BIDDING FAREWELL TO AMERICA'S NEW FRONTIERS

ARLINGTON, Va. -- On the 30th anniversary of the moon mission, another bell tolled for Apollo, and for Camelot.

Into the hot soil of Virginia, the body of Charles "Pete" Conrad was interred this week, surrounded by the faithful and the fearless of the New Frontier. The third man to step on the moon now rests in the Earth, on the southern slope of Arlington National Cemetery, across a hillock from the eternal flame that marks the grave of President John F. Kennedy.

It was Kennedy, of course, who set the astronauts on their journey to the moon, and it was the death of his youngest child, John Jr., that provided a poignant backdrop to this gathering of the graying, the balding and the halting -- the men, once young, who personified the vigor of the 1960s.

There in the chapel, and later at graveside, were the other symbols of Kennedy's decade: John H. Glenn Jr., who piloted Friendship 7 into Earth orbit and catapulted the United States back into the space race. Neil Armstrong, whose small step for man was a giant leap and a giant symbol. James Lovell, who piloted a Gemini spacecraft and then, 205,000 miles from Earth aboard Apollo 13, sent back one of the signature messages of the era: "Houston, we've got a problem."

And as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessels with side-scan sonar explored the ocean deeps for Kennedy's son, the men inside the Fort Myer Memorial Chapel could speak only of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration research vessels that explored the depths of space in pursuit of Kennedy's dream.

It is a week, to be sure, for the contemplation of old dreams -- and for the celebration of those who dream.

"The Pete Conrads of this world refused to believe the world was flat," said Alan Beam, the retired Navy captain who piloted the lunar-excursion module on Apollo 12, the mission that took Conrad to the moon. "They were the ones who fought and sacrificed in their Tomcats and Hornets. The Pete Conrads of the future will work on Mars and explore all the other places."

It is a week, also, for the contemplation of the caprice of life on Earth -- and for the celebration of those who are called to explore all the other places.

"We spent 10 days together visiting a very small part of our universe," added Richard Gordon, the retired Navy captain who was the pilot of the command module on Apollo 12.

It is a week, too, for the contemplation of how small, and how ironic, is our part of the universe.

On the surface, Conrad was an unlikely symbol for the anguish of this hard week and for the New Frontier retrospective set in motion by the Apollo anniversary and the Kennedy tragedy. He was not tall, nor dark, nor handsome. There was a big gap between his teeth -- a gap that Stockton Rush, a friend for six decades, noted seemed to grow bigger with time. He was earthy.

But he was rebellious, like the time; he once told a NASA medical officer that the physical exam he was about to receive was "crazy" and that he'd be damned if he'd give himself another enema. And he was a risk-taker; he water-skied while the other astronauts studied.

And -- above all -- he was one of the advance men for the future.

Two of his flights, Gemini 5 and Skylab 2, set endurance records for their time. His steady hand at the command of Apollo 12 kept the moon mission on track during a terrifying lightning strike during launch. On the Skylab flight he led a spacewalk to spread a thermal blanket over a damaged section of the spacecraft, an achievement NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin said "saved the program."

But most of all Conrad is an apt symbol of the age precisely because he believed so deeply in the program -- in the space program, and in the orthodoxy of the New Frontier, that peculiar ad-mixture of Cold War ideology and postwar idealism. In the back of the chapel sat Roger Patrick Bahn, president of TGV Rockets and a longtime Conrad business associate. "He was the single most New Frontier guy of any of the early astronauts," said Bahn. "He was a believer."

For at the heart of the space program, of the New Frontier, of the Kennedy mystique, was a willingness to believe -- to believe in the ability of technology to fix problems on Earth and transport astronauts into space; in the transcending power of idealism to address earthbound challenges and to meet them in space; in the inspirational power of the presidency to call the nation to a higher purpose.

And so at an Arlington funeral on a sweltering day 30 Julys since the first steps on the lunar surface, much of that was buried. But before a spadeful of earth was turned, Willie Nelson, balladeer to a nation, stood in the Fort Myer chapel to bid farewell to a friend. The voice was thin, even strained, and the words were half-spoken, half-sung, but the lines of "Amazing Grace" were unmistakable. It is an epitaph for an era. Amazing grace.