Riding Rockets (46 page)

When word of this program reached the civilians in the astronaut office, one particularly bookish scientist challenged the fairness of it. “If the air force and navy are sending its astronauts on a re-bluing, what is NASA going to do for us civilians?” Mark Lee, an air force fighter pilot, looked at the whiner and replied, “You guys are going to get re-nerded.”

West Berlin was the best place to get eyeball to eyeball with the enemy, so the air force flew us there. This was 1987 and the infamous Berlin Wall still had two years of life left in it. We attended various classified briefings and got a helicopter tour of the Iron Curtain, flying over death strips guarded from watchtowers and barricaded with razor wire.

One evening we donned our uniforms, passed through a border checkpoint, and walked into East Berlin for supper. The city was still considered occupied and the military personnel of the occupying countries could pass into one another’s zones, although it was a one-sided passage. The East didn’t allow their troops into the West, knowing they would never come back.

In our walk from West to East we traveled back to 1945. Color had yet to come to this part of the world. Everything was gray and drab, even the clothing of the women. Remote-control TV cameras mounted on buildings watched us and other pedestrians. The streets were heavily patrolled by Kalashnikov-toting East German and Soviet guards. They glared at us like we were the enemy, which, of course, we were. As we passed one pair of guards, I pointed to a medal on my chest and said to John Blaha (class of 1980) in an intentionally loud voice, “And I got this one for killing ten commies.” The hostile expressions of the guards didn’t change. Apparently they didn’t speak English, which was probably a good thing for me.

Our air force host led us to his favorite East Berlin restaurant. I was prepared to be disappointed, but the place was clean, brightly lit, and staffed with young and beautiful East German fräuleins. As we entered, the rest of the patrons, all East German and Soviet military officers, gave us their best game face. We ignored them. Several tables were shoved together to accommodate our entourage and we got down to the business of drinking. We were soon a rowdy spectacle for the rest of the crowd. They stared at us with disapproving expressions, as if laughing and smiling were forbidden in the workers’ paradise.

Later in the evening an intoxicated John Blaha grabbed a vase of daffodils and began to peer into each bloom with the focus of a horticulturist. I wondered if he had slipped into alcohol poisoning, but he whispered to me, “I’ll bet the KGB has bugged this vase. They’re probably in a back room listening to everything we’re saying. Well, I’ll give them something to think about.” He lifted the flowers to his mouth like a microphone and began to speak loudly into their blooms: “Mike, wasn’t that briefing about our new F-99 Mach 7 fighter really interesting?” Then he handed the vase to me.

I joined in the fun. “Yeah, and to think Mach 7 is its
single
-engine speed.”

The others at the table picked up on our disinformation campaign and the vase of flowers went from hand to hand while the rest of our group made even more outrageous claims about secret weapon systems we had recently seen or flown. Meanwhile, the humorless commie diners stared at us as if we were mad. Since we were talking into daffodil blooms, I could understand their bewilderment.

When the vase finally made it back to Blaha, he closed the floor show by speaking into it in an exceptionally loud voice. “Why is it that visiting Soviet basketball teams never play the Celtics or Lakers? Whenever they come to the USA they always play some piss-poor university team. What are they…pussies?” We all wondered how that would translate back in the Kremlin.

Imagine my shock when, several months later, Blaha ran into my office with a newspaper article describing how the Soviets, for the first time in history, were going to allow their basketball team to play an exhibition game with an NBA team. “I told you that vase was bugged,” Blaha shouted. We laughed at the image of an army of KGB spies hunting for that F-99 fighter.

