Ed White (astronaut)

• 1. Introduction

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  Ed White took his last step back inside a spacecraft on the 27th of January 1967, and by that evening, he was gone. But the moment that defined his life came nearly two years earlier, on the 3rd of June 1965, when he floated free of his capsule twenty thousand feet above the Earth and became the first American to walk in space. When mission control ordered him back inside, White said it was the saddest moment of his life. That single sentence tells you everything about who Ed White was: a man for whom the sky was never quite enough, who had been reaching toward it since the age of twelve, and who would not stop reaching even at the end.

• 2. A Military Boyhood

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  San Antonio, Texas, on the 14th of November 1930, is where Edward Higgins White II was born, into a family that lived by the rhythms of the Air Force. His father, Edward Higgins White Sr., was a West Point graduate who would eventually rise to major general. When White was twelve, his father took him up in a North American T-6 Texan trainer, and that ride fixed the course of his life.

  The family moved constantly from base to base. White attended Oakwood Junior High School in Dayton, Ohio, and then Western High School in Washington, D.C. When he graduated in 1948, he wanted to follow his father to West Point, but the academy's appointment system required a connection to a specific congressional district, and the White family had never stayed anywhere long enough to establish one. White walked the halls of the Capitol and knocked on the doors of congressmen until Representative Ross Rizley of Oklahoma gave him his appointment.

  At West Point, White acquired the nickname "Red" for his hair. He ran the 400-meter hurdles well enough to compete for a spot on the 1952 U.S. Olympic team, missing qualification by just 0.4 seconds. He played half-back on the soccer team and pursued squash, handball, swimming, golf, and photography. One of his classmates was Michael Collins, who would later travel to the Moon.

• 3. The Road to Space

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  White graduated from West Point in 1952, ranked 128th out of 523, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. He flew F-86 Sabre and F-100 Super Sabre fighters at Bitburg Air Base in West Germany, spending three and a half years there alongside colleagues that included Buzz Aldrin, who had graduated a year ahead of him at West Point. In 1953, he married Patricia Eileen Finegan, a woman he had met at a West Point football game.

  In 1957, White read an article about the astronauts of the future and resolved to become one. He calculated that an advanced degree would improve his odds, and Aldrin later recalled that White persuaded him to pursue the same path. White enrolled at the University of Michigan in September 1958 under Air Force sponsorship, studying aeronautical engineering alongside classmates James McDivitt, Jim Irwin, and Ted Freeman. He received his Master of Science degree in 1959.

  White then attended the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base with class 59-C, which graduated in July 1959, with McDivitt again among his classmates. He was assigned to the Aeronautical Systems Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, where he flew test missions on aircraft ranging from the Fairchild C-123 Provider to the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger. As a weightlessness-training captain, he piloted the planes that took astronauts through their parabolic arcs. His passengers included John Glenn and Ham, the chimpanzee who was the first hominid in space. By the time NASA came calling, White had logged more than 3,000 flight hours, about 2,200 of them in jets.

• 4. The First American Spacewalk

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  NASA chose White as one of nine men in Astronaut Group 2, announced at a press conference in Cullen Auditorium at the University of Houston on the 17th of September 1962. He was assigned to Gemini 4 as pilot, paired with command pilot James McDivitt, a pairing that Deke Slayton made because the two men had studied together in Michigan and trained together at Edwards.

  The question of whether anyone would step outside the spacecraft was not settled until late. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performed the world's first EVA on the 18th of March 1965, aboard Voskhod 2. NASA administrator James E. Webb did not approve an EVA for Gemini 4 until May 25, barely a week before launch. White carried three pieces of religious jewelry on the walk: a gold cross, a St. Christopher Medal, and a Star of David. He later explained that he could not represent every religion, only those most familiar to him.

  At 19:46 UTC on the 3rd of June 1965, White floated out of the hatch and propelled himself with an oxygen-powered gun called the Hand-Held Maneuvering Unit. He was so reluctant to return that McDivitt had to order him back inside the craft. While he was outside, a spare thermal glove drifted away through the open hatch and became one of the earliest pieces of space debris in low Earth orbit, eventually burning up on re-entry. The hatch itself proved troublesome: a mechanical failure made it difficult to both open and relatch, and McDivitt had to press on the gear mechanism with his glove to seal it. An unsealed hatch would have been fatal to both men on re-entry.

