Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

The crew was also a pleasure to work with. Mary Cleave was great fun. Now forty-two years old, she had a name tag on her flight suit reading, Mary Cleave—PMS Princess. She was another woman who wore the feminist mantle very lightly. When NASA HQ received a complaint from the California Democratic Party Women’s Caucus about photos of Mary preparing a shuttle meal during her first flight (while the men were photographed doing technical work), Mary had laughed it off, saying, “I do shuttle windows and toilets, too.” When the STS-30 mission slipped six days and the crew grew bored with TV, she requested a list of movies from a Cocoa Beach video-rental business and asked an astronaut to pick up her selections. As gags for the men on the crew, her choices included Hollywood Chain Saw Hookers and All Star Topless Arm Wrestling.

On the morning of STS-30’s second launch attempt, May 4, 1989, Dave and I met with astronauts Bryan O’Connor and Greg Harbaugh. Bryan and Greg were at KSC supporting the mission and would also be on the LCC roof during the launch and available to help with the families if Atlantis was lost. Over breakfast the four of us reviewed NASA’s contingency procedures: who would stand next to which family on the LCC roof, where the families would be temporarily gathered in the event of disaster, who would drive them to the KSC landing strip for their plane rides back to Houston. The wives had already been told to have their bags packed and ready to go before they were picked up for the trip to the LCC. This arrangement ensured they would not have to return to their condos and into a press feeding frenzy if disaster struck. A NASA official could retrieve the packed bags and bring them to the families at the KSC landing strip. But the procedure also meant the wives would have to unpack if the launch was scrubbed, and many wives had gone through the pack/unpack cycle multiple times for that reason. It was a pain but everybody understood the need.

Our breakfast table talk was devoid of emotion. Though we were planning our response to the death of friends and the widowing of their wives, our conversation was clinical and detached. We could have been talking about the logistics of a fishing trip. A review of the family escort procedures was just one more thing among thousands that had to be done as part of a shuttle launch. As I sipped my coffee, I thought of Donna’s pre–STS-41D observation. It is, indeed, a strange business that plans so thoroughly for helping a woman into widowhood.

As Atlantis came out of the T-9 minute hold, Dave and I escorted the families from an LCC office to the roof. In the hallway we passed drawings done by the children of astronauts from prior missions. To keep the youngest kids of the families entertained during the interminable wait of a countdown, the LCC team provided poster board on which the children were encouraged to draw. After each mission that poster board was framed and hung in the hallway. The drawings served as another “widows and orphans” message for the team, a reminder of what was at stake.

On the walk to the roof the wives were talkative and it would have been easy to believe they were relaxed, but a glance into their eyes revealed otherwise. They were too large and darted too quickly. I had no doubt that the STS-41D and STS-27 escorts had seen the same look in Donna’s eyes.

Steel folding chairs were set out on the roof but everybody was too nervous to sit. Portable speakers had also been deployed so the countdown could be monitored. Behind us, the 500-foot-high Vertical Assembly Building rose like a white cliff. In front of us was the route used by the 8-million-pound tracked crawlers to carry the stacked shuttles to their launch sites. The gravel road stretched eastward, its tan color bisecting the otherwise uniform green of the Florida lowlands. Three miles away the soaring lightning rod of Pad 39B, designed to protect space shuttles from lightning strikes, provided a sight line to Atlantis.

A broken layer of rainless clouds threatened a delay. While they posed no problem for an ascending shuttle, if an RTLS abort became necessary they would hide the runway and make the CDR’s landing task more difficult. The countdown would be held at T-5 minutes until the weather improved. As I had done in the cockpit so many times, I now prayed fiercely for the count to resume. There was only one way to get the terror behind us…launch.

Dave, Greg, Bryan, and I circulated among the families translating the technobabble on the speakers. As word came that the weather was a go and the count was resuming, we faded to the rear of the group. This was a sacred family moment. The wives and the others needed to be alone with their thoughts and prayers, not feeling obligated to talk to us.

T-4 minutes. The two mothers, Kirby Thagard and Mary Jo Grabe, squeezed their children to their sides.

T-3 minutes. Several of the family members bowed their heads and closed their eyes, their interlaced fingers drawn tightly to their mouths. I was certain they were in prayer…as was I.

T-2 minutes. I could imagine the scene in the cockpit—the crew closing their helmet visors, cinching harnesses, exchanging good luck handshakes.

T-1 minute. The families were mute. One of the wives was shivering.

T-30 seconds. I looked at the kids and wondered how they would react to a disaster. God, keep the crew safe! It wasn’t so much my prayer, as my demand.

The NASA voice took up the famous cadence. “T-minus 9…8…7…go for main engine start…6…main engine start…5…”

A bright flash signaled SSME start. It was a sight that instantly brought excited shouts. Somebody clapped. The tension of the countdown had been broken and everybody felt a momentary, if premature, relief.

At SRB ignition Atlantis rose on promethean pillars of fire. The scene had a dreamlike quality to it. A 4½-million-pound machine was being borne upward on twin flames 1,000 feet long, and yet, there was no sound. That was being delayed fifteen seconds by the distance. The first noise to roll over us was the animal-like shriek of the SSMEs, which generated a new round of exclamations from the families. Six seconds later the SRB-generated noise came, a sound that made every listener wonder if the air itself was being tortured. It began as a rolling thunder, then quickly increased in decibel to a violent, ragged crackle. Birds jerked in midflight confusion. The noise echoed off the VAB wall and came back to shudder the LCC roof. From the parking lot below came the sound of car alarms, activated by the vibrations.

Atlantis entered the clouds and those gave momentary form to the shock waves of the SRB exhaust. They raced outward like the sonic waves of explosions. At booster burnout and separation the families cheered loudly. Challenger had forever stigmatized the SRBs and everybody was glad to see them, and the threat they represented, tumbling away.

With the twin rockets gone, the blue-white trinity of the SSMEs was all that marked the streaking machine. That fire slowly faded and within three minutes there was no sight or sound of Atlantis. Only the SRB smoke remained as a sign of her launch. That effluent had seeded the air so thoroughly with particulate that a cloud grew from it and showered the launchpad with an acid rain.

Now everybody was talking. The wives wiped tears and hugged one another. Through the excited chatter I kept an ear tuned to the speakers. I wouldn’t be totally relieved until I heard the MECO call. At eight and a half minutes it came and I closed my eyes in prayer and thanked God there were no widows on that roof.

Back in the LCC, I called Donna to tell her of the successful launch and was shocked to find her sobbing in near hysteria. “Mike, I can’t do it! I just can’t do it again.” She had watched the launch on TV and it had served as a terrifying reminder of what awaited her. She would have to make that T-9 minute walk again, probably multiple times, given my luck. For the first time in my life I was hearing my wife put herself first. But I wasn’t going to step away from STS-36. That would never happen. I calmed her. “It’ll be okay, Donna. Just this one more time and then it’ll be over.” I was confident she would rally. There were nine months until STS-36 would fly, which I hoped would give her enough time to shore up her emotional reserves.