Riding Rockets

I floated back to the forward windows. The orbits continued…25,000 miles, 90 minutes, one sunrise, one sunset, a brush with the Arctic Circle, a brush with the Antarctic Circle. At each equatorial crossingAtlantis passed 1,500 miles west of its prior transit, an effect of the Earth’s eastward spin underneath our orbit. In circuit after circuit, I was seeing a different sea, a different land, a different sky. I watched North African deserts stretch to the horizon in dunes as perfectly spaced as ripples in a pond. I passed over snowy Siberian forests as virgin as the Garden of Eden. I saw the green vein of the Nile and the white-tipped chaos of the Himalayas and the Andes. I saw perfect fans of alluvial debris debouching onto desert floors, each a signature of millions of years of mountain erosion. I thrilled to shooting stars and the stellar mist of space and twinkling satellites and the jewel that was Jupiter. I saw the Baikonur Cosmodrome,Sputnik I ’s launch site, with the nearby Aral Sea appearing oil black against the winter white of the Kazakh Steppes. A few turns later the desert-lonely lights of Albuquerque came into view and I marveled at how those two places, so geographically distant from each other, had been inexorably linked in my life. I passed over every unimproved road my parents had ever dared, every mountain I had ever climbed, every sky I had ever flown. With the music of Vangelis and Bach and Albinoni as a sound track, I watched the movie of my life.

Chapter 41

The White House

Our first order of postlanding business was to review our mission film and edit two separate movies, one intended for security-cleared eyes only, the other for the public. Because of the secrecy surrounding our orbit activities, the latter had little in it. We wanted to include the fun video we had taken of our satanic crewmember in hilarious poses, but Dan Brandenstein squelched that. “If we keep showing on-orbit pranks, headquarters is going to assume control of editing our postflight movies. They’re getting pissed the press only shows us screwing off in space.” We thought it was bullshit, but understood Dan’s position and honored it. The world would never see Beelzebub clamped on a shuttle toilet.

Our postflight travel was similar to that of STS-27. I journeyed to places I can’t mention to be congratulated by people whose office titles are similarly unmentionable. I received another National Intelligence Medal of Achievement from another “black world” Wizard of Oz that I could only wear in a vault. This citation (declassified years later) reads:

…Colonel Mullane’s superior performance led to the safe deployment and successful activation of a system vital to our national security. The singularly superior performance of Colonel Mullane reflects great credit upon himself, the United States Air Force, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Intelligence Community.

At one of our stops some spooks hosted us to a candlelit dinner in their black-world building. The office secretaries acted as servers since no caterers could enter. We showed our mission movie and, lubricated by wine, I added my own editorial comments. As space video of the Boston–Cape Cod area was shown, I injected, “Moscow doesn’t have as many communists as are living in this picture.” There was a peal of laughter. Hank Hartsfield would have been proud.

The highlight of our meager postflight PR tour was a visit to George Bush, Senior’s White House. We were shocked by the invitation. STS-36 had been virtually ignored in the press. There were no women on the crew, no minorities, no firsts of any kind that might have turned out the press to cover a presidential handshake. Whatever the reason, the invitation was sincerely appreciated.

We met the president in the Oval Office, taking seats in sofas set around a coffee table. Mr. Bush sat in a nearby chair. The questions he asked indicated that he was well briefed on our mission. But it was hard to carry on a conversation. A steady stream of aides and secretaries were constantly coming to his side to get answers to questions and his signature on documents. I wondered if the man was ever alone, even on the toilet.