by Mike Mullane
The plasma vortex intensified in brightness. I wondered how many earthlings were watching the celestial spectacle. The trail of superheated air would glow for many minutes after our passage. We were painting a white-hot arc from horizon to horizon to take away the breath of anybody watching, be they jungle island shaman or the crew of a supertanker.
The horizon came into view from Guy’s window. The Earth’s limb was tinted with the indigo of an impending sunrise.
“Mach 22 at 220,000 feet, a half-G.”
I wasn’t going to be able to stand much longer. My leg muscles were quivering. I had to get down the ladder to my seat. Before I left the flight deck, though, I craned my neck to see the Earth. The Sun had risen and painted a broken layer of clouds in flamingo pink. Just when I thought I had seen every “wow” scene in space, I was treated with a new feast for the eye. We were still traveling at a couple miles per second but had dropped to within forty miles of the cloud tops. The illusion was that we were accelerating, not slowing down. The clouds appeared to skim by at science-fiction speeds. The sight was a narcotic and I watched it until my zero-G-weakened legs couldn’t take my weight any longer and I collapsed to the floor. It was beyond time to get to my seat. I crawled to the mid-deck ladder like a wounded infantryman and felt with my feet for the ladder rungs. In slow, deliberate movements I worked my way downward and into my seat. By the time I was strapped in, I felt as if I had just descended the Hillary Step with a Sherpa on my back. I was exhausted from working in a G-force that was one half of the Earth’s pull.
I hated being downstairs. I was staring at a wall of lockers. There were no windows, no instruments. I felt claustrophobic. I could not imagine anything more terrifying than being in this room and hearing the death throes of a disintegrating shuttle while simultaneously having the lights and intercom go off, as had Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe onChallenger. If the lights went dark and my intercom failed, I resolved to unstrap from my seat and try to climb upward so at least I could die looking out a window. There would be no reason to go to the side hatch and try our new bailout system. If I jumped out during aerodynamic heating, my body would be vaporized as quickly as a mosquito in a bug lamp.
I could hear rumbling throughAtlantis ’s structure. Again, I wished I had paid more attention on STS-41D. Was the rumbling normal wind noise?
We had glided 11,000 miles in the past 50 minutes but most of our deceleration was still ahead of us. Hoot’s dialogue came quicker. “Mach 20; 210,000 feet; 1,190 miles to go…Mach 18; 200,000 feet…one-G…185,000 feet; Mach 15.5…1.4 Gs.”
We had passed through the hottest part of reentry andAtlantis was flying just fine. Without a hiccup she was completing her transformation from spaceship to airship. My doubts about our assessment of the tile damage were growing and, again, I was happy to be alive to have those doubts.
Now there was significant wind noise accompanied with heavy vibrations.
“Speed brakes coming out.” We were ten minutes from landing.
At Mach 5 Guy activated the switches to deploy the air-data probes on the sides of the nose. The information they provided on airspeed and altitude would further refineAtlantis ’s guidance.
“Mach 3.7…100,000 feet…I’ve got the lakebed in sight.”Atlantis ’s computers had done their job. After a glide spanning half the Earth, they had put a runway within our reach.
The wind noise outside my little room had become a freight train roar.
“Mach 1.0…49,000 feet.” AsAtlantis ’s velocity dropped below the speed of sound our shock waves raced ahead of us, lashing the vehicle with a buzzing vibration. No doubt they were also sonic-booming the high desert and heralding our arrival to the wives.
We had finally entered the useable envelope of our crude bailout system. We were at subsonic velocity and below fifty thousand feet. If an escape became necessary now, I would pull the emergency cabin depressurization handle, followed by the hatch jettison handle. Then, I would unstrap from my seat, deploy the ceiling-mounted slide pole, clip my harness to a ring, and roll out. Of course all of this presupposed Hoot or the autopilot would be able to keepAtlantis flying in a straight-ahead, controlled glide. If the vehicle was in a tumble, the G-loads would pin us in the cockpit like bugs on a display board.
