully measures up to Boss Astronaut Donald K. ("Deke") Slayton's tough requirements. "You're really looking for a damn good engineering test pilot," says Slayton. "They've got to be good stick and rudder men, and also real smart." Not many qualify. Of 1,400 applicants for the last batch of astronauts in 1967, only eleven were chosen. There are now only 49 astronauts and, in many ways, all are as precise as the laws of celestial mechanics?and as unforgiving as the machines that hurtle them through space. Says Slayton of his astronauts...
...first moon landing. Apollo 10 was then still a candidate for the mission; there was also the distinct possibility that if problems developed, the attempt would be postponed until Apollo 12, 13 or even 14. "There isn't any big magic selection that goes on for each mission," says Slayton, whose crew recommendations have never been overruled. "It is like every squadron of fighter pilots. You've got a mission to do and you've got so many flights to fly and you assign guys to fly them. It's that straightforward...
Then, too, there is Donald K. ("Deke") Slayton, the man who selects and trains the astronauts. The professionalism of the Apollo crews is a reflection of Slayton's success-but leaves him less than totally fulfilled. Though he was chosen as one of the original seven U.S. astronauts in 1959, a mild heart murmur prevented him from ever venturing into space. When he was asked recently what he would best like to be remembered for, Slayton replied: "As the pilot of Apollo 11." There was no smile on his craggy face...