Spaceman

by Mike Massimino

  Ten months after we flew, IMAX premiered Hubble 3D. I was invited on The Late Show with David Letterman to promote it. Then the National Geographic Channel saw the videos I’d been posting online and the work I was doing on those other shows and asked me to host Known Universe, an eight-part documentary about mankind’s quest to understand the cosmos. While I was doing all that, Bert Ulrich, NASA’s liaison for film and television collaborations, called me up and said, “Mike, we have an opportunity with this show, The Big Bang Theory. You ever hear of it?”

  I hadn’t. “I knew it was a theory,” I said. “I didn’t know it was a show.”

  “It’s the number one sitcom in America. It’s a science show. They’re always referring to NASA and they want to send one of their characters to space and they want to talk to an astronaut. Are you going to be in LA anytime soon?”

  It turned out that I was going to be out there for my son’s water polo tournament in less than a month. Bert told me all I had to do was drop by the show’s production office, hang out in their writer’s room, and share some stories. So I did. I met the writers and the producers, Chuck Lorre, Steve Molaro, and Bill Prady. I sat around with them and told them stories for a few hours. This was in the middle of season five. The character they were sending to space was Howard Wolowitz. I flew back to Houston and got a note from Prady a few months later: “Hey, we’d like you to do a cameo.” So they wrote me a scene where I give Wolowitz his astronaut nickname, “Froot Loops.” I flew out and filmed it. A few months later I was going back to LA to do The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Prady called and said, “As long as you’re coming out here, we might as well write you into the show again.” They wound up writing me into the season five finale and several episodes of season six as Wolowitz’s partner on the space station. I’ve guest-starred six times to date, most recently giving Wolowitz advice on throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game. (Sound familiar?)

  The Big Bang Theory was huge. It averaged over 20 million viewers a week, and it will play forever in syndication. It’s safe to say more people know me from that than from anything I ever did in orbit. The producers and stars of that show were the nicest, most generous people to work with, and they were so excited to weave their show into the story of space. In the twenty years since the “Deep Space Homer” episode on The Simpsons, on the most popular sitcom on TV, NASA went from being the butt of the joke to being the star of the show. Appearing on a sitcom might not seem like a big deal compared to flying 350 miles high in space, but for me it was important. From the beginning, my love of space was shaped by the way astronauts are portrayed in the media and in pop culture. Watching the moon landing with Walter Cronkite, poring through old Life magazines, going to the movies to see The Right Stuff and Apollo 13—those things changed how I felt when I looked up at the sky and dreamed of going there, and I remember that every time I’m given the opportunity to step in front of an audience.

  Thanks to The Big Bang Theory, I got to go to the space station on TV, but I never managed to make it there in real life. They say you should treat every flight like it’s your last. Savor it. At the end of my final space walk on 125, floating above the payload bay, watching the planet pass below, I had a feeling I might never be back. There was a voice in the back of my head saying, Take a good look, ’cause this is it. It turned out it was, and that was okay.

  For a few months after 125 there was some talk that I might be on one of the final shuttle missions, maybe even the last shuttle mission, but it never materialized. I did have one chance to go back. In April 2010, NASA offered me a spot on a long-duration trip to the station, flying with the Russians on the Soyuz. Being an astronaut is demanding. There’s a lot of time away from family, but at least the job itself is in Houston. I was always around for the important things, like birthdays and coaching Little League teams. When I got offered a long-duration flight, I did the math. My daughter was a junior in high school, and my son was a freshman. For the next two years, more than half my time would be spent overseas, mostly in Russia, and then I’d be gone in space for six months after that. If I had never flown in space or if I was less satisfied with what I had gotten to do on my spaceflights, I would have jumped at the opportunity. I calculated the date of my return as the week before Daniel would graduate from high school. I’d miss seeing Gabby off to college. I’d miss everything. It wasn’t a hard decision to make.

