Riding Rockets (27 page)

Until my STS-41D association with Judy, I had believed it impossible for a man to be the close friend of an attractive woman. It was a fact of testosterone as irrefutable as gravity was a fact of nature. Men see attractive women as sex objects and that destroys any hope of close friendship. But I had discovered an exception to that rule. When a man and woman are thrown together for several years of training for a journey that has the potential to kill them, the man learns to see through the woman’s youth and beauty and measure her proficiency. He learns to see her as somebody whose response in an emergency might mean
his
life or death. On that June evening, six years after we first met, I could now see and appreciate Judy’s skills as an astronaut. I could trust her with my life. Tomorrow, I would do exactly that.

Several years later I would learn this friendship had placed my name on the office grapevine. After
Challenger,
I was in Hank Hartsfield’s backseat on a T-38 flight. We had been sharing our thoughts on the disaster and the loss of so many friends when Hank had commented, “Judy’s death must have been particularly hard on you.” I was confused by the statement. The death of all the crew had been hard on me. I asked him, “Why do you say that?” To which Hank had replied, “Well…being that you two were sleeping together.” I was stunned. I proclaimed innocence but I knew he didn’t believe me. Maybe it is possible for a man to share a close relationship with a beautiful woman that does not include sex, but don’t expect other men to believe it.

At the crew quarters I showered and returned to the main conference room. Hank was my only company. He was reading the newspaper, mumbling about the idiocy of liberals and their destruction of the country. “Goddammit, I wish Ted Kennedy would find another bridge…with deeper and wider water under it.” I had long before learned not to respond. It would only elicit a filibuster on the topic. When Hank got wound up on politics, you could never escape.

Our satellite TV, for some fortuitous reason, received the Playboy Channel. I marveled at this fact as much as I marveled that alligators didn’t chase astronauts. How did the Playboy Channel end up on the TV in the astronaut crew quarters? I suspect it was just one of those government snafus. There was a KSC bean counter somewhere who had contracted with a company for satellite TV and this was what we got. It would probably have taken multiple forms in triplicate and ten thousand taxpayer dollars to turn it off. I wondered if the signal was coming from a satellite a shuttle had previously placed in orbit. That would be a unique claim to fame: “I was the guy who put the Playboy Channel in space.”

So, at T-12 hours and counting I was listening to Hank grumble, “Gloria Steinem should be in Ted Kennedy’s car when he finds that bridge,” while watching a topless model speaking about her turn-ons, “a six-pack belly and world peace,” and turnoffs, “pollution and rude people.”

I finally headed to my room for sleep. I knew that would be a struggle. I was bipolar with the frequency of a tuning fork, oscillating between fear and joy. The flight surgeon had given us sleeping pills but I had no intention of taking one. There was still a last physical exam ahead and I didn’t want an adverse reaction to the pills prompting a medical question. There were plenty of MSes who would gleefully step into my shoes on a moment’s notice. I wasn’t about to give any of those vultures that opportunity.

I lay in bed and studied the room’s only wall decoration, a framed photo of an exploding volcano. The photo was a time exposure so the glowing ejected lava was captured as arcing streaks against a black sky. Bloodred coils of molten rock snaked downward on the skirt of the mountain. I wondered what bureaucrat had been doing the interior decorating for the astronaut crew quarters and thought,
If it was my last night before a mission into space, what wall art would I like to reflect upon to calm my uneasy soul? I know…an exploding volcano with lots of fire and sparks!
It was like showing films of airplane crashes on an airliner as the in-flight movie. If you’re going to hang a picture of something exploding, why not hang a photo of a NASA rocket exploding on the launchpad? That would be rich.

The only sound was a muffled, unintelligible voice coming through the steel wall next to my ear. Mike Coats was talking on the phone to Diane and his children. I had made my final call to Donna and the kids a couple hours earlier and had performed as poorly in that good-bye as I had in person on the beach. Even though I now had time to make another call, I did not. One more good-bye wasn’t going to help me or Donna. Mike was a better man than I, God bless him.

