Riding Rockets

by Mike Mullane

  I removed my wedding band and put it in my glasses case. The ring could snag on something in an emergency escape. I would put it back on when I reached orbit. I had done the same thing for STS-41D and STS-27 and had come back alive. The act was now a ritual as much as a ballplayer’s crossing himself in the batter’s box. I had to survive to put the ring back on. God knew that and would protect me. Or, so I hoped.

  The technicians helped me wiggle my feet into the bottom of the rear-entry suit. I then stood and zipped the integrated anti-G bladder around my gut. Next, I lowered my body and simultaneously inserted my arms into the suit’s armholes while pushing my head through its neck “dam.” The last time I had squeezed my head through an opening as tight as the LES had been at birth. The ring was intentionally made small so the rubber dam would clamp tight around the flesh of the neck and prevent the suit from filling with seawater.

  After zipping the back of the suit closed, the technicians continued the dress-out. They laced my boots and buttoned my Snoopy-cap communication carrier on my head. Next came the pressure suit gloves. Finally the helmet was locked onto the neck ring. I was now fully dressed for the two things I never wanted to experience…a cockpit depressurization and/or a bailout from a wounded shuttle.

  The techs connected their pressure test equipment and gave me my instructions. “Close your visor, turn on your O2, take a deep breath and hold it.” In the silence of the suit, my nervousness was obvious. I could hear my heart. It was squishing in my ears.

  Next came a fully pressurized test. I gritted my teeth for this. As the suit filled with oxygen it stiffened to the consistency of steel. It felt as if a cinch was being run across each shoulder and through my crotch and then tightened until my prostate was in danger of being cleaved in half. Fortunately the test only lasted thirty seconds. I wasn’t worried about dealing with the pain aboard the shuttle. If the suit ever pressurized in flight it would be because we had lost our cockpit atmosphere. In an emergency that dire, any suit pain would be insignificant.

  The suit check was nominal and the technicians removed my gloves and helmet. They handed me a tray of items to stow in my pockets. I loaded a gas-pressurized space pen in the left-sleeve pocket and checked that my parachute knife was in my “pecker pocket,” a sleeve on the inside of the left thigh. If I became entangled in my parachute and was being pulled to my death at sea, I could use the knife to hack at the shroud lines and hopefully save myself.

  In my right thigh pocket I placed my spare glasses. In addition to my wedding band, I had secreted my mom’s Psalm 91 in the case. Technically, the latter item was contraband, but it would only be discovered if Jim Bagian and Sonny Carter were cutting the suit from my dead body. In that case I wouldn’t care. In the same pocket I also loaded a radiation dosimeter, some aspirin for the zero-G backache that awaited me, and a Ziploc bag for stowing my used diaper once I was in orbit. I also included a barf bag. While I had yet to feel the slightest nausea in space, carrying the bag had become another ritual, as if that act alone prevented space sickness.

  In my right ankle pocket I placed a mirror. The immobility of the suit made it impossible to look at the hose connections, so a mirror was needed. I also stowed my right pressure suit glove and tethered my bailout survival radio.

  In my left ankle pocket I placed my left glove and more survival equipment: flares, strobe light, and flashlight.Who am I kidding? The fall is gonna kill me anyway.

  As I was finishing with my stowage, some NASA photographers entered the room and snapped a few pictures. We all assumed casual, not-a-care-in-the-

  world, lying smiles.

  I looked at my watch. Unfortunately we were fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. In this business you never wanted time on your hands. Mike Coats, who had been observing the suit-up, pulled out a deck of cards. He had been where we were and knew of the need to have every moment occupied. We gathered at a table for a couple hands of Possum Fargo, a dumb fighter-pilot card game that required no strategy—the worst hand won. As we played, Pepe observed that the flight surgeons seemed to have hung around him more than anybody else. “It was like they were two padres waiting to escort me to the gallows. I wonder if they thought I was going to panic or pass out or something.”

  Casper noted, “Pepe, you’re always in a panic. How would they know?” He was right. Pepe was a twenty-four-volt guy in a twelve-volt world. He reminded me of a hummingbird in the way he darted at whatever he was doing, whether he was turning the page of a checklist, punching in a phone number, or flipping cockpit switches.