  Passing on a flight is something that’s generally not done. At NASA you take what you’re assigned. Once you pass on a flight, you’re sending a signal to management that your days as an astronaut are numbered. I didn’t know it at the time—or maybe I knew it and hadn’t accepted it yet—but my time in Houston was winding down. The end was coming quickly now.

  One year later, on July 8, 2011, at 11:29 a.m., Gabby and I were standing outside the Saturn V building at Kennedy Space Center in an area called the Banana Creek viewing site for the final flight of the thirty-year shuttle program. The space shuttle Atlantis was on launchpad 39A, ready to take the crew of STS-135 up to deliver a year’s worth of clothing, food, and equipment to the astronauts on the space station. It was completely surreal that it was happening. When I arrived at NASA in 1996, I figured I’d fly a half dozen times at least. The shuttle program was thriving. The space shuttle was space travel. There was no reason to think it would ever come to an end. But it had, and what did that mean? Were we supposed to be celebrating the shuttle’s achievements? Sad that it hadn’t lived up to its promise? I didn’t know what to feel about it. I don’t think anyone did.

  The launch of the final shuttle mission came with the usual editorials and news segments about why we go to space and whether the expense of the shuttle was worth the return. When USA Today published a look back at the shuttle program’s triumphs and tragedies, a friend of mine brought me a copy. The tragedies it listed, of course, were the Challenger and Columbia accidents and the fourteen lives that were lost. As the triumph of the shuttle program, the article cited this:

  On May 17, 2009, floating 353 miles above the surface of the Earth, astronaut Michael Massimino put his gloved hand around a balky handrail obstructing repairs and ripped it off the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope. Only an astronaut could have done this.

  Flattered as I was, the point the article was trying to make wasn’t really about me. It was about the importance of astronauts. It was the same conclusion we came to after researching the robot mission to Hubble. Unmanned space travel is a great first step; lunar probes and Mars Rovers are excellent tools for scouting a path to explore—but you still need people do to the exploring. What was accomplished on those Hubble servicing missions—upgrading the instruments, repairing the STIS, yanking off that handrail—would have been impossible without astronauts, and we couldn’t have done it without the shuttle.

  There’s an ongoing debate about the most important legacy of the shuttle, whether it’s deploying and servicing the Hubble Space Telescope or building and supplying the International Space Station. Whenever I’m asked, I say the greatest thing the shuttle did was that it put a lot of people in space—fifty, sometimes sixty people a year when the program was at its peak. Every person who goes to space, every person who gets to peek around the next corner, is someone with the potential to help change our perspective, change our relationship to the planet, change our understanding of our place in the universe. Which is why we go to space to begin with.

  I knew I was never going back, but a few weeks after STS-135 launched, it was made official. I was pulled off active flight status. I didn’t want to be taken off. I was sad about it, but the shuttle program was done and I’d made it clear I didn’t want to fly on the Soyuz, so a decision was made. I was still an astronaut, but I wasn’t going back to space again—and no more hours in the T-38, either. I was grounded. After his one flight on 125, Ray J had left the astronaut office for Ellington, where he became head of flight operations. He called me up one day and told me he’d seen that I was being taken o
ff the flight list at the end of September. “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  “I want to fly.”

  So, for my last couple weeks, Ray J took me flying. We went out and did acrobatics in the practice area over the Gulf of Mexico. We went cloud surfing, did loops and barrel rolls and touch-and-goes on the runway at Ellington. I flew as fast and as high as I’ll ever fly again.

  My first year as an astronaut, Carola and I both had relatives in for Christmas. I was on the last T-38 flight before the holiday, and I told them, “Hey, I’m flying today. Why don’t you come by and I’ll show you some airplanes.” A bunch of folks came out and I showed them around. Daniel was seventeen months old at the time. I was a brand-new astronaut with this baby boy with curly golden hair. I remember he was wearing this goofy jumpsuit with dinosaurs on it. He was getting the hang of walking and had just started forming real words and he was all over the place, baby talking, “Ba ba ba ba ba,” like he was the one giving the tour of the airplanes.

