Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

At the crew quarters I showered and returned to the main conference room. Hank was my only company. He was reading the newspaper, mumbling about the idiocy of liberals and their destruction of the country. “Goddammit, I wish Ted Kennedy would find another bridge…with deeper and wider water under it.” I had long before learned not to respond. It would only elicit a filibuster on the topic. When Hank got wound up on politics, you could never escape.

Our satellite TV, for some fortuitous reason, received the Playboy Channel. I marveled at this fact as much as I marveled that alligators didn’t chase astronauts. How did the Playboy Channel end up on the TV in the astronaut crew quarters? I suspect it was just one of those government snafus. There was a KSC bean counter somewhere who had contracted with a company for satellite TV and this was what we got. It would probably have taken multiple forms in triplicate and ten thousand taxpayer dollars to turn it off. I wondered if the signal was coming from a satellite a shuttle had previously placed in orbit. That would be a unique claim to fame: “I was the guy who put the Playboy Channel in space.”

So, at T-12 hours and counting I was listening to Hank grumble, “Gloria Steinem should be in Ted Kennedy’s car when he finds that bridge,” while watching a topless model speaking about her turn-ons, “a six-pack belly and world peace,” and turnoffs, “pollution and rude people.”

I finally headed to my room for sleep. I knew that would be a struggle. I was bipolar with the frequency of a tuning fork, oscillating between fear and joy. The flight surgeon had given us sleeping pills but I had no intention of taking one. There was still a last physical exam ahead and I didn’t want an adverse reaction to the pills prompting a medical question. There were plenty of MSes who would gleefully step into my shoes on a moment’s notice. I wasn’t about to give any of those vultures that opportunity.

I lay in bed and studied the room’s only wall decoration, a framed photo of an exploding volcano. The photo was a time exposure so the glowing ejected lava was captured as arcing streaks against a black sky. Bloodred coils of molten rock snaked downward on the skirt of the mountain. I wondered what bureaucrat had been doing the interior decorating for the astronaut crew quarters and thought, If it was my last night before a mission into space, what wall art would I like to reflect upon to calm my uneasy soul? I know…an exploding volcano with lots of fire and sparks! It was like showing films of airplane crashes on an airliner as the in-flight movie. If you’re going to hang a picture of something exploding, why not hang a photo of a NASA rocket exploding on the launchpad? That would be rich.

The only sound was a muffled, unintelligible voice coming through the steel wall next to my ear. Mike Coats was talking on the phone to Diane and his children. I had made my final call to Donna and the kids a couple hours earlier and had performed as poorly in that good-bye as I had in person on the beach. Even though I now had time to make another call, I did not. One more good-bye wasn’t going to help me or Donna. Mike was a better man than I, God bless him.

At least I had done a good job of financially protecting my family in the event of my death. I had three insurance policies on my life. Months earlier I had written each insurance company explaining my pending shuttle launch and asking if there was any fine print on the policies that would negate the payout if I died on the shuttle. Each company had replied in writing that its policy would be unaffected by death by rocket. I had stapled each of those letters to the respective policies and put them with my will. Donna wouldn’t have to deal with any surprises there.

What were the chances there was a Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer? I wondered. There was not, thank God. It would have scared the shit out of me if NASA thought we needed one. “We’re not sure this rocket will work, so here’s our ultimate emergency backup, a Bible.”

I didn’t need a Bible to talk to God. I prayed for my family. I prayed for myself. I prayed I wouldn’t blow up and then I prayed harder that I wouldn’t screw up. Even my prayers reflected the astronaut credo, “Better dead than look bad.”

At some point in the night, exhaustion overpowered fear and excitement, and I fell into a shallow sleep. The smell of cooking bacon woke me. The dieticians had arrived and were making breakfast. My stomach turned in disgust. The thought of food was nauseating.

I could hear the wake-up knocks on the doors of the other crewmembers and wondered how many of them were actually asleep. I could believe Hank had slept well. Anybody who could read a newspaper and deliver political commentary on the eve of a shuttle launch must have their shit together. But I imagined the rest of the crew had spent much of the night as I had, counting holes in the ceiling tile.

The knock came on my door and I opened it to Olan Bertrand’s smiling face. Olan was one of the Vehicle Integration Test Team (VITT) members and would be a participant in our final prelaunch briefing. He was also a Louisiana Cajun with an accent as thick as a bowl of jambalaya. He mumbled something I interpreted as “The weather and the bird are looking good,” but could have been “It’s raining like hell and Discovery blew over.” Only his smile told me it was the former and not the latter.

I showered and shaved, then trimmed my fingernails. Some of the early spacewalkers had painfully torn their nails on the inside of the suit gloves and had suggested contingency spacewalkers cut them short, too. I did so and filed them to snag-free crescents.

For breakfast I dressed in a mission golf shirt. I had no appetite, but it was a mandatory photo opportunity. A NASA cameraman entered to film us sitting around the table. I faked a carefree smile and waved. Most of us ate nothing or very lightly. I had a piece of toast. As a teenager I had always heard the “voice of NASA” say the astronauts were enjoying a breakfast of steak and eggs before launch. One bite of that fare and I would have vomited. Nobody drank coffee. That would have been bladder suicide.

After the cameraman was gone, I gave Judy my emery board. “You can do your nails during ascent.” She laughed. It had been a running Zoo Crew joke that, as a Jewish American Princess (JAP), she would be giving herself a manicure during the countdown. With the nail file I included my latest JAP joke: “What does a JAP say when she inadvertently knocks over a priceless Ming dynasty vase, it shatters on the floor, and museum officials rush to the scene?”

Judy sighed in resignation. “What does she say, Tarzan?”

“She shouts, ‘ I’m okay! I’m okay!’ ”

After the meal, we collected in the main briefing room for a teleconference to review the launch countdown status and the weather forecast. Everything looked good. The weather for Dakar, Senegal, Africa, was covered. It was our primary transatlantic abort site, just twenty-five harrowing minutes away from Florida via a wounded shuttle. I really didn’t want to make my first visit to Africa in a space shuttle.

Next, we visited flight surgeons Jim Logan and Don Stewart in the gym for a cursory last exam. They checked our ears, throat, temperature, and blood pressure. I put myself in a happy place to ensure the last was within limits. Both doctors were good friends of the Zoo Crew, but if they had raised any medical issues at this moment, others would have later found their arrow-riddled bodies spread-eagled to the archery hay bale. We wouldn’t have missed.

We then cycled through the bathroom for a next-to-last gravity-assisted waste collection. We’d have one more chance at the launchpad toilet. My self-imposed fast from liquids was working. I had no urges, but nevertheless I took advantage of the moment to squeeze out a few drops of urine.