Riding Rockets

With STS-36 I dodged the SAS bullet for the third time. Maybe, I thought, God had given me a free pass in space because I had vomited enough for ten men in the backseat of the F-4 during my early flying career. Whatever the reason, I was happy to stow my unused barf bag. John Casper looked as if he might need it, but maybe not for SAS. It could have been his meal of eggplant and tomatoes. Gag. The NASA dietician included it because John’s other meal choices (heavy on butter cookies, M&Ms, and chocolate pudding) would leave him short of magnesium. I would have rather chewed on a magnesium flare. John hadn’t eaten the entrails-looking dish, but just rehydrating it would have made me sick. Regardless of the cause, John was feeling poorly and called on Dave Hilmers to inject him with the antinausea drug Phenergan. NASA had all but given up on patches and pills to treat SAS and had converted to industrial-strength injectable drugs. I reminded John of the warning the potion carried, “Do not operate an automobile under the influence of this drug.” He replied, “Lucky for me it doesn’t say anything about operating a space shuttle.”

Dave Hilmers was no doctor. He just played one in space. His premission training with needles had consisted of jabbing one into a piece of fruit. I would have to have been near death before I would have let a marine come near me with a needle. I expected to see blood and I wasn’t disappointed. Dave accidentally moved the needle while it was embedded in John’s ass and blood followed. A line of ruby planets shot from the wound like soap bubbles being blown out of a ring (giving new meaning to the term “airborne pathogen”). We chased the spheres with tissues. (Dave Hilmers must have been inspired by his needle work. After retirement from NASA he completed medical school and is now a pediatrician with a practice in Houston.)

While I had no nausea, I did experience the same painful backache from spine lengthening that I had encountered on STS-41D and 27. I also noticed the same Viagra effect. Every morning I would find myself painfully afflicted with a diamond-cutter erection, just like the geezers in the movieCocoon. And I wasn’t the only one dealing with this problem. On one reveille, as we all floated in our sleep restraints, Pepe looked at me and said, “I must have had a great dream about Cheryl [his “snort” cute wife]. I’ve got a terrific boner.”

I smiled and replied, “I must have had a great dream about Cheryl, too.”

Pepe laughed. “Damn you, Mullane! Keep my wife out of that filthy brain of yours.”

Someday the blood shift of weightless flight will make for some very happy space colonists.

During the last sleep period of the mission, I stayed awake in the upper cockpit to soak up the space sights that would have to last the rest of my terrestrial life. I wanted to listen to music as I did so and searched for my NASA-supplied Walkman. It took me a moment to find it. The inside of the cockpit was covered with Velcro pads, and everything we carried, from pencils to cameras to food containers to flashlights, had Velcro “hooks” glued to them so they could be anchored to a pad. The only problem was remembering where you anchored everything. On Earth, nobody ever had to look on a wall or ceiling for a misplaced item. In space you did.

I put on headphones and inserted one of my personal-mix music tapes in the player (NASA allowed us six), then switched off the cockpit lights. Floating horizontally, I rolled belly up and pulled forward until my head was nearly touching a forward cockpit window. It was a trick Hank Hartsfield had taught me on STS-41D. WithAtlantis in a ceiling-to-Earth attitude, my orientation had me lying facedown toward Earth. Though this attitude caused my body to brush against the ceiling instrument panels, which contained some of the most critical shuttle switches, I wasn’t worried about bumping one out of position. All the switches were set between two wire wickets so they could only be accessed by a thumb and forefinger inserted between those hoops.

The real joy of my new position was the illusion it created. I could put my head so far forward that the shuttle’s structure disappeared behind me. My view of Earth was completely unobstructed. It brought back memories of snorkeling in the Aegean Sea and watching the undersea life through my face mask. As I had then, I now had a powerful sense of being part of the element in which I was immersed, not a foreign visitor. When I steadied myself with my fingertips and then pulled those away, I would momentarily float free of any contact withAtlantis, enhancing the sensation of being a creature of space, not an astronaut locked in a machine.