Riding Rockets Read online

  The primary facility for practicing spacewalks was the WETF swimming pool. Few experiences in life are more claustrophobic than being lowered underwater while dressed in an EMU. One astronaut confided in me that he repeatedly exhibited excessively high blood pressure when the flight surgeons conducted their pre-WETF vital sign checks. In fact, the docs became so suspicious, they required him to do multiple blood pressure checks at the flight clinic to ensure it wasn’t a more chronic problem. I never had a problem with these checks. I could always put myself in a happy place while the cuff was on. After it was off, my veins got an elastic workout.

  Training in the WETF pool was the most physically demanding of all astronaut training. As it would be in space, the suit was pressurized to the consistency of iron. The simple task of opening and closing one’s hand rapidly fatigued those muscles. And while the suit was neutrally buoyant, the body inside wasn’t. When I was in an upright position, I was standing inside it. But when the spacewalk practice sessions required me to work upside down, which was frequently the case, I would “fall” an inch or two inside the suit until my entire body weight was borne by the top of my shoulders pressing into the EMU neck ring. That was torture. Moving against the stiffness of the suit also resulted in abrasions on the arms and wear marks on other parts of the body. But, in spite of the pain and occasional nibbles of claustrophobia, I loved the WETF sessions. Like the robot arm training, the work was more personally challenging and yielded a greater sense of accomplishment than learning how to throw a switch to release a satellite. I prayed that someday I would get to do a spacewalk…aplanned spacewalk. I never wanted to hear the wordcontingency on any of my missions.

  Our final EVA training session afforded me a unique insight into the burden of feminism on the TFNG females. The lesson involved a soup-to-nuts spacewalk dress-out conducted in an exact replica of the shuttle cockpit/airlock. The shuttle mid-deck, though the largest volume in the two-deck cockpit, was small, measuring about 7 feet fore-to-aft, 10 feet wide, and 7 feet floor-to-ceiling. Astronauts liked to impress the public with the gee-whiz fact that the Texas prison system allocated more space for one inmate than the shuttle provided for crews of six people. The airlock was even smaller, a cylinder 7 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter. Most of this space was filled with the two wall-mounted EMUs.

  Under the critical eye of our instructor, Judy entered the airlock, disassembled our suits, and passed the helmets and pants into the mid-deck. The torso portion of the suit that contained the electronics, oxygen bottles, water supply, and controls—and weighing nearly 200 pounds—would remain on the airlock wall. While she was busy with this task, Steve and I retrieved our condom UCDs, bio-data attachments, and Liquid Cooling Garments (LCG) from the EVA lockers. The LCGs were a netlike long underwear. Weaved into the material were small tubes that carried chilled water next to the skin to prevent spacewalkers from overheating.

  The first task of donning a spacesuit is to get naked and put on the UCD. I had assumed Judy would step out of the cockpit during this intimacy, but I had failed to appreciate how feminism had complicated our situation. No male IVA crewmember would have left the mock-up while other males rolled on their condoms, so Judy knew she could not either. To do so would be a violation of the feminist cause, to send a message that women were different from men. As Judy made no attempt to leave, I shot Steve a nervousYou go first glance, only to see his eyes answer,Screw you. You go first. This was going to be interesting, I thought. At least if I was going to get naked around a nonwife woman, I had a ripped body and the ass of a Greek god to impress her. But, even for me, a guy with few inhibitions, the thought of rolling on a condom while JR was standing in front of me discussing the checklist was, well, inhibiting. Certainly she didn’t intend to make sure we didthat task correctly?

  I need not have worried. As Steve and I started with our shirt buttons, Judy sat on the edge of the hatchway, put her head down, and faked reading the checklist. She gave us as much privacy as possible while still holding on to her feminist sensibilities.

  As fast as I could, I sheathed myself in latex, Velcroed the nylon bladder around my waist, then slipped into the LCG. Hawley did the same. We were once again presentable.

  Before zipping our LCGs fully closed, we attached biosensors to our chests. It was only on spacewalks that MCC monitored astronauts’ heart rates. The data was a measure of how much the spacewalker was exerting him- or herself. Astronauts also suspected flight surgeons wanted to be able to remotely pronounce a spacewalker dead in the event of a suit malfunction.

  Judy referred to a torso photo in the checklist to ensure we had positioned the sensors correctly. The photo was of a man’s chest, his nipples being the landmarks used in positioning the sensors. Those of us from Planet AD had jokingly complained of the sexism represented in the photo. There were female spacewalkers, too, we argued. The checklist should also have a photo of a woman’s naked chest showing the sensors properly applied. One AD male cut out aPlayboy model’s photo, drew in the biosensors on her naked breasts, and pasted it into an EVA checklist. He said he was going to clandestinely substitute it for the actual checklist in his next training session with a female spacewalker, but I never heard about the prank being executed, so I suspect he chickened out.

