Riding Rockets

If John Young had been more involved in our professional lives, things might have been better, but he was also an absentee leader. He was consumed with training for STS-1. His interaction with the rank and file was mostly limited to the weekly one-hour Monday meetings, and at those he had an irritating and morale-eroding habit of publicly rebuking us when we failed to win battles on shuttle issues at the various NASA review panels. I recall one meeting in which Bill Fisher (class of 1980) leaned over to me and sarcastically whispered, “That’s it, John, yell atus. ” Fisher’s implication was obvious to all within earshot: John should have been at the panel meeting in question using his vast experience as a veteran spaceman to defend his position instead of expecting one of us rookies to carry the day.

Many TFNGs would grow to loathe the Abbey-Young duopoly and its black hole of communication.

In our second year at JSC we received our first real astronaut job assignments. Because we lacked any other information on the flight assignment process, we quickly constructed a belief system in which these early jobs portended our place in the line into space. To draw an “STS-1 Support” job was thought to be indicative of a position at the head of the TFNG line because of the overarching importance of that first shuttle flight. My name wasn’t under “STS-1 Support.” Next were jobs supporting STS-2, -3, and -4. Again, it was assumed TFNGs assigned to support those missions must be impressing Abbey and be in line for an early space mission. My name was absent from those assignments. And neither was my name typed next to jobs supporting spacewalk, robot arm, and payload development. I finally found “Mullane” next to “Spacelab Support.” This was at the rock bottom of TFNG job preferences. I felt as if I were back in high school after baseball tryouts seeing my name penciled next toB-squad backup right fielder.

Spacelab was a cylindrical module that would be installed in the cargo bay of a shuttle and connected to the cockpit by a pressurized tunnel. Since Spacelab flights would be science missions, I had assumed the post-docs would fly those missions. But it was my name on the jobs list next to “Spacelab Support,” not theirs. Over lunch in the cafeteria I got to listen to Pinky Nelson and Sally Ride and the others excitedly discuss their work of validating robot arm malfunction procedures, developing spacewalk procedures in the WETF swimming pool, and getting down and dirty with STS-1 issues. I averted my eyes, praying nobody would ask me about my days of listening to science briefings on upper-atmospheric gases and the Earth’s magnosphere. I was crushed. I now had the scent of Spacelab on me. I had to believe I was at the end of the flight assignment line, and, most maddening, I had no idea how I had gotten there or how I might recover. But, as I had done throughout my career, I resolved to set aside my disappointment and do my best at my new job. I also resolved to do a better job at getting my nose up George Abbey’s behind.

My disappointment at my Spacelab job was mitigated when, in late 1980, I was assigned to be part of the STS-1 “chase” team. WhenColumbia came streaking to a landing, NASA wanted a T-38 chase crew on her wing to warn Young and Crippen if anything looked amiss, if there was evidence of leaking fluids or fire or damaged flight controls or the landing gear didn’t extend properly. Thermal protection engineers also wanted the backseater in the chase aircraft to photographColumbia ’s mosaic of ceramic belly heat tiles before she landed. There was some concern those tiles could be damaged by fragments of the Edwards AFB dry lakebed runway being hurled backward by the tires. Prelanding photos would enable engineers to determine whether a tile sustained damage during the mission or during landing. Several chase crews were formed and I was assigned to fellow TFNG Dave Walker’s backseat. During STS-1’s launch we were to be positioned at El Paso’s airport in caseColumbia had a problem that necessitated an Abort Once Around the Earth (AOA) with a landing at the nearby White Sands Missile Range runway. If that happened we would scramble to do the rendezvous and I would take the photos.

Dave was known by his navy call sign, Red Flash, bestowed on him for his red hair. (Air force flyers of my era did not have personal call signs, as those in the navy did.) Over several months Red Flash and I, along with the other TFNG chase crews, practiced shuttle rendezvous with ground-based radar personnel. One T-38 would simulate the landing shuttle while the others would be vectored toward it by the radar controllers, as would be the case ifColumbia made an emergency White Sands landing.