Our journey into the heart of the enemy camp wasn’t the highlight of that evening. Back at our hotel, four of us donned our bathing suits and headed for the sauna. There we encountered a middle-aged fräulein with a Mr. T physique who handed us towels and shower clogs and then pointed to our suits and said,
“Nein.”
The suits were not allowed. It was a nude spa. We exchanged a few self-conscious glances. But there were no other females present and only a saliva test would have confirmed our receptionist’s gender. We stripped. What a photo that would have made…four of America’s heroes marching to the sauna like we marched to our space shuttles, except we were marching completely bare-assed. We opened the door and entered a steamy room. When our eyes adjusted to the dim light we realized we were sitting with a half dozen naked women. The spa was coed. Oh well, when in Rome…

Later I was climbing out of a small pool when a very attractive and very naked German woman came to me. Someone in our group must have dropped the astronaut bomb because she wanted to ask a few questions about flying in space. I could barely understand what she was saying…not because her English was poor. On the contrary, it was excellent. Rather, it was because 99 percent of my meager mental powers were being used to force my eyes to look straight ahead. As she spoke, my brain was screaming, “
Don’t look down! Don’t look down!”
I felt it would be a serious breach of naked etiquette to talk to her breasts, something we denizens of Planet AD regularly did with clothed women. Given my struggles it was a wonder I could form a coherent sentence.

Meanwhile, as I did my best to be a naked gentleman, I noticed she had no qualms about looking at
my
body. As she spoke her eyes wandered up and down as if she were appraising a cut of beef. I felt
so
violated.

Even the naked ladies weren’t the most memorable part of our re-bluing trip. Events five thousand miles away trivialized everything we had encountered. We received word from Houston that John Young’s tenure as chief of astronauts had ended. He had been reassigned to the position of JSC deputy for engineering and safety, a technical rather than team-leadership position. The celebration was immediate. Most of us had been looking forward to this day for a long, long time. My celebration was probably the most unrestrained. For the past year, John had made my life miserable. While I had heard of only two incidents in which he had suggested I was lacking as an astronaut and should be replaced, God only knew how many other times he had said it and to whom he had said it. Despite Abbey’s “forget it” comment, I couldn’t believe my reputation hadn’t been damaged. Young had been my tor-mentor, and my joy at his departure was unalloyed. That’s not to say I couldn’t admire the man for his achievements in the cockpit. He had flown in space six times, including a moonwalk mission and the first space shuttle mission. The latter had probably been the most dangerous mission ever flown by any astronaut. While many of us questioned John’s leadership abilities, no one doubted his flying skills and guts.

On April 27, 1987, TFNG Dan Brandenstein was picked to replace Young. I knew he would do a superb job as chief of astronauts. But at the same time I was angry that Abbey had screwed the air force again. The grapevine had it that the selection criteria for the position had mandated a TFNG who had flown as a shuttle commander. There were three navy TFNGs who qualified: Brandenstein, Hauck, and Hoot Gibson. There was only a single USAF TFNG veteran commander: Brewster Shaw. And why did such a disparity exist? Because of Abbey’s longtime preferential treatment of the U.S. Navy astronauts. If a bomb went off under Abbey’s car, the air force TFNGs would be at the top of the suspect list.

Chapter 30

Mission Assignment

With Brandenstein at the helm of the astronaut office, the summer of 1987 passed much more pleasantly. At the Monday meetings there were actual exchanges of ideas. Astronauts, me included, were able to get up and make a presentation without being blasted with criticism. Dan even addressed one of the criteria for crew assignments, a first in my nine years with NASA. “Crews will be picked not only on how they have performed in simulations and on past missions, but also on how well they perform their office duties.” To imagine…someone in a management position at NASA was actually revealing something about the crew selection process. It was enough to make me want to step outside and see if a squadron of pigs was flying over. Actually, what Dan gave us wasn’t much…and
couldn’t
be much because Abbey was still God. But he was doing his best to be a real chief.

The days weren’t all sunshine and roses. Along with the rest of the office, I remained in flight assignment limbo. Also, STS-26 was slipping into the summer of 1988, a year away. If and when I ever got another mission, it was moving in lockstep to the right, too.

During this period of recovery from
Challenger,
Abbey pressed ahead with a previously scheduled new astronaut class selection. Every astronaut, and probably every other thinking person in NASA, thought it was insane to be selecting another group of astronauts when it was obvious the future shuttle flight rate was going to be a fraction of what it had been. Why bring more superachievers into certain frustration? Astronauts speculated that Abbey wanted more people to expand his empire. Whatever Abbey’s motivations, the selection was made and another group of fifteen astronauts, the class of 1987, walked into NASA that summer.

