edgar-mitchell

30
The Way of the Explorer
family lived on base with no real civilization for hundreds of miles in any
direction. There was only the base, surrounded by thousands of square
miles of desert. On late afternoons, husbands and wives would oftentimes
congregate on someone’s patio around a barbecue pit, talking shop, about
the sameness of the weather, and what they might do with a weekend up
to Reno. The men and women I was surrounded by were passionate about
their work, and because of this, they were simply exciting to be around. In
this respect I fit in, as this was serious research and development; we were
in the process of making aircraft do things they weren’t designed to do.
But occasionally a pillar of black smoke, rising from the desert floor, would
signal that someone might not be coming home that night.
The larger mission of military life never appealed to me. I could manage
interest in the details of the weapons technology so that I could carry
out my duty. But the horrendous destructive power of the weaponry was
distressing, and I wanted to shift my sights from the technology of war to
that of exploration. I felt that exploration was somehow at the core of my
being. I knew that after this duty I might be able to lead my career in
another direction by applying for the astronaut corps, though I hadn’t yet
accumulated enough hours in the seat of a jet. When the Soviets had
launched Sputnik in 1957, I realized that humans would not be far behind.
I wanted to go there.
But before leaving China Lake, another child was born to us, a baby
girl we named Elizabeth. The family was growing, and we were again on
the move, this time to the U.S. Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey,
California. Here I would study aeronautical engineering for the first time
in my life, incorporating what I experienced in the cockpit into the hoard
of new technical concepts being tested in wind tunnels. I also elected to
study subjects outside the usual domain of a test pilot’s curriculum, such as
the Russian language—a sign of the times. This was the confluence of science
and real life.
Through these years it became clear to me that new technology would
play the preeminent role in the exploration of space, and that being a pilot
alone, even a test pilot, would not take me there. I had to become a rocket
scientist, like Robert Goddard. When school in Monterey drew to a close,
I looked to the East Coast for an additional curriculum in aeronautics and
astronautics, and found one to my liking at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. The program’s ultimate goal was in getting a man into outer
space. This would lead to the series of missions that would eventually land
a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth. By changing my status
with the Navy to that of an aeronautical engineer, I found a career path
that I hoped would work for myself, my family, and the Navy. So, in 1961,
Louise and I gathered our young family, and we were once again embarking
on the familiar routine of moving and making a home in a distant city,