  When Gemini 4 splashed down, President Lyndon B. Johnson traveled to Houston to congratulate the crew and promoted both men to lieutenant colonel. The following week, Johnson presented them the NASA Exceptional Service Medal at the White House. The two astronauts received a ticker tape parade in Chicago, then flew to the 1965 Paris Air Show, where they met Yuri Gagarin.

• 5. Apollo 1 and the Fire

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  In March 1966, White was named senior pilot of the first crewed Apollo flight, sitting in the center seat between command pilot Gus Grissom and pilot Roger Chaffee. The mission, which the crew named Apollo 1 in June 1966, was originally planned to launch in late 1966, but delays in spacecraft development pushed it into 1967. The planned launch date settled on the 21st of February 1967.

  On the 27th of January 1967, the three men climbed into the capsule at 13:00 for a "plugs-out" test atop its Saturn IB booster on Launch Pad 34 at Cape Kennedy. The test was not classified as hazardous because the rocket would not be fueled. Problems with a cabin odor and poor communications between the crew and ground stations slowed the proceedings. At 18:31, fire broke out in the pure oxygen-filled cabin.

  White's assigned role in an emergency was to actuate the inner hatch release handle. His body was found in the center seat with his arms raised over his head, reaching toward the hatch, evidence that he had tried to do exactly that. The hatch design required venting pressure that was already above atmospheric before the cover could be pulled inward, and the fire rapidly raised cabin pressure to 29 psi. At that point, the cabin walls ruptured. All three men were killed by asphyxiation, smoke inhalation, and thermal burns.

  Investigators traced the fire's ignition to a spark from a wire under Grissom's seat on the far left of the spacecraft. The subsequent review identified a wide range of contributing factors: the 100% oxygen pre-launch atmosphere, wiring and plumbing flaws throughout the capsule, flammable materials in the cockpit and the flight suits, and the inward-opening hatch that could not be rapidly cleared in an emergency. Those problems were corrected, and the Apollo program continued.

• 6. Grief and Consequence

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  White was buried with full military honors at West Point Cemetery. NASA officials pressed his widow Patricia to allow burial at Arlington National Cemetery instead, against her knowledge of her husband's wishes. Astronaut Frank Borman intervened and blocked those efforts. Patricia received $100,000 from the life insurance portion of a contract the astronauts had signed granting two publishing firms exclusive rights to their stories and photographs, as well as $16,250 annually for the contract's duration. She later remarried and remained in Houston. On the 6th of September 1983, after surgery earlier that year to remove a tumor, she took her own life.

  White's younger brother James resolved to follow his path. He graduated from the Air Force Academy, became a fighter pilot, and set his sights on becoming a test pilot and then an astronaut. Believing that combat experience would help, he volunteered for service in Vietnam. On the 24th of November 1969, flying with the 357th Tactical Fighter Squadron, his aircraft crashed and he was killed. Nearly half a century passed before his remains were identified. On the 19th of June 2018, he was buried adjacent to his older brother at West Point Cemetery.

  The dismantled Launch Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral now bears two memorial plaques. One reads, in part, "Remember them not for how they died but for those ideals for which they lived." Another carries the Latin phrase "Ad astra per aspera," meaning a rough road leads to the stars. The Congressional Space Medal of Honor was presented to the White and Chaffee families by President Clinton in 1997; Grissom's family had received it in 1978.

• 7. Legacy in Metal and Stone

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  A photograph of White floating above the Earth on his Gemini 4 spacewalk is among the images carried aboard the Voyager Golden Record, launched in 1977 and now traveling beyond the solar system. Eight months after his death, in September 1967, the United States Post Office issued a postage stamp commemorating the spacewalk. It was the first time in the postal service's history that a single design was spread across two stamps joined by a tether, one showing White and the other his Gemini capsule.

  The Omega Speedmaster wristwatch, reference 105.003, worn by White during that walk, became known as the "Ed White" model. The Speedmaster remains the only watch NASA has qualified for EVA use. The star Iota Ursae Majoris was nicknamed "Dnoces," meaning "Second," as in Edward Higgins White the Second, spelled backwards. White Hill, 11.2 kilometers northwest of Columbia Memorial Station on Mars, is a part of the Apollo 1 Hills.

  Schools named for White include Edward H. White High School in Jacksonville, Florida; Ed White Memorial High School in League City, Texas; and Ed White Middle School in Huntsville, Alabama, a city with deep ties to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. McDivitt-White Plaza stands outside West Hall at the University of Michigan, the building that once housed the College of Engineering and counted both men among its graduates. White was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1982, the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1993, and the National Aviation Hall of Fame on the 18th of July 2009.