Leaving Orbit (42 page)

“Get any good shots?” my seatmate asks me, casting a curious eye over my small bag and empty hands.

“I’m not a photographer,” I answer, and then because he seems to be waiting for something more, “I’m a writer.”

“A writer. What do you write?”

“I’m trying to write about the end of the shuttle era. Trying to make sense of what all this means.” I gesture vaguely toward
Atlantis.
As I speak, I’m aware of how very iffy this all sounds.

“Huh.” He is quiet for a minute. “And what
does
it mean?”

I look out the window at a Japanese film crew packing up their elaborate setup, huge sheets of plywood they have laid out on the grass to enable them to get a smooth dolly shot, and I can’t imagine they got any images anywhere near worth the effort, but we watch while they haul all their equipment back into the van piece by piece against the totally unacceptable heat and humidity. The futility of their task seems to signify something.

“I have no idea what it means,” I tell him truthfully. “I’ve been out here for everything, and I have even less of a clue than when I started.”

He seems unsure of what to say to this, as if I’ve told him I’m dying of cancer. I’m struck with an idea. I turn in my seat to face him.

“What do
you
think it means?” I ask him. “You’ve been out here taking pictures, right? What do you think it means that we’re not going anymore?”

He takes a deep breath, leans his head back against the bus seat. I’m not sure whether he’s thinking or taking a brief nap.

Finally he speaks. “I don’t think it means anything, it means we’ve decided to stop,” he says. “It means a lot of people on this bus are about to lose their jobs.”

When we finally start moving, the bus circles around and delivers us to the opposite end of the Orbiter Processing Facility from where
Atlantis
is now displayed. We get out and look around. A small crowd presses toward a low barrier set up to keep us from touching the orbiter. People take turns snapping each other’s photos with it. Bins of ice cream and bottled water are on offer, and I immediately help myself to both. A number of awnings are set up—under one, people are invited to sign a banner commemorating this mission that will be hung in the Vehicle Assembly Building. I find a blank spot and write my son’s name and the date. Under another awning, a live band is playing R&B covers. They are with the Air Force Reserve, and they remind me of a high-end wedding band; they even have a horn section. Nearby, a woman in a union T-shirt is handing out cardboard fans with the NASA logo, and not far from her a man is handing out little American flags. People wandering by are taking one of each; I accept a fan and after a moment’s thought I decline the flag, thinking the stick is probably too long and pointy to carry on board my flight. The man handing out the flags scowls at me.

As I slink away, I see Omar emerge from OPF. I shout and wave, but he only raises a single hand to waist height to acknowledge me, looking totally unsurprised to find me here. I’ve texted him I was coming, and we’ve managed to find each other at other launches and events, but this one feels different. It’s an event for NASA employees only, and my sense that I’m not really supposed to be here, that I somehow got in on a technicality, makes me feel giddy about catching sight of my one friend who is also an employee.

Omar grabs two ice cream bars out of the nearest container and tosses me one. I don’t mention that I ate one two minutes ago and eat this one too.

“Want your picture with
Atlantis
?” Omar offers, and we make our way up to the barricade. We trade phones and take each other’s pictures with the orbiter peeking over our shoulders. It’s funny that so many of the people here, including Omar, have worked with these machines every day for years, yet they still clamor to take pictures with them like first-time tourists. Being close to this orbiter today is still a privilege.

A dais is set up with a microphone toward the center of the barricade, not far from where we have worked our way to the front of the crowd, and soon Charles Bolden, the NASA administrator, takes the stage to welcome us. He speaks for five minutes, somehow not repeating anything I heard him say at the history conference but not really saying anything new either. Then we hear from the crew of
Atlantis.
They have changed out of their orange reentry pressure suits and into blue flight suits (and, presumably, have showered). One by one they speak, thanking the people here for keeping them safe, for taking such good care of their ship. As Chris Ferguson steps aside to let Rex Walheim come to the microphone, I notice he stumbles over his feet a bit, a misstep then overcorrection, as if he is walking on the deck of a boat encountering swelling waves. I realize that what I am seeing is his readjustment to gravity.

