In the shadow of the moon by Francis French

Author:Francis French
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

As he got to know his crewmates better during the demanding training, Walt Cunningham never quite figured out what made Donn Eisele tick. He noticed that Eisele seemed to adopt the style of his commander very readily and enjoyed the astronaut lifestyle of working hard and playing hard. Beyond that he remained somewhat of an enigma, even to Cunningham. Eisele certainly liked to play hard, and this became even more evident during the long weeks of training at the Cape. The Cocoa Beach party scene had always embraced the astronauts, and it warmly embraced Eisele. Traditionally, when launch dates were approaching the crews spent a large part of their time down there, and the social scene surrounding the astronauts grew accordingly. Cunningham remembers one big party that ended with Eisele trying to swim the three miles back to his hotel along a canal. “He wasn’t unusual in that respect,” Cunningham remembers. “A lot of guys had a ‘home away from home,’ if you will: a life away from home.”

For those who were less careful, or didn’t care to be careful, there was even more on offer for the astronauts, as Cunningham explains:

There was a little hanky-panky that went on every once in a while. In the sixties, being an astronaut was literally a license to steal in that area. And being cool, an astronaut, having your own T -38—picture this. Arriving in a strange airport, with a strange blind date meeting you, and you pull up in a T-38, come leaping down in a flight suit—here I am. Now that was cool! In fact, I can remember, the very first lecture I ever had, when I reported to the office as an astronaut—I think it was Wally Schirra and Deke Slayton took all of us new guys aside, fourteen of us. All of us were going to go down to the Cape, as none of us had ever even seen a rocket launch. They told us to really mind our Ps and Qs, because for the last three months the National Enquirer has had a reporter assigned down there just to watch for astronauts coming and going at the Holiday Inn. So, whatever you do, you had better be awfully careful. That was the first lecture I ever had at NASA .

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