At an Outpost Tavern welcoming party for this class, I ended up alone with George. I turned from getting a beer and he was approaching me with purpose.
Uh-oh,
I thought.
I sure hope he doesn’t ask me about a document bearing Dr. Terry McGuire’s name.
I was still terrified that Abbey had hidden cameras around JSC, or had somehow put a homing device on all of us so he could keep track of where we went and who we talked to. Maybe he had listening devices in every office, including the ones that McGuire used. I regretted ever having seen that astronaut leadership document. Whether I liked it or not, it made me a co-conspirator in any possible plots against him.

From his mumbles I thought I heard “How are you doing, Mike?”

“Fine, George.” My heartrate was at
Go for main engine start
–speed. That’s what happens when God is speaking to you and you’re hiding a mortal sin.

“Are you going to be around this week?”

Here it comes,
I thought. He wanted to see me in his office…with McGuire’s treatise in hand. I was ready to blurt out, “I’m innocent! I didn’t have anything to do with it! McGuire wrote it before I ever spoke to him. The others are evil, not me. Kill them. Mercy, my liege, mercy!” But all I croaked was, “This week? Well, yeah…I’ll be here.” At the moment I was very glad George never made eye contact with his audience. If the conversation continued in the direction I thought it was going, I wouldn’t have to worry about him discovering any lies in my eyes. We were both talking to our shoes.

“That’s good. There are some things we need to discuss.”

Oh, God. I’m screwed.

Abbey continued. “The SRB testing is going well. More flight assignments will have to be made. We’ll need to talk about that.” I almost dropped my beer. The topic of conversation wasn’t McGuire! While I couldn’t be certain (nobody could be certain with Abbey about anything), I sensed he was teasing me about an imminent flight assignment. I looked at him and sure enough there was a coy smile on his face. He was actually relishing his godly role as the bearer of good news.

I immediately went to Donna to tell her about the exchange. I could see she was conflicted. She was happy that I might be on the verge of drawing a second space mission, but terrified I would die flying it. Several of the
Challenger
widows were at the party and every spouse, Donna included, was watching them and thinking,
That could be me.

The next week I sat in my office, snatching up the phone on the first ring hoping to hear Abbey’s voice, but the call never came. My paranoia began to ratchet upward. Maybe I had read too much into Abbey’s words. Maybe the coy smile I thought I had detected had been nothing more than a gas pain grimace. Maybe George knew of my treasonous McGuire visit and was playing with me.

The week after also came and went with no call, and I was certain I had been toyed with. If a bomb went off under his car now, I would be alone at the top of the suspect list.

Finally, on September 10—my forty-second birthday—I landed from a T-38 mission and found a note on the crew lounge door asking me to call Abbey…at home. I was sure this was the call in which I would learn of my assignment to a second mission. Why else would Abbey want me to disturb him at 10:15
P.M
.? What a birthday present this was going to be! I dialed the number.

But it was another disappointment. George acted as if there had been no reason to call him at home. All he wanted to know was if I had seen a letter written by a New Mexico congressman on the shuttle program. I was certain, now, that Abbey was the cat and I was the crippled mouse. He was playing with me. There was no pending flight assignment.

On Saturday night I was able to momentarily forget about mission assignments. The class of 1987 hosted its first party and provided some great escapism entertainment in the form of a skit modeled after the TV show
The Dating Game.
Dan Brandenstein played the eligible bachelor. He was onstage and screened from several women…or rather class of 1987 men in drag, who were vying for his affection. The only real female participant in the skit was Mae Jemison, the first black woman astronaut. She was introduced as “celebrity host Vanna White.” I’m sure Johnny Cochran could have found a lawsuit in that. One of the men in drag was new astronaut Mario Runco. Imagine a tall, muscular Klinger from
M*A*S*H
and you have an image of Mario. He had a classic Roman nose, a perpetual five o’clock shadow, and a regional New York accent—Mario spoke Bronx. For the skit he squeezed into black fishnet stockings, a low-cut dress, and high heels. It was an ensemble that revealed enough hair to have generated a Sasquatch sighting. He was, without question, the ugliest drag queen to have ever put on lipstick.