Bold They Rise: The Space Shuttle Early Years, 1972-1986 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S) (34 page)

Crippen had practiced a Kennedy landing hundreds of times in the Shuttle Training Aircraft, and the real thing seemed pretty much the same, he said. “I often joke that they’ve got a fifteen-thousand-foot runway, but they built this moat around it and filled it full of alligators to give you an incentive to stay on the runway. But it worked out well. The landing was fine.”

STS
-51
A

Crew: Commander Rick Hauck, Pilot David Walker, Mission Specialists Anna Fisher, Dale Gardner, and Joe Allen

Orbiter:
Discovery

Launched: 8 November 1984

Landed: 16 November 1984

Mission: Launch of two communication satellites, retrieval of two communications satellites

“We were scheduled to launch on the seventh of November early in the morning, and we loaded into the spacecraft,” 51
A
mission specialist Joe Allen recalled. “We unloaded from the spacecraft, in spite of the fact that it was a beautiful, crystal-clear day in Florida and in spite of the fact that the equipment seemed to be working properly.”

As perfect as both the visible weather and the spacecraft were that day, what the crew could not see was what was going on in the upper atmosphere—high wind shear levels.

Allen said that while the crew of the fourteenth shuttle flight was, of course, disappointed by the delay at the time, he later felt much better about the delay. “History now shows we were also possibly very lucky, because both of the tragic accidents, that of the
Challenger
and that of
Columbia
, involved launching through very high wind shear conditions, and there’s some thinking now that high wind shears and Space Shuttles do not safely go together.”

The mission was twofold: release two satellites—the Canadian communications satellite
TELESAT
-
H
and the defense communications satellite
SYNCOM
IV
-1 (also known as
LEASAT
-1)—and retrieve the
WESTAR
-6 and the
PALAPA
-
B
2 communication satellites, which were deployed on 41
B
but failed to achieve proper orbits.

While Allen described the mission as “fairly simple,” some members of the crew felt that people underestimated just how challenging the mission would be. “I got several somewhat rude notes from my fellow astronauts underscoring the fact that in delivering the two satellites to orbit and picking two up, that neither Dale nor I was to get these satellites confused,” recalled Allen. “In other words, don’t bring home satellites that we’d just taken there. It’s very unkind from our fellow astronauts to point this out, but it was kind of funny.”

Allen recalled meeting several days before the scheduled launch with an associate administrator of
NASA
. According to Allen, this individual was the newly named head of the Public Affairs Office at
NASA
. No agenda was given for the meeting, save that it was scheduled to last for about an hour and take place in a meeting room in the crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center.

We went into the meeting room in flight suits, we five crew members, and then in came the associate administrator. Very nice gentleman; introduced himself, and I think one of his aides or deputies was with him. Introduced himself all around. We sat down and Rick [Hauck] said, “Now, Mr. —”—it’s unimportant—“what’s the agenda for this meeting?” Whereupon the naïve individual—we didn’t know it at the time—said, “Well, no specific agenda. I just wanted to introduce myself and just say that if there’s anything I can do for you, I’m here to help and wish you good luck.” We as individual crew members were all surprised, because this really was occupying a good chunk of our morn
ing, and time was very important to us right then. Not that it was discourteous of the individual, but it was unclear why this meeting was to take place.

A day earlier, a story had appeared in the
Florida Today
newspaper in which an unnamed
NASA
spokesperson quoted the crew as saying that the likelihood of capturing both satellites was very high. The crew members were very curious about the story and, in talking among themselves, determined that none of them had given the quote. It seemed unlikely as well that a member of the support crew would describe the mission in that way. “We were fretful that those words had gone in, because we thought the task was going to be quite difficult,” Allen said.

