Riding Rockets

That night, February 3, 1983, Donna and I celebrated over dinner and later in bed. As she slept beside me, I stared at the ceiling and thanked God for passage through one more gate on my journey to space. I finally had a mission. Space was looking closer than ever. But there were six other shuttle flights in front of me. A lot could yet go wrong. I prayed for the crews of those missions. I prayed for their safety and success. I prayed more fiercely than they were praying for themselves. I wanted them out of the way.

The official NASA press release followed within a couple days and we bought the beer at an Outpost happy hour. George had also named the STS-41C crew so there was a total of seven TFNGs who had jumped to the sunlit side of the unassigned/assigned fence. I was now the one being congratulated and I ached for the others who showed me their fake smiles.

During the party I heard one frustrated astronaut redefine TFNG—thanks for Nothing, George. I would never understand George Abbey. Some interpreted his dictatorial style as megalomania, but I never saw him seek a spotlight. In fact, a recent newspaper photo had appeared on the astronaut B-board showing Abbey shaking hands with a shuttle crew. It was captioned, “Unidentified NASA official welcomes astronauts.” We all laughed at that. It was as if a photo of the pope had appeared in a newspaper over the caption, “Unidentified papal official welcomes pilgrims.” But it was an indication of how invisible Abbey was. Though his management of the astronaut corps provided many opportunities for him to be in the press and on TV, he was never featured in either. Abbey was no megalomaniac. I don’t think anybody had a clue what he was. Hoot Gibson would later offer me his best guess…that Abbey loved us, but, like a stern parent, he didn’t care how we felt. He knew what was best for us and would give it to us at the time and place of his choosing. The problem was, we weren’t children. We were freakin’ astronauts who would have gladly taken whatever he thought was best for us, if he would have just told us what that was. Abbey’s secretive leadership style was a cancer on astronaut morale.

Our 41D crew was at the end of the training line for the JSC simulators, but there were still opportunities for payload training and we traveled to Seattle to learn the intricacies of the 25,000-pound Boeing-built Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) rocket booster that would be our primary cargo. After we deployed it fromDiscovery ’s cargo bay, it would lift a large communication satellite to geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the equator. At the contractors’ factories, we also did some widows and orphans appearances, passing out “Maiden Voyage ofDiscovery ” safety posters to the workers. Judy had me laughing when she whispered, “There are nomaidens on this flight.”

Maiden or not, Judy was the center of attention wherever we traveled. At one contractor event a young engineer went, quite literally, mad for her. Throughout a daylong factory visit, he was constantly at her side trying to anticipate her needs. When she had none, he created some, bringing her water, soft drinks, and snacks. When we sat for briefings he would stand in a corner and stare at her like a Labrador waiting for the Frisbee to fly. On our factory tour he would rush ahead to hold a door until she walked past, then sprint ahead to the next. If there had been a puddle anywhere on our route, I was certain he would have flung himself face first into it, offering his back as a bridge. I expected the senior contractor official to tell his drooling puppy to get lost, but he turned a blind eye. I could tell Judy was seriously upset by the attention, but she was too much of a lady to say what needed to be said—“Fuck off!” We all breathed a sigh of relief when we were finally in our cars and on the way to the sanctuary of our T-38s. Those were parked at the gate-guarded military apron of Los Angeles International Airport. Then, to our astonishment, as we sat in our cockpits with the engines running, Judy’s want-to-be paramour appeared out of nowhere, rushed under her jet, and pulled the chocks!

Back in Houston, over an Outpost beer, we laughed off the incident as a one-time case of extreme infatuation. It wasn’t. It proved to be Jody Foster–John Hinckley creepy. Judy began to receive letters, poems (“your raven hair and eyes”), and gifts. JSC security was notified and they promised to call the wacko’s employer and have them discipline the man. I thought that was the end of it until one night I received a panicked call from Judy. “Tarzan, can you come over right away? I just got home and there was a package at my door from that engineer. It doesn’t have any postage on it.” The implication was obvious: It had been hand delivered. He was in town. The guy was a stalker and Judy his prey.