To The Moon, Alice

Though I first earned my nickname playing hockey, with a handle like "Rocket" it wouldn't be wrong to assume I've had more than just a passing interest in space travel. From the Mercury and Apollo programs, from Captain Kirk to Luke Skywalker, going where no man has gone before has always fascinated me. What’s even more fascinating, to me anyway, is that it’s all happened on ‘my watch’. From John Glenn’s first 15 minutes in orbit to Space Shuttle Endeavor’s glide to its final landing last month, I’ve been alive to see it all. Including the big kahuna of all space exploration, the day we landed a man on the moon.

 

I remember July 20, 1969 as a baking hot Sunday in Sacramento and there we had a bunch of people over that afternoon; Grandma and Grandpa Mason, friends from church, the Petefish’s, and Bill and Norma Stamper, Mom and Dad's chums from So Cal. But when the time got close for the landing, everybody stopped what they were doing and held their breath. There wasn’t much to see, it was mostly the radio back and forth between Mission Control and the astronauts. Nevertheless, it was riveting TV as the lunar lander made its slow, gentle decent to the surface of the moon with the world anxiously waiting to hear whether or not, “The Eagle has landed”. Which, of course it did. But that was only the first part of Apollo 11’s mission. The other half of the historic day wouldn’t happen for 6 more hours.

 

So for those of us in the under-18 bracket, the wait time was filled outside swimming or playing games. The grown-ups stayed in the air-conditioned indoors playing cards, snacking and yakking. When the dinner hour arrived and the astronauts remained parked on the moon and going no place fast, the barbeque was fired up, table set and hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner were served. Followed by and ice cream sundaes for dessert. After much eating, yakking and clearing of dishes, at last the big event was about to happen.

 

Shoehorned again into the living room, everyone remained glued to the grainy images coming from CBS Television and hanging on Walter Cronkite's every syllable as Neil Armstrong made his shadowy decent from “The Eagle”. When Armstrong’s shoe at last made contact with moon dust, it was 7:56 in the evening, Pacific Time, and audible cheering broke out in the room. So much so I almost missed hearing him say, “One small step for man....One giant leap for mankind.” Fortunately, they played it again- and again- on replay. And then I went swimming again.

But I wasn’t even 7 when John Glenn made the first space flight and have no living memory of that event. Only what I’ve seen in old newsreels and documentaries. But 19 years later I was on the air and working the graveyard shift at KGA in Spokane when STS-1 Columbia began its historic maiden voyage. KGA was a music station, but the event was so significant (nobody was even 100 per cent sure the thing would fly) management elected to carry the       lift-off live. It must've been a last minute decision though, because I didn't get the word till after clocking in that night.

 

There was a note in my box from Tom Newman,  the p.d., telling me to cut away from regular programming at exactly 3:40 a.m. to join the ABC Radio Network for their launch coverage. His instructions were to stay with it “until it’s either safely away or they're fishing pieces of it out of the Atlantic." Fortunately that didn’t happen and at straight up 4:00 Pacific Time on Sunday morning April 12, 1981, Columbia successfully lifted off from Cape Kennedy, as it was called back then. I got chills watching it on the TV from the news booth as it made its first ascent to the heavens. It was awesome. Ten minutes later the ABC guys signed off, and on KGA, I went back to playing Marty Robbins.

 

But in addition to all our space successes, I’ve seen the failures, too, including Columbia’s last flight which ended on February 1, 2003. Not a jock on the radio anymore, all I could do that Saturday morning was watch TV at home and wait along with the rest of the world for word on what happened after NASA lost radio contact as the Shuttle prepared to land. However, I think most people had already assumed the worst, even before Mission Control confirmed that Columbia had broken up over Texas during Earth re-entry. There were no survivors.

 

Back in 1967, though, three Apollo astronauts died just sitting on the launch pad, strapped into their capsule and running routine tests, incinerated in seconds during an oxygen-fed flash fire. I was almost 12 then and in 6^th grade. Fast forward to January 28, 1986. By then I was 30 and working in Grass Valley at KNCO when the space program experienced its first failure since 1967, the explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger. 

By the mid 1980's, space flight, and the Shuttle program in general, had become so routine that hardly anyone paid attention anymore. Not like in the beginning. Certainly none of the major news networks bothered to cover launches and landings live anymore. But the January 1986 flight was the first space mission where a private citizen would be riding along, teacher Christa McAuliffe. So this lift-off was different. Everybody was there that Tuesday morning, as Christa and the Challenger roared into space. From NBC to CNN to little ‘ol KNCO. We were all along for the ride. And it all looked so good until a minute and a half into the flight. As Challenger climbed into the blue Florida sky, we all heard Commander Dick Scobee answer the order from Mission Control in Houston to, "Go at throttle up. And then it was over.

 

A split second later the orbiter exploded and disintegrated. As pieces free-fell into the Atlantic, the nation was plunged into instant grief. It was horrific. It was awful. And you couldn’t turn away. But at KNCO, after two and a half hours of continuous coverage from the ABC Radio Network, we decided to break away. Not to be disrespectful but it’d been a hard morning and there really wasn’t anymore ‘news’. So at 11:00, we returned to regular programming. But it wasn’t easy. I was the personality on duty at that hour of the day, however with a National tragedy in Florida unfolding before everybody's eyes on television and within the sound of KNCO's voice, had it been up to me I’d have taken the rest of the day off. I just didn’t feel like being on the air. It seemed a little sacrilegious to start playing music and running commercials as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. To me, it’d be like selling used cars during somebody's funeral.

But for one of the few times in my radio career, I think I actually may have done something right. After the news ended at 11:05, instead of reading the weather I began the hour by asking everyone to stop what they were doing- except if driving in their cars- to close their eyes, bow their heads and say a prayer- for the loss of the Challenger and its crew, their families and for the nation. On the radio, I asked for a moment of silence.

 

Of course it's considered radio death to have even accidental dead air. But in this case, it seemed poignant and the right thing to do on a surreal morning weighted down in coast to coast sorrow. Besides, I don’t think it lasted more than 20 seconds and then it dissolved straight into “Amazing Grace”. Was it small town and a little goofy? Maybe. But I got a lot of nice feedback from callers, thanking us, thanking me, for the short tribute. I guess it really was the right thing to do. And after that, though we followed the story the rest of the day, KNCO returned to its regular format and proceed as best we could. It was a hard air shift and a hard day, but life had to go on- at least on the radio.

That was over twenty five years ago, though it seems like only yesterday. The time between the first moonwalk and last Shuttle flight seemed to go by in the blink of an eye, too. I was thinking about that the other night, while gazing at the full August moon. How my life has pretty much spanned the entire Space Age. And as I stood alone the other night, pondering this grand revelation under a moon so big it filled the vast summer night sky, I suddenly felt tiny and trivial and wondered what it all meant?  And you know what I came up with? You know what it means?

 

It means I'm getting old.