Riding Rockets

Hoot and I had a well-deserved reputation for a disgusting synergy. Our exchanges devolved into more offensive comebacks and counter-comebacks until Donna finally hollered, “Enough! Will you guys ever grow up?” I had now heard that outburst from so many women so many times in my life, I thought it should be in Latin on the official shield of Planet Arrested Development—umquam grow idiotum.

The rest of the visit was relaxing. We had all been cured of the need to deliver a Bergman-Bogey good-bye at the water’s edge, so we just sat around, drank beer, and traded stories. Pepe told us of his agony during the wait on the pad. Dave Hilmers shot him a hypothetical question: “Pepe, if NASA needs someone to replace an MS on the next flight, would you volunteer?” Pepe instantly replied, “Absolutely.” His eagerness embodied the astronaut conundrum. Even as we waited on the pad, scared shitless and physically tortured, none of us could imagine not taking every offered mission.

When we returned to the crew quarters we were greeted by the local news showing a large, unmanned, French-built Ariane rocket blowing up shortly after liftoff from its South American pad. The story wouldn’t have been covered anywhere else in America, but, on Florida’s space coast, the competing French space program was news. The stations played the video again and again. There was no way Donna and the rest of the families could possibly miss it and I was certain the images of the flaming rocket falling into the sea would add to their anxiety. And that wasn’t the end of it. That evening one of the networks was airing a docudrama on theChallenger disaster. The advertisements for that show were in all the newspapers and magazines, and the network was constantly hyping it. The wives were going to have to be sedated to get them to the LCC roof. With J.O.’s illness, the two scrubs, the Ariane blowing up, and theChallenger movie, it was a good thing I didn’t believe in omens.

The evening of February 26 our crew flew to Houston for a refresher simulation. It had been so long since J.O. and John had practiced ascent emergencies, the mission trainers thought it would be a good idea to get them back in the JSC sim. I made the trip even though I had no duties associated with ascent. I just couldn’t face the thought of sitting around the crew quarters all night with nothing to do. I had already watched more movies in the past thirteen days of quarantine than I had watched in the past thirteen years. I couldn’t watch another. After landing at Ellington Field, I left the crew to their sim, drove home, watered the houseplants, and went running.

On the flight back to Florida I was stabbed with regret at my decision to leave NASA. The pain and fear that, yesterday, had provided validation for my retirement plans had been temporarily forgotten. Cocooned in the warm cockpit with the stars as a blanket, I wondered if I would ever find fulfillment outside of this business. There was an unknown scarier than space and I was fast approaching it…my post-MECO future.

This time I asked Jeannie to put light sticks over the single cue card Velcroed on the locker in front of me. The downstairs lighting was poor and I wanted the extra illumination to read the card. It outlined the procedures for a launchpad escape, for bailing out, and for a crash landing escape. I had every step committed to memory and didn’t need the card but it gave me something to read during the wait. I also asked her to put a light stick next to the altimeter in front of me. In a bailout scenario, after pulling the emergency cockpit depressurization handle, I would watch the altimeter until it indicated we were below fifty thousand feet. Then, I would blow the side hatch and deploy the bailout slide boom. I would be the first out…into the ink black of a North Atlantic winter night and all the perils that it embodied.

Jeannie’s face was beaded in sweat as she crawled over me to make my connections. Kevin Chilton, one of the ASPs, was the last to leave the cockpit. He pulled the pin that locked a safety cover over the cockpit depressurization and hatch jettison handles. Assuming we made orbit, I would reinsert the pin. He handed it to me. “Good luck, Mike.”

“Thanks, Chilly. See you at Edwards.”

I heard the hatch close, the mechanicalthunking noise carrying a note of finality. A few minutes later J.O. watched from his port-side window as the last pad workers hurried across the access arm and entered the elevator. “The close-out crew just left. We’re alone.” J.O.’s observation reminded us that we sat at ground zero. Everybody else was racing to get away from the shuttle kill zone.