Riding Rockets Read online

  Eating an uninterrupted meal in public in a flight suit quickly became impossible for the TFNG females. Patrons would approach them and ask for autographs, scrounging for any scrap of paper, including napkins, sugar packets, or bank deposit slips from the back of their checkbooks. At one meal the entire kitchen staff came out to meet Judy. The proud establishment owner, a large Italian woman, fawned over her as if she were royalty while ignoring me and the other men as if we were Judy’s foot servants. In jest I interrupted their love fest and said, “Hey, what am I…chopped liver?” Moments later the woman brought out a plate of exactly that, raw chopped liver, and dropped it in front of me. Judy laughed. So did I. I like a good joke even when it is on me.

  Besides the open bars at our soirées, there were other attractions for the males…young, beautiful women. Lots of them. At a Florida event one of the coarser TFNGs observed, “Mullane, look at this party. It’s a potpourri of pussy.” I had been in enough officers’ clubs in my life to know that aviator wings had more babe-attracting power than Donald Trump’s twelve-inch wallet. The Navy SEAL insignia had the same effect. One SEAL told me that some of the young women who frequented their officers’ club were nicknamed Great White Sharks because they had swallowed so much SEAL meat. The male TFNGs were learning there was an even more powerful pheromone than jet-jockey wings and the SEAL insignia: the title astronaut. The fact that none of us had been any closer to space than an airline flight attendant didn’t seem to matter. To the space groupies the title was good enough. We males found ourselves surrounded by quivering cupcakes. Some were blatantly on the make, wearing spray-on clothes revealing high-beam nipples, and smiles that screamed, “Take me!” The few bachelor TFNGs must have experienced some Zen-like ecstasy. In fighter pilot talk, they operated in a “target-rich environment.” They should have just donned a full-body latex suit and gotten a “please take a number” dispenser.

  Even the gold bands on the fingers of us married TFNGs were no deterrent to many of these women. They were equal opportunity groupies. Of course it was easy to see who was taking advantage of the situation. During the head count on the bus to return to a hotel, some MIAs would be noted. “He said not to wait for him. He got a ride.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet he got a ride” would be the rebuttal and a wave of snickers would follow.

  It was also easy to see who was traumatized by the body swapping…the post-docs. I doubt any of them had ever met a married colleague with red-blasted “all-nighter” eyes, trailing the odor of alcohol and sex as he exited a motel room with a smiling young woman. Sensing their shock, Rick Hauck spoke to them on a bus returning from a meet-the-astronauts mingle. “Everybody needs to understand their moral standards aren’t necessarily shared by others in the group. If you see something on one of these trips that offends you, keep it to yourself. It’s none of your business. You could damage somebody’s marriage.”

  How different was Rick’s speech from John Glenn’s “keep your peckers stowed” speech of twenty-five years earlier. As documented inThe Right Stuff, Glenn cautioned his six peers against adulterous activity because of the scandal that would result if they were discovered. Now, a quarter century later, Rick’s comments were aimed at the spectators, not the perpetrators. Zip your mouth, not your pants. How the moral compass had swung. Adultery and divorce had lost their stigma. Neither was going to affect a TFNG’s career.

  Philandering wasn’t the only thing shocking the post-docs on these trips. The art of alcohol abuse was another, and some military TFNGs were true Picassos.

  “Who wants to try a flaming hooker?” was Hoot Gibson’s question at a Cape Canaveral bar one night. The recipe for the drink included a prodigious quantity of high-proof alcohol served in a brandy snifter. The drink was servedon fire. I stuck around for this. Fire and intoxicated astronauts were material for David Letterman’s stupid human tricks.

  As always, there had to be competition. Winners were those who could throw back the complete shot in one gulp without burning themselves, then slam down the glass with the residual alcohol still burning. Needless to say, it helped to be at the bulletproof level of intoxication before attempting this trick.

  Like a circus barker, Hoot roped in a crowd of unsuspecting post-docs. None thought it was possible. Hoot smiled at the challenge, unstuck a cigar from his mouth, slicked his mustache into order, grabbed the flaming drink, and quaffed it back. He slammed down the glass. A blue flame hovered over it.

  The gauntlet had been thrown down and several suckers readied themselves to duplicate the feat. The bartender served up more glasses and torched them. With fear-tightened faces the post-docs picked them up and hesitantly brought them to their lips. Soon a new smell mingled with the miasma of cigar smoke, perfume, and beer…burning facial hair. There were cries of pain as flaming alcohol scorched mustaches, lips, and chins. Through it all Hoot smiled and puffed his cigar with an expression saying, “Why do I do this?” Periodically he would down another drink to keep enticing the wounded scientists back to the flame. Each time he remained uninjured and the glass retained the blue flicker of success. Each time it emboldened another post-doc to attempt self-immolation. As the hour drew late, Hoot finally explained the trick. “You have to be fearless. Toss the entire glass. Don’t sip. There isn’t enough oxygen in your mouth to feed the flame so it’ll go out. If you do it fast enough, the flame will stay with the glass.”

