Riding Rockets

My thoughts drifted to the cause of the disaster. The video replays on TV showed fire flickering near the base of the orbiter just before vehicle destruction. Had an SSME come apart as so many of us had feared would one day happen? I was certain the SRBs had nothing to do with the disaster. They were seen flying after the breakup. It was to be expected their flight would be unguided and erratic, but other than that they appeared fine. Again, I would be proven wrong on all counts.

I asked Crippen what he thought had caused the tragedy. “I don’t know. But whatever it was, we’ve all ridden it.”

He was right. Whatever it was, the same mechanism of death had been with all of us on every mission. How close had it come to killing me on STS-41D? A second? A millisecond? Had theChallenger SSME that failed (and I wassure one of them had exploded) been one of the engines poweringDiscovery on my first mission? It was entirely possible. The engines were frequently interchanged among orbiters.

As I fell deeper into melancholy another thought wiggled its way to the fore. I hated that I couldn’t keep it at bay but, like smoke under a door, it crept in to choke off every other thought.What was Challenger’s loss going to do to me?To ask such a question at this moment defined me as one sick bastard but try as I might, I could not stop it. I suspected every other TFNG was similarly stricken. Would the shuttle ever fly again? I thought of my morning run and how perfect my future had seemed, with images of polar orbit spaceflight filling my brain. Now those images blurred like a mirage.

Our flight entered the Ellington landing pattern, each pilot following Crippen’s peal-off “break” to circle for touchdown. As we were marshaled to a parking spot, I searched the guest waiting area, expecting to see someone from the press. I dreaded the thought of speaking to them. But the only person to greet us was Donna. Crying, she walked to the side of the jet and rushed into my arms.

At home my fourteen-year-old daughter, Laura, informed me that someone from the newspaper had called and when she told them I was out of town they interviewedher. I was outraged. They had taken advantage of her naïveté to ask questions about my STS-41D experiences with Judy. “Daddy, they asked me how you felt when you sawChallenger blow up.” It was a good thing I hadn’t fielded that question. I could imagine the answer that might have leaped from my mouth. I had already passed the denial phase of grieving and had entered the anger phase. I told the kids to let the answering machine take the calls. I didn’t want to speak to anybody in the press.

That evening there were church services throughout Clear Lake City. Donna, the kids, and I went to our parish church, St. Bernadette’s. It was packed. I wasn’t the only astronaut parishioner. There were a few others. Our friends and neighbors came to us and sobbed their condolences. Complete strangers did the same. The grief was beyond anything I would have ever predicted.

At the request of some of the parish members, my son had put together a slide and music show to play as people entered the church. Pachelbel’s Canon and Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” accompanied slides depicting shuttle launches, spacewalkers, and other space scenes. There was a slide from STS-41D showing a grinning Judy with her cannon-cleaner weightless hair. When it appeared on screen, people were overcome, laughing and sobbing at the same moment.Watch out for hair-eating cameras. The slide resurrected from my memory the words I had spoken to her two weeks earlier. I closed my eyes. I wanted to cry, like the others around me, but I couldn’t. That gene just wasn’t in me. I was my mother.

The next day Donna and I drove to visit the widows. We first went to June Scobee’s home. The street in front of her house was a mob scene. A large crowd of the curious filled the neighbors’ driveways and lawns. The elevated microwave poles of news vans provided a beacon that drew a slow current of cars through the neighborhood streets. Power cables crisscrossed sidewalks. Technicians shouldered cameras and framed their news reporters with the Scobee home in the background. It would have been chaos but for a contingent of local and NASA police who kept everybody from June’s front door. Several NASA PR personnel were teamed with the police to recognize and allow astronauts and other NASA VIPs to enter the home. Donna and I were waved through the cordon.