Our Distinguished Volunteers
Four thousand one hundred and eighteen men have presented at the gate house since the programme opened in 1954. This sheet is about the ones we can name, the ones we cannot, and the eleven the Records Department files under a word Accounting chose and will not now change.
I want astronauts. I have said so in every address I have given at the head of that shaft and I will go on saying it. Astronauts, war heroes, Olympians — men who have already done one difficult, frightening thing and found that they liked it. That is the man who gives you clean data, because that is the man who is not frightened enough to lie about what he saw.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration named seven of them this April. I cabled all seven personally the same afternoon, offered each of them sixty dollars and an afternoon of his time, and received one reply, which was courteous, and which was no. I have had the reply framed. It is in the outer office. Caroline has stopped moving it.
Now. That is the preference and it is a strong one, and the Enrichment Center will concede, in print, that it is an aspiration rather than a description of the queue on a Tuesday morning. We take the men who come. We have taken longshoremen, machinists, two clergymen, a professional dancer, a man who would only give his occupation as “between things”, and one gentleman who arrived with his own helmet. Every single one of them produced usable data, and the man with the helmet produced the best afternoon of data in this company’s history.
“Astronauts, war heroes, Olympians. You’re here because we want the best, and you are it.”
Four Of Them, By Name, With Permission
The four gentlemen below sat for a photograph and signed a release permitting the Enrichment Center to print their names. There is no photograph, because the Art Department was reorganised into the Materials Department in the spring and did not come back, so you will have to take the names on their own.
VOLUNTEER 0,412 — T. HALVERSEN, of Ishpeming.
Iron range, nineteen years. First man down Shaft 04 in 1954 and the first man to ask, on coming up, whether he could go again on the Thursday. He could, and did, and has, eleven times. Occupation on his form: “I move heavy things.”
VOLUNTEER 1,908 — CPL. E. R. DOWD, of Marquette.
Korea, two tours, decorated twice and will not say for what. Completed nine afternoons. Reported, after the sixth, that the chambers were “restful”, which is a word no member of this company’s technical staff has ever used about them.
VOLUNTEER 3,110 — the fastest man we have measured.
Sixty-one feet per second on three coats of propulsion gel over steel, on the fourth of March. He asked us to write down that he had done it. We have written it down, and this is where it is written.
VOLUNTEER 2,884 — the gentleman with his own helmet.
Arrived at the gate house in 1957 wearing it, declined to explain it, declined to remove it, and was admitted on the President’s personal instruction. Best single afternoon of data in the company’s history. No surname is recorded on his form.
Who Actually Comes
Presenting volunteers by stated occupation, 1954 – Spring 1959
| Stated occupation | Presented | Completed | Operations note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labouring, mining, iron range | 1,644 | 702 | The backbone of the programme |
| Machinists and tradesmen | 881 | 310 | Ask the best questions. Answer the fewest. |
| Servicemen and former servicemen | 702 | 241 | Bored by it, which is what we want |
| Clerical, professional, other | 509 | 44 | Read the form |
| Athletes, competitive | 44 | 6 | Six is six more than none |
| Clergy | 2 | 2 | Both. Twice each. |
| Astronauts | 0 | 0 | The correspondence continues |
| “Between things” | 336 | 1 | The one is the helmet. |
2,801 of the 4,118 read Form ASI-900 at the gate house and went home, which Operations regards not as a failure of the form but as the form doing precisely what a form is for.
The Ones We Could Not Give Back
Eleven. That is the figure and I am not going to bury it in a table on the fourth page, because burying it is what the outfit in New Mexico would do and I would rather print it here in the same type as everything else.
Eleven men descended Test Shaft 09, or one of its predecessors, and did not ascend it. Their sixty dollars was posted to the address on their form the same week, in cash, by registered mail. Four of the eleven had completed the next-of-kin line and those four families were written to by me personally and I remember all four of their names.
The Enrichment Center does not use the word accident, because an accident is a thing that happens to a company and this happened to eleven men. Seven of the eleven were in the same fortnight in 1956 and nobody has ever asked me why.
What Is Recorded
- Volunteers not returned
- Eleven
- Compensation posted
- Eleven, in full, same week
- Next of kin on file
- Four
- Letters written by the President
- Four
- Inquiries opened
- Eleven
- Inquiries concluded
- Eleven
- Inquiries concluded on the day they opened
- Nine.
He says he remembers all four names. He does. I have watched him say them to himself walking to the machine shop. He has never once written them down and I think that is on purpose. — C.
Form ASI-303. Volunteers are engaged under Form ASI-302 and compensated under Form ASI-306. The Enrichment Center thanks every man who has walked into that gate house, including — and the President has asked for this sentence to be set in the same size as the rest — the two thousand eight hundred and one who read the form and walked back out.