Riding Rockets

I listened to the urgent voices of the launch controllers. Like us, they were exhausted and wanted to put the flight behind them and escape the inhuman sleep-work cycle. We were all gripped with a dangerous “launch fever,” a headlong rush to getAtlantis flying. The sane one among us was our launch director, Bob Sieck. Nobody was going to stampede him into a wrongheaded decision. As he did a final poll of his LCC team he was calm, deliberate. Mr. Rogers singing “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” sounded manic compared with Bob’s measured voice. Everybody listening wanted to jump in and finish his sentences. He was the perfect man for one of the most stressful jobs within NASA…and another person I would remember forever.

He polled the STA weather pilot and we heard Mike Coats reply, “Go.” Next he polled the TAL weather pilot in Zaragoza, Spain, and got another go. There had been a blessed nexus of satisfactory weather conditions on both sides of the Atlantic. We were cleared to fly.

“Atlantis,we’ll be coming out of the count in a few moments. It’s been a real pleasure working with you guys. Good luck and godspeed.”

I was shocked. For hours I had been convinced we would scrub. Now Casper was going through the APU start procedures. The clock was running. God had smiled on us. It had to have been Dave Hilmers’s work. The rest of us reprobates didn’t warrant any breaks from the Almighty.

I cinched my harness. My fear, which had ebbed with my certain belief the launch would be canceled, now roared over me like an avalanche. My mouth was metallic with it. My heart ran away with it. My hands shook with it. The palsy was a first for me. It had to be the combined effects of being downstairs and suffering from last-mission syndrome. Now, I was glad to be out of sight. Everybody knew everybody else was terrified, but nobody wanted tosee their neighbor’s fear, and trembling hands were a sure sign of it.

At T-2 minutes I closed my visor and turned on my oxygen. Again, I could hear J.O. and Casper snorting Afrin before they dropped their faceplates.

J.O. gave me a count. “One minute, Mike.”

I squeaked out a “Roger.”

“Thirty seconds, go for auto-sequence start.”

“Fifteen seconds.”

“Ten seconds…go for main engine start.”

There was a heavy rumble followed by a 2-G slap. We were off. The rest of my life was just 510 seconds away.

Chapter 40

Last Orbits

At MECO I silently celebrated life. For the first time in what seemed an age, it occurred to me that I might live long enough to die a natural death.

We went to work on our mission activities, most of which I’m forbidden to describe. But the classified nature of both my DOD missions produced a mighty temptation for me. Riches and fame beyond anything any astronaut has ever achieved could be mine if I just told the world thetruth …that on these hush-hush missions we actually rendezvoused with aliens. Given the vast population of conspiracy theorists, my claims would not be questioned. “Of course the government is hiding contact with aliens under the guise of military space shuttle operations,” they would shout. I would be their hero for revealing what they have long suspected. Book and movie deals would net me millions. I would just need a convincing sperm-extraction and anal-probe story for my Barbara Walters interview…and to be able to look pained and violated as I told it.

On one occasion since leaving NASA, I did publicly make the “alien rendezvous” claim. I did it at Pepe’s retirement ceremony. “Yes, we linked up with aliens,” I told that audience, “and then had sex with them. It wasn’t too bad after we got by the tentacles. Of course, Pepe, being a navy guy, picked the ugliest one.”

One unclassified experiment aboardAtlantis proved immensely entertaining—a human skull loaded with radiation dosimeters. After returning to Earth those dosimeters would yield an exact measure of how much radiation was penetrating the brains of astronauts.

To reduce the creepiness factor of the experiment, the investigators had used a plastic filling to give the head an approximation of a face. The result was far more menacing than plain bone would have been. The face was narrow, cadaverous, with two bolts at the back of the skull looking like horns. Satan himself was riding with us. During a break in our payload work, I floated into a sleep restraint and extended my arms through the armholes, then ducked my head into the bag. Pepe and Dave taped the skull on top of the restraint so it appeared our friend had a body. (Your tax dollars at work.) They silently floated the bag to the flight deck and maneuvered me behind John Casper, who was engaged at an instrument panel. When he turned to find the creature in his face with arms waving, it scared the bejesus out of him. Later, we clamped Satan on the toilet. No doubt my desecration of the poor anonymous soul who had volunteered his body (and skull) to science has earned me a few more millennia in hell’s fires.