Hoot took control from the autopilot and bankedAtlantis into a left turn toward final approach. Guy’s calls of airspeed and altitude came like an auctioneer’s. “Two hundred ninety-five knots, 800 feet…290…500 feet…400 feet…290…gear’s coming.” I heard and felt the nose landing gear being lowered. “Gear’s down…50 feet…250 knots…40…240…30 feet…20…10…5…touchdown at 205 knots.” We were safely home. Our heat shield had held. I was anxious to look at it and see how much crow we’d have to eat.
After the standard postlanding cockpit visit by the flight surgeon, we changed into our blue coveralls and walked down the steps from the side hatch. NASA Administrator James Fletcher was present to greet us. We exchanged handshakes and then turned to inspectAtlantis. There was already a knot of engineers gathered at the right forward fuselage shaking their heads in disbelief. The damage was much worse than any of us had expected. Technicians would eventually count seven hundred damaged tiles extending along half ofAtlantis ’s length. It was by far the greatest heat-shield damage recorded to date. Some of the more severely damaged tile had been melted deeper than the initial kinetic penetrations. The area around the missing tile had been particularly brutalized and the underlying aluminum looked as if it had been affected by the heat. But there had been no “zipper” effect, as the engineers had promised. If any of them had been present, I would have flung my arms around them and kissed them.
We had taken seven hundred bullets and lived to talk about it. The damage had been sustained in the only place where it could exist and still be survivable. It started a few yards back from the carbon-composite nose cap and stopped just a few feet short of the right wing’s leading-edge carbon panels. If any of those carbon-covered areas had been hit, we would have died as theColumbia crew would die fifteen years later, incinerated on reentry, except in our case the Pacific would have been our grave. Even the location of our missing tile proved fortuitous. By happenstance it covered an area where an antenna was mounted, and the underlying aluminum structure was thicker than in other locations. Had a different tile been blasted away, a skin burn-through might have occurred, allowing 2,000-degree plasma to run amuck insideAtlantis ’s guts. God had watched after us. As Hoot turned from his inspection I heard him grumbling, “I’m going to be really interested in what MCC has to say about this.”
A few days later we got to hear their story. The quality of the TV images in Mission Control had been very poor. The engineers had been convinced the damage was localized and minor. I wanted to say, “You should have listened to us,” but they knew that. There was no reason to rub their noses in it. And then there was the nasty little fact that it didn’t really matter. Even if MCC had determined the damage would positively result in vehicle destruction and our deaths, what could have been done? Nothing. The ticket home always entailed a flight through the blast furnace of reentry. We couldn’t magically fly over, under, or around it. We couldn’t have repaired any damage. There was no space station outpost for us to have escaped to. Our only hope would have been to have another shuttle come to our rescue and we wouldn’t have had enough oxygen to wait for that. All we could have done was pitched the robot arm overboard and dumped every ounce of water and excess propellant to get our weight to a minimum to reduce the heat load, but even these efforts would have been in vain. Stripping the shuttle would have made the reentry just fractionally cooler. Just as it was with our contingency abort cue cards, any MCC recommendations would have just given us “something to read while we died.”
MCC did have an explanation for the failure of the SRB nose cone. There had been a change in the manufacturing process, intended to improve the performance of the ablative material that protected the SRB from t
he aerodynamic heating it encountered during launch. At our debriefing of the incident at the Monday astronaut meeting, others wondered how many other slide rule jockeys were violating the prime directive of engineering: “Betteris the enemy ofgood enough. ” We all wanted to shout from the rooftops, “If it’s working, don’t fix it!”
At this same debriefing, Hoot reacquainted the post-docs with the sick humor of the fighter pilot. During our mission, there had been a horrific earthquake in the Soviet Eastern Bloc state of Armenia, killing 25,000 people. The TV news was still showing images of masked workers pulling bodies from the rubble. “I know many of you have been very curious about our classified payload.” Hoot paused until the room was hushed in expectation. “While I can’t go into its design features, I can say Armenia was our first target.” The military astronauts laughed. A handful of the post-docs cringed in disgust. Hoot tormented them further by adding, “And we only had the weapon set onstun !” The comment elicited more laughter and a few female darts of “Don’t you guys ever grow up?”