“Isn’t it weird,” I say to Omar, “that these people just got back from space?” Even as I say this, I know the observation is idiotic. Of course they’re just back from space; that’s why we’re all here.

But Omar nods. “It really is,” he says.

After the speeches are over, the Air Force Reserve band tries to get the crowd dancing, but with limited success. A lot of partygoers are standing around watching amiably, maybe clapping along, but no one is dancing. If these bottles we’re holding contained beer instead of water, maybe. But at work in the middle of a weekday with no alcohol—not a chance.

But then one dude steps forward. Tall and rangy, probably not any older than me but with a weathered face that reflects years spent in the Florida sun. He dances by himself, to “Celebrate Good Times,” and his footwork is reminiscent of Chris Ferguson’s stumble at the microphone. This man appears to have somehow gotten some alcohol on base, and he is dancing accordingly. Everyone still stands around, but now we are all watching him.

Where he went wrong was in taking the word
party
literally, when the event is not in fact a party but a wake. Best to stand around somberly. A wake with speeches from astronauts and NASA officials, a wake with
Atlantis
, fresh from its reentry into the atmosphere, in attendance. A wake with ice cream, in hundred-degree heat, a party where most of the partygoers know they are about to be laid off. We watch him dance a few minutes more, then avert our eyes and move on.

Omar and I walk around. The crowd thins out more the farther we get from
Atlantis
, and past the entrance to OPF-1 there is almost no one. We step over a set of train tracks, built to deliver the solid rocket boosters directly to the Vehicle Assembly Building from the contractor in Utah. Past that, the cliff wall of the VAB. One of the high bay doors is open, and I shield my eyes, straining to see inside.

“Trying to see
Discovery
?” Omar asks, following my eyes.
Discovery
has been in the VAB, having its engines and other working parts removed, in preparation for transport to the Air and Space Museum. Omar has been tweeting and posting on Facebook about this dismantling process, and though he doesn’t go on and on about it, it’s clear he finds it disturbing, the lifelong mandate to keep the orbiter safe from harm suddenly reversed into overseeing its dismemberment.

“She’s in there,” Omar tells me. “But I don’t think you’ll be able to see anything from here.” As we move toward the fence, Omar wonders aloud whether he might be able to get me past the gate.

“I’m not supposed to take you in there,” Omar explains, then thinks something over. “It might depend on who’s working security, though.”

As we get closer, we see an idling black SUV with a single guard in it. He steps one foot out onto the tarmac and juts his chin at Omar.

“She wanted to try to see inside the VAB a bit,” Omar says in a chummy, what-do-you-say-bro tone of voice. I can tell he doesn’t know this guy at all.

“Badge?” the guard asks. Omar hands over his work badge. I unclip my media badge and hand that to him as well.

The guard looks me over thoroughly.

“Sorry, dog,” the guard tells Omar, handing us both back our badges. “I can really only let in folks specifically badged for VAB.” It occurs to me only then that he might have thought Omar was trying to impress a date, and that maybe we’d have had better luck if I kept my media badge to myself. I feel a little disappointed, partly because I want to see
Discovery
, wanted to walk into the cool, dark VAB with Omar and no one else. But also because the guard seemed to be basing his decision on something other than our badges, and I can’t help but think if I had been younger or cuter he would have let us in.

As we walk away, Omar is apologetic about not getting me into the VAB, and I tell him he has nothing to be sorry for, after everything he
has
gotten me into. I wonder privately what Omar would have done in that guard’s place—it’s impossible to imagine him bending the rules, but also hard to picture him failing to come through for a coworker asking a favor.