  We continued with the rest of the dress-out. We pulled on our pants, waddled into the airlock, and squatted under the wall-mounted torso/arm pack. While Judy held the suit arms vertical, I drove my head and arms upward and into the torso part of the suit. The squeeze through the neck ring ripped at my ears and made my eyes tear. Judy locked the pant waist to the torso, then dropped my helmet into place and locked that down. She next pushed on my gloves and locked those to the wrist rings. It had taken the better part of two hours, but I was now fully dressed. The training session would go no further. If I released myself from the wall mounts, as I would have to do on a real space-walk, I would collapse under the 300-pound weight.

  Judy finished dressing Hawley but before she could get out of the airlock, I encircled her and pulled her into my front in a writhing hug. She laughed. The embrace was as sensual as a fair maiden hugging an iron-suited knight.

  Hawley and I had graduated. We were ready for a spacewalk. And as much as each of us wanted to do one, we both prayed it wouldn’t happen. If we were on a spacewalk, it would be to save our lives.

  Friday, April, 13, 1984, proved to be a very lucky day for the “Zoo Crew.” STS-41C landed at Edwards AFB. We were next. We were Prime Crew. With that title came top priority for simulators and T-38s. For me, it also brought Prime Crew night terrors. Until this moment every time my soul tried to deal with the fear and joy of what was fast approaching, I disallowed it. STS-6’s IUS failure, STS-9’s hydraulic fire, and STS-41B’s twin satellite booster failures had made me a skeptic. There was too much in front of us that could jeopardize our mission. Even now, with the horizon clear of any other shuttle missions, I kept my emotions on a very short leash. Until the hold-down bolts blew there were no guarantees, I told myself. An engine could blow up in a ground test and stop the program. My health could become an issue. The payload contractors could find something seriously wrong with their machines. There were thousands of unknowns in this business.Don’t even think about flying in space, I ordered myself. And during my waking hours I obeyed that order. I had plenty of distractions. However, in sleep, the reality of being Prime Crew would creep past my defenses. I would bolt awake with my heart wildly drumming and my brain overwhelmingly aware that I would be next off the planet. Every fear I had ever harbored about death aboard a space shuttle, every doubt I had ever held about my competence to do the mission, every joy I had ever celebrated at the thought of flying into space would flash through my consciousness in a wild, chaotic fury and vaporize any hope of further sleep. I would get up and go for a walk or run.

  By this time “Zoo Crew” had been together for fourteen months and we’d be together a few more. Because of delays in earlier missions,Discovery ’s launch had
slipped to June. In our thousands of hours of training Judy and I had become close friends and I would be a liar if I said I hadn’t thought about expanding our relationship beyond the study of payload checklists. That thought was certainly nibbling at me as our T-38s landed on a warm spring Sunday at the KSC shuttle landing strip. Judy and I were there, alone, to support some payload tests that would begin the following day. We jumped into a rental car for the drive to the KSC crew quarters. Wearing Prime Crew smiles, sitting in a convertible (top down, of course), dressed in our blue flight suits, the wind in our hair, the sun on our face, we were everybody’s image of the Right Stuff.

  Judy parked the car and we grabbed our luggage and headed for the elevator. The crew quarters occupied a small portion of the third floor of a huge Apollo-era rocket checkout building. The facility included a fully equipped kitchen, a small gym with weights and stationary bicycles, some conference rooms, ten or so bedrooms, and a handful of unisex bathrooms. NASA must have consulted with Benedictine monks on the decor of the bedrooms: They were monastery spartan, containing a bed, desk, telephone, lamp, and chair. No TV. To ensure no outside noises would disturb a sleeping crew, the quarters were located on the interior of the floor. There were no windows.

  Judy and I found the facility deserted.Come on, Satan, give me a break, I thought. I was going to be in sixteen hours of solitary confinement with a beautiful woman and idle hands, those instruments of the devil.

  “Hey, JR,” I shouted down the hall, “let’s check out the old Cape Canaveral launch facilities.” On multiple trips to KSC I had tried to fit in such a tour but the schedule had not allowed it. Now was a propitious time. My brain was screaming,Don’t do something stupid. Get out of here!

  “Sure, Tarzan,” she called back.

  It was too warm for flight suits so we changed into our NASA gym wear. I grabbed the NASA phone book, which included a map, and jumped in the car, letting Judy drive while I navigated. The early launch pads had been preserved as part of the Air Force Space and Missile Museum. The centerpiece of the museum was the concrete blockhouse that had served as the control center for the 1958 launch of America’s first satellite. An outdoor display of a couple dozen rockets had been added to the area. The orange-painted latticed gantry of Launch Complex 26 speared the sky a mere four hundred feet east of the blockhouse.

  It was late in the afternoon, long after tour hours. The facility was as deserted as the crew quarters. Judy looked at the rocket displays. “How many of these can you identify?”

  I did a quick survey. “All of them.”

  “Bullshit, Tarzan. I’ll bet you a six-pack you can’t identify all of these.”

  “Judy, I lived and breathed rockets from the age of twelve. Photos of these things wallpapered my bedroom. You’re challenging a rocket geek. You’re going to lose that bet.”

