Riding Rockets

CHAPTER 33 Classified Work

December 2, 1988, found me and the rest of the STS-27 crew strapped into Atlantis waiting out a weather delay at T-31 seconds. We had already scrubbed the day before due to out-of-limits high-altitude winds. With the potential of a second scrub hanging over us, the mood in the cockpit was gloomy. I was beginning to think I was cursed. This was my sixth launchpad wait for only a second mission. The problem today was the weather at our transatlantic abort sites in Africa. They were below minimums. The launch director was on the phone with the astronaut observer in Morocco. With the APUs running, a decision had to be made quickly.

I heard the range safety officer speaking on the LCC voice net and used the opportunity to joke, “The RSO’s mother goes down like a Muslim at noon.” (The term going down was from Planet AD and referred to an act of oral sex.) I didn’t worry about the RSO hearing me. He didn’t have access to our intercom.

The crew cringed…and laughed. I was slandering the mother of the man who was just two switches away from killing us. Hoot shouted, “Mullane, don’t joke about the RSO’s mother! Pick on the pope’s mother. Hell, pick on Christ’s mother. Anybody but the RSO’s mother!”

The laughter faded and the intercom fell quiet. I thought of Donna on the roof of the LCC. I knew the delay was killing her. Every wife-mother said the same thing: Watching a husband being launched into space is like being in a never-ending difficult childbirth…without any pain medication. My mom certainly thought so. She greeted me after my first mission with a sign reading, “September 10, 1945 was easier.”

My fear was “off-scale high,” an astronaut expression meaning the needle of a cockpit instrument had soared past the highest reading and had pegged itself against a physical stop. The fear wasn’t any greater than it had been on my first launch. Challenger had changed nothing in that regard—I had known before STS-51L that flying the shuttle could kill me, and I knew this flight could kill me. On the drive to the pad I had passed the same rescue vehicles I had passed on my way to Discovery and had, again, thought of the body bags they certainly contained. I thought of the full-mouth dental photos and clip of hair and the footprint the flight surgeon had archived in Houston. In another ten minutes would somebody be pulling those from my medical file to send to a Florida pathologist? If it was to be so, I prayed I would be brave in whatever form of death Atlantis might serve me. Challenger had convinced me there would be no merciful, instantaneous deaths granted to any shuttle crews. The cockpit was a fortress; at least it was a fortress until it slammed into Earth. If it had kept the crew alive through Challenger’s destruction, it would keep me alive through any breakup of Atlantis. The shuttle engineers had done what engineers always do…built their machine to spec and then added their own margins. The seat I was strapped to would survive twice the number of Gs my body could withstand. The windows (each triple-paned) and the walls around me would remain intact until the Earth crushed them. I was strapped into a fortress that would keep me alive long enough to watch Death’s approach. If fire was to kill me, I would have time to watch the flames. If a multimile fall was to kill me, I would watch the Earth rushing into my face. Even a cockpit decompression would no longer mercifully grant us unconsciousness, as it might have spared the Challenger crew. We now wore full-pressure suits that would keep us alive and conscious through any cockpit rupture.

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.

All went well. The Canadian-built arm handled like a dream. Within an hour I had lifted the payload clear of the cargo bay and had flown it to its release attitude. I called to Hoot, “We’re there.” He was all smiles and I knew that the rest of the payload team watching from the ground was wearing the same smiles. I had delivered for them. No Super Bowl–winning quarterback has ever felt more satisfied.

Hoot double-checked that his orbiter hand controllers were on and got a “Go for payload release” from MCC. On his cue I squeezed the grapple release trigger and pulled the arm off the payload. The satellite was now flying free in a 17,300-mile-per hour formation with Atlantis. Hoot quickly executed the fly-away maneuvers and we watched the satellite slowly recede in the distance until it was the brightest star in our windows. I parked the robot arm in its cradle thinking this would be the last time in the mission it would be needed. I would be wrong.

