Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

As I stared at the countdown clock, still frozen at T-31 seconds, my prayers covered a spectrum of needs. Please, God, let the TAL weather clear so we can launch…Please, God, let us have a safe flight…Please, God, don’t let me screw up…Please, God, if I’m to die, let me die fighting, joking, helping the CDR and PLT with a checklist, reaching for a switch. Please, God, let me die as Judy and the others died…as working, functioning astronauts to the very end.

Since I had first heard Jim Bagian and Sonny Carter reveal that Mike Smith’s PEAP had been turned on by Judy or El, I wondered if I would have had the presence of mind to do the same thing had I been in Challenger ’s cockpit. Or would I have been locked in a catatonic paralysis of fear? There had been nothing in our training concerning the activation of a PEAP in the event of an in-flight emergency. The fact that Judy or El had done so for Mike Smith made them heroic in my mind. They had been able to block out the terrifying sights and sounds and motions of Challenger ’s destruction and had reached for that switch. It was the type of thing a true astronaut would do—maintain their cool in the direst of circumstances. “Better dead than look bad.” My greatest fear was that I would fail if I was ever faced with a similar disaster, that I would die as a blubbering, whimpering, useless coward, an embarrassment to my fellow crewmembers and, worst of all, it would all be captured on the voice recorder to be played in a Monday morning meeting.

The launch director’s voice put a stop to my depressing thoughts and pleading prayers. “ Atlantis, the TAL weather is acceptable. We’ll be picking up the count.” There were audible sighs of relief on the intercom. Now…if only Atlantis would cooperate and keep humming along without a problem.

There was a short count by the LCC and the clock was released.

“Thirty seconds.”

Hoot reminded everybody to stay on the instruments. An unnecessary order. If a naked Wonder Woman had suddenly appeared in our midst, nobody would have been able to pull their eyes from the displays. Well…maybe I would have taken a quick peek.

“Ten seconds. Go for main engine start.” I wondered how many times I would have to do this before I could do it with a heart rate below 350 beats per minute.

The engine manifold pressures shot up. Fuel was on the way to the pumps.

Engine start. The now familiar vibrations of more than a million pounds of tethered thrust rattled me. I watched shadows move across the cockpit as Atlantis rebounded from the start impulse. When she was once again vertical, the SRB and hold-down bolt fire commands were issued. Seven million pounds of thrust rammed me into my seat. I was on my way into space for a second time.

“Passing 8,500 feet, Mach 1.5.”

We came out of the other side of max-q and the vibrations noticeably lessened.

“ Atlantis, you are go at throttle up.”

“Roger, Houston, go at throttle up.” At Hoot’s call, I knew everybody was thinking the same thought. Those had been the last words heard from Challenger.

“Ninety thousand feet, Mach 3.2.” Hoot gave the markers.

“P-C less than 50.” The SRBs were done. A flash-bang signaled their separation and we all cheered. Someone added, “Good riddance.” We wouldn’t know it until we were in space but the right SRB had already placed us in mortal danger…not because of an O-ring failure but because the very tip of its nose cone had broken off and hit Atlantis. The number-three SSME was also running sick, a fact we wouldn’t learn until after the mission. The inner-bearing race on its oxidizer turbo-pump had cracked. We were blissfully unaware of these two threats to our lives. The cockpit instruments were all in the green.

The rest of the ride continued smoothly. The sky faded to black while the flare of the sun painted the cockpit. We listened to the cadence of the abort boundary calls. With each call, we breathed a little easier.

“Here it comes, rookies…40…45…50 miles. Congratulations, Guy and Shep. You’re now astronauts.” They cheered and the rest of us added our own congratulations. I thought again of the ridiculousness of the fifty-mile altitude requirement. Guy and Shep had earned their wings as we all had…at the instant the hold-down bolts had blown.

Hoot’s calls continued. “Sixty-one miles, Mach 16…a little over 2-Gs.” We were paralleling the East Coast of America. No doubt Atlantis was generating some UFO reports. Even though the sun was up, the blue-white flare of our SSMEs would be visible all the way to Boston. We were steering for an orbit-tilted 57 degrees to the equator. Until launch that fact had been classified. But it was impossible to hide our orbit parameters after liftoff. Russian spy ships were most likely already sending our trajectory data to Moscow and their downrange radars would be picking us up as we came over their horizons.

“Twenty thousand feet per second and 3-Gs.” Under the G-load Hoot’s call was grunted.

“The engines are throttling.” Guy watched his power tapes slowly drop toward 65 percent of maximum thrust to keep Atlantis at 3-Gs until MECO. If the engines failed to throttle, Guy was prepared to shut one of them off to prevent Atlantis from overstressing herself under higher G-loads. At this point she was nearly parallel to the Earth, running to the northeast with an almost empty gas tank, rapidly adding velocity. “Twenty-two thousand feet per second…23…24…25…here it comes…MECO.” At slightly faster than 25,000 feet per second, about eight times faster than a rifle bullet, Atlantis ’s computers commanded the SSMEs off. There was the thunk of ET separation, the boom of the forward RCS jets to get us clear of the tank, the noiseless squeeze of the OMS burn, and then we were in orbit. I started breathing again.

My stomach was flip-flopping like a hooked trout. It wasn’t space sickness—I was still spared that malady. Rather, it was showtime jitters. It was time for me to deliver on the millions of dollars of training NASA and the air force had invested in me during the past year. I was to operate the robot arm to deploy our satellite payload.

Hoot and I faced aft toward the cargo bay, he at the starboard-side window with the orbiter controls at hand, I at the port side with the RMS controls. Our feet were jammed under canvas foot loops, anchoring our bodies so our hands would be free to grasp controls. Many science-fiction writers had assumed astronauts would wear magnetic or Velcro or suction-cup shoes to keep them anchored while working. The reality was much less sophisticated, just loops of canvas duct-taped to the steel floor in front of the control panels.

I opened the locks that held the RMS to the port sill of the cargo bay, prayed the astronaut’s prayer one more time, “Please, God, don’t let me screw up,” then grabbed the Rotational (RHC) and Translational Hand Controllers (THC) used to “fly” the robot arm. For once, the incredible beauty of the Earth passed unseen beneath me. I had eyes only for the payload, Atlantis, and the robot arm. I focused on each one with the intensity of a doctor doing open-heart surgery. I steered the end of the arm over the payload grapple fixture and fired the snare, which rigidly latched the payload to the arm. Jerry Ross then released the cargo latches. My eyes now moved in a constant scan between the out-the-window view and the views on two cockpit TV screens. There were cameras in each corner of the cargo bay as well as cameras at the end of the robot arm and at its elbow joint. At any time I could select the view of two of these six cameras to better determine the proximity of the satellite to Atlantis ’s structure. I also had Shep in the airlock watching from its outer-hatch porthole and Jerry watching the TV views over my shoulder, both men ready to scream, “STOP!” if contact looked imminent. The tolerances were exceedingly tight and I finessed the controls with the deliberation of a soldier probing the dirt for a booby trap. The payload, like all satellites, was as delicately constructed as fine crystal. Any mistake that caused a satellite-to- Atlantis impact could damage a critical component and turn the object into a billion-dollar piece of space junk and win me an open-ended assignment to Thule, Greenland, where I would get to hone new skills as a urinal scrubber. An impact could also foul the payload bay-door closing system, a mistake that could kill us. Needless to say, the other members of the crew were as focused as I was.