Riding Rockets - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Mike Mullane (ILLUSTRATIONS) #46

ILLUSTRATIONS

^{I was a child of the space race—twelve years old at the time of Sputnik I’s launch, October 4, 1957. I wanted to be an astronaut from the moment I heard the word.}

^{The Hugh Mullane family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, circa 1960. I’m second from the left. My dad was rendered a paraplegic at age thirty-three by polio. His leg braces are visible at his atrophied ankles.}

^{At about age sixteen, I’m posed with one of my homemade rockets. My “capsule” was a coffee can; the nose cone was a rolled-up sheet of plastic. My mom and dad were huge supporters of my interest in space. After taking this photo, my dad drove me into the desert for the launch.}

^{Donna and I walk out of the Kirtland AFB chapel, June 14, 1967. We both married for the wrong reasons—me for sex, she for escape from her parents. Somewhere in our marriage (thirty-eight years and counting), we fell in love. We would have three children, who would give us six grandchildren.}

^{In 1969, I flew 134 combat missions in Vietnam in the backseat of the RF-4C, the reconnaissance version of the F-4 Phantom. My flawed eyesight prevented me from being a fighter pilot.}

^{George Abbey, a midlevel bureaucrat, was God to the astronaut corps. He had supreme authority over shuttle mission assignments. Morale suffered significantly under his despotic and secretive leadership style, and many astronauts came to loathe him.}

^{Judy Resnik, the second American woman in space, helps me prepare for a spacewalk simulation in early 1984. In our year of training for our rookie mission, STS-41D, we became close friends. Judy opened my male, sexist-pig eyes to the reality that women could do the astronaut job as well as any man. She would die aboard Challenger while flying her second space mission.}

^{The heartrending final astronaut-spouse good-byes occur approximately twenty-four hours prior to launch at the astronaut beach house. For the Challenger and Columbia spouses, the good-byes were forever. The beach house sits on sacred ground.}

^{Donna and I sought the privacy of the beach house sands for our farewells. Before all of my missions, I told her, “If I die tomorrow, I died doing what I loved.”}

^{Donna slumps in emotional and physical exhaustion after one of my many mission scrubs. At T–9 minutes in the countdown, spouses and children are escorted to the roof of the Launch Control Center to watch the liftoff in the company of an astronaut family escort, aka “an escort into widowhood.”}

^{The STS-41D in-orbit crew self-portrait. I’m floating at the left (legs extended). At the bottom, from right to left, are Pilot Mike Coats and Commander Hank Hartsfield. At Judy Resnik’s left side is Mission Specialist Steve Hawley. Payload Specialist Charlie Walker floats behind me. Judy received hate mail from a handful of feminists for the cheerleader effect the pose suggested.}

^{A lifetime dream comes true—floating in Discovery’s upper cockpit on my rookie mission, STS-41D, August 30—September 5, 1984.}

^{Donna greets me after landing at Edwards AFB from my first mission, September 5, 1984. Mission Commander Hank Hartsfield and his wife, Fran, are in the background.}

^{Located a few blocks from the Johnson Space Center main gate, the decrepit Outpost Tavern is a popular astronaut hangout.}

^{Challenger’s forward fuselage (arrow) was part of the breakup debris, January 28, 1986. The fact that some cockpit switches were found in the wreckage in emergency positions proves that the crew was alive and functioning for at least some period after vehicle destruction. But escape was impossible. The space shuttle had no bailout system.}

^{The STS-27 Swine Flight crew after arriving at the Kennedy Space Center for our December 2–6, 1988, mission. From left to right: Mission Specialist Jerry Ross and Pilot Guy Gardner. I’m standing in the middle. To my immediate left is Mission Specialist Bill Shepherd. Robert “Hoot” Gibson, the commander, is at the microphone.}

^{Viewing the severe heat-shield damage sustained during our STS-27 launch. The tip of the right side SRB broke off during ascent and damaged seven hundred belly heat tiles, by far the worst shuttle heat-shield damage sustained prior to the Columbia tragedy. I’m leaning around Pilot Guy Gardner.}

^{Christie Brinkley is all smiles while standing next to me at a Super Bowl XXIII halftime photo-op, January 22, 1989. Bill Shepherd is at my right. Guy Gardner stands on Christie’s left side. No doubt it was meeting me that doomed her marriage to Billy Joel…or so I tell everybody.}

^{My family at the astronaut beach house in late February 1990, prior to my last mission, STS-36. Donna and I stand in the middle. My mom and our youngest daughter, Laura, stand at my right. Our twins, Patrick and Amy, stand at Donna’s left. My dad passed away in 1988.}

^{On the drive back from an STS-36 launch scrub, I hold my pressure-suit neck ring open for a flow of cooling air to escape. I forced the smile. Mission scrubs were always a crushing disappointment…and I had six of them.}

^{The STS-36 (February 28–March 4, 1990) in-space crew photo. From left to right: Commander John “J.O.” Creighton and Mission Specialist Dave Hilmers. I’m floating in the middle. Next are Mission Specialist Pierre “Pepe” Thuot and Pilot John Casper.}

^{Donna and I meet the Bushes in the Oval Office, May 1990. While leading us on a tour of the White House, Mrs. Bush displayed a hilarious one-of-the-guys sense of humor.}