  Her smile said, “No way,” and she rushed ahead to look at a placard. “What’s this one?”

  “The Navajo. It was the world’s first supersonic cruise missile. Range fifteen hundred miles.”

  “Lucky guess.” She walked to the next display. “This one?”

  “Bomarc. A ramjet-powered supersonic antiaircraft missile.”

  I could see she was beginning to believe my rocket identification powers might not have been exaggerated.

  “This one?”

  “Easy. Firebird, an early air-to-air missile. By the way, make it a six-pack of Moosehead.”

  “You haven’t won yet.”

  But I did. After correctly answering several more of Judy’s challenges, she capitulated in front of a Skybolt missile.

  “Tarzan, did you do anything as a kid besides memorize rockets, like go to rock concerts or dances?”

  “I have one autograph in my high school yearbook. Does that answer the question?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

  I was worried an air force security officer would arrive at any moment to lock the blockhouse, so I suggested we take a quick tour of it. For me, stepping inside was a spiritually moving moment. I had never been to this place before, yet I was connected to it. As a child in Albuquerque, I had watched TV scenes of this building and the gantry beyond as the earliest satellites and monkey-nauts, Able and Baker, had ridden pillars of fire into the sky. Werner von Braun had stood where I now stood and directed America’s first steps in the space race. I touched a lifeless control panel and felt even closer to him and the history he and his team had written. My fingers brushed across the blockhouse periscope and archaic lights and switches and oscilloscopes.God, I thought,what I wouldn’t give to go back to January 31, 1958, and be standing at this very spot as the final seconds clicked off the countdown clock for Explorer I’s launch.

  “Be careful, Tarzan. You’ll launch one of those rockets.”

  Judy interrupted my reverie. Her obvious indifference to the history of the site prompted a question that had been on my mind since I had first stood on the stage with her at our TFNG introduction. “JR, when did you first want to be an astronaut?”

  “In 1977, when I saw the announcement on the company bulletin board.”

  She answered as I had expected. I had already heard several of the other females say the same thing in various press interviews. Only Shannon Lucid had a different answer. She had a copy of a letter she wrote toTime magazine in 1960 challenging NASA’s male-only astronaut corps. She had dreamed of spaceflight as a child, as I had. Only recently had I matured enough to give Judy, Sally, and the others some slack for their lack of lifelong zeal for the astronaut title. If I had been raised in a society that told me I could never be an astronaut because of my gender (or color), would that dream have ever taken root in my soul? Probably not. How, I asked myself, could I hold it against this woman if she had not carried the dream from her childhood? I could not. Judy and the other women were teaching me the meaning and consequences of discrimination.

  We returned to the car, Judy still behind the wheel. “Let’s go to the beach house,” she suggested. “I’ll buy you a beer there.” It was a destination certain to test the male animal in me. The beach house was as isolated as Mars, situated just behind the dune line only a couple miles from the shuttle launchpads. The house was a relic of the 1950s, before the days of the great space race. Then, the Cape Canaveral area was just one more place for snowbirders to build their winter retreats, and private homes had dotted the landscape. But thebeep-beep of Sputnik had wrought a great change in this part of America. The newly formed space agency needed a place to launch its rockets and Cape Canaveral was ideal. Exercising its right of eminent domain, Uncle Sam acquired the land and began its spaceport renovations. Only one of the existing structures survived demolition, saved by some enlightened bureaucrat who had decided it would be the perfect retreat for the early press-hounded astronauts. The building selected was well into government property, so privacy was absolute. Even Jehovah’s Witnesses wouldn’t have been able to find this address. While the press no longer pursued astronauts as they had the Mercury Seven, the building was still used as an astronaut retreat.

  On the drive I tried to keep my eyes forward but could not. They kept going to Judy’s smile, to her wind-flagged hair, to her golden legs.Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! There’s never a good robot around when you need one.

  Judy turned the car onto a shell-covered driveway and parked. The house wasn’t exactly Frank Lloyd Wright. It was something the Unabomber might have cobbled together: small, boxy, utilitarian. The downstairs was concrete and comprised a garage and storage area. The flat-roofed, wood-framed upper story contained a living area of two small bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen/living area that opened onto an elevated wooden deck. NASA had done little to the structure over the decades. The exterior wood finish was sandblasted and warped, the weather stripping shredded, the concrete walkways uneven and crumbling. The interior furnishings were similarly old and worn.

  I stayed outside while Judy walked upstairs to the kitchen with a handful of bills for the
honor cash box. While she had been a model of professionalism and had done nothing to suggest there was more to this beach visit than watching the waves and having a beer, every molecule of testosterone in my body was busy suggesting otherwise. I could no longer see her as a fellow astronaut and crewmember. I could only see her as the beautiful woman she was. She came out with a six-pack of Coors hooked on a finger, stood with her hip cocked to the side, and smiled. “It’s not Moosehead, Tarzan, but here’re your winnings.” She tossed the package to me.God help me, I prayed.