Riding Rockets

CHAPTER 13 Training

The training we had all been anxiously anticipating—how to operate and fly the space shuttle—began in earnest in 1979. It was a training program that would last our entire careers. The shuttle cockpit has more than a thousand hardware and software switches, controls, instruments, and circuit breakers. Before our first ride, we would have to know the function of all of them.

The heart of NASA’s training was simulation. Anything associated with spaceflight that could be simulated, was. There were part-task trainers in which individual systems were simulated: the hydraulic system, the electrical system, the environmental control system, the main engine system, the attitude control system, the orbital maneuvering system, and all the other systems that made up the space shuttle. We were scheduled in these trainers again and again until we had a working knowledge of each switch and computer display for that particular system. Then we would go through the emergency procedures for each system.

There were no tests in our training. We had a motivation far more compelling than any written test…ourselves. The military flyer’s creed said it best, “Better dead than look bad.” Nobody wanted to look bad in front of their peers. So we attacked the training as if something more important than our lives depended upon it, since something more important did…our egos.

We graduated from the part-task simulators to the Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS). NASA had two of these machines, both featuring exact replicas of the space shuttle cockpit. The “fixed-base” SMS was, as the name implied, fixed; it didn’t move. It was used for orbit simulations. The “motion-base” SMS was used for ascent and entry training. Perched atop six hydraulic legs that could tilt, pitch, and shake the cockpit to simulate launch and landing maneuvers, it looked like a giant mutant insect from a sci-fi movie. In both SMSes, computer-generated graphics appeared in the windows to provide representations of the cargo bay, robot arm, payloads, rendezvous targets, and runways. The simulators could be electronically linked to Mission Control for “integrated” simulations in which the astronaut crews would fly missions with the same MCC team that would watch over them during the actual mission.

The SMS training was orchestrated by a Simulator Supervisor (Sim Sup, pronounced “sim soup”) and his/her team. Sitting at computer consoles in back rooms, these engineers could input malfunctions and watch the responses of the crew and MCC. Sim Sups were virtuosos from hell. Astronauts joked that simulation supervisors intentionally remained celibate for weeks prior to a simulation, wore shoes a size too small, and starched their underwear just to be frustrated and mean.

Within seconds after a simulated liftoff, a Sim Sup would introduce malfunctions that would have the crew scrambling to respond to a failed engine, an overheated hydraulic pump, a leaking reaction control system, and a shorted electrical system. Astronauts scheduled for “Ascent Skills” training jokingly referred to it as “Ascent Kills.” It was an exaggeration. The simulation objective wasn’t to kill the crew. Any mission that ended in a crash was considered poorly written or poorly executed. Instead, the Sim Sups and their teams designed missions that stressed the astronauts and MCC to their absolute limits. And their genius and dedication showed in the missions. No astronaut crew has ever been lost in flight because they were not adequately trained. No mission has ever failed to achieve its objectives because of a deficiency in training.

In my first SMS session I had a flashback to my arrival day at West Point. Then, an upperclassman had told me to relax and turn around to take in the magnificence of the campus. “Mr. Mullane, have a good look. Over there is Trophy Point and the beautiful Hudson River, and up there is the famous Protestant Chapel. Take it all in…because this will be the last time for eleven months that you’ll see it. You have now died and gone to hell. GET YOUR NECK IN AND YOUR EYES STRAIGHT FORWARD, MISTER!”

My first SMS experience was similar. The Sim Sup let us enjoy a perfectly nominal ascent into orbit. We felt the simulated rumble of engine ignition (delivered through the hydraulic legs), saw the computer-generated image of the gantry speed past the window, felt the Gs rise (simulated by increasing the tilt of the cockpit), experienced the bang-flash of SRB separation, and enjoyed the ride all the way to Main Engine Cutoff (MECO). Then, as he was resetting his computers, Sim Sup said, “I hope you enjoyed it. It’s the last one you’ll ever see.” He was almost right. In my twelve-year NASA career, I saw only three more malfunction-free SMS ascents. Each of those came just before departing to Kennedy Space Center for each of my three missions. In spite of rumors to the contrary, Sim Sups had hearts. They wanted us to leave for our missions on a high note, to see what we’d hopefully see during our real ascent a few days later…a completely nominal ride into space.

