Riding Rockets

CHAPTER 10 Temples of History

In our early TFNG months we were introduced to the Outpost Tavern, a temple of space history. The Outpost was the astronaut after-work hangout located a few blocks from JSC’s front gate. It was aptly named. To say the Outpost was “rustic” was like saying King Tut has a few wrinkles.

The building was a shack of weather-beaten boards, its parking lot as cratered as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Some of these water-filled holes could have swallowed a small sedan. After stepping around a minefield of fire-ant mounds, patrons entered the Outpost through two saloon-style swinging doors cut out in the shape of curvaceous bikini-clad girls. The bar ran around two walls. A griddle and deep-fryer served up burgers and fries certain to deposit a couple millimeters of plaque in every artery of the body. The low ceiling trapped a cloud of atomized grease and cigarette smoke like pollution in a temperature inversion. A dartboard, a shuffleboard table game, and a pool table offered entertainment. The interior décor consisted of space posters and astronaut photographs stapled to the walls and ceiling. The Outpost was the only bar in America where the pinups were smiling flight-suited women astronauts.

Why the Outpost was picked as the astronaut hangout has been lost to antiquity, but it is almost a tradition for flying units to have such a retreat. For Chuck Yeager and the rocket plane pilots of the ’50s and ’60s there was the Happy Bottom Riding Club near Edwards AFB; for the early astronauts, it was the Mouse Trap Lounge in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Most likely the Outpost became the unofficial watering hole for shuttle-era astronauts because of the sanctuary it offered. I never saw anybody approached for an autograph or interview in the Outpost. Perhaps outsiders were intimidated by the obstacle course of potholes or they assumed the building was condemned.

Every Friday happy hour, many TFNGs would be at the Outpost. The building would ultimately be the scene of our crew-selection parties, our landing parties, and our promotion parties. It would be the place where we traded gossip and bitched about our management. We would meet with our payload contractors and refine checklist procedures on the backs of napkins. And the Outpost would ultimately serve as a refuge, where we would grieve for our lost friends. The Outpost has been a witness to so much of the astronaut experience it should be moved in its entirety to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. It is as much a part of space history as the rocket planes hanging from the museum ceiling.

Our TFNG apprenticeship also introduced us to the loftiest temple of space history, the Mission Control Center (MCC). As we stepped into the deserted, silent room, I imagined we experienced the same sense of awe a rookie baseball player experiences when he jogs onto the field for his first Major League game. We were in the “Show,” stepping where legends had stepped before. Here was where cigars were smoked in celebration of the Apollo 11 landing. Here was where the words, “Houston, we have a problem” were first received when an explosion shattered the Apollo 13 service module.

Like pennant flags hanging in a stadium, large renditions of patches of the missions controlled from the facility decorated the walls. The front of the room was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling rear projection screen. This was where the sinusoidal orbit traces, spacecraft location, and other engineering data would be projected during an actual mission. From the floor in front of this screen to the back of the room were consecutive rows of computer consoles. Each row was terraced to be slightly higher than the one in front. On top of these consoles were signs with acronyms that labeled the function of the particular station. FDO referred to the Flight Dynamics Officer’s station, where a handful of men and women would monitor the trajectory of a launching and reentering spacecraft. INCO was the label for the Instrumentation and Communication Officer. PROP referred to the Propulsion systems controller. There were other labels: EVA, PAYLOADS, SURGEON, PAO, DPS, and more.

Our veteran astronaut escort had us take seats at the consoles and instructed us on how to wear the internal earpiece and microphone that were part of the MCC intercom system. He then began to explain the organization and function of each of the MCC stations. Every shuttle system, from the electrical system to the hydraulic system, from the environmental control system to the robot arm, had a controller who was an expert on that system and monitored its performance via the shuttle’s data stream. These MCC controllers were supported by their respective “back rooms,” which were filled with more specialists who had telephone access to the system contractors. In an emergency each controller had a wealth of brainpower to tap into.

Each MCC controller reported to the flight director, who occupied a console in the back of the room. “Flight” had overall responsibility for the conduct of the mission. They were the ones who faced the possibility of time-critical decisions carrying life-or-death consequences for the astronauts. It had been Flight Director Gene Kranz who had issued the famous edict “Failure is not an option,” and had led his team in saving the lives of the Apollo 13 crew. In my dozen years as an astronaut I would never meet a flight director I didn’t think was cut from the same mold as Kranz. There are no superlatives too great to describe the MCC teams.

The escort shifted our focus to the CAPCOM position. This was the only MCC position that astronauts filled. CAPCOM was the “Capsule Communicator,” the term capsule a carryover from the days in which astronauts flew in capsules. Early in the space program it was correctly determined that only one person should be in voice contact with flying astronauts. To have each of the MCC controllers talking to a crew would be chaos. The logical person to be the astronaut “communicator” was another astronaut. It had been this way since Alan Shepard’s first flight when Deke Slayton had served as his CAPCOM. CAPCOMs, our leader explained, would work hand in glove with the flight director to make sure mission crews got the exact information they needed, nothing more and nothing less. As part of our training, we would all shadow a CAPCOM before filling that position ourselves.

The TV cameras mounted on the MCC walls were next brought to our attention. During missions these were always aimed at the CAPCOM and flight director positions. An indiscrete nose pick or crotch scratch might end up as material for one of the late-night comedy shows.

After answering some questions, our escort asked us to remain on the MCC intercom. He then called for a technician to “roll the audio.” What we heard were the voices of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. The tape was from January 27, 1967. The three astronauts were in their Apollo capsule going through a dry countdown with Launch Control. For a minute the audio was mundane, just the acronym-laden techno-talk that is part of any spacecraft checkout. Then one of the voices urgently cried, “There’s a fire! Get us out of here!” NASA had designed the Apollo capsules to fly with pure oxygen atmospheres. Somewhere in Grissom’s capsule a spark had set it ablaze. In seconds the cockpit was transformed into a furnace. The Apollo I crew was being burned to death. “We’re burning up! Get us out of here!” Screams were cut off as the fire destroyed the communication system.

We sat in silence, listening to the echo of the tape playing in our consciousness. “We’re burning up!” The motive of our teacher was clear. He was attempting to open our eyes to the reality of our new profession. It could kill us. It had killed in the past and held every potential to do so again. It was a lesson the civilian TFNGs in particular needed to be given. The military astronauts were well acquainted with the dangers of high-performance flight, but the post-docs and others were not. The instruments of their past careers, telescopes and microscopes, didn’t kill people. I wondered if the other TFNGs would have an MCC tour guide who would play the tape for them. I hoped so. But, even if he did, it was too late. It should have been part of the astronaut interview process. Every interviewee should have had the opportunity to hear that tape so they could have made a fully informed decision as to whether or not they wanted to assume the risks of the business. No TFNG was going to quit now. How would they explain it… I’m afraid? We would all just have to pray that it wouldn’t someday be our voices crying in terror as a space shuttle killed us.