Spaceflight Myths That Need To Disappear
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I was aware, in confidence, of how astronaut Frank Borman was doing in the last year of his life. I didn’t want to post this review of a book about him and his late wife at that time, nor around the time of his passing. But now I feel it is important to share this, for the sake of accuracy in space history.
Frank was an incredible guy, whose stern discipline when it came to the job at hand was legendary. I was pleased to interact with him in far more relaxed, social circumstances, including working to organize the Apollo 8 40th anniversary celebration with the whole crew. His self-effacing humor was wonderful to experience. He was the right person at the right time in history to do what humans had never done before – leave Earth orbit and venture into the void.
“Far Side of the Moon: Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman and the Woman who Gave Him Wings,” Liisa Jorgensen, 2022.
The stories of the wives of the early astronauts have gained greater attention in recent decades, providing a needed balance to the chronicles of the spacefarers. While the husbands gained great fame and glory, the wives frequently carried the load of keeping a household operating. Many marriages did not survive. Susan and Frank Borman’s love story was one of the rare few that did. It’s all the more poignant for being lifelong, and surviving immense challenges. Susan’s battles with depression, and later with Alzheimer’s, combined with Frank’s evolution from a hard-nosed career man to a dedicated carer for his wife, makes for a greatly moving tale. It’s a story that has been told a number of times before, both on television and in books. This book promises to focus on Susan and the marriage in unprecedented detail.
In large measure, it succeeds in that regard. But in doing so, it incorrectly gossips about at least two other real people in space history, and for this I have trouble forgiving it.
The book is written in an extremely relatable, novelistic style. Susan Borman escaped a twisted, dysfunctional family to marry Frank, and the dramatic style frequently does fit the story. But often it slides scarily close in its melodrama to a kind of soap opera, romance novel writing style. There is a lot of phrasing such as “ran his hand over her beautiful blonde hair,” and “Susan rested in Frank’s strong arms,” which becomes a little hard to take seriously over hundreds of pages. Almost all of the conversation is invented, and is similarly melodramatic. I frequently wondered if these people truly looked at each other and said phrases such as “You can’t quit. You can’t run away from something that you love.”
Many of the chapters end on cliffhangers. Multiple chapters wrap up with a variation of “everything seemed perfect. But dark clouds were on the horizon,” much as daytime soaps do. It’s an effective writing tool – if not overused.
The beginning and end of the book are the most melodramatic. In the middle is a much less breathless account of Frank’s breakneck career. There are a number of factual errors in it – some minor, some egregious. Here are some examples.
NASA did not make a deal with LIFE magazine – it was the personal agent of the original astronauts. George Mueller was never the head of NASA. University names are spelled incorrectly. Companies are referenced with names they did not use until years later. A civilian CIA pilot is incorrectly listed as Air Force. An airplane used by the White House is misnamed. Borman is incorrectly given credit for the first joint crewed Soviet-American space mission taking place, rather than being one minor player. Apollo 1 is incorrectly listed as originally intended to fly on a Saturn V rocket. The author’s understanding of the oxygen mix used for Apollo missions is factually incorrect. What people said during the Apollo 8 countdown, and re-entry – easily verified with a listen or a read of transcripts – is written incorrectly, so much so as to make no sense. The Kennedy Space Center is given an incorrect geographical location. The author misdescribes which parts of the Saturn V connect to which other stages. Frank Borman was not the first spacefarer to suffer from suspected space sickness. The author misdescribes Apollo 8’s trajectory, adding a melodramatic touch about what this could mean to the crew’s survival which is factually incorrect. She misdescribes how the spacecraft computer works. The author misunderstands why Apollo 8 returned to Earth at the speed described. The wording President Nixon is quoted as saying to the Apollo 11 astronauts while they stood on the moon is at times close to, but overall substantially different from what he actually said, something that could have been easily checked.
It was times like these I questioned the need for this book. The story is one that has been told in multiple Apollo 8 books before, and in the case of the Bormans’ personal lives, in Frank Borman’s own memoir, Countdown, with sometimes only slightly different emphases.
