Riding Rockets

A broken layer of rainless clouds threatened a delay. While they posed no problem for an ascending shuttle, if an RTLS abort became necessary they would hide the runway and make the CDR’s landing task more difficult. The countdown would be held at T-5 minutes until the weather improved. As I had done in the cockpit so many times, I now prayed fiercely for the count to resume. There was only one way to get the terror behind us…launch.

Dave, Greg, Bryan, and I circulated among the families translating the technobabble on the speakers. As word came that the weather was a go and the count was resuming, we faded to the rear of the group. This was a sacred family moment. The wives and the others needed to be alone with their thoughts and prayers, not feeling obligated to talk to us.

T-4 minutes. The two mothers, Kirby Thagard and Mary Jo Grabe, squeezed their children to their sides.

T-3 minutes. Several of the family members bowed their heads and closed their eyes, their interlaced fingers drawn tightly to their mouths. I was certain they were in prayer…as was I.

T-2 minutes. I could imagine the scene in the cockpit—the crew closing their helmet visors, cinching harnesses, exchanging good luck handshakes.

T-1 minute. The families were mute. One of the wives was shivering.

T-30 seconds. I looked at the kids and wondered how they would react to a disaster.God, keep the crew safe! It wasn’t so much my prayer, as my demand.

The NASA voice took up the famous cadence. “T-minus 9…8…7…go for main engine start…6…main engine start…5…”

A bright flash signaled SSME start. It was a sight that instantly brought excited shouts. Somebody clapped. The tension of the countdown had been broken and everybody felt a momentary, if premature, relief.

At SRB ignitionAtlantis rose on promethean pillars of fire. The scene had a dreamlike quality to it. A 4½-million-pound machine was being borne upward on twin flames 1,000 feet long, and yet, there was no sound. That was being delayed fifteen seconds by the distance. The first noise to roll over us was the animal-like shriek of the SSMEs, which generated a new round of exclamations from the families. Six seconds later the SRB-generated noise came, a sound that made every listener wonder if the air itself was being tortured. It began as a rolling thunder, then quickly increased in decibel to a violent, ragged crackle. Birds jerked in midflight confusion. The noise echoed off the VAB wall and came back to shudder the LCC roof. From the parking lot below came the sound of car alarms, activated by the vibrations.

Atlantisentered the clouds and those gave momentary form to the shock waves of the SRB exhaust. They raced outward like the sonic waves of explosions. At booster burnout and separation the families cheered loudly.Challenger had forever stigmatized the SRBs and everybody was glad to see them, and the threat they represented, tumbling away.

With the twin rockets gone, the blue-white trinity of the SSMEs was all that marked the streaking machine. That fire slowly faded and within three minutes there was no sight or sound ofAtlantis. Only the SRB smoke remained as a sign of her launch. That effluent had seeded the air so thoroughly with particulate that a cloud grew from it and showered the launchpad with an acid rain.

Now everybody was talking. The wives wiped tears and hugged one another. Through the excited chatter I kept an ear tuned to the speakers. I wouldn’t be totally relieved until I heard the MECO call. At eight and a half minutes it came and I closed my eyes in prayer and thanked God there were no widows on that roof.

Back in the LCC, I called Donna to tell her of the successful launch and was shocked to find her sobbing in near hysteria. “Mike, I can’t do it! I just can’t do it again.” She had watched the launch on TV and it had served as a terrifying reminder of what awaited her. She would have to make that T-9 minute walk again, probably multiple times, given my luck. For the first time in my life I was hearing my wife put herself first. But I wasn’t going to step away from STS-36. That would never happen. I calmed her. “It’ll be okay, Donna. Just this one more time and then it’ll be over.” I was confident she would rally. There were nine months until STS-36 would fly, which I hoped would give her enough time to shore up her emotional reserves.

But only six weeks later those reserves took another hit. We awoke on Father’s Day to news that TFNG Dave Griggs had died the day before in the crash of a WWII aircraft while practicing for an air show. While his death was unrelated to shuttle operations, it was another grim reminder of the business of flying. Dave had left a wife, Karen, and two teenage daughters. One more time Donna and I drove to the home of a woman widowed in the prime of her life. One more time I watched Donna enter a sobbing clinch with a grieving friend.