  When it was time for everyone to go, I still had to change. Daniel wanted to stay with me, so I said, “I’ll take him home.” I brought him back to the locker room and he toddled around, getting into everything while I changed. Once I was ready, I called him over and bent down and gave him my little finger. He took it and we walked out together, past all the planes in the hangar, saying “Bye-bye” and “Merry Christmas” to everyone. Then we got in my car and drove home.

  For my last flight, Daniel was grown. He was sixteen, almost a man now, his sister away at college. He and Carola and my mom and my sister came out to Ellington for the occasion. It was September 30, 2011, a Friday, the last flight of the day. Ray J took me out for some acrobatics and a quick trip over to Lake Charles. Everyone was going to go out to dinner afterward, but I still had to change and clear out my locker. “Whatever you leave here we’re going to throw out,” they told me. I said to Daniel, “Why don’t you stay and help me clean out my locker? Then I’ll drive us to dinner.”

  Daniel sat with me while I packed up some maps and old boots and a couple of flight suits. There was some chitchat here and there, but it was mostly me and him at the end of it just like we were at the beginning. I closed the locker, spun the combination, and locked it. Right in front of me on the locker was my name tag, MIKE MASSIMINO, JSC, HOUSTON. During my time there’d been so many names on those lockers. John Young. John Glenn. Rick Husband and Ilan Ramon. At one point or another all those names had come off, and now it was time for mine to come off, too. I looked at my name tag and thought, This is the coolest thing I’ ll ever do. I got to fly with my heroes, and now it’s done. Then I ripped it off, leaving an empty locker with a strip of Velcro on the front for them to give to the next guy. Then Daniel and I headed out, making the same walk we’d made fifteen years before. Only it wasn’t Christmas this time. It was late at night, the sun going down and everybody gone for the day. We walked out through the empty hangar, past the rows of quiet planes, climbed in our car, and went home.

  EPILOGUE

  Around the Next Corner

  When I packed up my locker and walked out of Ellington, I had to face the big question: What do you do when you’re an astronaut who can’t fly? Having the “astronaut” title on your résumé is a great way to open doors. You can get a job interview just about anywhere, and companies are usually eager to hire you. But it only gets you so far. You’ve got about two weeks’ worth of telling funny space stories before that wears thin and people start to ask, “What else can you do?”

  It was a hard transition for me. I’d been dreaming of going to space since I was a kid. I’d never really thought about what I was going to do afterward. Once you leave active flight status, you’re supposed to transition to a managerial role or say your good-byes. I didn’t want to be management, but I wasn’t ready to leave, either. I hung around the office for a while, making my PR videos, doing guest spots on TV, handling whatever I was assigned to handle. I was in denial for a long time. I knew that things were winding down, but I wasn’t taking any decisive steps to do something else. Part of me felt like nothing I did could possibly top what I’d already done. But part of me knew that wasn’t true. I did want to do other things, tackle other challenges, but it was hard to admit that to myself.

  There came a point, looking around the office, when I knew it was time. Kevin Kregel had retired; he was flying commercial for Southwest Airlines. Scorch had left to fly for FedEx. Digger had been gone since 2004; he moved to Colorado and became a motivational speaker. Scooter had left in 2010 to work for an aerospace technology company. Steve Smith and Rick Linnehan and Nancy Currie were here and there serving in different managerial jobs. John Grunsfeld was leaving for an administrative role at NASA headquarters in DC; I’m pretty sure he’ll end up running the whole place someday. Bueno and Drew flew again on station assembly flights and were both still active. Megan was still active, too, but taking time off to have a baby. I was coming up on my fiftieth birthday. Younger people were coming in and stepping up. I needed to make a decision. I thought a lot about the talk Neil Armstrong gave to us my first week at NASA: The important thing in life is having a passion, something you really love doing, and you take joy in the fact that you get to wake up every day and do it.