  I added, “If they were watching for panic, they should have been at my seat.” I told them of my pounding heart during the pressure test. Everybody nodded knowingly. We were all the same. Anybody who wasn’t terrified getting ready to fly a space shuttle must have chased a couple Valiums with a fifth of vodka.

  At my suggestion, we started playing draw poker. The game required more thought and was therefore a greater distraction. To the astonishment of all, I pulled two straights in just six hands. Incredible luck. As we were called for the bus, I hoped I hadn’t used it all up.

  In the elevator I noticed J.O. and Casper had net bags filled with flight surgeon–prescribed Afrin, throat lozenges, antibiotics, and other treatments. Casper held up his medicine bag and suggested a STS-36 motto: “Just saymaybe to drugs.” I wondered if this was a first in the space program…a commander and pilot carrying a small pharmacy as they headed for their machine. I wasn’t worried. The autopilot would be flying us to orbit. If it wasn’t, and J.O. was hand-flying us because of some malfunction, I knew he would do just fine. The threat of death has a way of focusing anybody, even a sick CDR.

  It was 9:45P.M . on a Sunday night when we stepped outside and headed for the astro-van. There were only a handful of NASA workers there to greet us, a fact that proved fortuitous for Pepe, as there were fewer people to laugh at his near fall. We had been instructed to stay close together on our exit so the photographers could get aMagnificent Seven –style group photo. Pepe was closest to the building door, and, as he passed it, his oxygen hose caught on the handle and he nearly walked right out from under his feet. It was great entertainment for the small crowd.

  At the LCC the driver stopped to let Mike Coats off. He would get a ride to the Shuttle Landing Facility and serve as the weather pilot in the STA jet. Before stepping down, Mike had us all join our hands in collective prayer. We bowed our heads as he led, “God help you if you screw this up.” It was a prayer that Dan Brandenstein had first composed and made famous among TFNGs. We all laughed, but knew that Mike spoke the truth. God better help us if we screwed up anything because management would shish-kebab our testicles if we did.

  The van continued toward the pad and I sucked in every detail of the journey. The memories would have to last me the rest of my life, be that another few hours or decades. We sat facing one another, our suit-cooling units in the aisleway. In the high-humidity air the units produced a vapor that swirled around our feet. Several of us had one hand at our throat pulling back the rubber dam to allow an escape pathway for the cooling air being blown into the sides of our suits. Others solved the problem by inserting their space pens between flesh and rubber to create a flow path.

  I watched the crew. Hilmers was quiet. I knew he was praying and that was more than fine with me. If God protected him, He would be protecting the rest of us Playboy Channel–watching children of Gomorrah. J.O. and Casper, still struggling with the effects of their illness, were subdued. Pepe and I were the motormouths, trying to hide behind our joking.

  I observed, “With this swirling vapor at our feet, it’s like being part of the STS-26 crew. Let’s start singing ‘I’m Proud to Be an American.’ Come on, Dave, you know the tune.” Dave Hilmers had been a “Return to Flight” crewmember.

  Pepe quipped, “I forgot my badge. We’re going to have to go back.” We had left our NASA badges in our EOM bags—standard prelaunch protocol. With NASA security cars leading and trailing our v
an, the roadblock guards weren’t about to stop us and ask for badges. It would be like the Vatican Swiss Guard stopping the pope mobile to check the badge of the guy in the funny hat.

  Atlantisappeared above the darkened palmetto as an incandescent white obelisk. I couldn’t imagine the gates of heaven appearing more brilliant or more beckoning. Everybody twisted in their seats to look and have their breath taken away. The scene instantly brought to mind Chesley Bonestell’s paintingZero Hour Minus Five from my childhood bookConquest of Space. His winged rocket had been made of stainless steel but otherwise he had nailed the image. He had foreseen the soul-tugging drama of an illuminated spaceship standing ready against a star-filled sky.