At least I had done a good job of financially protecting my family in the event of my death. I had three insurance policies on my life. Months earlier I had written each insurance company explaining my pending shuttle launch and asking if there was any fine print on the policies that would negate the payout if I died on the shuttle. Each company had replied in writing that its policy would be unaffected by death by rocket. I had stapled each of those letters to the respective policies and put them with my will. Donna wouldn’t have to deal with any surprises there.

What were the chances there was a Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer? I wondered. There was not, thank God. It would have scared the shit out of me if NASA thought we needed one. “We’re not sure this rocket will work, so here’s our ultimate emergency backup, a Bible.”

I didn’t need a Bible to talk to God. I prayed for my family. I prayed for myself. I prayed I wouldn’t blow up and then I prayed harder that I wouldn’t screw up. Even my prayers reflected the astronaut credo, “Better dead than look bad.”

At some point in the night, exhaustion overpowered fear and excitement, and I fell into a shallow sleep. The smell of cooking bacon woke me. The dieticians had arrived and were making breakfast. My stomach turned in disgust. The thought of food was nauseating.

I could hear the wake-up knocks on the doors of the other crewmembers and wondered how many of them were actually asleep. I could believe Hank had slept well. Anybody who could read a newspaper and deliver political commentary on the eve of a shuttle launch must have their shit together. But I imagined the rest of the crew had spent much of the night as I had, counting holes in the ceiling tile.

The knock came on my door and I opened it to Olan Bertrand’s smiling face. Olan was one of the Vehicle Integration Test Team (VITT) members and would be a participant in our final prelaunch briefing. He was also a Louisiana Cajun with an accent as thick as a bowl of jambalaya. He mumbled something I interpreted as “The weather and the bird are looking good,” but could have been “It’s raining like hell and
Discovery
blew over.” Only his smile told me it was the former and not the latter.

I showered and shaved, then trimmed my fingernails. Some of the early spacewalkers had painfully torn their nails on the inside of the suit gloves and had suggested contingency spacewalkers cut them short, too. I did so and filed them to snag-free crescents.

For breakfast I dressed in a mission golf shirt. I had no appetite, but it was a mandatory photo opportunity. A NASA cameraman entered to film us sitting around the table. I faked a carefree smile and waved. Most of us ate nothing or very lightly. I had a piece of toast. As a teenager I had always heard the “voice of NASA” say the astronauts were enjoying a breakfast of steak and eggs before launch. One bite of that fare and I would have vomited. Nobody drank coffee. That would have been bladder suicide.

After the cameraman was gone, I gave Judy my emery board. “You can do your nails during ascent.” She laughed. It had been a running Zoo Crew joke that, as a Jewish American Princess (JAP), she would be giving herself a manicure during the countdown. With the nail file I included my latest JAP joke: “What does a JAP say when she inadvertently knocks over a priceless Ming dynasty vase, it shatters on the floor, and museum officials rush to the scene?”

Judy sighed in resignation. “What does she say, Tarzan?”

“She shouts, ‘
I’m okay! I’m okay!’
”

After the meal, we collected in the main briefing room for a teleconference to review the launch countdown status and the weather forecast. Everything looked good. The weather for Dakar, Senegal, Africa, was covered. It was our primary transatlantic abort site, just twenty-five harrowing minutes away from Florida via a wounded shuttle. I really didn’t want to make my first visit to Africa in a space shuttle.

Next, we visited flight surgeons Jim Logan and Don Stewart in the gym for a cursory last exam. They checked our ears, throat, temperature, and blood pressure. I put myself in a happy place to ensure the last was within limits. Both doctors were good friends of the Zoo Crew, but if they had raised any medical issues at this moment, others would have later found their arrow-riddled bodies spread-eagled to the archery hay bale. We wouldn’t have missed.

We then cycled through the bathroom for a next-to-last gravity-assisted waste collection. We’d have one more chance at the launchpad toilet. My self-imposed fast from liquids was working. I had no urges, but nevertheless I took advantage of the moment to squeeze out a few drops of urine.

I returned to my room and began to dress. While we had been at breakfast, the suit crew had arranged our wardrobe on the bed. The first item I donned was my urine collection device. I stepped through the leg openings and pulled the condom toward my penis. It looked incredibly small. Not the condom…my penis. I coached the recalcitrant appendage into the latex. It promptly slipped from my body. Apprehension had sucked every molecule of blood from my crotch. I doubted even a naked Bo Derek doing jumping jacks in front of me would have stirred life into this lizard.

