Riding Rockets

But even as we TFNGs and the class of 1980 were doing our best to gain George’s favor we were also developing serious doubts about our leader. While he frequented our social functions, he rarely made appearances in the astronaut office. In particular he offered no insight into the one thing that mattered most to us, the shuttle flight assignment process. Initially, we believed that John Young would be making shuttle crew assignments. Since he bore the titlechief of astronauts, how could it be otherwise? But the older astronauts were certain Abbey would be assigning crews independent of Young. In our rookie naïveté we found that hard to believe. Young was in a much better position to know our capabilities, limitations, and interpersonal compatibilities. Abbey’s office was in a separate building. How could he know what crew composition would be best for a particular mission? We could understand why Abbey wanted crew assignment authority, since it represented considerable power, but we could not understand why Young would have rolled over and allowed him to take it. While NASA’s management hierarchy did put Young under Abbey’s authority, it seemed to us Young could have easily insisted on having a big say in crew assignments without the slightest risk to his career. John was a living legend. He was a four-time veteran of spaceflights—two Gemini missions and two Apollo missions. He had walked on the moon. There was no way a midlevel bureaucrat like Abbey could have ever prevailed against him if Young had told Chris Kraft, “These are my astronauts. I know them. I want to have a hand in crew assignments. I’ll consider HQ’s inputs, your inputs, and Abbey’s inputs, but I want a significant say in the matter because I will have to bear the ultimate responsibility if there are any mistakes made by crews.” But the vets in the office were adamant in their opinion that Abbey was a rapacious power monger who had taken all flight assignment responsibility from Young. Why Young would have ever accepted such an office-neutering arrangement would remain a mystery throughout my astronaut life.

There were occasional hints that Abbey’s rule over astronautswas absolute, as when Jerry Ross (class of 1980) returned from Chris Kraft’s welcome for his class. Jerry told us he had been shocked when Kraft had implied he didn’t understand why their class had even been selected. He thought there were enough astronauts as it was. (As Jerry said, it was a strange way of welcoming them.) Jerry’s story implied Abbey had selected a new class over Kraft’s objections. Did even Dr. Kraft answer to Abbey on the subject of astronauts? Nobody knew. Kraft, Abbey, and Young never said a word about their responsibilities. Everything about the most important aspect of our career—flight assignments—was as unknown to us as the dark matter of space was to astrophysicists. Who made assignments? Who approved them? Who had veto power over them? Would there be a rotation system? Would our preferences for a mission be considered? Would military astronauts fly only military missions? Abbey said nothing. Nor did he ever provide the slightest performance feedback—positive or negative. If he had an agenda, that was never revealed either. I have never worked in any organization where there was such a complete lack of communication from above. The result of this information vacuum was predictable. FEAR. The line into space was long and nobody wanted to be at its end, or worse, be banished from it altogether. We were all terrified of doing something that might cross our king. We lived by rumor and innuendo because that was all there was. An early instance was a warning to Steve Nagel from Don Peterson (class of 1969) to stop work on a shuttle autopilot improvement project, “because rumor has it Abbey hates that project.” Nagel was stunned. He had beenassigned the work by another office vet. It wasn’t something he had initiated. Yet he was being told he was jeopardizing his career by doing his assigned job. Shannon Lucid and I had a similar experience. Moon walker Al Bean directed us to prepare a report justifying why nonpilot MS astronauts should be trained as pilots. Later we heard from another office vet that Abbey was vehemently opposed to such a program. Shannon and I dropped the work as if it were radioactive waste. Everybody was constantly second-guessing their actions. It was a poisonous situation.