Chapter 36
Christie and Annette
It was a few days after landing that Rhea Seddon bestowed another handle on Swine Flight. We became “The Grissom Crew.” It was a play on a scene from the movieThe Right Stuff . After Alan Shepard returned from his history-making flight as the first American in space, he and his wife had been hosted at the White House by JFK and Jackie. The movie dramatized how Gus Grissom and his wife had been expecting similar treatment when he returned as the second American in space. But it didn’t happen. Runner-ups never slept at the White House. Rhea’s “Grissom Crew” label of STS-27 was poking fun at the fact there was no White House invitation awaiting us in our in-boxes, whereas President and Nancy Reagan had received the STS-26 crew and their spouses. In a wonderful parody of the movie scene in which Mrs. Grissom laments her lockout, Rhea exaggerated her already severe Tennessee accent and swooned, “You mean, I won’t get to meet Nancy and Ronald?!”
While it appeared we would remain invisible to the civilian world, we did have a “black world” postflight tour around the country. We visited the classified control center for our payload. We showed films of the satellite release and thanked everyone who contributed to the mission. It was all very staid and professional until Hoot presented a Swine Flight autographed photo to the unit commander. It was of the free-flying payload bearing Shep’s inscription,Suck on this, you commie dogs! The group crowded around to see the photo. They couldn’t wait to get it on their wall. Shep had made them feel like the warriors they were.
In a visit to Washington, D.C., we were invited to the Pentagon to brief the Joint Chiefs of Staff on our mission. My heartrate was as high walking into that office as it had been walking across the shuttle cockpit access arm. There was a veritable constellation of stars in the room, including five four-star generals and admirals. When a cute female lieutenant walked in, Hoot delivered a sotto voce “snort” in my ear.Jesus, I thought,does he ever NOT live on the edge? Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr., was taking a seat not more than fifteen feet away and Hoot was snorting an aide-de-camp! Depending on your perspective it was either a new low or new high for Swine Flight. I discreetly elbowed him. If I got the giggles from his antics now, that urinal-scrubbing assignment in Thule would be back in play.
In a mark of his leadership style, Hoot asked each member of the crew to say a few words about our mission tasks. I knew there were plenty of other egocentric commanders who would have hogged the stage for themselves. Not Hoot. After we all made our remarks and had taken our seats, Admiral Crowe asked his staff to rise and said, “I think we owe this crew a round of applause for their outstanding work,” and five flag officers heartily responded. I was numb. The joint chiefs of staff of the United States military, led by their chairman—a total of twenty stars—were standing to applaud Mike Mullane. I could not have been more shocked if Hoot had stood up and announced he and Shep were gay lovers.
The day only got more unusual. We were driven to a classified location for an awards ceremony. As we followed our escort through multiple layers of security, I whispered to Hoot, “Maybe we’ll meet Pussy Galore.” He replied with a snort.
We were finally led into a walk-in vault where we were greeted by a senior government official. He offered his thanks for our work, then pinned the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement on each of our chests. Inwardly I laughed at the title. It sounded like an award for the brainless scarecrow inThe Wizard of Oz. But it was a pride-filled moment for me, even exceeding what I had experienced in Admiral Crowe’s office. I felt directly connected to America’s defense in a way I had never felt in Vietnam or in my NATO forces tour. On STS-27 with the RMS controls in my hand, I had been at the tip of the spear.
The citation accompanying the medal reads
…in recognition of his superior performance of duty of high value to the United States as Mission Specialist, Space ShuttleAtlantis, from 2 December 1988 to 5 December 1988. During this period, Colonel Mullane performed in a superior manner in deploying a critical national satellite to space. Colonel Mullane expertly operated the Remote Maneuvering System (RMS) to lift the satellite out of its cradle and position it for deployment of subsystems. The release of the system was performed so expertly that the spacecraft was left in a remarkably precise and totally stable condition. This allowed the activation sequence to continue expeditiously. Colonel Mullane’s superior operation of the Shuttle Remote Arm, as well as his initiative and devotion to duty, led to the safe unberthing and deployment of a critical new satellite system crucial to our national defense and treaty verification. The singularly superior performance of Colonel Mullane reflects great credit upon himself, the United States Air Force, and the Intelligence Community.
