posted 08-05-2009 07:35 PM            

One thing I struggle to live with whilst getting older, (52, grumpy old man and proud of it) is sob stories from well known "rich" people bleating on about how poor they were in the old days and now astronauts' kids are doing it.

From PBS's American Experience "Race to the Moon" - Astronaut Families:

Gayle Anders Nuffer: I was in second grade. I remember that we did not go to the Cape to watch the launch. I found out later it was because, #1, they could not afford it (money was always tight with five kids and a military salary) and, #2, my dad did not want us all out in the grand stands in case the rocket exploded during the launch. How could my mother comfort five children if that were to happen? The big deal was that we got a new color TV to watch the launch!

I was very skint as a kid and my dad was mega skint when he was a kid with a Father who had his arm shot off in WW1 as he was in the front line unlike some in the upper levels who had a back seat. He could not do a proper job afterwards rubbish pension and no compo like nowadays, to support his four kids in a slum house, where they tap danced on the cockroaches in the kitchen on getting up every morning to boil a kettle.

Along with many other really skint people amongst us, I find it hard to believe that an astronaut on free car, jet aircraft as a taxi, free meals and accommodation at Cocoa beach, Time magazine dollars, and military salary of about 3000 dollars a month in the 60's is skint. My dear old dad earnt the equivalent of 250 dollars a month as a skilled man (printer) if he was lucky mid 60's.

Some of us really were skint.

posted 08-06-2009 06:59 AM               

I would imagine that in the 1960s, as now, plane fare for a large family cost a pretty substantial amount of money, not to mention lodging, etc. And I know in Michael Collins' book he mentions that his annual salary at the time of Apollo 11 was $17,000...although I'm sure the astronauts' salaries varied to some degree, I can't fathom where you're getting your $3000/month figure. Finally, I doubt that the Life magazine money was a tremendous amount by 1968, given that it was a set amount divided up by all the astronauts and there were quite a few of them by then.

posted 08-06-2009 07:20 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by flight_plan:
military salary of about 3000 dollars a month in the 60's

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I would be interested to see your source for that figure. If you meant that they were getting $3000 monthly paychecks in the 1960s, that can't possibly be true. $3000 in 1965 would have been over $20,000 in 2008 dollars. If you took inflation into adjustment and are saying that someone is whining if they say it was hard to raise a family of five children on the equivalent of $36,000 (2008) dollars a year, I strongly disagree. That would be a struggle.

As for you also including as "whining" a mother being reluctant to have her children possibly see their father disappear in a gigantic fireball, I don't know what to say.

This isn't motivated by blind hero worship: by any cool, rational analysis the astronauts and their families, amidst the glories of the historic accomplishments being achieved, had to undergo some uniquely terrible challenges. Discussing those challenges now just leads to a fuller picture of that time.

posted 08-06-2009 12:52 PM               

The military pay scales are available online. Taking 1969, for example, a four-star general is making about $2500/month. Someone more along the ranks of the astronauts would make half that in basic pay, which doesn't include any allowances, flight pay, or whatever else I'm not privvy to.

posted 08-06-2009 07:02 PM               

Everyone assumed the seven men were volunteering for certain death (the very reason, incidentally, Ike specified that the candidates be chosen from the ranks of military test pilots).

In short: combine fear of the Soviets, cold war emotions, a once-in-a-century news story, Luce's deep pockets, and DeOrsey's legal acumen, you get unusually hefty compensations, such as that arranged for the Project Mercury astronauts; it was was paid out over a five-year period, ending in 1964.

One rarely noted fact (and when noted, badly mangled) is that John Glenn did not wield Astro Power with JFK to win the LIFE contract over NASA Administrator Jim Webb's objections. The first LIFE contract was signed under Eisenhower. Webb was not NASA administrator in 1959.

As far as I can tell, the second LIFE contract was advocated by John Glenn, when he was asked about it by President Kennedy in 1962. The JFK Justice Department under Bobby Kennedy was not well disposed to the LIFE contract, then being revisited as Group 2 came into the fold in June 1962. JFK asked Glenn about the contract face-to-face aboard the Honey-Fitz following Glenn's historic flight.

Glenn explained the loss of privacy suffered by the families and cited the additional burdens placed on the wives because of the demands on their time (speeches, tea parties, Junior League) and wardrobes--demands usually borne by wives of the prosperous.

It appears Glenn persuaded the president and his attorney-general. A second so-called LIFE contract, ca. 1962, was arranged the summer of 1962 for the nine new families.

John Glenn was not arguing that he and his Project Mercury colleagues should benefit from the LIFE contract. Their LIFE contract was a done deal--had been since 1959.

Glenn was advocating compensation on behalf of a successor group.

