Riding Rockets

I took a page and pennedMike Mullane. It didn’t look right. Too small, too tight, too anal, I thought. My “Ms” in particular looked like they had been made with a nun standing over me. They were too legible. Each was composed of symmetrical double humps that would have fit perfectly into the capital line guides of my third-grade Red Chief tablet. Such a signature would never do. It seemed to me famous people always had illegible signatures. I took another page and tried a radical swipe and imagined how it would look on a photo on some collector’s wall. It appeared as fake as it was. Another page bit the dust. I tried signing faster, slower, with more slant, less slant…I wanted an autograph that would dazzle. Then it dawned on me.Everybody was doing the same thing. An act that had been as casual as, well, signing your name had suddenly become a quest, a personal challenge. I looked around and saw several TFNGs intensely studying their pages. A few tongues worked around the corners of mouths. To produce the perfect autograph was hard labor. I was witnessing the definition of astronauts…competitive to the nth degree. They even beat the shit out of their own muses.Why can’t you come up with a memorable autograph, goddamn you! I could hear the buzz of pages disappearing from the tablet, ammunition being expended in thirty-five private wars to produce the perfect signature. By the time the secretary had her autographs for the auto-pen machine, a small forest had been wasted.

Chapter 9

Babes and Booze

Over the next several months we continued our agency indoctrination by visiting NASA “centers” around the country. Like all government agencies, NASA spreads its operations over multiple states to gain the largess of as many congressional delegations as possible. We flew in private NASA jets to Kennedy Space Center, to NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, to Marshall Spaceflight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, and to several other NASA and contractor facilities scattered around the country. At each location we were introduced to the workers, took tours, and received briefings on the operations of each facility.

There was a social agenda as well. Many nights would find us at a cocktail reception or dinner hosted by a local community official. Some of these events were more work than fun. Attendees clamored for autographs and photos. Or the press would be invited and they would squeeze us for interviews. For the most part, though, we were good ambassadors for NASA and warmly welcomed the attention. The women probably welcomed it less so. With each passing day it was becoming more evident that the major focus was on them. Even the black TFNGs would become as invisible as us white guys whenever Judy or Rhea or Anna—the triumvirate of TFNG beauty—walked into the room. They were particularly dazzling when they were dressed in their dark blue patch-covered flight coveralls. There wasn’t a man or woman in any public setting who didn’t stare. I recall one local politician questioning several of us men at a party. He was totally focused on our comments until Judy walked by in her flight suit. Then he interrupted us, said, “Excuse me,” and hurried to catch up to Judy. We were abandoned like the out-of-state voters we were.

What was it about the women in their flight suits? It wasn’t like the clothing flattered their figures. NASA ordered them off the shelf. The nuns of my high school would have loved them. They were baggy in all the right places, effectively neutering the female form. But in them, Judy, Rhea, and Anna stole the audience. The flight suits seemed to transform them into fantasy creatures like Barbarella or Cat Woman or Bat Girl. If Madonna had walked into a room in a jewel-bedecked Prada special, dripping Tiffany diamonds, and stood next to a coverall-clad Judy, Rhea, or Anna, the Material Girl would have paled to “ordinary.” Everybody, men and women alike, wanted to be seen with the flight suit–dressed women and pose for photos with them. Occasionally they would be so bothered and exhausted by the attention, they would use us men as human shields. At one of the parties I was standing with Dale Gardner, Norm Thagard, and a few others when Judy Resnik ducked behind our backs and whispered, “Close it up. I don’t want that press guy to find me.” A moment later we saw the stalker, pen and pad in hand, searching the room for his quarry. He eventually camped out at the exit to the ladies’ room, expecting Judy had fled there.