Riding Rockets (22 page)

On December 8, 1983, my dream of spaceflight, not to mention the entire shuttle program, almost ended when STS-9 landed on fire. During the final moments of
Columbia
’s approach, one of its hydraulic pumps experienced a propellant leak that dumped hydrazine, a particularly wicked fuel, into the aft engine compartment. The resulting fire quickly spread to a second hydraulic system and both systems failed shortly after touchdown. Had the fire started a moment earlier, it probably would have caused all three hydraulic systems to fail while
Columbia
was still airborne. Like a car losing power steering, the controls would have frozen.
Columbia
would have rolled out of control and crashed into the desert. John Young and his crew missed death by a handful of seconds. As I later examined photos of the fire damage, I thought of John’s earlier pronouncement, “God watches out for babies, drunks, and astronauts.”

The failure mode that caused the hydrazine leak was quickly identified and corrected. The shuttle program rolled on and my spirits soared…and then, just as quickly, came crashing back to Earth. On the very next mission, STS-41B, both of its deployed satellites failed to reach their intended orbit due to booster rocket malfunctions. I was thrown back into hell. We had the identical booster rocket attached to one of our two communication satellites. It was unlikely NASA would launch
Discovery
with only a single satellite as freight. For weeks we fretted and sweated while NASA HQ shuffled payloads and, for a second time, we survived with
Discovery.
One mission to go.

We were now practically living in the simulators—one session was fifty-six hours in duration. Hank and Mike were spending most of their time practicing launch aborts and landings. Steve, Judy, and I were consumed with payload training. There was also spacewalk training. None was planned for our mission but every shuttle crew included two astronauts who were prepared for an emergency spacewalk. This was to provide one more line of defense against things that could kill a crew, like not being able to close the Payload Bay Doors (PLBD). To attempt reentry with those open would be certain death. This was why every component associated with the door closing and locking systems was redundant. Redundant motors were powered by redundant electrical systems through a myriad of redundant black boxes and redundant wiring. One failure of anything would not prevent an astronaut crew from closing and locking the doors. But that wasn’t good enough for NASA. They wanted to back up even this redundancy with astronaut spacewalkers who could manually string a lanyard to a door edge and winch it closed, then hand-install and manually tighten locks. Other contingencies also had to be considered. The shuttle’s high-gain antenna and the robot arm were both mechanisms that could become stuck outside the PLBD envelope and interfere with door closure. The two-man contingency spacewalkers were trained to muscle these devices inside the bay and tie them down. Hank designated Hawley and me as the EVA (spacewalk) crewmembers and Judy as our Intra-Vehicular Activity (IVA) crewmember. It would be her job to help us dress in the 300-pound Extra-vehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), i.e., a spacesuit, assist us in the suit checkout, and follow us in the EVA checklists to ensure we didn’t make a mistake. A spacewalking crewmember entered a whole new arena of risks. When pressurized, the suits became as hard as a steel-belted radial, severely impairing movement and tactile feel. In this condition a mistake was possible, perhaps a deadly one. If Hawley and I had to do a spacewalk, Judy would be our omnipresent guardian angel, watching us from inside
Discovery
and making certain we followed every procedure exactly.

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…a
planned
spacewalk. I never wanted to hear the word
contingency
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 nervous
You 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 did
that
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 a
Playboy
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.