I was particularly surprised to note on page 290 of Jorgensen’s book the following passage, which ends the final chapter, right before the epilogue:
Frank couldn’t seem to get any words out and just looked at her with tortured eyes – the tough-as-nails air force pilot and NASA astronaut who helped save the lunar program and commanded the first mission to the Moon, the man who had been sought out by world leaders on multiple diplomatic missions overseas, the man who had been offered high ranking cabinet-level jobs by three presidents and had addressed Congress on more than one occasion…
This man now put his head on his wife’s lap, and wept.
Compare this to the following passage from Borman’s own book, which ends the final chapter, right before the epilogue:
The tough astronaut who had flown two of the space program’s riskiest missions and had been feted by rulers throughout the civilized world…
The man who had been offered cabinet-level jobs by three presidents of the United States and twice addressed joint sessions of Congress…
The man who had conducted more than one delicate diplomatic mission abroad…
The stern airline executive accused of running Eastern like a Marine drill instructor…
This was the same guy who now put his tired head on his wife’s shoulder and cried.
In style, content, and placement within the book, such wording is so close to identical that I wonder why readers shouldn’t simply read Frank Borman’s original book. If I were the publisher and copyright holder of the original book, I might have some questions of a legal nature also.
I wish these were my only issues with this book, which I feel to be well-intentioned and trying to tell a lovely, moving story. However, now I must relate the worst elements, which I feel to be insulting to some people no longer with us.
Names are given of astronauts who (the book confidently states) never cheated on their wives. Not only is the list incorrect (and presumptive), those left out by omission will be presumed by the reader to have cheated. It’s a slide into untrue gossip. But it’s minor compared to what else this book contains.
The book dishes that “Apollo 7’s Donn Eisele hooked up with a ‘cookie’ he met at the Cape during training. He then went and informed his wife Harriet that he was leaving her and his children while she was in a hospital room with their young son, who was dying of leukemia.”
This account, which could have come right out of General Hospital, is directly contradicted by Harriet’s own words to me in my book In the Shadow of the Moon.
Harriet relates, “I knew at the time of Matt’s death that Donn was involved with someone else, although he denied it to me.” She goes on to explain that her husband finally confessed to affairs many months later, and they did not separate until after the Apollo 7 mission – a divorce which she understandably initiated herself – a long time after the tragic death of their son Matt.
I ran the passage from this book by a member of the Eisele family, who confirmed my understanding that it was the loss of their son that was the catalyst for the end of the marriage some time later, in part from Donn Eisele’s great struggle with accepting and dealing with his death.
Donn Eisele’s actions around that time are not something I’d wish to defend. But to melodramatically place a breakup scene in a hospital room over a dying child seems a little much to me, given that it is directly contradicted by easily-findable first-hand accounts from the participants.
Despite all this, I was still rooting for this book. But there was a point where I had to admit to myself I was really rooting for Susan and Frank’s love story. Because what the author did with cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov’s story is inexcusable.
Komarov, an incredibly accomplished test pilot, died during the flight of Soyuz 1 in 1967, when the automatic parachute system failed. Komarov had spent much of the mission battling a seriously malfunctioning spacecraft, and the fact he’d be able to bring it back on target into the atmosphere at all is a testament to his great skill. As reliable sources confirm in a manner which makes sense to those who know how test pilots operate, Komarov worked diligently to the very end to return to Earth safely.
Jorgensen, however, twice repeats a conspiracy theory-type story about Komarov’s final hours which was discredited as long ago as the mid-1970s, something that would have been easy for the author to check against any reliable source. The tall tale given in this book has Komarov knowing he was going to die (not true), talking to his soon-to-be-widow (whose name is given incorrectly) by radio to say goodbye (not true), and screaming as he plummeted to Earth – impossible to have been picked up by listeners in faraway Turkey as this book describes. Nevertheless – perhaps because it is so melodramatic – Jorgensen chooses to relate the juicy falsehood twice in this book, over fifty pages apart.
Contrasting with Jorgensen’s correct accounting of Frank Borman’s steely-eyed test pilot demeanor, the account of Komarov’s fictitious terror is a particular insult to someone who gave his life in the very field Borman also excelled in.
There’s a wonderful love story in this book. However, the number of errors make me wonder what else might be wrong that I don’t know about, and I am unable to consider this book to be in any way reliable.