The Scene at the Cape: Prometheus and a Carnival

COVERING a football game or a space shot, TV these days delivers technical excellence, informed commentary and immediacy. So why go to the scene? Were the hundreds of thousands of tourists, the 6,000 or so special guests of NASA and the 1,782 journalists all foolish to take the trouble of being at Cape Kennedy? Just ask one who walked into the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the 363-ft.-tall Saturn 5 rocket was put together, and listen to him insist that no picture had ever prepared him for the experience of looking up at the towering vastness, the esthetic curves of the work platforms, the cathedral-like sense of man's puniness. No camera angle or word comparison can convey the feeling of standing like a blade of grass alongside the impersonal white complexity of the lofty moon rocket itself.

In the darkness of 5 a.m., when the brilliantly floodlit rocket gives off rays of light like a star sapphire, it seems entirely possible that so beautiful a machine might reach the moon. But with sunrise and the reappearance of the normal landscape, doubt intrudes; eventually, at a distance of three miles, the rocket seems to shrink in size and magic until it becomes an act of almost Promethean gall to aim it at the heavens.

At ignition, nothing that TV says or does can re-create the waves of sound that actually buffet the ears, chest and gut of the spectator. The slowness of lift-off contrasts incredibly with the acceleration into flight. The head goes back, hands are raised to block out the sun, tears of relief and perhaps pride fill the eye. The sense of brute power boring an escape hole through the atmosphere is heightened by a sudden realization that one is being left behind. The earth itself seems to be dropping away as fast as the wingless rocket is accomplishing the completely unnatural act of heaving itself upward and bursting through the sky.

This was what the crowds had come to witness. Jules Verne had the vision more than a century ago. When Western man finally launched himself into space, he foresaw, it would be from Florida's midsection. Men with less foresight saw only a forbidding stretch of sand, scrub and fetid marshland that was bypassed even during the land boom of the 1920s. In the 1950s, recalls Space Reporter Al Volker of the Miami News, the space program was so hushed up that the only way to find out that a shot had taken place was to have a Cocoa Beach bartender telephone the news. But in the 1960s the time had come for Verne's idea. With it came a population of 250,000, cinder-block subdivisions, all the effluvia of a boom town and, last week, a million guests in a carnival atmosphere.

Cocoa Beach pays unending tribute to the space age that made it prosper. Motels bear names like Sea Missile, Satellite and Polaris. There is a Celestial Trailer Court and an Astro-Dine Outer Space Eat-In. George's Steak House has rest rooms marked "Astronauts" and "Astronets." The menu suggests: "Lift off with a three-stage martini. Order a steak that soars to an apogee of taste and splash down with coffee."

At least ten days before the launch the crowds began streaming in--those without press passes or VIP badges, families with young children, groups of students. They came out of curiosity to see a sensational event, but plainly also with a strong sense of patriotism. Thousands converged on the Cape by boat; 3,000 craft of every description gathered on the Indian and Banana rivers. They also came in jalopies of no recognizable genus, in Skampers, Starcrafts, Swingers and Shastas, in Lo-Liners, Open Roads, Trade Winds and Nomads, packing the campsites and motels. Long-Distance Runner Bill Emmerton, 49, arrived on foot, having jogged 1,034 miles from Houston.

On "T-minus-three" (for takeoff-minus-three days), as NASA labeled the Sunday before the launch, most journalists who covered the event were already on hand. Close to 850 came from abroad, representing 54 countries and speaking in languages ranging from Spanish to Punjabi. Old hands at space reporting set up a telephone watch of the countdown and otherwise filled the evenings with beach parties, dancing at George's and lots of "Hemingway daiquiris" (Papa's recipe: grapefruit juice, lime juice, Bacardi and a dash of grenadine).

In contractors' hospitality suites, private houses, hotel ballrooms and on yachts, the cups never ceased running over. CBS commenced the nonstop round of parties with a "Come and Meet Walter Cronkite" bash Sunday afternoon. While Cronkite mingled affably in his role as a national institution, a clerk for an airline took reservations for the firm's "first charter flight to the moon" and trotted out a "space age" stewardess encased from head to knee in a plastic bubble. "You can't win in this town," muttered Norman Mailer as he walked past her.

NASA's distinguished guest list included General William Westmoreland, Terence Cardinal Cooke, Charles Lindbergh, Johnny Carson and Jack Benny--not to mention 205 Congressmen, 30 Senators, 19 Governors, 50 mayors and 69 ambassadors. Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson flew in from Houston, representing President Nixon, and dined on launch's eve with NASA Administrator Thomas Paine. On launch day, the VIP grandstand was a miniature Who's Who of white America; it was disturbing to note that black faces were scarce.

Soon after the relentless Florida sun came up, coats, ties and even shirts came off. The long wait grew wearisome, until the announcement: "T-minus-two minutes." Idle conversation halted. Tedium evaporated. "We have lift-off," said Mission Control. People shouted "Go! Go! Go!" and whispered "God bless you." In another two minutes, there was nothing to see but the blue sky. For those incredible two minutes, said the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who led 250 Poor People's Campaigners in a protest march, he was so stunned by the sight and so proud of the astronauts that he forgot there was hunger.

He would soon remember. But Abernathy--and the thousands of others who were on the scene--would probably also recall that moment last week as the biggest historical event of their lives. A radio newsman thrust a microphone into the face of William F. Buckley. "You're an eloquent man, Mr. Buckley," said the interviewer. "How would you describe what you've just seen?"

"With silence," said Buckley.

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