History lesson: Pete Conrad, the original Rocket Man
Pete Conrad was not the most famous of the first-generation astronauts to travel into space – that would be John Glenn – but he may have been the most independent, or at least the most original. A skilled naval test pilot, in 1959 Conrad was one of 56 airmen invited to participate in the original selection process for NASA’S Project Mercury space program, the first of the many programs designed for manned space exploration.
Still, only seven astronauts would be chosen for Mercury, and in addition to incredible bravery, the candidates had to possess many different skills. Ironically, the ability to fly a plane was not one of them, because in the Mercury program the astronauts would essentially be passengers with little control over the rocket’s flight. “Spam in a can” as they were called.
Actually, as Conrad and the others learned, the “skill tests” they did undergo made no sense, at least not to those who had spent their careers flying at Mach 1 speeds in jet planes. Rather than tests of endurance, rapid response, or the ability to withstand pressure, at the clinic where they were tested they had to give sperm counts and stool Pete Conrad during suits up for the Apollo 12 launch.
samples. They underwent prostate exams, enemas, and gastrointestinal exams. They were poked, prodded and invaded, including having cold water pumped through tubes into their ear canals. If this was about their physical health, fine, but what, they asked the uncooperative doctors, did this have to do with reacting to the unpredictability of space flight?
It was Conrad who finally rebelled, telling the clinic’s commanding officer that the testing process was insane and that he had had enough of it. It endeared him to his fellow astronauts but made him a pariah among the clinic’s staff.
The required psychological tests were no better, especially since psychiatrists in lab coats would ceaselessly record in notebooks every gesture an astronaut
made, be it a smile, frown, cough, twitch, even a nose rub, which (figuratively) drove Conrad and the others nuts. And, again, it was Conrad who rebelled. In one test he was given a blank piece of paper and asked to describe what he saw. “I don’t know,” he replied sarcastically. “It’s upside down.”
Unsurprisingly, Conrad did not make the original cut, but when a second set of astronauts was later recruited, he reapplied and was accepted. He went on to command Apollo 12, walked on the moon, and in 1978 was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
He died this week (July 8) in 1999 – he was 69 – after the motorcycle he was racing in California went off the road and crashed. In some ways it was a fitting end to an untamed life.