As the meeting broke up, I was looking forward to telling Donna about the award. It was as much hers as it was mine. She had earned it on that LCC roof. But my anticipation ended at the vault door. We were asked to hand back the medal. “Sorry, but this award is classified. You can’t wear it publicly or talk about it. It won’t appear on your official records. But if you are ever in town and want to come over and wear it in this vault, be our guests.” Amazing, I thought. We had received a medal we could only wear in a vault. James Bond might have been able to tell Dr. Goodhead(snort) about his daring adventures, but we couldn’t tell anybody about ours, not even our wives. (The award was declassified several years after the mission.)
No call ever came from the White House, but Swine Flight did score one gem of a PR trip into the civilian world. Dan Brandenstein decided that the STS-26 crew had overstayed their welcome in the “Return to Flight” spotlight and redlined them from the Super Bowl event. Our crew would make the trip to Miami and represent NASA during the Super Bowl XXIII halftime show.
Accompanied by our wives, we flew to Miami the day before the big game. That evening we were the guests of NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle at a party…along with three thousand of his closest friends. The event was held in a convention facility and around its entryway balcony sat a clutch of harp-playing women dressed as cowgirl saloon hookers. The choreographer of that act had to have been on LSD. Later I noticed the ladies were faking their “plucks.” When they took a break, the harp music continued. And their music wasn’t the only thing being faked. Squadrons of silicone-stretched zeppelin breasts, mounted on Pamela Anderson look-alikes, cruised the room. Every escort service in the state must have sold out and then called Vegas for backup.
Mountains of food, rivers of booze, and live bands in every corner occupied the crowd. Donna and I loaded up our plates and searched for seats. I had the great misfortune to find two at a table with a fat, lavishly bejeweled gasbag of a woman who saw our arrival as an excuse to recount how rich and well-traveled she was. There was nothing on my guest badge to identify me as an astronaut and her glances at my cheap suit and Donna’s middle-class wardrobe must have given her the impression I was some NFL groupie she could lo
rd over. Her husband looked up from his food and communicated a “sucker” look to me. He never said a word, just ate, maintaining a grin on his face the entire time as if to say, “Good, now you’ve got her and I don’t have to listen to that runaway pie hole of hers.” I finally wearied of her nonstop travelogue and interrupted to say, “I’m an astronaut, so I’ve seen a little of the world, too.” With that Donna and I rose from the table and departed, leaving her speechless, no doubt for the first time in her life.
The next day, January 22, 1989, found us in a skybox at Joe Robbie Stadium preparing to watch the San Francisco 49ers battle the Cincinnati Bengals. There was just one significant distraction: Billy Joel, who was to sing the national anthem, brought along his wife, Christie Brinkley, and they were ensconced in an adjoining skybox. Just a glass wall separated us. This arrangement created the greatest dilemma in the history of maledom. In front of me was the sports spectacle of the year. Joe Montana and Boomer Esiason were calling the signals for their teams. Seventy-five thousand fans were screaming. Even the STS-26 crew didn’t create a moment like this. But a few yards to our right was Christie Brinkley, arguably one of the most beautiful women on the planet. What was a man to do?
We did what every man would have done. We watched both. As soon as the ball was blown dead, we’d all stare at Christie like pound dogs hoping for adoption. Then our heads would snap back for the next play. Our heads oscillated back and forth as if we were watching a tennis match. The rhythm was only interrupted long enough to get a beer. Could it get any better? Yes, it could. Turned out Christie was a fan of the space program. She came to our skybox to meet us. We all rose as if she were royalty, which of course she was. She was royally, freakin’ beautiful. Hoot, Shep, and I generated more snorts than a hog farm.