  The formula for success had come far too late. At breakfast the next morning a few embarrassed, miserably hungover post-docs sat at the table nursing multiple blisters on their faces. Some of those victims, no doubt, were dreading having to explain to their spouses the source of their injuries. “Honey…you’re not going to believe how this happened.” Indeed, they wouldn’t.

  At every opportunity the military TFNGs also introduced the civilians to our lively, sometimes sick, sense of humor. During our tour of NASA’s California facilities, Steve Hawley made the mistake of asking Loren Shriver, Brewster Shaw, and me to dinner with a former colleague of his. In the course of the meal Steve’s friend, a male astrophysicist, became overawed with the Vietnam aspect of our past lives. Like me, Loren and Brewster were combat veterans of that conflict. The young scientist was relentless in probing for information on our experiences. “Mike, what did you do in Vietnam?”

  I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to play with his head, so I seamlessly replied, “I flew a candy bomber.”

  “A candy bomber? What was that?”

  I had a fish on the line and began to reel it in. “In the villages the women and children would hide in their spider holes and trenches. You could never get them in the open. So I flew a plane loaded with canisters of candy and would swoop low over the villages and drop them nearby. This would bring the women and children out of their holes to scoop it up.” At this point in my story I pointed to Loren and Brewster. “And these guys would be thirty seconds behind me loaded wall to wall with napalm and would lay it down on those villagers. It got them every time.”

  The scientist’s eyes widened in shock and outrage. I could just imagine the scene playing out in his brain: images of women and children dipped in jellied gasoline running around on fire. He snapped his head to Loren and Brewster, anticipating a denial. At this point I expected my twisted joke to come undone but Brewster and Loren picked up my lead. They assumed the steely eyes of professional killers and silently nodded in the affirmative. Every Vietnam atrocity this young scientist had ever heard of was now confirmed.

  Hawley tried to calm him. “That’s bullshit. They make up these stories all the time. Don’t believe them. They didn’t kill any women and children.”

  At that comment, Brewster shrugged. He didn’t say a word but his body language did: “You can believe what you want.” There was no doubt in any of our minds Steve’s friend walked away from dinner believing he had just socialized with war criminals.

  On a trip to Los Angeles it was Jeff Hoffman who felt the sting. At breakfast he asked Brewster and
me what we had done the night before. While we had actually been at a bar having a few beers, I immediately replied, “We visited that museum.”

  “What museum?”

  I made up an incredible story about a museum of “cultural art.” Loren Shriver picked up on my lead and added his own embellishments about famous paintings by Picasso and sculptures by Michelangelo. Dick Scobee joined in with more bullshit. Through it all Jeff expressed his disappointment at missing such a rare and wonderful opportunity. Finally he asked, “Where’s the museum?”

  I replied, “It’s right next to the Christian Science Reading Room. We did some studying there before going to it.”

  Even this over-the-top BS didn’t immediately register in Jeff’s brain. He continued to lament he had missed one of America’s greatest museums. A minute later he jerked up from his coffee. “You guys made all that up, didn’t you?” We laughed.

  Jeff would prove to be the most enduring TFNG scientist. Over the years, many of the other civilians would become enamored with the military aviator mystique and would take on varying degrees of its form. But, to the very end, Jeff remained an unpolluted scientist—a fact that presented some great opportunities for us AD retards. I recall a Monday meeting in which he made an impassioned request for better attendance at an astronaut office science lecture series. Attendance was voluntary and few of the military TFNGs were showing up. Jeff begged, “Guys, we’re going to have coffee and doughnuts and the visiting professor really has some fascinating stuff to tell us. You really should be there.” He then expanded on the science that would be covered. I watched the pilots. Their faces were pictures of disinterest. The only thought running through their brains wasI wonder where happy hour will be?

  Jeff finally finished. “Do you have any questions?” He looked so hopefully at his tuned-out audience, it about broke my heart. He was desperate for any indication that we had paid the slightest attention to his pleas. “Any questions? Any questions at all?” But the room remained as silent as an OMS burn.

  I slowly raised my hand and Jeff’s face lit up like a sunspot. “Yes, Mike.”

  “I was just wondering…. What type of doughnuts are you going to have?” The walls of the room nearly blew apart with laughter. It was one of Jeff’s many lessons that the military aviator brain was a science wasteland.

  Like Hoot with the flaming hookers, I wondered,Why do I do this? and smiled that I had. But I will ultimately pay the price. Besides Bible hell and feminist hell, I’ll also burn in post-doc hell.

  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 theApollo 11 landing. Here was where the words, “Houston, we have a problem” were first received when an explosion shattered theApollo 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 theApollo 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 termcapsule 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 astron
auts. 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. TheApollo 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.