Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

While I didn’t think there was a damn thing he could do for me, I cut to the chase. “Young and Abbey are driving me fucking nuts.”

McGuire laughed at that. “I’ve heard that from a number of your fellow astronauts.”

I’m sure he noticed the shock on my face. “Are you saying I’m not the first astronaut to meet with you?”

“Not at all.”

The revelation was like a giant weight being lifted from my shoulders. Misery loves company and now I was being told I was part of a miserable crowd. Suddenly, I wanted to interview him, to find what others were saying, but he quickly steered me back to topic. “So, tell me what’s happening with Young and Abbey.”

For the next hour the demons of anger and disgust flew from my soul like bats from a cave. Emboldened by the thought that others had sat in this same seat, I didn’t hold anything back. I told of my ongoing head-butting with Young on range safety and OMS burn issues and the warnings other astronauts had given me that my career was in peril for doing my job. “We’re all afraid to speak up for fear it will jeopardize our place in line. There’s no communication. Nobody understands how crews are chosen or even who chooses them or who has veto power over them—and that’s all that matters to us, flight assignments. Fear dominates the office.”

I recounted how astronauts had recently attempted to forecast flight assignments based upon where people would be parking. “Hank Hartsfield put out an updated parking lot map. Some astronauts jumped on it as if it were the Rosetta Stone, which could decipher their place in the flight line. They assumed those with the closest parking spaces to the simulators were to be on the next missions. It’s sick. It just shows our desperation for some insight into the flight assignment process.”

I told him of something Hartsfield had related. “Hank is working as Abbey’s deputy and told me that George is resisting bringing computer links into the astronaut office. It’s Hank’s opinion that Abbey doesn’t want us to have a communication path he can’t control.”

I told him of a revealing incident in which one astronaut suggested, “There will be one hundred suspects, all astronauts, if Abbey was ever to die from foul play.” Another astronaut offered, “No, there won’t be one hundred suspects. There will be one hundred astronauts clamoring to take responsibility…‘I’m the hero…I did it.’” A hundred astronauts were on the verge of going postal.

I explained the profound us-versus-them attitude that had come to dominate our relationship with Young and Abbey. I told of astronauts who were perceived as spies for the duo. “Whenever they enter a conversation, everybody watches what they say for fear it will come back to haunt them. It’s like being in a prison yard and worrying about the warden’s stoolies overhearing an escape plan.”

I told him how we had all hoped the Challenger disaster would be the catalyst for change in management, but nine months had passed and nothing had changed and, with each passing day, it became more evident nothing ever would change. I offered my opinion that “Nobody runs NASA. Young and Abbey don’t answer to anybody. They’re bulletproof.”

Throughout my diatribe, I couldn’t get it out of my head that I was engaged in an exercise of futility. What was McGuire going to do? He wasn’t even a NASA employee: He was a consultant. I was wasting my breath.

I finally stopped and thanked him for listening. “I know there’s nothing you can do on this, but it’s been helpful to get it off my chest. Knowing others have been driven to you in their frustration is definitely helpful.”

McGuire said nothing to dissuade my belief that he was powerless to effect any management changes. He would have been lying if he had, was my certain opinion. He encouraged me to stick it out. Changes might be in the works, brighter days might be ahead, blah, blah, blah. It was what I had expected. He was as impotent as the rest of us. He was a good listener but he had no cure for what ailed me. I wanted to fly in space again and my immediate boss had twice indicated, if he had anything to do with it, that was never going to happen. I had long exhausted myself wondering if Young’s opinion mattered at all.

As I rose to leave, McGuire handed me a ten-page, single-spaced document. “You might want to read this sometime. It’ll help explain the situation you’re in.”

I wanted to say, “I don’t need to read anything to know the situation I’m in…It’s called deep shit,” but held my tongue. I glanced at the cover page, Leadership as Related to Astronaut Corps, by Terence F. McGuire, M.D., Consultant in Psychiatry. It was undated. My curiosity was piqued by the title. Why was McGuire writing about astronaut leadership? I could only assume it was a self-initiated private work. “Publish or perish” was the order of the day for university professors. I rolled the document into my hand, thanked McGuire for listening, and departed.

I wasn’t about to be found at my desk reading anything with McGuire’s name on it, so I put the document in my briefcase and took it home. That evening I popped a beer and began reading. “One of the more operationally practical ways of viewing personality subdivides the population into six basic clusters of characteristics that define distinct personality types….” Yawn. I felt like I was back in high school reading Moby-Dick (a book I’m convinced nobody has ever completed). But as I read further I realized McGuire did have an extensive knowledge of what was happening in the astronaut corps.

“In the last eight years or so, the dissatisfaction level relative to management style has risen significantly, if I am to judge from all the unsolicited comments offered by astronauts and their spouses. The level of dissonance is much higher than I experienced in my military career as a flight surgeon-psychiatrist working almost exclusively with pilots and their families. Nor have I seen its equal with the elite flying units or special projects air crew for whom I was a long-term consultant…. Though they are exceedingly careful about the setting in which they [astronauts] give voice to their dissatisfaction, there is no doubt that the current managerial style constitutes an important morale issue with the astronaut community and, for many, has a stultifying effect on creativity and open discussion.”

The writing was couched in scientific mumbo jumbo and not a single manager’s name was mentioned. The opening paragraph implied it was nothing more than a technical paper. “This is a background document on leadership as it relates to the astronaut group, more specifically, on the impact of various leadership styles upon the morale, creativity and productivity of the astronauts.” But much of the remainder of the work focused on a particular leadership style as it related to astronauts—the autocratic power merchant. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see the similarities between that style, as described by McGuire, and the way Abbey operated:

“Like a good Pavlovian psychologist, he has learned not only that rewards and punishments reinforce behaviors, but also that there are times when an inconstant system of incomplete rewards can evoke even stronger adherence to desired behaviors than a predictable full-scale reward system. This second approach also lowers his predictability and keeps people off balance.”

“…No one in the cadre is allowed to know all parts of the grand plans the power merchant may have.”

“Inconsistency, ambiguity, silence, evasion…all have their place in his studied unpredictability.”

Later in the document, McGuire makes the point, “The autocratic managerial style is the most antithetical to the needs of the astronaut corps, a group who in most settings would be chiefs rather than indians [ sic ]. Though calculated to be the least effective, if the autocrat is open, non-devious and fair, he can still be acceptable to the prototypical astronaut. But if he is the type of leader who is oriented toward the accumulation of personal power for power’s sake, rather than for the good of the company, his impact on the corps will be destructive. Men of such inclination are drawn by nature toward the autocratic style. So I have gone to special pains to identify the hard-core autocratic power merchant because, of all leadership approaches, it has the greatest potential for negative impact not only on personnel clusters such as the astronauts, but also within the total institution….”