Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

I grabbed another beer and then another. I didn’t want to hear any more of this. I was burned out. But it was impossible to escape. As the party was breaking up, Ron Grabe (class of 1980) took me aside. “Mike, you better watch your six o’clock.” It was fighter pilot lingo; I had an enemy on my tail. “This week I was waiting to see Young and I heard him on the phone. I don’t know who he was speaking with, but I assumed it was Abbey. He was saying, ‘Mike Mullane is one of the enemy. He’s a nice kid and all that, but he’s on the side of the Range Safety people.’”

A “nice kid”? I was forty years old. And what crime had I committed to earn the label “enemy”? I was guilty of doing my assigned job.

I thanked Grabe for the warning and added, “I guess I’ll talk to P.J.” P. J. Weitz was a Skylab-era astronaut working as Abbey’s deputy. He was well regarded, and I considered him the only manager I could trust within all of NASA.

Grabe added, “Don’t bother with P.J. I’ve already spoken to him about Young. I told him John has become unbearable. Nobody can make an objective presentation on any subject. He has made up his mind on everything. I used your Monday morning presentation on the RSS as an example. P.J. was sympathetic but said he couldn’t do anything.”

I reached a new nadir of depression. It was never clear how Young influenced flight assignments. Most of us believed he had nothing to do with them, which, if true, was absolutely amazing given the title on his office door: Chief of Astronauts. But none of us knew for sure. Maybe Abbey did listen to his input. I couldn’t just dismiss Grabe’s warning. I did need to watch my six.

The following week I made an appointment to see Abbey. I had been at NASA for eight years and had only met with George on a handful of occasions and always in the company of others. I had never had any real one-on-one time with him. I approached his desk with the same trepidation I imagine a departed soul experiences while being escorted by the seraphim to the judgment seat of God.

He motioned for me to take a seat and I began to explain my problems with Young. Abbey wouldn’t look me in the eye. As I spoke he continued to shuffle through papers on his desk as if my problem were the merest of trivia. I was only a couple sentences into my rehearsed speech when he saw where it was going and mumbled, “Don’t worry about that,” to his ink blotter. “John is just frustrated he can’t do more.” I kept talking. I needed resolution. I was still working the RSS and OMS burn issues and being savaged by Young in the process. I couldn’t go on like this. Abbey interrupted me with a dismissive wave. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be getting too busy with DOD affairs in the next six months.” I was silenced by that comment. What was he suggesting? Was he hinting I was in line for a Department of Defense shuttle mission? There were several DOD payloads ready to go on the shuttle—satellites so optimized for the shuttle cargo bay they could not be easily switched back to the air force’s unmanned boosters. Or was Abbey implying I would soon switch jobs from Range Safety to review the safety of DOD payloads? Or was this a polite warning that my career at NASA was being terminated and I would be going back to the USAF? There was no divining what George Abbey meant.

I came away from George’s office only slightly unburdened. His manner suggested my career was intact. But in the same breath he also told me to basically ignore John Young—his chief deputy. That command was more proof NASA’s leadership structure was a joke. How could I do that? Young was my immediate boss. He signed my air force performance reports. If any generals ever called to discuss my promotion potential, they would be talking to Young. Besides, there were some serious range safety issues that needed to be addressed. Was I supposed to “not worry about those”? There was also the possibility that perhaps John hadn’t been talking to Abbey when Grabe overheard him. Maybe he had been bad-mouthing me to one of his champions, a champion far above Abbey’s level who held veto power over Abbey’s crew selections and was ready to redline me from any list based on Young’s input. I hated the position I was in. I couldn’t just ignore Young. My prayer was that Abbey would discuss the situation with Young and he would become rational on the OMS burn issue. But all hope in that regard was dashed a couple months later when I was warned a second time that there was somebody at my six o’clock. This time the messenger was Hank Hartsfield. “Mike, John has a real hard-on against you about the way the pre-MECO OMS burn issue has played out. I heard him mumbling that maybe you should be replaced. I hope your career hasn’t been damaged.”

I was blind with fury. At every meeting on the topic I had dutifully represented Young’s position that he disapproved of burning OMS fuel during powered flight. But Young never personally attended these meetings to defend his position. He never used his bully pulpit as a six-time astronaut, moon-walking hero, and chief of astronauts to formally make his case. When I suggested to him in writing that he attend a Flight Techniques Panel meeting at which Jay Greene was going to “press forward with implementation [of pre-MECO OMS burns],” John shot back his written answer: “NO! We are NOT going to a forum or voting on this issue!”

I thanked Hank for the warning, suppressing the urge to ask, “Who do I appeal to for justice? Who runs this asylum called Johnson Space Center?”

But Hank’s warning was the final straw. I broke. Mike Mullane, the man who prided himself on being able to hold it all inside, be it an enema in the colon or an agony of emotions in the soul, the man who had lived a life in abject fear of doctors, the man who thought psychiatry was for the feminine and weak…that iron man, Mike Mullane, called Dr. McGuire’s office and made an appointment. I was losing my mind.

On the day of the meeting I picked up the phone several times to cancel. I was certain that if I walked into McGuire’s office I would be recording a new astronaut first. I would become the first astronaut in the history of NASA to voluntarily see a shrink. I would be admitting failure. I would be violating the “Better dead than look bad” commandment. I could imagine how the office grapevine would carry the news if my dark secret was ever discovered. “John Young put Mullane in tears. He ran to the shrink like one of those weepy women on Oprah. ” My finger hovered over the phone keypad as this image of personal failure filled my mind. I would cancel the appointment. But I would always come back to the question, “What choice did I have?” I was going freakin’ nuts. I would hang up the phone only to immediately snatch it back and begin to question myself all over again.

Somehow my resolve triumphed. I made it to zero hour. I told my secretary I was going to the gym and then took a circuitous route to McGuire’s temporary office. He merely consulted for NASA. His primary job was in San Antonio with the University of Texas. I found the unmarked room and walked by it several times, checking the hallways for any prying eyes. A Baptist preacher on a clandestine rendezvous with a prostitute could not have acted more suspiciously. The hallway was deserted. Finally I grabbed the door handle, took one more hurried glance in all directions, rushed into the room, and immediately closed the door. That entry alone was probably enough for McGuire to make a diagnosis: paranoid.

As he had ten years earlier, Dr. Terry McGuire met me with a broad smile and enthusiastic handshake. “Come on in, Mike. Have a seat. What can I do for you?” He was largely unchanged from how I remembered him—tall, trim, yielding to baldness, clean shaven. He had the perfect voice for his job—deep, melodious, and soothing.