Why you can not talk about the moon landing without mentioning the cigarette

At the press conference at which the 7 Mercury astronauts were presented – the first American astronauts – on April 9, 1959, three of the seven astronauts smoked on stage during their presentation in the country (Deke Slayton, Alan Shepard and Wally Schirra). Also smokes on stage during the press conference: Brig. General Donald Flickinger, an air doctor trained at Stanford and one of the leaders of the astronaut selection. In fact, the third question of a reporter was a half-joking investigation about it. "I notice that three of you are smoking," he says, "and I wonder what you are going to do for cigarettes when you get in the capsule?"

In the 1960s, when there was virtually no restriction on where to smoke, smoking was not an idle habit. The pilots smoked in the cockpit while flying and the doctors smoked in the hospitals. The typical smoker consumed 29 cigarettes a day (one and a half pack), a cigarette every 35 minutes when he was awake.

Thomas Kelly, chief engineer at Grumman for the design and construction of the lunar module, regularly visited factories of companies supplying parts for the Moon lander. In 1966, he was particularly dismayed by what he had discovered at Eagle Picher, the Joplin, Missouri, company that made the batteries that supplied all the lunar module power as it flew to the moon. The lunar modules themselves were assembled under cleanroom conditions, with each person having touched the lunar modules wearing a jumpsuit, hair nets and gloves. At the battery factory, as he tells in his memoirs Moon LanderKelly found a non-air-conditioned building with open windows and staff smoking while assembling the batteries. "A muscular fellow particularly caught my attention. He was wearing a dirty shirt and had a cigarette hanging on his lips. As I watched in disbelief, the ashes of his cigarette grew longer as he scanned the open holster (stack) in which he had just placed a plate, until he reached the top. it breaks and falls inside. "Kelly was so furious that he ordered Grumman's quality control inspector permanently assigned to the Eagle Picher plant.

Gene Kranz, the legendary flight director who was in Houston during the first landing on the moon, explained that cigarettes were an integral part of the Mission Control structure during the Apollo mission and the space flight ritual. In his memoirs, Failure is not an optionKranz describes entering Mission Control for his shift on July 20, 1969, as he directed the first landing on the moon: "The room smells of cigarettes, covered with pizza, stale sandwiches, full bins and coffee burned on the hotplates. Just before the flight between lunar orbit and the moon, Kranz locks all the doors of the control of the mission so that no staff member can enter or enter during this critical period. While they wait for the spacecraft to come from the other side of the Moon, Kranz writes, "We are counting the minutes for the acquisition (radio) and I am lighting up another Kent, take a deep breath and recite a prayer. "Pictures of Mission Control during the Apollo period, mount large overflowing ashtrays directly onto the computer consoles.

According to Dee O'Hara, the nurse assigned by NASA to the medical care of the first astronauts, space agency officials asked them not to smoke in public, where they could be photographed with cigarettes. Especially since Gemini and Apollo flights have extended space travel to multi-day missions, some astronauts have resigned, if only to avoid being miserable for days without smoking in the air. 39; space. Wally Schirra, one of those photographed smoking at the Mercury 7 press conference, stopped before taking the plane on Apollo 7 in October 1968, a mission he had commanded during 11 days.

But not everyone has done it. Al Worden was the pilot of the Apollo 15 command module. A few weeks after the mission, he had written a test for the New York Times on what it was to turn around the Moon, alone, while his teammates were exploring the surface for three days. The photo that accompanied the test shows Worden at his dining table with his 13-year-old daughter, Merrill.

In his left hand, a cigarette.

Ronald Evans was the pilot of the command module for Apollo 17, the last landing mission on the moon. His teammate, Gene Cernan, in Cernan's memoirs The last man on the moonEvans "smoked the last cigarette he would have had for two weeks," as astronauts put on their spacesuit before boarding the Saturn V rocket. Cernan writes, when Apollo 17 landed in the Pacific, that one of the first things (that Ron did) was a cigarette burned by a sailor.

Charles Fishman, who has been writing for Fast Company since its inception, has spent the last four years researching and writing One Giant Leap, a book on how 400,000 people, 20,000 businesses and a federal government have been led. to bring 27 people to the moon. (You can preorder it here.)

For each of the next 50 days, we'll be releasing a new story from Fishman – a story you've probably never heard before – about the first effort to reach the moon that illuminates both the historic effort and the ongoing effort. . New publications will be posted here daily and will be featured on Fast Company's social media. (Follow us at # 50DaysToTheMoon).