Down to Earth

Few groups of men have been more carefully picked or enjoyed more widespread admiration than America's astronauts. Before man's first landing on the moon in 1969, the corps totaled more than 50 men. Most of them were extremely skilled jet pilots and had distinguished military records, as well as extensive engineering and scientific training. Now, like the space program itself, this elite cadre is rapidly being reduced in size. By 1974, NASA expects to have no more than 14 astronauts on active flight duty.

The attrition in the ranks of America's spacemen is already becoming apparent. Apollo 12 Astronaut Dick Gordon recently quit to become executive vice president of pro football's New Orleans Saints, and Apollo 7 Astronaut Donn Eisele traded his NASA desk job for the directorship of the Peace Corps in Thailand. In August, Ed Mitchell, who staged an ESP experiment aboard Apollo 14, will leave the space program to pursue his intense interest in psychic phenomena. Apollo 15 Astronaut Jim Irwin, a Baptist lay preacher, will also retire, "to spend more time spreading the good news of Jesus Christ."

More resignations are in the offing.

Under NASA'S austerity program, the only manned spaceflights still on schedule are Apollo 17 in December, three Skylab missions, and the orbital linkup with the Russians in 1975. Deke Slayton, chief of flight-crew operations who was recently returned to flight status after a long battle with a heart irregularity, bluntly sums up the situation: "We have had a surplus [of astronauts] for the past three or four years. The writing is on the wall."

Most of the astronauts who have already resigned have found financially rewarding careers. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, made an unsuccessful bid for a Senate seat, and is now part owner of several Ohio motels. Mercury Astronaut Scott Carpenter is head of an oceanographic company, while Apollo 8's Frank Borman is a vice president of Eastern Airlines. Mercury and Gemini Astronaut Gordon Cooper has set himself up as a management consultant. Wally Schirra, of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, when not acting as Walter Cronkite's sidekick during CBS's coverage of moon shots, runs an environmental research firm. Restless as NASA's deputy associate administrator for aeronautics, Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, quit last October and became an engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati.

Perhaps the most jarring postflight experience befell Armstrong's fellow moon walker, Buzz Aldrin. Unprepared for the hectic demands on his life (ticker-tape parades, speeches, world tours), Aldrin was on the way to "a good, old-fashioned American nervous breakdown," turned to psychiatric treatment, and resigned from NASA. Now writing his autobiography, to be called Return to Earth, he talks candidly about his illness. He has also become an ingratiating salesman on TV commercials.

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