Riding Rockets

From my perspective the racial integration of the astronaut office with Bluford, Gregory, McNair (all African American), and El Onizuka (Asian American) had occurred seamlessly. The entire astronaut corps seemed color-blind. I certainly was. My family upbringing, so abysmally lacking when it had come to the topic of females, had been radically progressive on the subject of race. “When you’re in a foxhole and the damn Japs are shooting at you, you don’t care about the color of the American at your side,” was my dad’s version of an “I Have a Dream” speech. And my religion, so medieval in its attitude about women, was enlightened in its preaching on race. Jesus Christ had said, “Love your fellow man.” He hadn’t added any footnotes on color. Hell’s fire awaited the racist, just as it did for boys imagining the cheerleaders naked. I never gave a second thought to the skin color of the minority astronauts and I got the impression the other palefaces in the astronaut office didn’t either.

While there was no racism in the astronaut office, the topic of race, like that of gender, religion, sexual orientation, the pope, motherhood, apple pie, and just about anything else, was fair game for the office humorists. Nothing was sacred to them. While substituting for Guy Bluford in the SMS I had a ringside seat to some of this humor.

During the course of the sim, we received a call from the Sim Sup, “I want you guys to come up with a medical problem and call the surgeon about it.” We were used to such requests. There was a “surgeon” console in the MCC manned by a NASA physician and the Sim Sup wanted to ensure he had a crew health problem to work. In the cockpit we put our heads together and the suggestions flowed.

“Let’s tell him Dan has a sharp pain in his stomach. It might be appendicitis.”

“Let’s tell him Dick has flulike symptoms.”

“Let’s tell him Dale has a bad toothache.”

We were mulling over these and a few other ideas when Dale Gardner snapped his attention to me, the Guy Bluford substitute, and exclaimed, “No! I’ve got it. Let’s tell them that Guy has turned WHITE!” NASA HQ had been in orgasmic ecstasy over the impending flight of America’s first black astronaut. Knowing this, the suggestion was outrageously funny.

Somebody mimicked the call with anApollo 13 header, “Houston, we’ve got a problem. Guy has turned white!” It would be a call certain to turn a few people in HQwhite.

Dick Truly looked at us and said, “If you guys make that call, the closest you’ll get to space is the ninth floor of Building 1 while Kraft fires you.”

We all understood. Even color-blind astronauts couldn’t publicly joke about race. It was career suicide in America. We had to settle for Dan’s stomachache.

During another simulation in which I was a substitute crewmember, I thought my career had ended and the circumstances had nothing to do with race. During a break another crewmember and I climbed down to the mid-deck and made ourselves some lunch. Since every aspect of a real shuttle mission was being simulated, our food was space food—sandwich spreads and dehydrated food. Bread wasn’t on the menu. It crumbled tooeasily in weightlessness. Instead, tortillas were used. We made peanut butter sandwiches from these and then cut into a package of dried fruit. My lunch partner held up a dehydrated pear. “Mullane, check it out, it looks like a [part of the female anatomy].” Only this TFNG didn’t say “part of the female anatomy.” He used a popular planet AD euphemism. I laughed. “You’re right. It does look like a——” I repeated the word. The butterflied pears had dried into an X-rated art form.

A moment later Dale Gardner, who had been absent on a toilet break, reentered the mid-deck. The vein on his head looked ready to burst. “Jesus Christ, what did you guys say on the intercom! Some woman working on the Sim Sup console heard you guys say something about a dehydrated pear and was totally grossed out. She stormed off to Kraft’s office to lodge a complaint.”

“Oh God,” I said. “She must have heard us through an open mic.”

This wasn’t going to look good…some young woman leaning over Dr. Kraft’s desk and screaming, “Some of your wonder-boy astronauts just saw a part of the female anatomy in a dried pear!” God, why couldn’t we have seen the Virgin Mary in a tortilla instead?

Dale again asked, “What did you say to piss her off?”

My compatriot hung his head like a six-year-old in front of an irate parent and mumbled, “I think I said——”

“You said THAT? Jesus…you’re toast. Kraft is going to crucify you.” Then he climbed to the flight deck shaking his head at our idiocy.