We didn’t plan to do anything about it, because newspaper stories are newspaper stories, and it was now water under the bridge. Something about the start of this meeting [with the associate administrator], though, got under Rick’s skin as the commander, and he said, “Mr. So-and-so, there is something that you can do.” He then cited this newspaper article of two days ago, and he said, “I do not know who said that. I assure you that none of us said that, nor do we believe it. And I will personally tell you that my assessment is, if we successfully capture one satellite, it will be remarkable, and if we get both satellites, it will be a fucking miracle.” And he went on to say, “You can quote me on that.” Well, the man was shocked, properly so. We were as well. And then Rick said, “If you have no other business, I think this meeting is over.” We’re ten minutes into a one-hour meeting. He excuses himself, somewhat distressed, with probably good reason, and leaves, and we go back, too, and we sort of said [sarcastically], “Boy, Rick, that was being very commander-like. But good for you.”

While his crew members were somewhat surprised by their commander’s remarks, Hauck explained that he was livid over the comments in the article.

I thought, “Here we are,
NASA
is shooting themselves in the foot because we are implying that this is easy.” And I had the opportunity to see this gentleman, and I said, “You have set
NASA
up for a humongous failure by the nature of this press release. . . . In my view, if we get one of these satellites back, it’ll be amazing, and if we get both of them back, it’ll be a miracle. . . . You have not done
NASA
any favors.” There’s no sense in trying to tell the American people and the taxpayers that what you’re doing is easy, because it isn’t easy. It’s very hard, and any implication that it’s easy is a disservice to everybody.

Many parties had a vested interest in bringing the satellites back to Earth.
NASA
was still trying to prove the shuttle’s capabilities. The insurance companies that now owned the failed spacecraft wanted them returned. And McDonnell Douglas, who made the solid rocket motors that failed, was interested in studying what happened to cause the motors to fail. “You put those all together, and there was great motivation from all sides to mount a rescue mission to bring those satellites back,” said Hauck.

The opportunity to recover the satellites came with a great burden of responsibility, even more than usual, Allen said, because of the insurance companies involved. The two insurance companies were Lloyd’s of London and International Technology Underwriters. He explained that while, for insurance companies in the United States, the potential for losses is mostly felt by the corporations, for Lloyd’s, one of the first insurers in the world marketplace, there was a much higher level of personal risk for involved stakeholders. “We learned in a rather roundabout way that more than a few lives would be dramatically affected by our success or nonsuccess, lives of people whom we did not know on the ground, but . . . individuals who would lose [a] considerable amount of their personal wealth if the satellites were not recovered.”

Allen said he found it bizarre that the insurance industry was now involved in space exploration.

I remember hearing an insurance person from England describe the mission we were about to set off on as very unusual, to his way of thinking, because, he pointed out, he had spent a lifetime insuring things against fire or the chance they would explode, and he said, “With you chaps in the space business, you purposely set fire to a massive amount of explosives, and I find myself now betting on whether you can control the explosion or not.” And I thought that was a rather graphic way to describe a rocket launch. The more one thinks about it, though, it’s a very accurate way, and sadly, a year later, we saw an example of what happened when we chaps could not control the explosion, and we lost
Challenger
as a consequence, as a tragic consequence.

Capturing the satellites was not an easy assignment, Allen said. Those who built the satellites never envisioned they would be revisited, much less handled by astronauts. The satellites were supposed to be twenty-two thousand miles above the surface of Earth in geosynchronous orbit, far higher than the Space Shuttles could reach, but they had not achieved that orbit.
The only features of the satellites that it might be possible to use as a handle were microwave guides and antennae affixed to the top of the satellites, or possibly the engine nozzle at the bottom of the satellites that was used to reposition them from time to time.

NASA
engineers came up with a very clever plan, Allen said. “We decided the antennae would be too fragile to grapple, so they decided we would stab the satellite from the back, using a device that I later called a tribute to Rube Goldberg and Sigmund Freud, the device we called the Stinger.”

Allen said the device resembled a folded umbrella. During a spacewalk, the astronauts would put the Stinger inside the rocket and then open it so that the tines of the umbrella would stick against the sides. “When completely suited in the spacesuit and in the
MMU
with the Stinger device affixed to our chest, we looked for all the world like a space-age medieval knight entering a jousting contest,” Allen said.