  As we drew nearer, the finer details of the pad appeared. The flame from the hydrogen gas waste tower streamed away in the wind. The same breeze snatched a vapor of oxygen from the tip of the gas tank. The white spherical supply tanks of liquid hydrogen and oxygen squatted on steel legs on either side of the pad like alien spaceships. The soaring finger of the lightning suppression mast seemed like an artistic touch, added merely to draw the eye skyward. The burnt orange of the ET and the American flag onAtlantis ’s left wing provided the only color in what could have otherwise been an Ansel Adams photograph.

  As we stepped from the crew van, the pad sights and sounds closed around me: the screeching hiss of the engine purge, the shadows playing on the vapors, workers marked with yellow light sticks hurrying to the booming call of the countdown, a light fall of snow from the maze of frosted cryogenic propellant lines. I crammed it all into my brain.

  I stood at the edge of the gantry awaiting my turn for cockpit entry. I could feel Judy’s presence. At this exact spot she and I had waited for our entry intoDiscovery …four times. My STS-27 flight had launched from Pad 39B, so this return to the 39A gantry was sort of a homecoming for me. I could see Judy’s smile, her wind-whipped hair. I could hear her voice, “See you in space, Tarzan.” I missed her. I missed them all.

  Pepe came to my side. “Sure hope it all works.”

  I appended his comment. “I sure hope it all workstoday. I’ve got a sorry record for launching on a first attempt. This will be my seventh strap-in for a third ride into space.”

  As I walked toward the cockpit access arm I ran into John Casper, who was exiting the toilet. He was pulling his LES crotch zipper closed. I teased him, “We’re going to have to call you Long Dong Casper. Nobody else has a lizard long enough to reach around the UCD, past the long johns, and out of the LES.” He laughed. I was happy to help someone else relax, if only for a moment. I just wished someone would do it for me.

  I got my wish in the White Room. One of the Astronaut Support Personnel (ASP) had placed a sign on the wall reading “Cut her loose!” This was the punch line of a particularly offensive joke—circulating among the Planet AD contingent—involving a naked woman bound to a bed. I chuckled. For five seconds I was able to forget what was about to happen.

  Jeannie Alexander went to work securing me to the seat. Then she quizzed me on the components I would have to find in the event of a ground or bailout emergency. “Ship’s O2connection?” It was on my left thigh. “Parachute disconnect?” My hands reached for my shoulders and I touched them. “Rip cord?” Another touch. “Barometric actuator lollipop?…Life raft actuator?…Overhead ground escape carabineer?” I found them all. She broke a light stick to activate its glow and Velcroed it to my shoulder. Now the fire-and-rescue people could find my body. She leaned over me and gave me a peck on the lips. “Have a great flight.” She was another person I would remember for the rest of my life. As she left the cockpit she placed another light stick over the side hatch to show the exit in the event of a lights-out emergency. I heard the hatch close and soon my ears were popping as the cockpit pressure test started.

  The wait began. My heart was in afterburner. The seat was a torture. My bladder distended toward rupture even as I was mad with thirst from my prelaunch dehydration efforts. And this time I faced a new experience certain to tax my reserves even more—I was launching in the downstairs cockpit. My dislike of the position had not changed since I last sat here on STS-27’s reentry. I hated the tomblike isolation. I hated not having a window to look from or instruments to monitor. And I could never entirely expel from my mind the image of what it must have been like for Christa, Greg, and Ron inChallenger ’s lower cockpit. There are some things best forgotten, but locked in the same box, I couldn’t help but remember them.

  God, let us gowas my prayer. The thought of having to do this tomorrow made me nauseous. Maybe the cards had been a sign. Maybe seven would be my lucky number. At least I had Pepe’s rookie complaints to entertain me. They came over the intercom in a nonstop flood: “Oh God, my back is killing me…My bladder is ready to explode…My stomach is being pushed out of my mouth…I got a cramp in my calf…I’m dying of thirst…I’m going to puke before I even get into space.” J.O. jokingly asked how he would throw up in the LES while strapped to his seat. Ever the engineer, Pepe gave the question a moment of serious thought and replied, “I’ll just roll my head around and puke in the back of my helmet.”