There were other simulators besides the SMSes. Astronauts trained for spacewalks in an enormous indoor swimming pool, the Weightless Environment Training Facility (WETF). The pool contained replicas of the shuttle airlock, cargo bay, and payloads. We dressed in 300-pound spacesuits and were craned into the water, where scuba divers ballasted us with lead until we floated at a fixed depth. This “neutral” buoyancy provided a fair replication of what occurred on real spacewalks, where a push on a tool would result in an equal and opposite reaction. The WETF facilitated the design of tools, handholds, and foot restraints for spacewalkers, all necessary to complete weightless work.

There was also a simulator for MSes to acquire skills with the Canadian-built Remote Manipulator System (RMS). The Manipulator Development Facility (MDF) contained a full-scale mock-up of the shuttle cargo bay (60 feet long and 15 feet in diameter) and a fully functional 50-foot-long robot arm. Huge helium-filled balloons served as weightless payloads. MSes would stand in a replica of the shuttle’s aft cockpit, look through the aft windows, and operate the robot arm controls. We would lift the balloons from the cargo bay and/or stow them in the bay in simulations of orbit activities.

Robot arm operations were challenging. A camera at the end of the arm transmitted images to a screen in the cockpit. MSes would look at these images and simultaneously use two hand controls to bring the arm’s business end to a successful grapple with the target. Using these hand controls while tracking a moving target on a display screen (how we would grapple a free-flying satellite) was like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. It required lots of practice. To assist us in developing tracking skills, the engineers provided a moving target that hung from the ceiling of the building.

In one of my MDF sessions, I employed my newly acquired tracking skills to tease Judy Resnik. I knew from the schedule that she was next up for the training and watched for her to enter the building. When she did, I maneuvered the end of the robot arm so as to track her with the camera at its tip. She glanced up and saw the huge boom dipping and swaying and twisting to her every turn and knew exactly what I was doing. She stopped, and I flew the arm outward as if it were reaching for her, then slowly tilted the wrist joint so the camera scanned her body from head to toe. When she entered the cockpit, she smiled and said, “You’re a pig, Mullane.” I smiled back and pretended not to understand, but of course she was right.

While I eagerly looked forward to SMS, WETF, and MDF simulations, there was one simulator I could have done without…. NASA’s zero-G plane, nicknamed “the Vomit Comet.” This was a modified Boeing 707 aircraft. Large sections of seats had been removed and the interior surfaces padded. After taking off from Ellington Field, the pilot would steer for the Gulf of Mexico, where he would fly the craft in a roller-coaster trajectory. While climbing toward the top of each “hill,” he would push forward on the controls so the trajectory of the plane exactly matched the pull of gravity. The result was a thirty-second free fall in which everything in the plane was weightless. Unrestrained astronauts in the back would float in their padded chamber. At the end of the dive, the pilot would perform a 2-G pullout that would smash everybody to the padded floor. He would then advance the throttles, climb back to 33,000 feet, and start all over. On a typical mission the process would be repeated about fifty times.

It took only one flight in the jet to understand why it was named the Vomit Comet. The plane was a barf factory. Just climbing aboard, the nose would detect a faint odor of bile. Like cigarette smoke that cannot be removed from the drapes of a two-pack-a-day addict, the smell of stomach fluid had permeated the very aluminum structure of the machine. Even when its aged bones are someday sold for scrap and melted down, the recycled aluminum will still bear the aroma of our stomach acid.

I quickly learned that the videos NASA released to the public of Vomit Comet–borne astronauts laughing and tumbling were recorded on the first couple dives because by the tenth weightless parabola someone would have already retreated into his or her seat and be vomiting copiously. Like the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion, the odor of fresh barf would drift through the cabin and send a few more over the edge. Those new smells would combine to affect yet more people. Even those who tried to block the smell by breathing through their mouths could not shield their senses, for the guttural sounds of the damned would fill the volume like a pack of barking German shepherds. By the twentieth parabola there were few smiles remaining. By the thirtieth parabola, some would be wishing the flight controls would freeze and the plane would smash into the sea at 600 knots and put them out of their misery. But through it all there would be the lucky minority, the immune who would smile and whoop and tumble and ask for more. I hated them.

I never barfed on any of my Vomit Comet rides, but I had wanted to on all of them. From the fifth dive onward my gorge was continually at the back of my throat and only by a super-human effort was I able to keep it there. I sucked on Life Savers by the gross, hoping the constant swallowing reflex they generated would keep my stomach where it belonged. I knew I would have felt better had I periodically retreated to the rear of the plane and vomited, but that would have been a sign of weakness and a violation of rule number one: Better dead than look bad. Besides, there were female TFNGs unaffected by the maneuvers. The image of me strapped into the back with my head in a barf bag while Anna Fisher and Judy Resnik did loop-de-loops was too much for my testicles to take. So I faked it. When Judy suggested we do simultaneous somersaults I smiled through gritted teeth and nodded agreement, all the while cursing my balls for their bravado.