Allen was looking forward to the opportunity to finally don a spacesuit for the recovery operations, after having missed out on participating in the first shuttle spacewalk back on
STS
-5, due to a problem with the
EVA
suit. He noted a bit of irony in the fact that, without the satellite recovery, he likely would not have had a spacewalk on this mission, either—on
STS
-5 he had lost out on performing a spacewalk because of one malfunction, and now, because of a malfunction on a different mission, he was getting a second chance.

Allen and Dale Gardner were suited up with help from Pilot David Walker. Walker went to place Allen’s helmet on his head, but Allen said, “Stop.”

I said, “David, stop. I am so hungry. I really need a cookie or something to eat.” He said, “Oh, Joe, how could you?” . . . I said, “David, I need a butter cookie.” So he goes off into the food pantry, grabs things, throws it hither and yon, and comes back with a butter cookie. I open my mouth—keep in mind I can’t use my hands now—he puts the butter cookie into my mouth, the whole thing, and then he hits my jaw shut. He says, “Eat it, but don’t choke, you little rodent.” I ate the butter cookie; felt better. David put the helmet onto me, popped it. We’re now sealed, and there unfolded a pressurizing and then a depressurizing of the airlock, and the
EVA
started.

Allen maneuvered himself in the
MMU
to the first satellite and successfully grabbed hold of it. But he was facing the sun and was being blinded by its brightness. He radioed to his crew inside the orbiter, and Hauck
moved the orbiter so that a shadow was cast on the satellite and Allen was no longer seeing the sun.

“It was beautiful, clever as could be,” said Allen. “I could then see the bull’s-eye, the center, the rocket engine, very easily, threaded it like I’d done it all my life, deployed the tines of the Stinger, tightened down the clamp, and voilà, there it was. Anna [Fisher] grappled me with no problem at all; turned around, and Dale set about affixing the clamp to go to the top.”

However, the tool designed to fit on the top of the satellite did not fit. The problem, the crew later learned, was that the actual satellite was not built to the drawings the crew had used on the ground.

About the time we realized this was the case,
Discovery
came acquisition of signal, and we reported to the ground that the holding tool did not fit, and they said, “Roger that. We’ll get the back room working on it. What is your plan?” And we said, “We’re going to go to Plan B.” “Roger that. See you next
AOS
,” and the ground was now out of earshot again. David Walker, bless his heart, was the keeper of all the Plan Bs that we as a crew, prior to the launch, had devised, and we’d written them down. What would we do in the event that “blank” failed? We had a Plan B for what we would do in the event that this clamp failed, and it was, sad to say, written on David’s piece of paper just as “Improvise.” We really did not know what we were going to do.

The crew discussed it and decided that improvisation would involve affixing a foot restraint on the orbiter into which Allen could maneuver the
MMU
with the satellite. There Fisher would help move the satellite so that Allen could hold the top of it, not with the arm’s grapple fixture, but just by getting a handhold. Gardner would then, by himself, attach the large clamp—normally a two-person job—to the bottom of the satellite. Allen and Gardner had successfully maneuvered the clamp with two people in the water tank at Johnson Space Center several times, and even with two people it hadn’t been easy.

Allen held the satellite for about two hours while Gardner single-handedly affixed the big clamp. “The fact he was able to do it still astonishes me, but he was,” said Allen.

He’s just persistent, the most persistent individual I’ve ever worked with, and one of the smartest, and he did the impossible. Ultimately the clamp was affixed. I
later was given far too much credit for supporting a two-thousand-pound satellite for one orbit of the Earth, and a political cartoon appeared in Canadian newspapers the next day showing a chunky little spacesuited crewman standing on the gunnel of an orbiter holding this satellite, and the caption was, “Nobody kicks sand in this man’s face anymore,” referring back to an old Charles Atlas ad of many, many decades earlier. Dale was not recognized in the paper for the heroic work he had done, but his fellow crew members knew of it and still know of it.