Apollo astronauts knew they’d always have a job in government or aviation or academia or corporate America if they made it back to Earth alive from their missions, but the actual job didn’t pay very well, even by the standards of the 1960s. From Norman Mailer’s Of a Fire on the Moon: “Of course, most of the astronauts worked for only thirteen thousand dollars a year in base pay. Not much for an honored profession. There are, of course, increments and insurance policies and collective benefits from the Life Magazine contract, but few earn more than twenty thousand dollars a year.”