  Maybe I was just punch-drunk with exhaustion and fear but I found Pepe’s constant dialogue hilarious. I was going to puke from laughing. J.O. warned, “Don’t make me laugh, Pepe. I’ll fall into another coughing fit.” J.O. could barely talk without inducing a phlegmy hack.

  After several waves of complaints, Pepe prefaced his next chapter with “Guys, I know I’m not a wimp, but…” and then continued the litany. John Casper picked up on the preamble and began to use it every time he had a complaint. “Guys, I know I’m not a wimp, but…” Soon the entire upstairs cockpit was doing it. Pepe heard my laughing cackle and continued his comedy routine by mimicking it…an explosion of rapid and high-pitchedhee, hee, hee s. That got me giggling even more. If the launch director was listening he probably thought we had all gone insane.

  Pepe’s complaints faded and we looked for other ways to occupy our time and take our minds off our misery. We resorted to the old standby—roasting the flight surgeon. He was a captive audience, required to monitor our intercom but forbidden to speak to us directly unless we requested a conversation, and none of us were about to do that.

  “I hear the doc’s wife is having an affair with a chiropractor.”

  “And his daughter is sleeping with a malpractice lawyer.”

  “And his son is studying to be a malpractice lawyer.”

  There was a fake “Shhhhh…He might hear us.”

  “He’s not listening. He’s going over his stock portfolio.”

  “He’s on the phone with his Hong Kong broker getting the fix on gold and the yen.”

  “He’s probably phoning for a tee time.”

  “Hell, it’s Sunday. He’s not even there. Docs don’t work on Sunday.”

  “Well, they don’t worksober on Sundays.”

  Then we began to enumerate the perks the flight surgeons enjoyed. “They get hired by NASA as GS Infinities,” a reference to the higher government service pay grade they were given.

  “They get reserved parking places.”

  “They get preferential tee times.”

  “They just have to ask and women take off their clothes for them.”

  The banter finally ended and the intercom fell silent. Even Pepe got quiet. We all retreated into our own little chaotic worlds of pain and fear and prayer. Around T-45 minutes the range safety officer threw in the first wrench of what had been a smooth countdown. “RSO is no-go for blast.” The blast to which he referred was the space shuttle being blown up. The RSO’s computers had determined atmospheric conditions would amplify the power of the shuttle’s destruction and jeopardize the safety of those around the LCC. His no-go call elicited groans and profanities in the cockpit. We’d reached the point of,I’ll kill anybody who gets in the way of our launch. The RSO must have sensed the universal outrage at his no-go call and quickly reran the calculations to come up with accepta
ble numbers. “The RSO is go for blast.” We all cheered…and laughed at the irony. We were cheering because a detonating shuttle would now kill only us and that wasgood because it meant the countdown could continue.

  At T-5 minutes Casper started the APUs and the flight control system checkout followed. Everything was nominal and I was beginning to actually believe I had carried my luck from the card table to the cockpit.

  “Atlantis…close helmet visors.” Before complying with LCC’s call I heard J.O. and John snort Afrin for a last time. I would be flying with a CDR and PLT on drugs.

  I rechecked my harness. Other than look at a wall of lockers, it was all I could do. God, how I wished I was upstairs and had the distraction of the instruments. I had nothing whatsoever to do but dwell on my fear. I was the gas chamber victim waiting for the tablets to fall.

  And then…“RSO is no-go for backup computer.”

  The intercom was immediately alive with our colorful assessments of the RSO:bastard, asshole, sonofabitch! We were now at the point ofI’ll kill anybody AND THEIR WIFE AND CHILDREN AND MOTHER who gets in the way of our launch.

  The launch director ordered the countdown held at T-31 seconds in the hopes the RSO could clear his problem and the count could resume. But we couldn’t hold for long with the APUs burning their fuel. A minute ticked away.Come on…come on…fix your freakin’ computer and give us a go for launch! But as we waited, the liquid oxygen inlets on all of the SSMEs got too cold. The mission was scrubbed. I just melted into a formless blob. The suit technicians would have to look for me in the bottom of the LES.