You can see a very good oral history of John Glenn, interviewed in 1964, on the JFK Presidential Library site. The historian asks about the LIFE contract quite directly.

posted 08-10-2009 08:23 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by stsmithva:
As for you also including as "whining" a mother being reluctant to have her children possibly see their father disappear in a gigantic fireball, I don't know what to say.

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I have never assumed astronauts were wealthy and do side with comments about the dangers of the job, no argument, BUT, my dad was of the same age in the late 60's as many of these astronauts and earned a darned site less. But we still had holidays every year because my parents cut their cloth accordingly. He did not have any job perks or side related perks, a car, colour TV to watch the launch on either, hotels on the job, Time magazine contracts, private jets to fly home in (did they buy the gas or taxpayer?) lucrative offers and deals. I don't begrudge them any of that especialy as the job they did is not the argument and I would not swap places with any of them.

So let's do a like for like compassion. Are any ex-1960's astronauts on this site?

What did you earn as an astronaut late 60's? My dad about £250 max GBP a month if lucky. (Skilled man)

What did your parents do for a living? Let's compare childhood homes and schooling: Just search Google and see Buzz Aldrin's childhood home. Was he poor too?

What perks did you get? NASA or otherwise? Who paid for your homes, furniture, TV (Colour), white goods, car, fares to and from work? hotels, drinks, food?

My dad: His dad's father had right arm shot off in WW1 so no chance of decent job. His childhood home was a slum in slum are of east London and is not on Google because it fell down in 1970.

My dad had No car, no phone, No microwave, no colour TV, one week holidays a year in UK when he got married (it was just as expensive here, too). We pay more for gas to get around in cars. No job perks, fares to pay to get to a from work, raising a family of two on his one income only. If my dad died he had nothing to sell and to send us to college/university was near impossible for us in the 60's as we had no spare no money at all.

Thousands of dads in the UK and USA were in a similar boat and I work alongside people now who also had a real life of poverty in the 60's compared to a 1960's astronaut.

posted 08-10-2009 05:57 PM               

I was also puzzled by the OP comparison of working-class families in gritty postwar Britain with middle-class families of postwar US test pilots seconded to NASA as astronauts. Apples and oranges.

The LIFE contract of 1959, applicable only to the Original 7 families, amounted to a total net compensation, if memory serves, of about $70,000 per Project Mercury family. The money was paid out by Time-LIFE in yearly increments over a five-year period in exchange for the exclusive rights to the personal stories of the astronauts.

(Of course, in the process the astronauts and their wives became public figures. And public discussion about their salaries and homes and kitchen appliances became part of their lives. They accepted that and tried to live in an honorable and ethical fashion.)

Maybe it would be helpful to point out that middle-class Americans in the mid-20th century lived very comfortably, albeit in smaller homes with fewer possessions than is considered the norm today among a stressed and debt-wracked American middle class. But that is Paul Krugman's subject.

Likewise, middle-class astronauts lived very comfortably, with some perks. 'Twas ever thus.

More context about salaries at the time: For lieutenants in the US Navy in 1959, IIRC, annual salaries stood at about $7000, with allowances for dependents and so on. It sounds like a trifling sum, but at the time it was a nice income in a community where everyone had pretty much the same cars and clothes and commissaries and nearby public schools.

A personal note: as children of naval aviators, we were intensely proud of the service our parents were performing on behalf of the country. Same emotion when that service to country moved over to NASA's precincts. Same objective. That notion of service made us proud. Like a shiny possession but better.

As for the astronaut kid quoted above, I believe she was seeking to provide (1) context for her own parents' decisions about family launch protocols (i.e., 'my dad might die and mom thought all things considered she didn't want us to witness the launch in the event of a mishap') and (2) a correction to the perception regarding vast astronaut wealth (i.e., 'we were a family of seven and lived on a middle-class income and airplane tickets were expensive; but we could afford a color tv').

Sounds about right. The Carpenters had a slightly more exotic experience at launch time. But a 1962 launch was a more exotic event, requiring 11 hours of nonstop coverage on network television. We watched the launch from the beach.

As for Lou's question about how many astronaut groups were privy to contracts with Time-LIFE magazine, the answer is, I don't know. Certainly through all the M-G-A groups, no? Perhaps someone else could chime in.

posted 08-11-2009 03:55 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by mjanovec:
I'm not sure what the point of this whole discussion is. I'm sure flight_plan's Dad earned every penny of his money, but I don't see how (or why) that relates to what the astronauts earned, what perks they got, and what their childhold homes looked like.

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posted 08-11-2009 04:05 PM               

...they could not afford it (money was always tight with five kids and a military salary)

posted 08-11-2009 06:42 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Where did Ms. Anders-Nuffer say they were poor? ... One doesn't need to be poor to have difficulty affording family trips and/or to have a tight budget.

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Exactly what I said. I would also respond to the original poster that a one-sentence mention that money was tight, in an interview where she was ASKED for her recollections, hardly qualifies as "going on about" anything.