Riding Rockets

Is a crab’s ass watertight?was one rejoinder that came to my mind.Hell, yes answered both questions.

Our group immediately broke into jokes and giddy laughter. No one really answered Abbey’s question, but, of course, we didn’t have to. He was offering us gold and nobody ever turned that down. I was now officially a crewmember for the second post-Challengermission. It was a classified Department of Defense mission so nobody yet knew exactly what we would be doing, but it didn’t matter. We were an assigned crew. That wasall that mattered.

As I floated in weightless joy back to my office, I considered for the billionth time that strange man known as George Washington Sherman Abbey. He defied analysis. To borrow a quote from Winston Churchill, George was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” It seemed he went out of his way to drive astronauts to loathe him. Even in this STS-27 crew assignment some would be rightly embittered. Bill Shepherd was class of 1984 and would be flying his first mission before two mission specialists from the class of 1980, Bob Springer and Jim Bagian, would fly their rookie flights. And STS-27 would mean Hoot Gibson would be flying his second mission as a commander before eight other TFNG pilots had yet to command their first mission. The STS-27 crew assignment press release was going to be a bitter pill for many in the office to swallow.

Hoot would later tell me Abbey had informed him several weeks before the official announcement that he would be the CDR of STS-27. Hoot had replied, “George, it’s not my turn.” Abbey had said, “Turns have nothing to do with it.” He might as well have said, “I don’t give a shit about astronaut morale.” The statements were identical.

While sitting in Abbey’s office, though, I had never seen him as jolly as he had been while telling us of our new mission assignment. It was as if he was high on our happiness. Why couldn’t he understand it could be like that 24/7/365? All he had to do was understand that turns did matter, that visibility into flight assignments mattered a hell of a lot, that open communication mattered, that being positively stroked once in a while mattered…hell, beingnegatively stroked once in a while, gettingANY performance feedback once in a while, mattered. During those ten minutes in his office I loved George Abbey, but the moment passed. Now, if there were conspirators somewhere in NASA’s hierarchy preparing to strike, I wished them all the luck in the world.

That evening, as I told the kids about the flight, my sixteen-year-old daughter, Laura, said, “You’re not going to die on me, are you?” She said it with a smile, trying to make a joke out of it—a chip off the old block—but I knew she was worried. So were Donna, Pat, and Amy. And I knew, as soon as STS-26 was on the ground, I would be worried. Just as it had been with STS-41D, I knew Prime Crew night terrors awaited me for STS-27. But I had to do this. I couldn’t stop or turn away from a flight into space any more than a migratory bird could ignore the change of seasons. It was in my DNA, beyond rational understanding.

Chapter 31

God Falls

We were the last crew ever to receive news of our mission assignment from George Abbey. On October 30, 1987, George was reassigned to NASA HQ in Washington, D.C., to assume the job of deputy associate administrator for spaceflight. Hoot would later tell me Abbey had hinted he didn’t want the “promotion.” That was easy to believe. For ten years George had wielded enormous power at JSC and now it was being taken from him. His loftier-sounding HQ title came with about as much power as one of those twenty or so vice president positions on the staff of a local bank. Every astronaut was of the opinion that this had been an assassination. But by whom? Many astronauts suspected Admiral Dick Truly. Dick was now the number-two man at NASA HQ and being groomed for the NASA administrator position (which he would assume in 1989). As a former astronaut, he certainly knew of George’s leadership style, so he had motive. I wasn’t about to ask Dr. McGuire if he had a hand in it. I doubted he would have told me and, besides, I didn’t want any further association with the matter. It was the kind of office intrigue that could only hurt a career.