Of all of NASA’s simulators, none was more memorable than the toilet trainer. It occupied a room next to the fixed-base SMS so astronauts could practice on it when they were in those training sessions. And practice was certainly needed.

The shuttle toilet was basically a vacuum cleaner. (Do not try this at home.) The urinal was a suction hose with attachable funnels to accommodate male and female users. Because of its strong suction (one marine proposed marriage), the toilet checklist contained a warning for males not to allow the most cherished part of their anatomy to get too deep into the funnel. If an inattentive astronaut’s appendage got sucked into the hose, he would find himself qualified for a second career as a circus freak working under a banner heralding, “See the world’s longest and skinniest penis!”

Urine was collected in a holding tank and dumped into space every few days. I would later find these urine dumps spectacular to watch. The fluid would freeze into thousands of ice crystals and shoot into space like tracer bullets.

The toilet solid waste collection feature also used airflow as a flush medium. A plastic toilet seat sat atop a “transport tube” approximately four inches in diameter and a couple inches in length. Users attached themselves to the seat with padded thigh clamps then pulled a lever to open the transport tube cover and turn on the steering air jets. The waste would be directed into a large bulbous container directly beneath the user. Astronaut solid waste is not dumped outside but is retained in the toilet, no doubt to the great relief of the rest of humanity. If solid waste is ever dumped into space, it will give new meaning to the phenomenon meteor shower.

One feature of the toilet made it particularly difficult to use…the narrow opening of the solid waste transport tube. This was an engineering necessity to achieve an effective downward airflow, but it made transport tube “aim” critical to waste collection success. A user not perfectly aligned in the center of the tube could find their feces stuck to the sides of the tube and smeared over their rear end. To help the astronauts find their a-holes, NASA installed a camera at the bottom of the toilet simulator transport tube. A light inside the trainer provided illumination to a part of the body that normally didn’t get a lot of sunshine. A monitor was placed directly in front of the trainer with a helpful crosshair marker to designate the exact center of the transport tube. In our training we would clamp ourselves to this toilet and wiggle around until we were looking at a perfect bull’s-eye. When that was achieved we would memorize the position of our thighs and buttocks in relation to the clamps and other seat landmarks. By duplicating the same position on a space mission we could be assured of a perfect “shack” (fighter pilot lingo for a perfect bomb drop). Needless to say, this training took a lot of the glamour out of being an astronaut.

The toilet design was essentially complete by the time TFNGs were undergoing waste management training, but an Edwards AFB Vomit Comet pilot told me of some of the early development efforts. These included female nurse volunteers who flew hundreds of weightless parabolas. They drank gallons of iced tea and during the thirty-second weightless falls would void into various toilet designs. Volunteers for the solid waste collection tests included a USAF lieutenant. The Vomit Comet would be parked near a taxiway with all the ground support equipment attached and ready to go, just like a Cold War nuclear bomber. And just like those bomber crews, the Vomit Comet pilots made sure they were ready for the scramble call…not from the president of the United States but rather from the bowel-distressed lieutenant screaming, “I’ve got to go!” At that, everybody would run to the plane, fire up the engines, and roar skyward. The weightless parabolas would begin and the test subject would have multiple thirty-second intervals to try a bowel movement. Where do we get such men?

Urine collection for spacewalking females proved to be a particularly challenging engineering problem. Catheterization was quickly eliminated—too dangerous and uncomfortable. Diapers were messy. The most bizarre design was the brainchild of a gynecologist. He proposed that a mold of the inside of a woman’s vagina could be used as an alignment tool for urine collection. Before dressing in the spacesuit, the woman would insert her personal mold into her body, which would bring the exterior-mounted urine collector into a seal around the urethra. Urine could then be cleanly collected as it left the body. A test subject was needed to try the design and a call went out for volunteers. Kandy answered.

Kandy was a free-spirited Ellington Field flight operations secretary with a wonderful sense of humor. She easily tolerated the AD astronauts, as when she pulled up a chair to join a group of us waiting for the fog to lift so we could fly our ’38s. Several of the navy astronauts were telling “beat this” stories about bizarre tattoos they had seen. One pilot recalled a photograph of a man’s crotch in the window of a Filipino tattoo parlor. Tattooed on the thighs of both his legs were huge elephant ears that gave the man’s penis the appearance of the animal’s trunk. (Who says we men aren’t in touch with our inner feelings?) Kandy joined in our laughter.

