Riding Rockets

During the same 61C countdown, a malfunction of a different valve (this time on the launchpad side of the plumbing) caused the drain back of a large amount of liquid oxygen from the gas tank. For a variety of technical reasons, the LCC had remained ignorant of the lost propellant. The shuttle very nearly lifted off without enough gas to reach its intended orbit. The crew’s first indication of a problem would have come when all three SSMEs experienced a low propellant level shutdown somewhere over the Atlantic. How high and fast they were at that moment would have determined whether the crew lived (TAL, AOA, or ATO abort) or died (contingency abort). Again, the day was saved when the launch was scrubbed for unrelated reasons and the drain-back problem was discovered in the turnaround.

These near misses should have been warning flags to NASA management that the shuttle was far from being an operational system. They were indicative of the types of problems that occur in the early test phase of any complex aerospace machine. Every military TFNG had seen it happen in new aircraft systems they had flown. In fact, we were used to having urgent warnings appear on our ready-room B-boards concerning newly discovered failure modes on aircraft types that had been seasoned in decades of operations. It is the nature of high-performance flying. The machines are extremely complex and operate at the edge of their performance envelopes. And the space shuttle was about as high-performance as flying got. There were certainly more surprises awaiting us in its operations. In fact, if the shuttle program should survive for a thousand flights, I am certain engineers will still be having occasional moments of “Holy shit! I never expected to seethat happen.”

The shuttle was not operational and the close calls—STS-9’s APU fire, STS-51D’s brake problem, STS-51F’s ascent abort, and STS-61C’s valve problems (not even considering what was going on with the SRB O-rings)—were clear warnings to that effect. Yet, nothing changed. The shuttle continued to fly with passengers and without an in-flight escape system, the two most visible manifestations of the operational label. Senior management saw the dodged bullets as validation that shuttle redundancy would always save the day. Meanwhile, astronauts saw the near misses as indicative of the experimental nature of the craft. When backup systems saved the shuttle, we cheered the genius of the engineers just as management did. The gods of Apollo were damn good. But we also knew these incidents were just the tip of the iceberg. There were more unknowns lurking in the shuttle design, and when they finally reared their ugly heads, redundancy might not be enough to save us.

Astronaut concerns about the shuttle’s operational label, the lack of an escape system, and the passenger program should have been heard by every key manager, from Abbey to the JSC center director to the NASA administrator. But they were not. We were terrified of saying anything that might jeopardize our place in line to space. We were not like normal men and women who worried about the financial aspects of losing a job, of not being able to make the mortgage payment or pay the kids’ tuition. We feared losing a dream, of losing the very thing that made usus. When it came to our careers, we were risk averse in the extreme. Effective leaders would have done everything possible to eradicate that fear. George Abbey, the JSC director, and the NASA administrator all should have been frequent visitors to the astronaut office, actively polling our concerns, and each visit should have started with these or similarly empowering words: “There is nothing you can say to me that will jeopardize your place in the mission line. Nothing! If you think I’m doing something crazy, I want to hear it.” I had experienced this form of leadership many times in my air force career. I saw it on an F-4 mission in which a general officer was serving as my pilot. I was a first lieutenant—and terrified. I had never flown with a flag officer before. But this man was a leader who understood how fear could jeopardize the team and did his best to eliminate it. As my foot touched the cockpit ladder, the general stopped me and said, “See these stars,” and pointed to his shoulder. “If I make a mistake they won’t save our lives. If you see anything that doesn’t look right on this flight, tell me. There’s no rank in this jet. Flying is dangerous enough as it is without having crewmembers afraid to speak up.” It was an empowering moment. The astronaut office desperately needed the same empowering moments, but they never came. Fear ruled—a fear rooted in Abbey’s continuing secrecy on all things associated with flight assignments. We kept our mouths shut.