Riding Rockets

Our first day continued with payload preparations. We rolled out the robot arm and closed the sunshades on our trio of satellites. Charlie Walker began work on his experiment. Mike loaded the IMAX camera. Throughout the mission he and Hank would be filming some space scenes for the Walter Cronkite–narrated IMAX movie,The Dream Is Alive.

At one point I was alone in the upstairs cockpit when Hank called to me from the toilet, “Mike, let me know when we’re passing over Cuba.” I grabbed a camera, assuming he wanted me to photograph the island as part of our Earth observation experiment.

“We’re about five minutes out.”

“Give me a countdown to Havana.”

Shit, I didn’t know where Havana was. I scrambled to find it in our booklet of maps. “Ten seconds, Hank. It’s coming up quick. I’ll get the photo for you.” I aimed the Hasselblad and began to click away.

From below I heard Hank in his own countdown, “Three…two…one,” followed by a cheer.

A moment later Hank’s head popped above the cockpit floor. He wore an expansive grin. “I just squeezed out a muffin on that fucker Castro. I’ve always wanted to shit on that commie.”

Every military astronaut was a Red-hater. We’d been shot at by communist bullets in Vietnam. Many had experienced long separations from families while deployed to remote Cold War outposts. Hank had claimed his small revenge by giving birth to an all-American turd two hundred miles above that commie clown. Hank wistfully continued, “Damn, I wish our orbit took us over Ted Kennedy.” Mr. Kennedy was spared Castro’s fate by our orbit path. The only parts of the continental United States we flew over were the extreme southern portions of Texas and Florida. Our orbit inclination (tilt to the equator) fixed the traces of our orbits between 28 degrees north latitude and 28 degrees south latitude.

For several hours we were immersed in our checklists to deploy our first communication satellite and its booster rocket. It, like the others, was destined for an orbit 22,300 miles above the Earth’s equator. At that extreme altitude the orbit speed of the satellite matched the turn of the Earth so, to Earth observers, it would appear parked in the sky. At the contractor’s ground receiving stations, satellite dishes could be pointed at the satellite and the Earth’s rotation would do the tracking.

Hawley monitored the satellite-deployment computer displays from the front cockpit while Judy and I worked the release controls in the back. We opened the baby buggy–like sunshield, spun up the payload to 40 revolutions per minute (for stabilization during its uphill rocket burn), then activated the switches to pop it free ofDiscovery. The orbiter shivered as the 9,000-pound mass was shed.

The successful payload deployment refreshed our euphoria. We knew there were a hundred sets of very critical eyes watching our performance—all belonging to fellow astronauts. Any screwup would be our legacy. Astronauts have elephantine memories when it comes to crews who make mistakes.

Afterward we relaxed around our supper of dehydrated shrimp cocktail, beef patties, and vegetables. The food was packaged in plastic dishes and rehydrated with water from our fuel cells. After nearly burning a hole in my esophagus by swallowing a blob of inadequately hydrated horseradish powder, I learned to mix the food and water a bit longer. Fuel cell water was also used for drinking. It was dispensed into plastic containers, some of which contained various flavored powders (yes, including Tang). Because nothing can be poured in weightlessness, the drinks had to be sucked from straws. I quickly learned never to drink plain water. Iodine was used as a disinfectant and the water was tinged yellow with it and tasted of the chemical. While we ate much better than the early astronauts, who had to squeeze their food out of tubes, I still longed for the day the NASA food engineers would come up with dehydrated beer and pizza.

After cleaning up and cycling through our toilet we prepared for sleep. This was not a “shift” mission so we all slept at the same time. We would depend uponDiscovery ’s caution-and-warning system to alert us if something bad happened. Each of us had a sleep restraint, a cloth bag we pinned to the walls and zipped into. There was no privacy. Like bats in a cave, we bunked cheek to jowl in the lower cockpit. We slept downstairs because the lack of windows made it darker and cooler than the upstairs cockpit.

As I floated inside my restraint I joined in the chorus of complaints about a fierce backache. In weightlessness the vertebrae of the spine spread apart, resulting in a height increase of an inch or two. The strain on the lower back muscles is significant and painful. All of us but Judy were bothered by it. Why she was immune I had no idea, but she grew weary of our complaints and exploited her advantage: “I’m probably the first woman in history to go to bed with five men and all of them have backaches.”