Riding Rockets

Military aviation, the background of many astronauts, is a dangerous and stress-filled occupation, frequently complicated by long separations from spouse and family. It is quick to eliminate the slow and the weak, either through an early death or administrative action. It is for this reason most aviators have an intrinsic trust of other aviators who have survived this winnowing process and a deep suspicion of passengers who, for whatever reason, are given cockpit access. This was the reason most of the military TFNGs had harbored doubts about the post-docs and other civilians when we had first come together in 1978. Who were these people? What stress-filtering processes had they been through? How were they going to react in dangerous situations? They had a lot to prove, and they did. NASA’s astronaut training program made sure they had continuing chances to prove themselves in environments where mistakes could kill. They regularly flew in the backseat of T-38 jet trainers. They experienced sphincter contractions like the rest of us during various in-flight emergencies and bad weather instrument approaches. They went through sea-survival training. They dressed in spacesuits and trained in vacuum chambers where one mistake would give them a few seconds to feel their blood boil inside their body before death came. After several years of this stress exposure, the military TFNGs had come to trust our civilian counterparts. They hadearned that trust. But the part-time-astronaut training program was measured in months and didn’t provide the sustained and comprehensive stress-testing needed to truly evaluate a person’s mettle. Part-timers got a ride or two in the Vomit Comet, a couple rides in the backseat of the T-38, and some sea-survival training. These were helpful evaluation venues, but hardly sufficient. So, it didn’t surprise any TFNG when disturbing stories about the behavior of some of these part-timers began to make their way to the Monday meetings.

One shuttle commander told of being very concerned about his part-timer’s interest in the side hatch opening mechanism. The shuttle side hatch is very easy to open, intentionally designed so because of theApollo I tragedy. The initial Apollo capsules had a complex opening mechanism that is believed to have hindered that crew’s escape from their burning cockpit. Determined not to repeat that mistake with the shuttle, engineers designed its hatch to open with just one turn of a handle. And the hatch opensoutward. Since the shuttle flies in the vacuum of space with the cockpit pressurized at 14.7 pounds per square inch, there are thousands of pounds of force acting to push the hatch open. If the handle was ever turned to the open position in space, the hatch would explode outward, immediately decompressing the cockpit and killing everybody aboard. Knowing this, how would you feel if a personyou really didn’t know took an unusual interest in the hatch opening system? I daresay you would feel as that commander had…very concerned. It was after this mission that a padlock arrangement was placed on the hatch handle and only commanders were given the key.

Another part-timer story involved a PS on a mission from hell. First, he fell victim to space sickness. Then, his experiment failed. After years of peer reviews and shuttle delays, he was finally getting his one and only chance to operate the device in space. Its failure severely depressed him and he surrendered to episodes of crying. But this was just the beginning of his torture. He turned out to be a cleanliness freak. What he imagined life would be like aboard the space shuttle for two weeks with possible vomiting, no running water, and few changes of clothes was anybody’s guess. Living aboard the shuttle doesn’t leave its occupants feeling springtime fresh. If the toilet had functioned normally, the part-timer in question might have had a chance. But as luck would have it, the commode suffered a low-airflow malfunction. In his debriefing the commander had explained the situation: “We had to use our glove-wrapped fingers to separate the feces from our bodies.” The already stressed-out PS now faced another significant challenge. His solution was to refuse to allow himself a BM. Over several days he miserably constipated himself, which aggravated his depression. A doctor aboard eventually convinced him to take a laxative, but afterward he refused to eat any solid foods to avoid more BMs. This lack of nutrition further compromised his mental and physical health. In debriefing, the mission CDR summarized the situation he had faced: “I had a depressed, crying, constipated PS on my hands. I thought I was going to have to place him under a suicide watch.” It was only by the grace of God that some of these part-timers didn’t cause problems that would have jeopardized mission success or worse.