Meanwhile NASA had run into a lot of flak over the first orbital workshop, Skylab A. Pete Conrad had led the first setup mission to open up Skylab. But then the second crew had been military, a consolation for the DoD after the shuttle cancellation. Ken Mattingly, an Apollo veteran, had led a crew of military astronauts — Manned Spaceflight Engineers — through a secretive program testing “Terra Scout” and “Battleview” surveillance equipment, radiation-monitoring gear, encrypted-communications beams. Every previous NASA flight had been completely open; it had been a deliberate and popular policy going back to Kennedy.

And, meanwhile, U.S. Intelligence had learned that Soviet cosmonauts in Salyuts had overseen military exercises in Eastern Siberia, sending down realtime tactical information to battlefield commanders.

A lot of people thought the militarization of space was a deeply shitty development, a fall away from the dream of Apollo. And Jack Kennedy had attacked it, publicly.

So maybe Seger was right that a morale-raising stunt was a good idea at this point. But it would be a stunt.

Stone had a military background himself. But he hadn’t come into the space program to play spies in space, or to fly stunts. For him, the proposal was a sour compromise. Screw the science, for the sake of the politics. Just like the old days.

And, to him, it didn’t say a lot for Seger’s sound judgment.

Seger cut the discussion short. “Chuck, Phil, every so often you’ve got to take a chance like this. To go back to the Moon so soon would be a hell of a thing for us. A hell of a thing. The nation needs a boost right now: why, you’ve got two White House aides testifying in the Senate against the President right this minute. And as for the risks, remember, they flew Apollo 8 to the Moon and back on only the second manned Apollo, the first manned Saturn V, and the first V to fly after the unmanned Apollo 6, which was a shambles…”

Stone finally understood. Seger had been reading his history. This is Bert’s Apollo 8. Back to the Moon! A grandiose stunt, a way to make his mark. And Skylab B is to be sacrificed for it.

Seger was saying, “Just think what a hell of a lift it will give us when you’re successful…”

“If, Bert,” Jones said. “If.”

When he’d thought it over, Stone still wasn’t happy.

But he wanted to fly in space. If he was going to have to swallow this ill-thought-out, gung-ho crap to do it, then that was the price he would pay.

And anyhow — Stone reflected, in the midst of the revised, hectic training schedule — he kind of liked the idea of going to the Moon…

Friday, July 20, 1973

MASON CITY, IOWA

The piece was splashed over the front page of yesterday’s Washington Post. Ralph Gershon sat in the public library of his hometown, reading it over and over.