Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

Hoot’s hallmark was his “snorting.” Whenever he saw a young, attractive woman, he would discreetly make a sound like a pig snort. This was a physical manifestation of one of his favorite expressions, “I’d like to snort her flanks.” He did this snorting so often that when he was assigned as the commander of STS-27, our mission was nicknamed Swine Flight by the office secretaries. I’m sure Gloria Steinem and Sally Ride would have thoroughly agreed.

So, Rhea and Hoot’s marriage was one of the world’s great mysteries, like the rise of life on earth. If the pope were ever to beatify a woman as the patron saint of wifely patience, it would have to be Rhea. Indeed, we called her Saint Seddon for putting up with Hoot.

If Hoot were number one on NOW’s most-wanted pig list, I would have been number two. As test pilots would say, I operated at “the edge of the envelope.” It was as if I had sexist Tourette’s syndrome. The joker in me would leap from my mouth. Only around Sally did I keep myself somewhat throttled. I had a sixth sense about the danger there, like a dog knows not to paw at a snake. But Sally really wasn’t an issue. After my tits joke, she avoided me like I was criminally insane.

I definitely tested Shannon Lucid’s feminist tolerance a few times. I liked Shannon. She always struck me as indifferent to office politics, whereas her five peers were clearly vying for that most coveted of titles: FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN IN SPACE. Shannon was just there to do a good job. Whatever came of that, so be it, was the attitude she projected. I admired her for that. Her philosophy would serve her well. Ultimately she would fly five times in space, including a six-month stay aboard the Russian Mir space station. (Sally Ride only flew twice and departed NASA after Challenger. But it’s her name in Billy Joel’s song, not Shannon’s. Life isn’t fair.)

Shannon’s first flight had Saudi Arabian Prince Sultan Salman Al-Saud aboard and after the mission he invited the crew and their spouses to visit Saudi Arabia. Shannon’s husband could not make the trip. Shannon wasn’t concerned. She didn’t need a man to hold her hand. Wrong. Saudi Arabia did not allow women to enter the country alone. She had to have a male escort. When Shannon heard this she told headquarters she wasn’t going. NASA HQ and the State Department were concerned about the potential press photo featuring only the men from the mission being greeted in Riyadh by King Fahd, so they asked the Saudis to look into their laws for a loophole. I was in my office when a TFNG came in with word they had found one. The Saudis would allow Shannon to enter as Dan Brandenstein’s honorary daughter (Dan was the mission commander). Or, she could enter as John Fabian’s honorary sister (John was another crewmember). Or, they might make a special exception, as they had when the queen of England had visited the country, and designate Shannon an honorary man.

When the men in my office heard this, we exploded in laughter. What greater insult could a feminist hear than to be told she must take on the label “man” to get some respect. When I heard this, I couldn’t contain the joker in me. I immediately went to Shannon’s office and congratulated her on having achieved the highest honor a woman could ever hope to achieve…to be designated an honorary man. Shannon had a lively sense of humor and laughed at my antics, but I made certain not to walk down the stairs in front of her for the next few weeks.

Shannon later came into my sights at a Bible study meeting. The astronaut office was filled with devout persons of several faiths. Some of the most religiously committed astronauts were marines, a fact that shocked and awed me. Marines were known for eating their young, not for their “praise Jesuses.” But several had organized a weekly Bible study. Shannon was a member of the group, as were Donna and I. The topic of one meeting was how people who had never “known Jesus Christ” might be treated by God in the afterlife. One group member posed these thought-provoking questions: Could a native from the jungles of Indonesia, who had never heard of Jesus Christ, enter God’s Kingdom? Or how about a mentally ill person or someone born with half a brain?

The last part of this question was a setup the joker in me could not let pass. I jumped on it. “Yeah, Shannon, what about women?”

Suddenly Shannon had the mark of the beast. I was a dead man. She bore into me with a look that said, “I’m going to stake you to an anthill!”

After the meeting it was suggested I find God somewhere else…somewhere far, far away from this Bible study group. Donna and I were excommunicated.

When I die, I’m going to two hells. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I will be in Bible hell, the one with all the fire and brimstone. There, demons will torture me with their fiery pitchforks. But during the rest of the week I’ll be damned to feminist hell, where some high-value parts of my body will be placed in a red-hot vise and Shannon Lucid, Sally Ride, and Judy Resnik will take turns cranking the vise tighter and tighter while I plead, “Mercy! Mercy! I was raised on the planet Arrested Development. I couldn’t help myself!”

Chapter 8

Welcome

On a hellish July day in 1978, properly dressed by my wife and handicapped with a brain from Planet AD, I drove through the gates of the Johnson Space Center to begin my TFNG life. If NASA ever needs to test a space probe designed to survive on the surface of Venus, a Houston parking lot in summertime would suffice. Air-conditioning isn’t a luxury in Houston. It’s a life support system. Until I arrived in Houston I would laugh at those supermarket tabloid reports of people walking down a sidewalk and spontaneously combusting. But after one day of a Houston summer, I no longer laughed. It could happen.

Besides a small rocket park featuring a Saturn V moon rocket horizontally displayed near the entrance, there was nothing to suggest JSC had anything to do with space. There were no towers or gantries or blockhouses. A passerby could easily think it was a university campus or a corporate headquarters. The architecture screamed “low bid.” Except for size, every building was identical, each featuring a façade of exposed aggregate concrete. The major buildings were positioned around a duck pond landscaped with pine and oak trees to relieve the otherwise flat, boring terrain of southeast coastal Texas.

Johnson Space Center was located in the far south of Houston’s urban sprawl. It was nearly as close to Galveston as it was to Houston’s city center. The community in which many NASA employees lived was the suburb of Clear Lake City—implying a lake nearby, and a clear one at that. Wrong. Clear Lake was neither clear nor a lake, but rather a chocolate-tinted, humidity-shrouded inlet from the nearby Gulf of Mexico that served as a time-share for a couple billion vacationing mosquitoes. Obviously Clear Lake City had been named by a real estate developer. If there was truth in advertising, Clear Lake City would have been named Fire Ant City. In its abundant grasses were legions of these insects, which should be on the UN’s list of weapons of mass destruction. Fire ants have been known to kill babies, the elderly, and newly born animals (I’m not kidding). To step in one of their mounds was to understand what it feels like to be napalmed.

If only the fire ants preyed on the Olympic-size roaches, which were equally ubiquitous, then at least one pest would have been eliminated. But the ants did not. In some kind of insect pact, the ants stayed outdoors, leaving the roaches free to turn homes into vast roach motels. Every morning brightly colored exterminator trucks poured into suburbia like tanks coming ashore at Normandy. Technicians donned moon suits and slung flamethrower-like tanks to their backs to enter the combat zones of kitchens and baths. But theirs was a lost cause. The roaches thrived on their powders and gases and liquids. Even the old standby, the shoe, proved ineffective because these roaches were masters of land and air. They flew. I recall an early incident at a TFNG party where the hostess chased a four-incher into a corner and chortled with glee as she aimed her toe at it. “Eat leather, you bastard!” But as her foot came down the monster spread its wings and launched itself straight at her face. She screamed and fled, flailing her arms as if her hair were on fire. Meanwhile, the victorious roach broke off its attack, made a clattering turn, and settled on the mantle, tucking its wings back into its body like a majestically perched eagle. For the rest of the party it remained on that mantle, its antenna waving back and forth like semaphores, daring anybody to attack. There were no takers.