Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

While there was no racism in the astronaut office, the topic of race, like that of gender, religion, sexual orientation, the pope, motherhood, apple pie, and just about anything else, was fair game for the office humorists. Nothing was sacred to them. While substituting for Guy Bluford in the SMS I had a ringside seat to some of this humor.

During the course of the sim, we received a call from the Sim Sup, “I want you guys to come up with a medical problem and call the surgeon about it.” We were used to such requests. There was a “surgeon” console in the MCC manned by a NASA physician and the Sim Sup wanted to ensure he had a crew health problem to work. In the cockpit we put our heads together and the suggestions flowed.

“Let’s tell him Dan has a sharp pain in his stomach. It might be appendicitis.”

“Let’s tell him Dick has flulike symptoms.”

“Let’s tell him Dale has a bad toothache.”

We were mulling over these and a few other ideas when Dale Gardner snapped his attention to me, the Guy Bluford substitute, and exclaimed, “No! I’ve got it. Let’s tell them that Guy has turned WHITE!” NASA HQ had been in orgasmic ecstasy over the impending flight of America’s first black astronaut. Knowing this, the suggestion was outrageously funny.

Somebody mimicked the call with an Apollo 13 header, “Houston, we’ve got a problem. Guy has turned white!” It would be a call certain to turn a few people in HQ white.

Dick Truly looked at us and said, “If you guys make that call, the closest you’ll get to space is the ninth floor of Building 1 while Kraft fires you.”

We all understood. Even color-blind astronauts couldn’t publicly joke about race. It was career suicide in America. We had to settle for Dan’s stomachache.

During another simulation in which I was a substitute crewmember, I thought my career had ended and the circumstances had nothing to do with race. During a break another crewmember and I climbed down to the mid-deck and made ourselves some lunch. Since every aspect of a real shuttle mission was being simulated, our food was space food—sandwich spreads and dehydrated food. Bread wasn’t on the menu. It crumbled tooeasily in weightlessness. Instead, tortillas were used. We made peanut butter sandwiches from these and then cut into a package of dried fruit. My lunch partner held up a dehydrated pear. “Mullane, check it out, it looks like a [part of the female anatomy].” Only this TFNG didn’t say “part of the female anatomy.” He used a popular planet AD euphemism. I laughed. “You’re right. It does look like a——” I repeated the word. The butterflied pears had dried into an X-rated art form.

A moment later Dale Gardner, who had been absent on a toilet break, reentered the mid-deck. The vein on his head looked ready to burst. “Jesus Christ, what did you guys say on the intercom! Some woman working on the Sim Sup console heard you guys say something about a dehydrated pear and was totally grossed out. She stormed off to Kraft’s office to lodge a complaint.”

“Oh God,” I said. “She must have heard us through an open mic.”

This wasn’t going to look good…some young woman leaning over Dr. Kraft’s desk and screaming, “Some of your wonder-boy astronauts just saw a part of the female anatomy in a dried pear!” God, why couldn’t we have seen the Virgin Mary in a tortilla instead?

Dale again asked, “What did you say to piss her off?”

My compatriot hung his head like a six-year-old in front of an irate parent and mumbled, “I think I said——”

“You said THAT? Jesus…you’re toast. Kraft is going to crucify you.” Then he climbed to the flight deck shaking his head at our idiocy.

We threw our food in the garbage, including those offending pears. Our appetites were gone. Our careers would soon be in that garbage can, too, I thought. We climbed back to the flight deck and went through the motions of being an astronaut. We were hooded victims tied to a post waiting for the bullet to be fired from Kraft’s office: “Get your asses over here…and clean out your desks on the way!” But hours passed and no call came. In fact the sim proceeded to completion and still there was no call.

As we sulked back to our offices expecting to find messages on our desks, Dale came to our sides and said, “Hey, guys, that was pretty funny, wasn’t it?”

We looked at him. “What was funny?”

“That joke I pulled on you about the woman hearing your pear comment.”

“That was a joke?”

“Yeah, I was standing outside the mid-deck and heard you guys talking about it. I thought I’d rattle your cage.”

I was ready to rattle his cage with both hands on his throat. “You bastard!”

A few days later a note did appear on my desk requesting my presence in Building 1. It was from George Abbey.

*Initially the STS numbering system was straightforward, STS-1, -2, -3, etc. After STS-9, NASA instituted a new number/letter system to provide more information in the mission designator. But there was another reason for the change—superstition. Astronauts and engineers aren’t immune from it any more than the rest of the population. NASA did not want to have the bad luck number 13 hanging on a shuttle mission, particularly given the near disaster of Apollo 13. So Gerald Griffin, the JSC director, came up with a new STS mission designation system to shortstop an STS-13 label. The first number would designate the calendar year in which the mission was planned to launch. The second number would be a 1 or 2—1 designating a KSC launch and 2 indicating a launch from Vandenberg AFB in California. The letter designation would show the intended launch sequence in the calendar year, with A, B, C, D, etc., translating to the first, second, third, fourth, etc., calendar year launch. So the STS-41G label shows the mission was planned to be the seventh (G) mission of 1984 (4) and would be launched from KSC (1). It was hoped that this code would sufficiently blind the god of bad luck to the fact that STS-41G was actually the thirteenth shuttle mission. Labels were fixed at the birth of a mission on the planning manifest, years before flight. They were not later changed as the flight schedule changed due to shuttle and payload problems, so they are not indicative of the sequence of actual launches. For example, because of schedule changes, STS-51A, the first planned KSC flight of 1985 when it first appeared on the manifest, actually flew as the last mission in 1984. STS-51L, the fated Challenger flight, was supposed to be the last flight of 1985, but flew as the second mission of 1986. After Challenger, NASA reverted to the straight numerical designation, beginning with STS-26.

Chapter 17

Prime Crew

I knew there were binoculars focused on us as we made the trek to Building 1. I was in the company of four others who had also been called for the same appointment: Hank Hartsfield, a veteran of STS-4, and fellow TFNGs Mike Coats, Steve Hawley, and Judy Resnik. There was no mistaking the meaning of this gaggle. It screamed flight assignment . It was all I could do not to break into a sprint for the headquarters building.

It might have been the very first time in my five years as a TFNG that I had been to Abbey’s office. As befitting a deity, it was a large corner office on the eighth floor that looked out on our home, Building 4. None of us believed that sight line was an accident. George wanted his shadow to fall over his subjects at all times.

The secretary waved us through and we entered to find him standing behind his expansive desk. He wore a coat and tie, the coat unbuttoned and his belly prominent. Though it was midmorning his jowls were already darkened with a faint beard. Several documents and an overflowing in or out box (I couldn’t tell which) littered the mahogany. I had a momentary wonder, What was all the paper about? It was a standing TFNG joke that Abbey never left a paper trail. Few could recall ever seeing his signature on any document.