Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

The primary facility for practicing spacewalks was the WETF swimming pool. Few experiences in life are more claustrophobic than being lowered underwater while dressed in an EMU. One astronaut confided in me that he repeatedly exhibited excessively high blood pressure when the flight surgeons conducted their pre-WETF vital sign checks. In fact, the docs became so suspicious, they required him to do multiple blood pressure checks at the flight clinic to ensure it wasn’t a more chronic problem. I never had a problem with these checks. I could always put myself in a happy place while the cuff was on. After it was off, my veins got an elastic workout.

Training in the WETF pool was the most physically demanding of all astronaut training. As it would be in space, the suit was pressurized to the consistency of iron. The simple task of opening and closing one’s hand rapidly fatigued those muscles. And while the suit was neutrally buoyant, the body inside wasn’t. When I was in an upright position, I was standing inside it. But when the spacewalk practice sessions required me to work upside down, which was frequently the case, I would “fall” an inch or two inside the suit until my entire body weight was borne by the top of my shoulders pressing into the EMU neck ring. That was torture. Moving against the stiffness of the suit also resulted in abrasions on the arms and wear marks on other parts of the body. But, in spite of the pain and occasional nibbles of claustrophobia, I loved the WETF sessions. Like the robot arm training, the work was more personally challenging and yielded a greater sense of accomplishment than learning how to throw a switch to release a satellite. I prayed that someday I would get to do a spacewalk…a planned spacewalk. I never wanted to hear the word contingency on any of my missions.

Our final EVA training session afforded me a unique insight into the burden of feminism on the TFNG females. The lesson involved a soup-to-nuts spacewalk dress-out conducted in an exact replica of the shuttle cockpit/airlock. The shuttle mid-deck, though the largest volume in the two-deck cockpit, was small, measuring about 7 feet fore-to-aft, 10 feet wide, and 7 feet floor-to-ceiling. Astronauts liked to impress the public with the gee-whiz fact that the Texas prison system allocated more space for one inmate than the shuttle provided for crews of six people. The airlock was even smaller, a cylinder 7 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter. Most of this space was filled with the two wall-mounted EMUs.

Under the critical eye of our instructor, Judy entered the airlock, disassembled our suits, and passed the helmets and pants into the mid-deck. The torso portion of the suit that contained the electronics, oxygen bottles, water supply, and controls—and weighing nearly 200 pounds—would remain on the airlock wall. While she was busy with this task, Steve and I retrieved our condom UCDs, bio-data attachments, and Liquid Cooling Garments (LCG) from the EVA lockers. The LCGs were a netlike long underwear. Weaved into the material were small tubes that carried chilled water next to the skin to prevent spacewalkers from overheating.

The first task of donning a spacesuit is to get naked and put on the UCD. I had assumed Judy would step out of the cockpit during this intimacy, but I had failed to appreciate how feminism had complicated our situation. No male IVA crewmember would have left the mock-up while other males rolled on their condoms, so Judy knew she could not either. To do so would be a violation of the feminist cause, to send a message that women were different from men. As Judy made no attempt to leave, I shot Steve a nervous You go first glance, only to see his eyes answer, Screw you. You go first. This was going to be interesting, I thought. At least if I was going to get naked around a nonwife woman, I had a ripped body and the ass of a Greek god to impress her. But, even for me, a guy with few inhibitions, the thought of rolling on a condom while JR was standing in front of me discussing the checklist was, well, inhibiting. Certainly she didn’t intend to make sure we did that task correctly?

I need not have worried. As Steve and I started with our shirt buttons, Judy sat on the edge of the hatchway, put her head down, and faked reading the checklist. She gave us as much privacy as possible while still holding on to her feminist sensibilities.

As fast as I could, I sheathed myself in latex, Velcroed the nylon bladder around my waist, then slipped into the LCG. Hawley did the same. We were once again presentable.

Before zipping our LCGs fully closed, we attached biosensors to our chests. It was only on spacewalks that MCC monitored astronauts’ heart rates. The data was a measure of how much the spacewalker was exerting him- or herself. Astronauts also suspected flight surgeons wanted to be able to remotely pronounce a spacewalker dead in the event of a suit malfunction.

Judy referred to a torso photo in the checklist to ensure we had positioned the sensors correctly. The photo was of a man’s chest, his nipples being the landmarks used in positioning the sensors. Those of us from Planet AD had jokingly complained of the sexism represented in the photo. There were female spacewalkers, too, we argued. The checklist should also have a photo of a woman’s naked chest showing the sensors properly applied. One AD male cut out a Playboy model’s photo, drew in the biosensors on her naked breasts, and pasted it into an EVA checklist. He said he was going to clandestinely substitute it for the actual checklist in his next training session with a female spacewalker, but I never heard about the prank being executed, so I suspect he chickened out.

We continued with the rest of the dress-out. We pulled on our pants, waddled into the airlock, and squatted under the wall-mounted torso/arm pack. While Judy held the suit arms vertical, I drove my head and arms upward and into the torso part of the suit. The squeeze through the neck ring ripped at my ears and made my eyes tear. Judy locked the pant waist to the torso, then dropped my helmet into place and locked that down. She next pushed on my gloves and locked those to the wrist rings. It had taken the better part of two hours, but I was now fully dressed. The training session would go no further. If I released myself from the wall mounts, as I would have to do on a real space-walk, I would collapse under the 300-pound weight.

Judy finished dressing Hawley but before she could get out of the airlock, I encircled her and pulled her into my front in a writhing hug. She laughed. The embrace was as sensual as a fair maiden hugging an iron-suited knight.

Hawley and I had graduated. We were ready for a spacewalk. And as much as each of us wanted to do one, we both prayed it wouldn’t happen. If we were on a spacewalk, it would be to save our lives.

Friday, April, 13, 1984, proved to be a very lucky day for the “Zoo Crew.” STS-41C landed at Edwards AFB. We were next. We were Prime Crew. With that title came top priority for simulators and T-38s. For me, it also brought Prime Crew night terrors. Until this moment every time my soul tried to deal with the fear and joy of what was fast approaching, I disallowed it. STS-6’s IUS failure, STS-9’s hydraulic fire, and STS-41B’s twin satellite booster failures had made me a skeptic. There was too much in front of us that could jeopardize our mission. Even now, with the horizon clear of any other shuttle missions, I kept my emotions on a very short leash. Until the hold-down bolts blew there were no guarantees, I told myself. An engine could blow up in a ground test and stop the program. My health could become an issue. The payload contractors could find something seriously wrong with their machines. There were thousands of unknowns in this business. Don’t even think about flying in space, I ordered myself. And during my waking hours I obeyed that order. I had plenty of distractions. However, in sleep, the reality of being Prime Crew would creep past my defenses. I would bolt awake with my heart wildly drumming and my brain overwhelmingly aware that I would be next off the planet. Every fear I had ever harbored about death aboard a space shuttle, every doubt I had ever held about my competence to do the mission, every joy I had ever celebrated at the thought of flying into space would flash through my consciousness in a wild, chaotic fury and vaporize any hope of further sleep. I would get up and go for a walk or run.