Francis French - Into That Silent Sea

'The straightforward yet engrossing writing style of this history will interest readers from the junior-high level to adults.... What is especially compelling about this race into space story is the humanistic narrative, describing the individual cosmonauts and astronauts.... For younger readers, the description emphasizes the characteristics of determination, scholarship, loyalty, camaraderie, dedication, and fitnesstraits that are essential for astronaut applicants."Rita Hoots, Journal of College Science Teaching

'Unforgettable days and some unforgettable characters were brought vividly back to me by this truly wonderful book. They were fun times; they were also incredibly difficult, hard-working, and agonizing times, watching dear friends launch into space with my heart in my mouth. This book offers a treasure trove of memories."Dee O'Hara, nurse to the astronauts

'As well as vividly picturing the men, this book also accurately tells the story of the very first women to train for spaceflight in Russiaand women like me in America who hoped for the same opportunity to reach for the stars."Wally Funk, rocket pilot for Interorbital Systems Corporation

'This frank, entertaining, no-holds-barred ride through the golden age of space flight takes us behind the official stories, into the real lives of the very first astronauts and cosmonauts."Wally Schirra, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronaut

We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Foreword

Reflections of a Golden Era

During the extraordinarily dynamic period covered in this book, Paul Haney became widely known as nasa's "voice of Mission Control, "and later its "voice of Apollo."A journalist and news editor from Akron, Ohio, Haney joined the fledgling space agency as an information officer based in Washington DC and later served in nasa's Public Affairs Office as its first news director. In 1963 he moved to Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center (later the Johnson Space Center [JSC] as nasa's public affairs officer in their Office of Manned Spaceflight.

In October 1957 the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite. It shocked, surprised, amazed, and confounded the federal establishment in Washington. At the time I was working for the 140-year-old Washington Evening Star.

Following the Sputnik announcement the Star commissioned me to do something that usually preceded a congressional vote on whether to go to wara special section called a "man-in-the-street" reaction. The national reaction went deep: a majority decided there was something wrong with America's education system. Teachers began doubting the efficacy of the McGuffey Reader, an educational standard since the 1840s. At the very least, the Soviet space challenge ushered something called New Math into American grade schools.

In December 1958 I quit the Star, having accepted an invitation to join America's brand-new space agency, nasa, as their first news division chief. To me, the space challenge seemed capable of becoming at least as big as the opening up of the western United States, 150 years earlier. It was one of the few times in my life when I guessed right.

Looking back, I was privileged to observe the infant nasa in its bureaucratic birthing crib in Washington Dc. The Eisenhower administration, like so many real-life fathers, wasn't sure what it had sired, so it was understandably reluctant to take too much credit.

In 1961 when Houston was selected as the home of what is now the Johnson Space Center, it was the last time in the modern era that cities bid for the right to be home to a new national facility. Houston's psychic payoff for volunteering came when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and Neil Armstrong's first words back to mother earth were: "Houston... the Eagle has landed."

In the course of 1961-63, everyone eventually "transitioned" to Houston and the new home the human spaceflight program was building on a swampflood plain twenty miles south of the city. I set up a weekly news conference that identified all coming events in the manned space effortflight hardware tests in California, geology hikes in Iceland, jungle training in Panama, simulations in Houston. It was like opening my day-to-day office planner to anyone who cared to look.