I made a second attempt to get my sword into its sheath, this time taking the weight of the UCD bladder in my hand so I would stay attached. I Velcroed the device around my waist, accepting the results whatever they might be. I had no choice. There was a countdown clock ticking.

I finished dressing in my flight suit, then filled my pockets with spare prescription glasses, pencils, pressurized space pens, and barf bags…lots of barf bags. I put one in each of my chest pockets and a couple spares in other pockets. Would I be a victim of space sickness? I had been sick so many times in the backseats of various jets, I couldn’t believe I would be spared in space. I toyed with the idea of taking one of NASA’s antinausea pills, a mixture of scopolamine (a downer) and Dexedrine (an upper), but decided otherwise. I wanted to know my Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS) susceptibility and drugs would camouflage it. Besides, I didn’t think the pill would work. Months earlier I had been on a deep-sea-fishing trip with a group of astronauts, several of whom had taken the capsule. Some had still gotten seasick. Another guest on the same trip, who had also swallowed a ScopeDex, had been so suddenly struck with nausea he had vomited before getting to the rail. The memory of NASA’s miracle SAS pill floating in a puddle of barf on the fantail of a fishing boat did nothing to inspire confidence that the pills would help me in space. I left them behind.

Fully dressed and with pockets loaded, I stepped from my room and joined the rest of the crew in a walk to the elevator. Judy was in front of me and I could hear the whooshing sound of her diaper plastic rubbing against her coveralls. I teased her, “You’re getting a little broad in the beam, JR.”

“Screw you, Tarzan.”

How different from reality were all those science fiction movies of my youth. As Lloyd Bridges (Colonel Floyd Graham ) and Osa Massen (Dr. Lisa Van Horn) boarded their
Rocketship X-M
in the 1950 Hollywood classic of the same title, I don’t recall them commenting on the condoms and diapers they were wearing.

A group of NASA employees welcomed us with applause on our exit from the crew quarters. I wanted to embrace them and say, “Thank you for giving me this moment.” They were the best in the world.

We stepped into the elevator and two heavyset men wearing tool belts followed us. I was shocked. We were on our way to fly the space shuttle and two blue-collar workers had decided to hitch a ride with us. When the elevator opened and the photographers got this picture, it was going to be a hoot. A bewildered Hank had to ask, “What are you guys doing?”

“We’re elevator repairmen. There’ve been reports this elevator is giving you guys problems. We didn’t want you to get stuck on your way to your rocket.” We all laughed. NASA thinks of everything. A comforting thought at this moment.

But the workers were not needed. We creaked to ground level without a problem and exited the building to cheers and more applause from a larger group of the NASA team.

Outside, I immediately looked to the sky hoping to see stars, hoping for proof the weather was good. But the lights of the cameras filming our departure had ruined my night vision.

We climbed into the astro-van and began the drive to Pad 39A, the same pad from which Neil Armstrong had embarked on his historic journey to the moon fifteen years earlier. I wondered what his drive had been like. The van air-conditioning was making ours frigid. My skin was clammy and I was shivering. Nervous small talk occupied us. I hoped nobody could hear my heart. Each pulse seemed like a detonation.

We passed successive security checkpoints where the guards saluted or waved or flashed a thumbs-up. They had trucks parked nearby for their own evacuation to more remote points. Closer to the pad we passed several fire trucks and ambulances. Their crews were clad in silver firefighting suits and hovered near their vehicles. When the launchpad closeout crew departed, these men and women would remain in a nearby bunker, ready to race to our rescue if there was a problem. I couldn’t imagine any problem involving 4 million pounds of propellant leaving anything to rescue. There were certainly six body bags in those ambulances.

I was as scared as I had ever been in my life. But at that moment, if God had appeared and told me there was a 90 percent probability I wasn’t going to return from this mission alive and had given me an opportunity to jump from that crew van, I would have shouted, “No!” For this rookie flight, I would take a one in ten chance. I had dreamed of this moment since childhood. I had to go. Even if God had given me a vision of what the other nine chances meant, a vision of my charred remains being zipped into one of those body bags, I still would have declined His offer to exit the van. I had to make this flight.