Riding Rockets

I awoke to the depressing news that the mission had been postponed for forty-eight hours. J.O. had been diagnosed with an upper respiratory infection. It marked the first time sinceApollo 13 that a mission had been delayed for crew health reasons. That J.O. had gotten sick didn’t surprise me—we were all exhausted. The week of JSC quarantine to progressively shift our sleep cycle had been completely inadequate. And the sleeping pills were useless at inducing good periods of refreshing sleep. I was certain all of our immune systems were in chaos.

To prevent J.O. from infecting the rest of us, he was moved out of the crew quarters and into an unused room next door. He was being quarantined from the quarantine. At our 6A.M . supper the rest of us put on germ masks and took him his meal. His room was an abandoned Apollo-era spacesuit facility painted brilliant white and illuminated with a full ceiling of intense fluorescent lights. Except for a small table, chair, and bed, the room was deserted. J.O. was seated at the table and, in the supernova lighting, he appeared remarkably like the old astronaut at the end of2001: A Space Odyssey. We wished him a quick recovery but none of us wanted to go anywhere near him. We placed his food tray on the floor and used a long-handled push broom to shove it close to his table and then immediately retreated from the room. He croaked a laugh at that.

J.O.’s sickness was just the beginning. John Casper began to feel poorly and went on medication. Dave Hilmers quickly followed. Then one of the mission support astronauts rushed from a briefing to vomit. The crew quarters had suddenly become a biohazard. Health-and-safety technicians entered in full-body moonsuits to swab the quarters for viruses. The flight surgeons also ordered urine and stool samples from all of us. I tried to ignore the turd request but I couldn’t escape. I returned to my room from a briefing to find doctors Phil Stapaniak and Brad Beck had left me a not-so-subtle reminder—a Baby Ruth candy bar inside a collection container. My next bowel movement was into a Cool Whip dish. While I was forking a sample of the mess into a smaller container I screamed at the bathroom door, “This wasn’t in the brochure!”

I sealed the smeared collection container in a plastic bag and dropped it in the garbage can. That contained more medical waste than a New Jersey beach: snotty tissues, other fecal collection bowls, packaging for antibiotics and decongestants, and an empty Pepto-Bismol bottle. STS-36 was being crewed by the walking wounded.

Pepe and I were the only healthy ones remaining. I prayed it would stay that way. If the bug slowly worked its way through all of us, there was the potential for a significant delay. If I was the last to be infected, I could get the giant screw. I could envision being pulled from the flight and a substitute MS taking my place. My old paranoia was back with me…that I would get to within hours of launch only to have the mission snatched away. In spite of the fact it was my third mission, that it wasn’t going to make my astronaut pin any more “golden,” and that I was scared out of my wits, I stillneeded this mission as desperately as a heroin addict needs his fix. The flight surgeons were going to have to pry my jaws open to get a tongue depressor in my mouth.

Chapter 39

Holding at Nine and Hurting

Due to a bad weather forecast, the February 24 launch attempt was canceled before the gas tank was even filled. It was just as well since J.O. was still deathly ill. February 25 looked as if it would be the day. The weather forecast was good for the midnight opening of our launch window. J.O. looked and sounded like a consumptive, but he somehow managed to convince the flight surgeons he was okay. We headed for the suit room. For this flight I was wearing the diaper instead of the condom UCD. I was tired of worrying if the latex had slipped off. Maybe in my next life God would give me a penis more suited for spaceflight but for now I had to make do with what was there. The diaper was a more dependable choice.

We wore thermal underwear as an extra layer of insulation. Now that we had a bailout system, our pressure suits doubled as antiexposure suits and the long johns were intended to increase our survival time if we landed in the ocean. On the topic of surviving in the Arctic Sea during the dead of winter, we all had an Alfred E. Neuman,What, me worry? attitude. As Hoot Gibson had said on STS-27 (borrowing a line fromButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ), “Hell, the fall is gonna kill you anyway.”