Riding Rockets

Like the majority of people, most astronauts fear public speaking more than death. As the joke goes, “Most people would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy.” I witnessed this hierarchy of terrors one dark and stormy night in the backseat of a T-38. My pilot was Blaine Hammond (class of 1984). After finishing a day of practice shuttle approaches at the White Sands shuttle runway, we were making a night takeoff from El Paso’s airport for our return to Houston. Our eastward departure was sending us into an ink black sky over a similarly darkened desert. Just as Blaine pulled the nose from the runway, I noticed a yellow flickering in the cockpit rearview mirrors and was about to comment on it when the El Paso tower interrupted. “Departing NASA jet, you’re on fire. There’s a flame trailing from your aircraft.” We were already airborne and well beyond our maximum abort speed. We had no choice but to continue our climb. I quickly informed Blaine of the flickering yellow in the mirrors. Clearly, our jet was burning behind us. Blaine yanked the engines out of afterburner (AB) and declared an emergency. El Paso tower immediately cleared us to land on any runway we could make. My thoughts were on ejection. The checklist was clear: In bold lettering it read, “Confirmed Fire—Eject.” You don’t get better confirmation than having the tower tell you you’re riding a meteor. I cinched my harness to the point of pain and placed my hands on the ejection handles and mentally reviewed the bailout procedures. As I was doing so, I continued to watch the engine instruments. The nozzle position on the left engine was the only off-nominal indication. At the power setting of the throttle the nozzle should have been more closed than what was indicated. There were no firelights and the fire-warning circuitry checked okay. I snatched my mask from my face and breathed the ambient air. There was no odor of smoke. The tower was telling us we were on fire, but there was no indication of it in the cockpit.

“Something’s wrong with the left engine. I’m going to keep it at idle and make a single-engine approach.” Blaine stated his intention and immediately banked the plane toward the nearest runway.

I challenged the decision. “That’s not what the checklist says we should be doing.” I didn’t have to say the wordeject. Blaine knew the emergency procedures as well as I did.

“I know, but she’s flying fine.” I could tell in his voice Blaine was as frightened as I was about our predicament. The planewas flying fine and neither of us wanted to leave the security of his cockpit for the black outside. The thought of pulling those handles was absolutely terrifying. But, by staying with the plane, we were in clear violation of the emergency procedures.

I heard the tower wave off an airliner to give us every option for landing. We had the field to ourselves. I wondered if we would soon be putting on a fireworks display for a planeload of TWA passengers.

As the runway lights came into view, I followed Blaine through the landing checklist, including making a computation of our touchdown speed…nearly 180 knots. We were full of gas, making a high-speed, single-engine landing on a high-elevation runway. To complicate things a thunderstorm had just passed over the field. The runways were sodden.This could get ugly was my thought. Assuming we made the runway, there was an excellent chance we were going to blow some tires. To run off the runway would probably result in death. That assumed we made the runway at all, which was far from guaranteed. The fire had already damaged the engine nozzle positioning system, which put it in the vicinity of the tail-control surfaces. If those failed while we were deep into our landing attempt, we would probably die. The ejection seat wouldn’t be able to save us in an out-of-control situation close to the ground.

The annals of military aviation are filled with stories of aircrews that died doing exactly what we were about to do…ignore the “Fire—Eject” rule, play the heroes, and attempt an emergency landing. “Crewmember death occurred when ejection was attempted out of the ejection seat envelope.” I had read that conclusion in accident reports a hundred times in my career. I could imagine the comments of our peers at the next Monday meeting: “If they had followed the checklist, they would be alive today.”

Eject? Stay? Eject? Stay? The runway lights were looming and I was in the agony of indecision. Finally I decided that I would stay. I put the checklist aside and resumed my death grip on the ejection handles. If the master caution light illuminated or there was any other indication of ongoing fire damage, I was gone. It might be too late by then, but that was my decision.

Throughout this period, which had been less than two minutes, I could hear Blaine’s breathing through the intercom. He had the respiration of a marathoner. He was stressed to the max.