Riding Rockets

Atlantisappeared above the darkened palmetto as an incandescent white obelisk. I couldn’t imagine the gates of heaven appearing more brilliant or more beckoning. Everybody twisted in their seats to look and have their breath taken away. The scene instantly brought to mind Chesley Bonestell’s paintingZero Hour Minus Five from my childhood bookConquest of Space. His winged rocket had been made of stainless steel but otherwise he had nailed the image. He had foreseen the soul-tugging drama of an illuminated spaceship standing ready against a star-filled sky.

As we drew nearer, the finer details of the pad appeared. The flame from the hydrogen gas waste tower streamed away in the wind. The same breeze snatched a vapor of oxygen from the tip of the gas tank. The white spherical supply tanks of liquid hydrogen and oxygen squatted on steel legs on either side of the pad like alien spaceships. The soaring finger of the lightning suppression mast seemed like an artistic touch, added merely to draw the eye skyward. The burnt orange of the ET and the American flag onAtlantis ’s left wing provided the only color in what could have otherwise been an Ansel Adams photograph.

As we stepped from the crew van, the pad sights and sounds closed around me: the screeching hiss of the engine purge, the shadows playing on the vapors, workers marked with yellow light sticks hurrying to the booming call of the countdown, a light fall of snow from the maze of frosted cryogenic propellant lines. I crammed it all into my brain.

I stood at the edge of the gantry awaiting my turn for cockpit entry. I could feel Judy’s presence. At this exact spot she and I had waited for our entry intoDiscovery …four times. My STS-27 flight had launched from Pad 39B, so this return to the 39A gantry was sort of a homecoming for me. I could see Judy’s smile, her wind-whipped hair. I could hear her voice, “See you in space, Tarzan.” I missed her. I missed them all.

Pepe came to my side. “Sure hope it all works.”

I appended his comment. “I sure hope it all workstoday. I’ve got a sorry record for launching on a first attempt. This will be my seventh strap-in for a third ride into space.”

As I walked toward the cockpit access arm I ran into John Casper, who was exiting the toilet. He was pulling his LES crotch zipper closed. I teased him, “We’re going to have to call you Long Dong Casper. Nobody else has a lizard long enough to reach around the UCD, past the long johns, and out of the LES.” He laughed. I was happy to help someone else relax, if only for a moment. I just wished someone would do it for me.

I got my wish in the White Room. One of the Astronaut Support Personnel (ASP) had placed a sign on the wall reading “Cut her loose!” This was the punch line of a particularly offensive joke—circulating among the Planet AD contingent—involving a naked woman bound to a bed. I chuckled. For five seconds I was able to forget what was about to happen.

Jeannie Alexander went to work securing me to the seat. Then she quizzed me on the components I would have to find in the event of a ground or bailout emergency. “Ship’s O₂connection?” It was on my left thigh. “Parachute disconnect?” My hands reached for my shoulders and I touched them. “Rip cord?” Another touch. “Barometric actuator lollipop?…Life raft actuator?…Overhead ground escape carabineer?” I found them all. She broke a light stick to activate its glow and Velcroed it to my shoulder. Now the fire-and-rescue people could find my body. She leaned over me and gave me a peck on the lips. “Have a great flight.” She was another person I would remember for the rest of my life. As she left the cockpit she placed another light stick over the side hatch to show the exit in the event of a lights-out emergency. I heard the hatch close and soon my ears were popping as the cockpit pressure test started.

The wait began. My heart was in afterburner. The seat was a torture. My bladder distended toward rupture even as I was mad with thirst from my prelaunch dehydration efforts. And this time I faced a new experience certain to tax my reserves even more—I was launching in the downstairs cockpit. My dislike of the position had not changed since I last sat here on STS-27’s reentry. I hated the tomblike isolation. I hated not having a window to look from or instruments to monitor. And I could never entirely expel from my mind the image of what it must have been like for Christa, Greg, and Ron inChallenger ’s lower cockpit. There are some things best forgotten, but locked in the same box, I couldn’t help but remember them.