Riding Rockets

I answered, “No, but I believe there is alien life elsewhere in the universe. There are so many trillions of stars it’s easy for me to believe there will be planets around some of those stars that harbor intelligent life.” I should have quit right there, but like a fool, I continued. “However, I don’t believe any UFOs have landed on earth. Why,” I rhetorically asked the audience, “would an advanced civilization go to the trouble of building an interstellar craft, fly to earth to find it teeming with life, and then only hover over lonely women and beer-drinking men?” The crowd laughed. The woman asking the question did not. If looks could kill, I was a dead man.

The next week I received an anonymous letter postmarked Salt Lake City, Utah, viciously attacking my position on aliens. It was clear the writer believedthe truth is out there and that I was part of the cover-up. I suspect the letter was from the woman who had asked the alien question.

This question was just one of many that could turn a public appearance into a gut-wrenching torture. “What happens when you fart in a spacesuit?” or “Do women have periods in space?” were the easy ones to answer. But questions like “Are there gay and lesbian astronauts?” and “Has there been sex in space?” had the potential to put a TFNG’s name in a Johnny Carson monologue.

The prizewinner in the category of fielding the most difficult question was Don Peterson (class of 1969). After one of his speeches, several members of the audience came to him with their questions. One asked, “Is there privacy on the shuttle to masturbate?” Don was immediately thrown into a panic. It was like being asked, “Do you feel better since you’ve stopped beating your wife?” It was impossible to answer. He considered saying no, but that implied astronauts had searched for such privacy. He imagined his face on a supermarket tabloid under the headline “Astronaut Complains: No Privacy to Spank the Monkey.” A yes reply held equally embarrassing possibilities: “Astronaut Admits to Five-Knuckle Shuffle in Space.” He mumbled an incomprehensible answer, praying whatever it was it wouldn’t come back to haunt him in theNational Enquirer.

As Blaine Hammond learned in the El Paso flight operations office, the most dreaded form of public speaking was a TV interview. A streak of antiaircraft fire passing your wing doesn’t get your heart rate up like looking into a black camera lens and hearing, “Three…two…one…you’re live.” For me, it was a cadence that always brought on nausea. Once, as I was listening to this on-the-air countdown, the anchor leaned in to me and said, “It’s just like a shuttle launch. When you hit zero, there’s no going back.” He was right. Hearing, “You’re live,” was just like hearing the rumble of SRB ignition. You were flying. The camera was scattering your image and words into the living rooms of America and there would be no do-overs. I was sure my Adam’s apple was dancing like a bobblehead on a dashboard and my fear-widened eyes were darting like minnows. I imagined people at their breakfast tables laughing as I choked, trying to respond to a simple question like, “What’s your name?”

Live interviews could be made even more torturous by the AD antics of other astronauts. Several of us were in a Houston bar one evening when the TV caught our eye. A local station was airing a call-in interview with Ed Gibson (class of 1965) and TFNG Kathy Sullivan. One of our group immediately asked the bartender to borrow the phone and called in his questions: for Kathy, “How do girls pee in the toilet?” and for Ed, “What does Mrs. Gibson think of Mr. Gibson flying single women around the country in a NASA jet on overnight business trips?” We all hooted and hollered as the victims struggled with their answers.

Interviews with the print press were much more relaxing but still held the potential to screw an astronaut. During one interview I explained to the reporter my feelings of boundless joy and visceral fear while being driven to the pad for my first launch. I said, “To see the xenon-lightedDiscovery and know it was my shuttle, that I was only hours from the culmination of a lifetime dream come true, nearly had me crying with joy.” But I was quoted as having said, “Astronauts cry fromfear as they are driven to the launchpad.” The story was picked up by Paul Harvey and repeated to a huge national audience on his radio show. I was outraged and excruciatingly embarrassed.

Experiences like this explained why the astronaut office bulletin board occasionally displayed news articles in which an offending quote was circled with “I didn’t say this” written next to it by a pissed-off astronaut.