After some more wandering around, Omar tells me he has to go back to OPF—he’s working today, and people are taking turns coming out to the party. For a while after he’s gone I linger, watching the band, eavesdropping, eating more ice cream, watching
Atlantis
, and watching people watch it. A call goes out for media people to get back on the bus, but I ignore it. Even though I’ve signed a form saying I will stay with media escorts and won’t wander around unaccompanied, I feel pretty confident that I won’t get in any trouble today. If I’m caught, I will say I missed the last bus, which will more or less be true.

Eventually, when the crowd starts to thin out, I set out to head back to the Press Site by circling around the VAB on foot, a project that, I only now start to realize, is going to take me a while. For the millionth time, the building has fooled me with its hugeness. The sun is fully blazing now in the early afternoon, I realize it’s been hours since I applied some sunscreen I begged off a Scottish journalist, and I put my Lawrence of Arabia scarf back on my head. I haven’t slept for thirty-two hours. I walk and walk and walk and the huge building next to me hardly seems to change as I walk. It is city blocks long.

Then something strikes me: I am walking, by myself, next to the Vehicle Assembly Building in the middle of the day. I’m loose on the grounds of the Kennedy Space Center. I’m walking through a strange landscape I have come to know so well in my mind it feels like another home to me, yet it still feels like a setting for science fiction. This is where the spaceships are assembled, and I will never get used to that—the people who assemble the spaceships themselves say they never get used to that—even as the spaceships are retired and will be assembled no longer.

For the many minutes it takes me to circumnavigate the enormous beige edifice, I look up at it. I think of the way architecture, over time, can become transmuted into pure emotion. I haven’t really been seeing the VAB, I just feel an overwhelming wonder and admiration and loss. But now I look closely. Turkey vultures circle endlessly overhead, as they always do. Seeing it this close up, I finally notice the many imperfections on the facade, places where the beige-gray paint has been touched up after hurricanes and doesn’t quite match, the way the corrugated surface, seen from directly below, distorts the huge NASA logo. When I pass the high bay doors, I squint inside again to try to catch a glimpse of
Discovery.
It’s too far away.

I get back to the Press Site, where my rental car waits in the parking lot, baking in the heat. It took me longer to walk back here than I thought it would, and I really need to be getting on my way to the airport. But before I get in the car, I decide to visit the grassy field with the countdown clock at the edge of the Turn Basin. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to visit the Press Site again, whether there will be another event that will allow me to get badged, whether I will ever have an excuse to come to the Kennedy Space Center again at all.

The press parking lot is still half full, and I imagine things are still bustling inside the News Center. But no one is out here near the countdown clock; nothing is launching. I compare in my mind what this grassy field looked like on the day of the launch, thirteen days ago—the tents and awnings and cameras and tripods and mic booms and thousands of journalists in clumps and pairs and singly, speaking a dozen different languages. All heady with excitement. The land shows no trace of this, except for some tire tracks cutting through the long grass. I look out at the Turn Basin, its calm water. I look at the countdown clock, now powered down, counting nothing. With my phone, I snap a picture of the clump of tropical foliage at the edge of the grassy field. All along I’ve been thinking that Norman Mailer had an experience similar to mine, that he and I saw similar events from the same vantage point. But now that a certain sense of history is catching up with those at my end of the rope, it seems more and more clear to me that what Norman Mailer and I saw could not have been more different. What he saw was a moment that felt like it was going to be the start of an era. I have never really tried to imagine what it would feel like to be inside that moment, the sixties optimism that my parents’ generation is always trying to make people younger than themselves understand, not yet ground down into a cliché but a real palpable hope, an actual optimism that here,
now
, people could make things different. That things could start to be better than they had been from that moment on. For as long as I’ve been alive that idea has been demonstrably false. But on the morning of the launch of Apollo 11, even the gruffest, most cynical of Americans, even Norman Mailer himself, could inhabit that optimism for a moment. For that moment, he thought it might be true that the achievement of going to the moon would permanently change the human condition. I’ve always envied him the simple experience of watching that launch, but now that I’ve come to understand what he saw, my envy is an entirely different kind. Because what must
that
have been like? To think everything was about to get better, that people, all of them, were going to change for the better, once and for all?