Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

I walked to the kitchen, ignored the desiccated carcass of a roach on the countertop, shoved a few dollars in the honor cash box, and liberated a Coors from the refrigerator. I sipped on that as I continued my tour in the back bedroom. It held another astronaut artifact, the convertible sofa bed Hoot and Mario had used for their high jinks with the STS-36 wives. I knew the bed had supported more than just that one prank—at a Houston party one tipsy TFNG wife had jokingly complained, “I hated doing it at the beach house on a bare mattress.” I looked in the closet. There was still no linen. If Hoot and the wives had thought about the multidecade special use of that particular piece of furniture, I doubt they would have climbed onto it. Even dressed in an LES, I wouldn’t have sat on it.

On the other side of the den was the dining/conference room and I entered it. A large table dominated the area. An easel holding a blackboard and chalk sat at one end. The board featured a hieroglyphics of engineering data from a premission briefing on a prior shuttle launch. It was easy for me to imagine the crew in the surrounding chairs hanging on every word of the VITT presenter, praying he wouldn’t use the D word…delay. I would never miss those worries.

Finally, I walked to the door and paused for one last moment to allow the memories to congeal and be sealed in my brain. As it was with every step of this journey, I was seeing a part of my life I would never see again. In a few more weeks I would be a civilian outsider with no more ability to access this beach house than one of the tourists on a KSC bus tour. With a lump in my throat I switched off the light, closed the door, and headed down the crumbling concrete walkway to the beach.

The breeze was cool and I zipped my jacket and took a seat in the sand. As far as I could tell, I was the only living being on the planet. Even the gulls had retired for the night to their hidden nests. The only sound was the respiration of the surf.

I had no agenda. I just wanted some time with my thoughts, wherever they might take me. And they immediately took me to the land of doubts. For the millionth time I wondered if I was doing the right thing leaving NASA. Even at this late hour, I knew my decision was reversible. I could walk back into the beach house and call Brandenstein and tell him I’d changed my mind and would like to stay at JSC as a civilian mission specialist. I knew he would make it happen. After my retirement ceremony, I had run into him at the bathroom urinals and he had said, “Mike, you should stay. I’m running out of MSes.” But I knew if I returned to Houston with the news I had changed my mind, it would kill Donna. My decision stood. Now was the time to leave. My astronaut career was over.

Joy was the next emotion to overcome me. I was a three-time astronaut. My pin was gold. Sputnik had set me on a life journey toward the prize of spaceflight, and I had gained that prize. It had not been easy. I started the journey without pilot wings, when only pilots were astronauts. I did it without the gift of genius. But God had blessed me through his earthly surrogates: my mom, my dad, and Donna. Every step of the way, they were at my side, physically and spiritually, giving me the things I needed to ultimately hear my name being read into history as an astronaut.

Mom and Dad gave me the gift of exploration. They tilted my head to the sky. They supported my childhood fascination with space and rockets. In dealing with my dad’s polio, they were living examples of tenacity in the face of great adversity. On countless occasions I had needed that example to persevere in my journey. I needed it to survive the rigors of West Point, to survive airsickness in the backseat of the F-4, to survive graduate school and flight test engineer school.

Donna was the other great dream-maker in my life. She never wavered in her support…ever…even though the journey had been difficult and terrifying. She assumed the role of single parent to our three children to give me the focus I needed for the journey. She waited for me through a war. She buried friends and consoled their widows and children. She came to accept my limitations as a husband—my sometimes blind selfishness for the prize. She endured the terror of nine space shuttle countdowns, six beach house good-byes, six walks to the LCC roof, an engine start abort, and three launches. Throughout my journey she was my shadow…always there next to me.

I thought of the NASA team upon whose shoulders I had been lifted into space. While I had serious issues with some of NASA’s management, I had only the greatest respect and admiration for the legions who formed the NASA/contractor/government team…the schedulers, trainers, MCC team members, the USAF and other government personnel associated with my two DOD missions, the Ellington Field flight ops personnel, the admin staff, the flight surgeons, the suit techs, the LCC teams, and thousands of others.

I considered how my NASA experience had changed me. I walked into JSC in 1978 as a cocky military aviator and combat veteran, secure in my superiority over the civilians. But watching Pinky Nelson steer his jet pack across the abyss of space toward the malfunctioning Solar Max satellite humbled me. Hearing Steve Hawley joke in the terrifying first moments of our STS-41D abort, “I thought we’d be higher when the engines quit,” was another lesson. I learned that the post-docs and other civilians had skill and courage in spades, and I admired and respected them all.

By far, the greatest personal change my NASA experience had wrought was in my perception of women. I learned that they are real people with dreams and ambitions and only need the opportunity to prove themselves. And the TFNG women did. Watching a nine-month-pregnant Rhea Seddon fly the SAIL simulator to multiple landings was a lesson in their competence. Watching video downlink of her attempting an unplanned and dangerous robot arm operation to activate a malfunctioning satellite was a lesson. Watching Judy perform her STS-41D duties was a lesson. Knowing Judy might have been the one to turn on Mike Smith’s PEAP in the hell that was Challenger was a lesson. Through their frequent displays of professionalism, skill, and bravery, the TFNG females took Mike Mullane back to school and changed him.

It was impossible to sit on this beach and not think about Challenger. The ocean that churned at my feet was more of a grave for that crew than anything in Arlington Cemetery. Why them and not me? As January 28, 1986, receded into the past, that question loomed larger and larger in my consciousness. There had been twenty TFNGs with the identical title—mission specialist. One in seven of us had died. It could have been any of us aboard Challenger. Why wasn’t it the atoms of my body rolling in the beach house surf? It was the unanswerable question survivors everywhere asked…the soldier who sees the friend at his side take a bullet, the firefighter who watches the house collapse on his team, the passenger who missed her connection to the fatal flight. For some reason, known only to God, we had all been given a second life.

And where would I journey on the ticket of my second life? I still didn’t know. I had yet to do a job search. I just didn’t have a passion for anything in the civilian world. I was facing what every retiring astronaut faces—the reality we had reached the pinnacle of our lives. We groped above us searching for the next rung on the ladder of life and it just wasn’t there. What does a person do for an encore after riding a rocket? Whatever it was, we would have to climb down that ladder to reach it. No matter how much money we made or what fame we acquired in our new lives, we would never again be Prime Crew. We would never again feel the rumble of engine start or the onset of Gs or watch the black of space race into our faces. We were forever earthlings now. It was a sobering thought, but I knew I would adjust. I would find a challenge somewhere. If there was one thing my mom and dad had taught me, there were plenty of horizons on the Earth I had yet to look over.