Communities: Life in the Space Age

Two decades ago, Florida's Brevard County was a somnolent, 70-mile stretch of citrus groves along the Atlantic Coast. Thanks largely to the Cape Kennedy space complex, the county's population has grown to 250,000 today, and there are more engineers and technicians (35,000) than there were people in 1948. Nearly one-fourth of Brevard County's residents have a college education, six times the national figure; incomes in this affluent subsociety range from $8,000 to the moon. Most families own a boat and at least two cars.

Nonetheless, Brevard County, beneath its pleasant surface, is more than normally edgy. The technicians who assemble and service the rockets have chosen a tense career, and it has taken its toll on their personalities, their marriages and their community. Local psychiatrists and social workers describe the prevailing pattern of life as "the engineer syndrome," and often it seems that only a computer could love it.

Unnatural Environment. The rhythms of life at Cape Kennedy are set not so much by the clock or the seasons as by the irregular flights of the missiles. Bouts of furious activity and 14-hour days may be followed by periods of idleness. "It's not a natural environment," complains Ray Forbes of General Electric, who visits the space center for launchings but leaves as soon as he can. "Down here you oversmoke, overeat, overdrink, overworry and undersleep."

Many Cape Kennedy engineers bring home the fail-safe attitudes necessary to their work. "These are intelligent, perfectionist males who are usually intolerant of the feelings of those around them," says Psychiatrist Burton Podnos, administrator of the local Mental Health Center. Absorbed all day in scientific precision, engineers are apt to accuse their wives of sloppy housekeeping if they find an unwashed coffee cup in the sink. It is hard for some of them to understand why there is not an effective system for toilet-training the baby.

Divorce is common. County Circuit Judge Volie Williams, who has handled 3,000 divorces in the past two years, finds that plaintiff wives of engineers present a strikingly similar recital of marital discord. By their accounts, says the judge, "the husband never wants any family life. He likes to build a stereo set from component parts and then dare anyone in the family to touch it. Every weekend he goes out in his boat by himself and doesn't want his wife or kids to go with him. He never physically abuses his wife and he's a good provider, but when he gives material things he thinks he is fulfilling his obligations. He's selfish, but he doesn't think so."

A. C. Martin, 45, engineer in charge of operations on the Saturn SII rocket, feels that he has a secure marriage, but he fits the pattern to a remarkable degree. Except when a moon shot is in preparation, he plans his day to get home for dinner, chats first with his five-year-old daughter, then with his teenage girl. After dinner at 6:30, he retires to a den, where the family knows he is not to be disturbed. He reads technical material for about two hours, eases his tension by drinking a beer and smoking the one cigarette of the day, is in bed by 9:30. "If your wife isn't with this business," says Martin, "you are better off out of it."