Riding Rockets

The launch director ordered the countdown held at T-31 seconds in the hopes the RSO could clear his problem and the count could resume. But we couldn’t hold for long with the APUs burning their fuel. A minute ticked away.Come on…come on…fix your freakin’ computer and give us a go for launch! But as we waited, the liquid oxygen inlets on all of the SSMEs got too cold. The mission was scrubbed. I just melted into a formless blob. The suit technicians would have to look for me in the bottom of the LES.

Upon our return to the crew quarters we were offered the opportunity to go to the beach house and visit the wives. I called Donna and we both agreed we didn’t want another beach good-bye. I could sense her complete exhaustion…mental and physical. I called my mom, the iron woman who had birthed six children and raised them with an invalid husband, and she was similarly incapacitated. The only silver lining to the scrub was that it reinforced my retirement decision. If stress was the killer the docs were saying it was, I was killing Donna, the kids, my mom, and myself with these launch attempts.

When the crew returned from the beach house, they found me in the conference room watching a movie. Pepe tilted his chair onto its back on the floor and lay in it to watch TV. “What the hell are you doing?” I was certain he had lost his mind.

“I’ve got to acclimate myself to lying in the orbiter. I was ready to die out there.”

“Pepe, you’re crazy. That’s like practicing getting kicked in the balls. You’ll never acclimate yourself.”

But Pepe was not dissuaded. He remained in the reclined position throughoutLawrence of Arabia. I don’t know how he did it. Only a gun to my head would have made me practice for tomorrow. I barely had the strength to lift a beer to my lips.

The next morning we relived it: Olan’s Cajun face at my door, faking a smile for the photographers, having my nuts squeezed in the LES pressure test, confronting my fears on the drive to the pad, getting a kiss and a glowing light stick from Jeannie, laughing at Pepe’s complaints, worrying about death, praying for life, and finally hearing, “Atlantis,the RTLS weather is no-go. We’re going to have to pull you out.” I didn’t even have the strength to swear. This time the launch director decided to slip the mission by forty-eight hours to give everybody time to rest. Our next try would be on February 28.

Back in the crew quarters the techs stripped me out of the LES. After grabbing two beers from the kitchen, I walked to the bathroom, shed my long johns (reeking of sweat and faintly of urine), unfastened my diaper, and stood at the mirror. The craters under my eyes could have hidden a moon buggy. I wondered what a decent night of chemical-free REM sleep would feel like. It had been so long I couldn’t imagine the experience. My neck was ringed red from the chafing of the LES neck dam. There were other suit tattoos: ruptured capillaries on the insides of my arms and bruises on my biceps from trying to move while the LES was pressurized. There were still multiple shaved and sandpaper-roughened hickeys on my chest from the EKG attachments applied during a prequarantine medical test. My thighs and calves had similar shaved and roughened patches of skin marking the attachment locations of sensors for a muscle-response test. The end of my penis was cherry red with what I could only hope was temporary diaper rash. Whatever it was, I wasn’t about to bring it to the attention of the flight surgeons. If I had a urinary tract infection, it would come along for the ride. I had invested far too much in this mission to be pulled from it now. I entered the shower, stood under the cascading hot water, and drank my beer.

By the time we completed our debriefings the sun had risen and J.O. suggested we meet our wives at the beach house. I called Donna and this time we agreed it would be fun to get together.

The five of us entered the beach house living area to find it strewn with clothing: shirts, shoes, socks, panty hose, bras. There was even a bra swinging from the end of a ceiling fan. It was obvious we had entered a joke in progress. Sure enough, when we walked into the bedroom we found the family escorts, Hoot Gibson and Mario Runco, lying shirtless on the bed. Crowded next to them were all the wives, clothed but for their underthings, pretending to beshocked at our appearance. Everyone laughed, something we all needed as much as a good night’s sleep.

Hoot teased us with the obvious point of the joke. “You guys are taking so long to get this mission going, your wives are developing some realneed issues.”

I threw it back in his face. “I’m not worried. You and Mario are navy officers. You have to be heterosexual to know what a woman needs. I’m surprised you guys aren’t in a bedroom by yourselves.”