  I began to realize academia made the most sense for me. I’d enjoyed teaching during my time at Rice and at Georgia Tech. In December 2011, Rice University reached out to NASA, looking for someone to be the executive director of the Rice Space Institute. They wanted someone to beef their program up and coordinate its research and activities more closely with the work being done the Johnson Space Center. I applied for the job, got it, and the astronaut office agreed to loan me out; my salary and benefits would still be paid by NASA, but I would work at the university. I led a few seminars, helped to develop the curriculum. It was a great way to ease back into university life. Not long after, my alma mater Columbia started asking if I wanted to come back to the engineering school as a visiting professor, still on loan from NASA. As it happened, Daniel was starting at Columbia as a freshman in the fall of 2013. Gabby was starting her junior year at Sarah Lawrence up in Bronxville. With the kids gone and the shuttle program over, Carola and I didn’t have much keeping us in Houston. After fifteen months at Rice, I took the visiting professorship offer and we moved back to New York.

  On October 1, 2013, right after we left Houston, the federal government shut down when the House of Representatives tried to use the 2014 appropriations bill as leverage to defund President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. NASA was shut down almost entirely; only six hundred of its eighteen thousand employees stayed on to support the astronauts on the space station. Along with most of my colleagues, I was deemed “nonessential” and furloughed without pay for what ended up being two very worrisome weeks. I couldn’t believe it was happening. How had we gone from John Glenn being a national hero to a time where astronauts weren’t even getting paid?

  The government shutdown started, somewhat symbolically, on the fifty-fifth anniversary of NASA’s charter. In the Mercury and Apollo years America believed in itself. We pledged our public resources to a lofty common goal and we put a man on the moon as a result—a perfect good. The fact that half a century later our elected representatives were willing to jeopardize that mission over some political squabble says a lot about the faith we put in our public institutions today. We owe it to ourselves to be better.

  The year I joined NASA, in the astronaut class of 1996, there were forty-four of us. In the astronaut class of 2013, there were eight. That number should be going in the opposite direction. Our space program is in a period of transition. Some doors are closing and others we’re still trying to open. But the difficulty of our present moment should inspire us, not discourage us. There’s so much for us to achieve if we decide, as a nation, to commit ourselves to it. The James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s successor, is set to launch in 2018. Private companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are putting rockets
into space, creating a whole new range of exciting opportunities. The international cooperation behind the space station has put a wealth of resources at our disposal that the Mercury and Apollo teams never had. The Constellation Program announced by President Bush in the wake of Columbia was canceled, but it was replaced by the new Space Launch System. Once it’s operational it will be the most powerful rocket ever built. It has the potential to give us a permanent presence on the moon, to take us to Mars and back.

  Despite the short-term challenges we face, one way or another, I have faith that we’ll make it. Humans will never stop going to space. We’ll go because we have no choice but to go, because it’s what we’ve always done, since the day we left the caves. I have faith because I’ve seen the men and women of NASA endure tragedy and adversity and come through it more determined to complete their mission than ever before. I have faith because I see the excitement in the faces of young people every day.

  In the fall of 2014, I left NASA to become a full-time professor at Columbia. My main class, and my most popular one, is Introduction to Human Space Flight. The way I see it, I’m training my replacements. My job is to inspire them, to show them what it takes to live and work and accomplish great things under brutally difficult circumstances. I take them from the story of Ernest Shackleton to life on the International Space Station and cover everything in between. Not all of my students will become astronauts—most of them won’t—but they may help the environment or cure a disease or create some life-saving technology. The same lessons still apply. I try to teach them to be socially useful, to put their talents in the service of the public good. And I’m not only talking to the students in my class. I travel to high schools across the country, talking to young people by the thousands, encouraging them to go to college, to challenge themselves, to follow their dreams.