Time to celebrate. For all intents and purposes our mission was over. As orbiting astronauts were prone to say, “It’s all downhill from here.” We raided our pantry, ignoring the dehydrated broccoli the NASA dietician had included to grab some M&M candies and butter cookies. Soon a baseball game was in full swing. I would pitch an M&M to Guy and he would bat it across the mid-deck with a locker tool. Jerry and I would then field it with our mouths. (Astronauts never play with their food like this while other crewmembers are vomiting.) Hoot filmed the fun, something NASA was not going to be happy about. HQ had relayed to the astronaut office their growing displeasure with astronauts filming their weightless games. It was all the press would show and they felt it trivialized our missions. The press had ignored video of the STS-26 crew deploying their quarter-billion-dollar TDRS satellite and instead showed them dressed in Hawaiian shirts engaging in 0-G surfing.

Hoot next liberated a football from a locker. NASA was going to be honored during the January Super Bowl halftime show and HQ wanted a space-flown football to give to NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle. The ball had been deflated to save space, but using a food rehydration needle, Hoot was able to blow enough air into it to give it a useable shape and we paired up for a hilarious weightless football game. As with the baseball game, we filmed our Super Bowl. NASA HQ would have to cut us some slack. The classified nature of our mission would prevent us from showing the public any of our payload activities. Our game films would be all that we could show.

We spent the rest of the day immersed in our Earth-observation experiment, taking photos for geologists, meteorologists, and oceanographers. For each of us, though, there was one very special Earth feature to photograph that wasn’t on any of the scientists’ lists…our hometowns. Even the other veterans on the flight, Jerry Ross and Hoot Gibson, had never seen their childhood homes from space. The orbits of our earlier missions had been too close to the equator. But Atlantis was crossing over all of America.

Albuquerque was an easy target to locate. The dark, winter-dormant flora of the Rio Grande River Valley contrasted well with the adjoining deserts, and Albuquerque’s western border was formed by that river. I needed only to spot a few other landmarks to know I was approaching the city. There were the snowcapped peaks of the Sandia Mountains to the east and solitary Mount Taylor to the west. As it came into view, the city itself was a gray patch filling the terrain between the river and the mountains. It was impossible to see individual houses or even neighborhoods, but I could approximate the location of my childhood home. No longer was it on the edge of the city but rather deep in suburbia. Like other Sun belt cities, Albuquerque had grown up. But my mom still lived in the same house and I could imagine the thrill she would have felt if she could have looked up to see Atlantis passing overhead. There was no chance of that, though. The sun was too high.

I snapped a few photos and then Velcroed the camera to the wall. This was another sacred moment in my life and I didn’t want to be distracted with setting an f-stop. I was looking into the cradle of my astronaut dream. There was no other place on the planet that held more memories for me. Two hundred and forty miles below were the deserts from which I had launched my rockets. Here was the Rocky Mountain West that had excited my imagination with its infinite horizons. Here was the sky I had navigated in a Cessna while making plans to be a test pilot and astronaut. Here was the place God had steered Donna and me together. And, now, I was speeding over all of it in a spaceship.

Later we gathered around the window to watch the evening lights of Houston pass under us. The last rays of the setting sun were on Atlantis, so she would be visible as a bright star to anybody in the city who cared to look up. I wondered if someone had bothered to call our wives to tell them to watch for us. I would later learn that family escort Dave Leestma had. At the very moment I was staring downward, Donna was standing in an open field near our home and looking upward at our streaking star. After my return, she would tell me how the sight had overwhelmed her. “Mike, do you have any idea how amazing that was? You were in that point of light. I had to pinch myself to make certain I wasn’t dreaming.” I could appreciate her wonder. Every moment of orbit flight seemed like a dream to me, too.

Swine Flight went to bed without a care in the world…or off the world, for that matter. The dangers of ascent were behind us. We had already scored our mission success. Our only problem was a slow leak in Atlantis’s left inboard tire and that wasn’t a big deal. MCC had noted it in their data and had directed us to program the autopilot to keep Atlantis’s belly pointed at the Sun. The heat was keeping the tire warm and its pressure up. We hoped the higher pressure would reseal the leak point. But, even if the tire went flat, we were scheduled to land on the Edwards AFB dry lakebed and would have its infinite runway to handle any type of steering problems after touchdown.

I fell asleep secure in the machine that surrounded me. This would be the last time on the mission any of us would feel safe.