Riding Rockets

Shannon Lucid was from Bethany, Oklahoma, and had a cement-thick Sooner accent. I once heard her speaking with Apollo astronaut and fellow Okie, Tom Stafford, and wondered if they were speaking Klingon. At thirty-five, Shannon was the oldest TFNG female and the only mother (three children) at the time of her selection. She held a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Oklahoma.

All of these women were feminists in the sense they were out to prove they were as good as any male astronaut. Only Sally Ride struck me as an activist, a woman bent on making a political statement as opposed to a personal one. She seemed to view the world through NOW prescription lenses. Every action had to be gender sanitized. Before her first space mission I heard her say there could be no live TV downlink of her during orbit food preparation because it would show her in a traditional female role, even though food preparation, like toilet cleaning, was a shared crew responsibility. After the mission, at a JSC welcome for the crew, a NASA PR spokesperson brought out a bouquet of roses for Sally. She refused to accept them, as if to do so would be an affront to women. After all, the males weren’t being given roses. Every military TFNG quickly learned to be careful in word and deed around Sally. She had about as much tolerance for our arrested development as Billy Graham did for a Wicca.

The other five females cut us varying degrees of slack. Rhea Seddon was a model of tolerance. She had to be. A couple years into our TFNG lives she married Robert “Hoot” Gibson, an F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot. Forget the James Carville and Mary Matalin marriage as one of polar opposites. Compared with Rhea and Hoot, James and Mary are paragons of blissful compatibility.

It was easy to see the mutual attraction between Rhea and Hoot. Rhea was a petite, confident surgeon. She was blonde, beautiful, outgoing, and a classy dresser. Hoot was the Chuck Yeager of the TFNGs, capable of flying anything with a stick and throttle, and flying it as if it were a natural extension of his body. He didn’t so much strap into a cockpit as meld with it. He was a natural-born leader and would ultimately rise to the position of chief of the astronauts a few years afterChallenger. On appearance alone, women were drawn to him. He had a Tom Selleck look about him, with a large blond mustache and an easy smile. In his California childhood he had learned to surf and play guitar. He rode motorcycles. He built his own formula-one racing plane in his garage, was a frequent winner in air races around the country, and held several world speed and altitude records. He also flew super–high power WWII fighter planes and Russian MIG jets in air shows as part of a flying museum. He was the consummate fun-lover. When I returned from my third shuttle mission, my wife told me how Hoot, a family escort for that mission, had driven the crew wives into the Edwards AFB desert and spun doughnuts in the sand in a government van. That was Hoot, always ready to thrill the women. Occasionally at parties, he and a few other navy pilots would grab a microphone and serenade a skirt with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” Next to Hoot, Tom Cruise’sTop Gun character, Maverick, looked like aShow Boat chorus member. Oh, did I mention he was the lead singer and guitarist in the astronaut band, Max Q? I hated him. I’m kidding of course. I had great respect for Hoot and thoroughly enjoyed being part of his crew on my second shuttle mission, STS-27. But in his company another man couldn’t help but ask himself,What would any woman see in my sorry ass?

But there was another characteristic that came with the guitar, surfboard, and airplanes. Hoot was, like all military aviators, a male chauvinist pig. If NOW had a ten-most-wanted pig list, he would have been at the top. If they had ever caught him, though, it would have only taken a few minutes before the NOW politburo fell into a hair-pulling cat fight screaming, “I want to have his baby!” Hoot was that charming. Lest you think I exaggerate, even Sally Ride went out with Hoot when both were single, which says a lot about his charm factor.

Hoot’s hallmark was his “snorting.” Whenever he saw a young, attractive woman, he would discreetly make a sound like a pig snort. This was a physical manifestation of one of his favorite expressions, “I’d like to snort her flanks.” He did this snorting so often that when he was assigned as the commander of STS-27, our mission was nicknamed Swine Flight by the office secretaries. I’m sure Gloria Steinem and Sally Ride would have thoroughly agreed.

So, Rhea and Hoot’s marriage was one of the world’s great mysteries, like the rise of life on earth. If the pope were ever to beatify a woman as the patron saint of wifely patience, it would have to be Rhea. Indeed, we called her Saint Seddon for putting up with Hoot.