Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

Pepe’s complaints faded and we looked for other ways to occupy our time and take our minds off our misery. We resorted to the old standby—roasting the flight surgeon. He was a captive audience, required to monitor our intercom but forbidden to speak to us directly unless we requested a conversation, and none of us were about to do that.

“I hear the doc’s wife is having an affair with a chiropractor.”

“And his daughter is sleeping with a malpractice lawyer.”

“And his son is studying to be a malpractice lawyer.”

There was a fake “Shhhhh…He might hear us.”

“He’s not listening. He’s going over his stock portfolio.”

“He’s on the phone with his Hong Kong broker getting the fix on gold and the yen.”

“He’s probably phoning for a tee time.”

“Hell, it’s Sunday. He’s not even there. Docs don’t work on Sunday.”

“Well, they don’t work sober on Sundays.”

Then we began to enumerate the perks the flight surgeons enjoyed. “They get hired by NASA as GS Infinities,” a reference to the higher government service pay grade they were given.

“They get reserved parking places.”

“They get preferential tee times.”

“They just have to ask and women take off their clothes for them.”

The banter finally ended and the intercom fell silent. Even Pepe got quiet. We all retreated into our own little chaotic worlds of pain and fear and prayer. Around T-45 minutes the range safety officer threw in the first wrench of what had been a smooth countdown. “RSO is no-go for blast.” The blast to which he referred was the space shuttle being blown up. The RSO’s computers had determined atmospheric conditions would amplify the power of the shuttle’s destruction and jeopardize the safety of those around the LCC. His no-go call elicited groans and profanities in the cockpit. We’d reached the point of, I’ll kill anybody who gets in the way of our launch. The RSO must have sensed the universal outrage at his no-go call and quickly reran the calculations to come up with acceptable numbers. “The RSO is go for blast.” We all cheered…and laughed at the irony. We were cheering because a detonating shuttle would now kill only us and that was good because it meant the countdown could continue.

At T-5 minutes Casper started the APUs and the flight control system checkout followed. Everything was nominal and I was beginning to actually believe I had carried my luck from the card table to the cockpit.

“ Atlantis …close helmet visors.” Before complying with LCC’s call I heard J.O. and John snort Afrin for a last time. I would be flying with a CDR and PLT on drugs.

I rechecked my harness. Other than look at a wall of lockers, it was all I could do. God, how I wished I was upstairs and had the distraction of the instruments. I had nothing whatsoever to do but dwell on my fear. I was the gas chamber victim waiting for the tablets to fall.

And then…“RSO is no-go for backup computer.”

The intercom was immediately alive with our colorful assessments of the RSO: bastard, asshole, sonofabitch! We were now at the point of I’ll kill anybody AND THEIR WIFE AND CHILDREN AND MOTHER who gets in the way of our launch.

The launch director ordered the countdown held at T-31 seconds in the hopes the RSO could clear his problem and the count could resume. But we couldn’t hold for long with the APUs burning their fuel. A minute ticked away. Come on…come on…fix your freakin’ computer and give us a go for launch! But as we waited, the liquid oxygen inlets on all of the SSMEs got too cold. The mission was scrubbed. I just melted into a formless blob. The suit technicians would have to look for me in the bottom of the LES.

Upon our return to the crew quarters we were offered the opportunity to go to the beach house and visit the wives. I called Donna and we both agreed we didn’t want another beach good-bye. I could sense her complete exhaustion…mental and physical. I called my mom, the iron woman who had birthed six children and raised them with an invalid husband, and she was similarly incapacitated. The only silver lining to the scrub was that it reinforced my retirement decision. If stress was the killer the docs were saying it was, I was killing Donna, the kids, my mom, and myself with these launch attempts.

When the crew returned from the beach house, they found me in the conference room watching a movie. Pepe tilted his chair onto its back on the floor and lay in it to watch TV. “What the hell are you doing?” I was certain he had lost his mind.

“I’ve got to acclimate myself to lying in the orbiter. I was ready to die out there.”

“Pepe, you’re crazy. That’s like practicing getting kicked in the balls. You’ll never acclimate yourself.”

But Pepe was not dissuaded. He remained in the reclined position throughout Lawrence of Arabia. I don’t know how he did it. Only a gun to my head would have made me practice for tomorrow. I barely had the strength to lift a beer to my lips.

The next morning we relived it: Olan’s Cajun face at my door, faking a smile for the photographers, having my nuts squeezed in the LES pressure test, confronting my fears on the drive to the pad, getting a kiss and a glowing light stick from Jeannie, laughing at Pepe’s complaints, worrying about death, praying for life, and finally hearing, “ Atlantis, the RTLS weather is no-go. We’re going to have to pull you out.” I didn’t even have the strength to swear. This time the launch director decided to slip the mission by forty-eight hours to give everybody time to rest. Our next try would be on February 28.

Back in the crew quarters the techs stripped me out of the LES. After grabbing two beers from the kitchen, I walked to the bathroom, shed my long johns (reeking of sweat and faintly of urine), unfastened my diaper, and stood at the mirror. The craters under my eyes could have hidden a moon buggy. I wondered what a decent night of chemical-free REM sleep would feel like. It had been so long I couldn’t imagine the experience. My neck was ringed red from the chafing of the LES neck dam. There were other suit tattoos: ruptured capillaries on the insides of my arms and bruises on my biceps from trying to move while the LES was pressurized. There were still multiple shaved and sandpaper-roughened hickeys on my chest from the EKG attachments applied during a prequarantine medical test. My thighs and calves had similar shaved and roughened patches of skin marking the attachment locations of sensors for a muscle-response test. The end of my penis was cherry red with what I could only hope was temporary diaper rash. Whatever it was, I wasn’t about to bring it to the attention of the flight surgeons. If I had a urinary tract infection, it would come along for the ride. I had invested far too much in this mission to be pulled from it now. I entered the shower, stood under the cascading hot water, and drank my beer.

By the time we completed our debriefings the sun had risen and J.O. suggested we meet our wives at the beach house. I called Donna and this time we agreed it would be fun to get together.

The five of us entered the beach house living area to find it strewn with clothing: shirts, shoes, socks, panty hose, bras. There was even a bra swinging from the end of a ceiling fan. It was obvious we had entered a joke in progress. Sure enough, when we walked into the bedroom we found the family escorts, Hoot Gibson and Mario Runco, lying shirtless on the bed. Crowded next to them were all the wives, clothed but for their underthings, pretending to be shocked at our appearance. Everyone laughed, something we all needed as much as a good night’s sleep.

Hoot teased us with the obvious point of the joke. “You guys are taking so long to get this mission going, your wives are developing some real need issues.”