Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

What was it about the women in their flight suits? It wasn’t like the clothing flattered their figures. NASA ordered them off the shelf. The nuns of my high school would have loved them. They were baggy in all the right places, effectively neutering the female form. But in them, Judy, Rhea, and Anna stole the audience. The flight suits seemed to transform them into fantasy creatures like Barbarella or Cat Woman or Bat Girl. If Madonna had walked into a room in a jewel-bedecked Prada special, dripping Tiffany diamonds, and stood next to a coverall-clad Judy, Rhea, or Anna, the Material Girl would have paled to “ordinary.” Everybody, men and women alike, wanted to be seen with the flight suit–dressed women and pose for photos with them. Occasionally they would be so bothered and exhausted by the attention, they would use us men as human shields. At one of the parties I was standing with Dale Gardner, Norm Thagard, and a few others when Judy Resnik ducked behind our backs and whispered, “Close it up. I don’t want that press guy to find me.” A moment later we saw the stalker, pen and pad in hand, searching the room for his quarry. He eventually camped out at the exit to the ladies’ room, expecting Judy had fled there.

Eating an uninterrupted meal in public in a flight suit quickly became impossible for the TFNG females. Patrons would approach them and ask for autographs, scrounging for any scrap of paper, including napkins, sugar packets, or bank deposit slips from the back of their checkbooks. At one meal the entire kitchen staff came out to meet Judy. The proud establishment owner, a large Italian woman, fawned over her as if she were royalty while ignoring me and the other men as if we were Judy’s foot servants. In jest I interrupted their love fest and said, “Hey, what am I…chopped liver?” Moments later the woman brought out a plate of exactly that, raw chopped liver, and dropped it in front of me. Judy laughed. So did I. I like a good joke even when it is on me.

Besides the open bars at our soirées, there were other attractions for the males…young, beautiful women. Lots of them. At a Florida event one of the coarser TFNGs observed, “Mullane, look at this party. It’s a potpourri of pussy.” I had been in enough officers’ clubs in my life to know that aviator wings had more babe-attracting power than Donald Trump’s twelve-inch wallet. The Navy SEAL insignia had the same effect. One SEAL told me that some of the young women who frequented their officers’ club were nicknamed Great White Sharks because they had swallowed so much SEAL meat. The male TFNGs were learning there was an even more powerful pheromone than jet-jockey wings and the SEAL insignia: the title astronaut. The fact that none of us had been any closer to space than an airline flight attendant didn’t seem to matter. To the space groupies the title was good enough. We males found ourselves surrounded by quivering cupcakes. Some were blatantly on the make, wearing spray-on clothes revealing high-beam nipples, and smiles that screamed, “Take me!” The few bachelor TFNGs must have experienced some Zen-like ecstasy. In fighter pilot talk, they operated in a “target-rich environment.” They should have just donned a full-body latex suit and gotten a “please take a number” dispenser.

Even the gold bands on the fingers of us married TFNGs were no deterrent to many of these women. They were equal opportunity groupies. Of course it was easy to see who was taking advantage of the situation. During the head count on the bus to return to a hotel, some MIAs would be noted. “He said not to wait for him. He got a ride.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet he got a ride” would be the rebuttal and a wave of snickers would follow.

It was also easy to see who was traumatized by the body swapping…the post-docs. I doubt any of them had ever met a married colleague with red-blasted “all-nighter” eyes, trailing the odor of alcohol and sex as he exited a motel room with a smiling young woman. Sensing their shock, Rick Hauck spoke to them on a bus returning from a meet-the-astronauts mingle. “Everybody needs to understand their moral standards aren’t necessarily shared by others in the group. If you see something on one of these trips that offends you, keep it to yourself. It’s none of your business. You could damage somebody’s marriage.”

How different was Rick’s speech from John Glenn’s “keep your peckers stowed” speech of twenty-five years earlier. As documented in The Right Stuff, Glenn cautioned his six peers against adulterous activity because of the scandal that would result if they were discovered. Now, a quarter century later, Rick’s comments were aimed at the spectators, not the perpetrators. Zip your mouth, not your pants. How the moral compass had swung. Adultery and divorce had lost their stigma. Neither was going to affect a TFNG’s career.

Philandering wasn’t the only thing shocking the post-docs on these trips. The art of alcohol abuse was another, and some military TFNGs were true Picassos.

“Who wants to try a flaming hooker?” was Hoot Gibson’s question at a Cape Canaveral bar one night. The recipe for the drink included a prodigious quantity of high-proof alcohol served in a brandy snifter. The drink was served on fire. I stuck around for this. Fire and intoxicated astronauts were material for David Letterman’s stupid human tricks.

As always, there had to be competition. Winners were those who could throw back the complete shot in one gulp without burning themselves, then slam down the glass with the residual alcohol still burning. Needless to say, it helped to be at the bulletproof level of intoxication before attempting this trick.

Like a circus barker, Hoot roped in a crowd of unsuspecting post-docs. None thought it was possible. Hoot smiled at the challenge, unstuck a cigar from his mouth, slicked his mustache into order, grabbed the flaming drink, and quaffed it back. He slammed down the glass. A blue flame hovered over it.

The gauntlet had been thrown down and several suckers readied themselves to duplicate the feat. The bartender served up more glasses and torched them. With fear-tightened faces the post-docs picked them up and hesitantly brought them to their lips. Soon a new smell mingled with the miasma of cigar smoke, perfume, and beer…burning facial hair. There were cries of pain as flaming alcohol scorched mustaches, lips, and chins. Through it all Hoot smiled and puffed his cigar with an expression saying, “Why do I do this?” Periodically he would down another drink to keep enticing the wounded scientists back to the flame. Each time he remained uninjured and the glass retained the blue flicker of success. Each time it emboldened another post-doc to attempt self-immolation. As the hour drew late, Hoot finally explained the trick. “You have to be fearless. Toss the entire glass. Don’t sip. There isn’t enough oxygen in your mouth to feed the flame so it’ll go out. If you do it fast enough, the flame will stay with the glass.”

The formula for success had come far too late. At breakfast the next morning a few embarrassed, miserably hungover post-docs sat at the table nursing multiple blisters on their faces. Some of those victims, no doubt, were dreading having to explain to their spouses the source of their injuries. “Honey…you’re not going to believe how this happened.” Indeed, they wouldn’t.

At every opportunity the military TFNGs also introduced the civilians to our lively, sometimes sick, sense of humor. During our tour of NASA’s California facilities, Steve Hawley made the mistake of asking Loren Shriver, Brewster Shaw, and me to dinner with a former colleague of his. In the course of the meal Steve’s friend, a male astrophysicist, became overawed with the Vietnam aspect of our past lives. Like me, Loren and Brewster were combat veterans of that conflict. The young scientist was relentless in probing for information on our experiences. “Mike, what did you do in Vietnam?”