The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

A pool of reporters and photographers watched behind the ropes as we walked from the elevators to the transfer van. I don’t think there was room for a single person more in the crowd. The atmosphere in the van was casual and jocular during the six-or seven-mile ride to the launch pad, though as I looked around at my crewmates I could see that we were getting ready to be serious. Then we reached the gate to the pad. The guard stepped into the van, and Curt said, “Launch passes, everybody.” The crew reached into the pockets on the left shoulders of their suits and pulled out small blue cards. I felt in my pocket, thinking somebody must have put mine there, but there was no card. Pedro was doing the same thing. Amid our fumbling. I was about to ask when the cards had been issued when I noticed that the rest of the crew – Shuttle veterans – were looking at us, rookies, trying to hide their grins. We had bitten, hook, line, and sinker. They all had a laugh, Pedro and I had our initiation rite, and the van proceeded toward the pad.

At the pad, we walked back out along the ramp and looked up at the shuttle. That’s another launch day tradition, and it’s quite a sight.

The space shuttle is the most complex machine ever made. It has two million parts, and a million of them move. Its wiring laid end to end would stretch 230 miles, and it has six hundred circuit breakers. The orbiter itself has three eighty-thousand-horsepower engines that each develop 393,800 pounds of thrust. They are fed by the huge rust-orange tank to which the orbiter and the boosters cling during launch, and the two solid-fuel rocket boosters each develop 3.3 million pounds of thrust. The weight at liftoff is about 4.5 million pounds, and total thrust at liftoff is over 7 million pounds.

It was up there ready to go, and the liquid oxygen oxidizing the liquid hydrogen fuel venting out the top in wisps of vapor adds to the sense of drama. It’s a huge machine containing an almost unfathomable amount of power. That’s the point when it hits you. It’s for real – you’re going up.

The elevator took us up. It was a beautiful day, and I paused to glance around at the Cape and the space complex that had changed so much since the time of Project Mercury. As I looked south to the Canaveral lighthouse, the Atlas and Titan launch gantries that are the remaining occupants of Heavy Row were reminders of the early days. Pad 14, where Friendship 7 and the rest of the Project Mercury Atlas flights had launched, was still there, but its gantry had been dismantled long ago. The blockhouse is a museum. It was hard to imagine that virtually the entire history of space travel had occurred between my first flight and my second. Somebody had pointed out that more time had passed between Friendship 7 and this Discovery mission than had passed between Lindbergh’s solo transatlantic flight and Friendship 7. It didn’t seem that long to me, but that is the way lives pass when you look back on them: in the blink of an eye.

I don’t think anyone was scared. Apprehensive? Yes: I felt the same constructive apprehension I’d felt as a forty-year-old, keyed up and ready to go. Everybody knows something could go wrong, but you just put that behind you and go do what you’ve been trained to do.

Chiaki had said that I ought to remember that in Japan, seven is a lucky number, and my age, double seven, was doubly lucky. That was a good way to look at it, too.

I couldn’t have been happier that morning. This was about to be the culmination of a very long effort, both a chance to go up again after I thought that chance had been lost forever, and the beginning of a precious opportunity. I was a data point of one, but it was a start, and I saw the flight as the first step in a process that I hoped would lead to a new area of research that could eventually benefit tens of millions of people.

Curt was the first into the spacecraft, and he climbed up to the flight deck, followed by Steve Lindsey and Pedro. I was next to last. No phone call from the gantry this time. Steve Robinson and Chiaki were already in their seats there on the mid-deck. They were being strapped in as I got there and Scott came in after me and went on to the flight deck.

I hoisted myself into the seat by way of a strap hanging from the lockers overhead. Seated for launch between Chiaki and Steve, I was on my back with the wall of lockers less than three feet from my face.

Launch was two and a half hours away as the strapping-in proceeded. The best thing to do is just lie there and let the technicians do the work. The seats aren’t the body-conforming contour couches of the early flights; they’re flat bench-type seats that are padded but not all that comfortable. The only way to adjust them is by pumping a bladder that provides lumbar support to your lower back. The early seats were designed to help us endure eight times the force of gravity, but a shuttle launch produces only three Gs.