Riding Rockets

Jeff would prove to be the most enduring TFNG scientist. Over the years, many of the other civilians would become enamored with the military aviator mystique and would take on varying degrees of its form. But, to the very end, Jeff remained an unpolluted scientist—a fact that presented some great opportunities for us AD retards. I recall a Monday meeting in which he made an impassioned request for better attendance at an astronaut office science lecture series. Attendance was voluntary and few of the military TFNGs were showing up. Jeff begged, “Guys, we’re going to have coffee and doughnuts and the visiting professor really has some fascinating stuff to tell us. You really should be there.” He then expanded on the science that would be covered. I watched the pilots. Their faces were pictures of disinterest. The only thought running through their brains wasI wonder where happy hour will be?

Jeff finally finished. “Do you have any questions?” He looked so hopefully at his tuned-out audience, it about broke my heart. He was desperate for any indication that we had paid the slightest attention to his pleas. “Any questions? Any questions at all?” But the room remained as silent as an OMS burn.

I slowly raised my hand and Jeff’s face lit up like a sunspot. “Yes, Mike.”

“I was just wondering…. What type of doughnuts are you going to have?” The walls of the room nearly blew apart with laughter. It was one of Jeff’s many lessons that the military aviator brain was a science wasteland.

Like Hoot with the flaming hookers, I wondered,Why do I do this? and smiled that I had. But I will ultimately pay the price. Besides Bible hell and feminist hell, I’ll also burn in post-doc hell.

Chapter 10

Temples of History

In our early TFNG months we were introduced to the Outpost Tavern, a temple of space history. The Outpost was the astronaut after-work hangout located a few blocks from JSC’s front gate. It was aptly named. To say the Outpost was “rustic” was like saying King Tut has a few wrinkles.

The building was a shack of weather-beaten boards, its parking lot as cratered as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Some of these water-filled holes could have swallowed a small sedan. After stepping around a minefield of fire-ant mounds, patrons entered the Outpost through two saloon-style swinging doors cut out in the shape of curvaceous bikini-clad girls. The bar ran around two walls. A griddle and deep-fryer served up burgers and fries certain to deposit a couple millimeters of plaque in every artery of the body. The low ceiling trapped a cloud of atomized grease and cigarette smoke like pollution in a temperature inversion. A dartboard, a shuffleboard table game, and a pool table offered entertainment. The interior décor consisted of space posters and astronaut photographs stapled to the walls and ceiling. The Outpost was the only bar in America where the pinups were smiling flight-suited women astronauts.

Why the Outpost was picked as the astronaut hangout has been lost to antiquity, but it is almost a tradition for flying units to have such a retreat. For Chuck Yeager and the rocket plane pilots of the ’50s and ’60s there was the Happy Bottom Riding Club near Edwards AFB; for the early astronauts, it was the Mouse Trap Lounge in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Most likely the Outpost became the unofficial watering hole for shuttle-era astronauts because of the sanctuary it offered. I never saw anybody approached for an autograph or interview in the Outpost. Perhaps outsiders were intimidated by the obstacle course of potholes or they assumed the building was condemned.

Every Friday happy hour, many TFNGs would be at the Outpost. The building would ultimately be the scene of our crew-selection parties, our landing parties, and our promotion parties. It would be the place where we traded gossip and bitched about our management. We would meet with our payload contractors and refine checklist procedures on the backs of napkins. And the Outpost would ultimately serve as a refuge, where we would grieve for our lost friends. The Outpost has been a witness to so much of the astronaut experience it should be moved in its entirety to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. It is as much a part of space history as the rocket planes hanging from the museum ceiling.

Our TFNG apprenticeship also introduced us to the loftiest temple of space history, the Mission Control Center (MCC). As we stepped into the deserted, silent room, I imagined we experienced the same sense of awe a rookie baseball player experiences when he jogs onto the field for his first Major League game. We were in the “Show,” stepping where legends had stepped before. Here was where cigars were smoked in celebration of theApollo 11 landing. Here was where the words, “Houston, we have a problem” were first received when an explosion shattered theApollo 13 service module.