It was later in my TFNG life when, at a party, she recounted being the volunteer for the vaginal-insert urine collection design. The gynecologist had made the mold and she had tried it, but with limited success. Eventually the design was rejected and diapers were adopted as the best solution. Kandy finished her story: “I’ve got the mold sitting on my coffee table at home.” Upon hearing that, I choked, shooting beer out my nose in the process. I had an instantaneous vision of a guest at Kandy’s home picking up the object and asking, “What’s this unique knickknack?” I told Kandy NASA should have given her a medal, or at least mounted the device on a plaque signed by the NASA administrator with an inscription, For service above and beyond the call of duty.

NASA is filled with thousands of men and women who have labored in anonymity to put astronauts in space and make our lives somewhat comfortable once we get there. As I once heard an astronaut say, “We stand on their shoulders to get into orbit.” In the case of Kandy and those other toilet testers, we stood on other parts of their bodies.

In our space-wardrobe fitting sessions, we encountered one other waste collection detail, which included a man’s worst nightmare. These sessions were conducted by white-smocked young ladies armed with tape measures, calipers, and clipboards. They measured our skulls, hands, limbs, and feet for helmets, gloves, and spacesuits. During my session I was as witty and charming as Burt Reynolds. I was a brand-new astronaut being fitted for a spacesuit. A bottle of tequila couldn’t have gotten me higher.

At the end of the session a particularly sweet little custard walked me to a corner of the room that was screened from the rest of the facility. “Step inside and tell me what size fits you.”

I pulled back the curtain and boldly walked forward, expecting to find a fitting room for underwear. But I was wrong. I had stepped into male hell. Forget about blowing up on a space shuttle. This was real fear. On a table, laid out like indictments, were four different-size condoms.

I would learn an open-ended condom was part of the male urine collection system worn under the pressure-suit cooling garment. One end of the latex slipped over the penis, the other end was connected to a waist-worn nylon bladder. Urine could pass through the condom, through a one-way valve, and into the nylon bladder. After a launch, landing, or spacewalk (the three times when the toilet was inaccessible) the bladder/condom combination, known as a Urine Collection Device (UCD), could be stripped from the body and thrown away. In a really cruel joke, God created different-size penises, so NASA provided different-size condoms. The cute little filly on the other side of the curtain needed my stud size on her clipboard so the correct condom could be loaded in my personal locker when I finally flew in space.

With all the enthusiasm of a prisoner walking to the gallows I dropped my pants. Until this moment in my life I had worn a condom only during brief periods in my marriage when my wife had stopped her birth control pills. On those occasions there had been a sense of urgency and enthusiasm about donning the one-size-fits-all latex scabbard. Not now. I looked down at an appendage that was in the process of renouncing circumcision and finding some heretofore unknown foreskin to hide behind.

I reached for the largest condom. Astronauts are the most competitive people in the world. From supplying an autograph to fitting a rubber, we’re out to be the best, the fastest, the smartest…the biggest. If there had been a hula hoop on that table, male astronauts would have seized it with hope in their souls.

I grabbed my cowering little friend and began work. “Don’t you have anything bigger?” I nervously joked to the cutie on the other side of the curtain. I’m sure she had never heard that one before.

Why didn’t they have a man collecting this information? I wondered. Then, I thought, That would be even worse.

Putting a flaccid penis in a condom is like shoving toothpaste back in the tube. I finally managed to corral the beast and did a few jiggles to see if the rubber would stay on. It fell to the floor. My testicles might as well have joined it. I had been emasculated. Clearly, I wasn’t going to place first in this competition. Of course I could have lied and said I needed the annihilator size, but to do so would have been to invite disaster during a spacewalk. If the condom didn’t fit, it would leak or even come off altogether, in which case the cooling garment would become a urine sponge. As uncomfortable as that sounds, it would be the least of the victim’s problems. An astronaut would never outlive the teasing.

I finally made a fit and gave the technician my size, wanting to add, “I’ll have you know I’ve fathered three children with this!”

Many years later astronauts were outraged when a pilot’s medical records were compromised to the press. Some in the media were questioning his suitability to command an important shuttle mission since he had been treated for kidney stones. Astronauts were livid that the flight surgeon’s office had somehow leaked this private medical information. As the brouhaha raged, I told a fellow TFNG, “I don’t care if they publish my medical records in the New York Times. I just hope the record of my condom size is locked up in a vault in Cheyenne Mountain.” He understood. There are worse things to read about in the paper than the fact that you have passed a kidney stone.