“The Artist & The Astronaut” Illuminates Space and Human History
The Artist & The Astronaut shows how partners with seemingly disparate careers find their space.
During the 1960s — in both his career as a Marine and a NASA astronaut — Gerald P. Carr was self-admittedly isolated from the tumult of that decade. Many Apollo-era astronauts admitted as much in their autobiographies, including Apollo 15’s Al Worden and Last Man on the Moon Gene Cernan. Unsurprisingly, 80+ hour workweeks didn’t allow the astronaut corps much time to reflect upon issues encompassing civil rights, the Vietnam War, and political turmoil.
As a military member, Carr was dedicated to being a “Cold Warrior”; later, as an astronaut, he was dedicated to beating the Soviets in another public arena — spaceflight. While NASA was ultimately successful in beating its Cold War opponents to the Moon, the decade in full left little social resonances upon Carr, who spent the end of the decade trying to figure out what the hell had happened to Apollo 12’s Saturn V on its way to space (spoiler: it had been struck by lightning…twice. The crew did just fine thanks to an acronym we all know and love). Enter the 1970s, and Carr was also disconnected from upheavals in the world thanks to a new assignment: commander of Skylab 4, the longest spaceflight in duration to date aboard the first U.S. space station.
Launching in November 1973 and returning to Earth 84 days later in February 1974, Carr was inexorably changed by his time in space, not just because of the spectacular Earth views. During Skylab 4, Carr’s leadership was tested by his having to work out a better way of scheduling daily activities and experiments with mission planners and ground control, which led to a widely reported (and grossly inaccurate) media focus on how the crew had been “difficult” during their mission. This led to Carr becoming somewhat disillusioned with NASA. As the space agency strained from slow milestone to slow milestone in developing the nascent Space Shuttle program, Carr began to awaken to the social injustices perpetrated during the previous decade.
Part of Carr’s new awareness was thanks to his second wife, Pat Musick, an accomplished artist who tackled a variety of social issues, including feminism and the systematic displacement of Native American populations, in her impressive catalog of work. The unique marriage of Carr and Musick is discussed in the new film The Artist & The Astronaut, a film by Bill Muench.
As a director, Muench takes the brave stance of stepping back from the film as a personality, and he quietly allows the titular subjects — and many of the people who also made history in spaceflight during the 1960s and 1970s — to direct the narrative and tell their stories. We hear about how isolated and overworked the 1960s-era astronauts and NASA personnel were through voices including those of Frank Borman, Dr. Ed Gibson, Gene Kranz, and Alan Bean; we also learn more about the horrific Apollo 1 tragedy that strangely united a space agency struggling to find its footing during the early years of its crewed lunar landing program. David Shayler, who wrote the marvelous Carr biography Around the World in 84 Days, is also interviewed and provides historical context regarding Carr’s Apollo and Skylab years.
The movie masterfully intertwines Musick’s career with Carr’s. It gives her equal billing by illuminating her struggles as a working artist juggling marriage and children during a decade not yet impacted by second-wave feminism. If you think Carr had a hard time devoting most of his waking hours to Apollo and, later, Skylab, Musick was dealing with issues best exemplified by the “fig tree” metaphor put forth in Sylvia Plath’s pre-feminist novel The Bell Jar:
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked…I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
The film doesn’t discount the couple’s first marriages and freely acknowledges their personal pasts and children; in fact, The Artist & The Astronaut features a vignette with Jeff Carr, one of Jerry’s children, who went on to work at NASA during the 1980s. Again, tragedy touches the story as the younger Carr — who worked alongside “Teacher in Space” Christa McAuliffe planning lessons to teach aboard Challenger — begins his career in the wake of another horrible spaceflight tragedy.
The film ultimately shows two people mutually and forever changed by their union, as disparate as their lives might seem to outsiders. Shortly after Carr’s 2020 passing, Skylab 4 science pilot and crewmate Gibson, on an episode of the Space and Things podcast, attributed Carr’s legacy to “leadership.” Throughout the film, we miss that leadership — and the courage he had to shatter the “tough Marine” stereotype later in life by becoming a socially aware artist’s inspiration — and aid. Carr discussed his marriage in a 2000 NASA oral history conducted with space historian Kevin Rusnak:
I finally retired completely from aerospace work about two years ago, and my new job description now is studio assistant. I’m enjoying welding and woodworking and running heavy equipment while I assist my wife in the design of her sculptures. I do a lot of the engineering design for it, to help her make sure that we have good solid bases and that they stand up straight the way she wants them to and the way she envisions them…
The thing with my wife, Pat Musick, is that when I met her, I was a technocrat, an engineer, a technician, an astronaut, a pilot, and after having met her and getting to know some of her friends, a door was open, and there’s a whole new aspect of my life that was open to me that I hadn’t any appreciation for, and I learned to appreciate and love art. At the same time, I took some of my expertise in planning to help her.
*****
The Artist & The Astronaut will premiere at midnight on Thursday, February 8, 2024, the 50th anniversary of Skylab 4’s splashdown. The movie will be available via video on demand for $9.99; however, pre-orders are $6.99. Check out The Artist & The Astronaut’s website for more information and behind-the-scenes looks.
