Riding Rockets (7 page)

However, designing and building this manned liquid-fueled booster was going to be very expensive at a time when NASA’s budget was being slashed. The agency had won the race to the moon and Congress was ready to do other things with the billions of dollars NASA had been consuming. In this new budget reality NASA looked for cheaper booster designs and settled on twin reusable Solid-fueled Rocket Boosters (SRBs). These were just steel tubes filled with a propellant of ammonium perclorate and aluminum powder. These ingredients were combined with a chemical “binder,” mixed as a slurry in a large Mixmaster, then poured into the rocket tubes like dough into a bread pan. After curing in an oven, the propellant would solidify to the consistency of hard rubber, thus the name
solid
rocket booster.

Because they were the essence of simplicity, SRBs were therefore cheap. Also, because after burnout they were just empty tubes, they could be parachuted into salt water and reused. There was just one huge downside to SRBs: They were significantly more dangerous than liquid-fueled engines. The latter can be controlled during operation. Sensors can monitor temperatures and pressures, and if a problem is detected computers can command valves to close, the propellant flow will stop, and the engine will quit, just like turning off the valve to a gas barbecue. Fuel can then be diverted to the remaining engines and the mission can continue. This exact scenario has occurred on two manned space missions. On the launch of
Apollo 13
the center engine of the second stage experienced a problem and was commanded off. The remaining four engines burned longer and the mission continued. On a pre-
Challenger
shuttle mission the center SSME shut down three minutes early. The mission continued on the remaining two SSMEs, burning the fuel that would have been used by the failed engine.

Solid-fueled rocket boosters lack this significant safety advantage. Once ignited, they cannot be turned off and solid propellant cannot flow, so it cannot be diverted to another engine. At the most fundamental level, modern solid rocket boosters are no different from the first rockets launched by the Chinese thousands of years ago—after ignition they have to work because nothing can be done if they don’t. And, typically, when they do not work, the failure mode is catastrophic. The military has a long history of using solid rocket boosters on their unmanned missiles, and whenever they fail, it is almost always without warning and explosively destructive.

The SRB design for the space shuttle was even more dangerous than other solid-fueled rockets because their huge size (150 feet in length, 12 feet in diameter, 1.2 million pounds) required them to be constructed and transported in four propellant-filled segments. At Kennedy Space Center these segments would be bolted together to form the complete rocket. Each segment joint held the potential for a hot gas leak; there were four joints on each booster. Redundant rubber O-rings had to seal the SRB joints or astronauts would die.

Yet another aspect of the design of the space shuttle made the craft significantly more dangerous to fly than anything that had preceded it. It lacked an in-flight escape system. Had the
Atlas
rocket, which launched John Glenn, or the
Saturn V
rocket, which lifted Neil Armstrong and his crew, blown up in flight, those astronauts would have likely been saved by their escape systems. On top of the
Mercury
and
Apollo
capsules were emergency tractor escape rockets that would fire and pull the capsule away from a failing booster rocket. Parachutes would then automatically deploy to lower the capsule into the water. The astronauts riding in
Gemini
capsules had the protection of ejection seats at low altitude and a capsule separation/parachute system for protection at higher altitudes.

The shuttle design did accommodate two ejection seats for the commander and pilot positions, but this was a temporary feature intended to protect only the two-man crews that would fly the first four shakedown missions. After these experimental flights validated the shuttle design, NASA would declare the machine
operational,
remove the two ejection seats, and manifest up to ten astronauts per flight. Such large crews would be necessary to perform the planned satellite deployments and retrievals, spacewalks, and space laboratory research of the shuttle era.
These crews would have no in-flight escape system whatsoever.
These were the missions TFNGs were destined to fly. We would have no hope of surviving a catastrophic rocket failure, a dubious first in the history of manned spaceflight.

The lack of an escape system aboard operational space shuttles—indeed, the very idea that NASA could even apply the term
operational
to a spacecraft as complex as the shuttle—was a manifestation of NASA’s post-Apollo hubris. The NASA team responsible for the design of the space shuttle was the same team that had put twelve Americans on the moon and returned them safely to Earth across a quarter million miles of space. The Apollo program represented the greatest engineering achievement in the history of humanity. Nothing else, from the Pyramids to the Manhattan Project, comes remotely close. The men and women who were responsible for the glory of Apollo had to have been affected by their success. While no member of the shuttle design team would have ever made the blasphemous claim, “We’re gods. We can do anything,” the reality was this: The space shuttle itself
was
such a statement. Mere mortals might not be able to design and safely operate a reusable spacecraft boosted by the world’s largest, segmented, uncontrollable solid-fueled rockets, but gods certainly could.

It would be more than just the unknowns of a new spacecraft that TFNGs would face. NASA’s post-Apollo mission was also uncharted territory. Having vanquished the godless commies in a race to the moon, the new NASA mission was basically a space freight service.

NASA sold Congress on the premise the space shuttle would make flying into space cheap and they had good reason to make such a claim. The most expensive pieces of the system, the boosters and manned orbiter, were reusable. On paper the shuttle looked very good to congressional bean counters. NASA convinced Congress to designate the space shuttle as the national Space Transportation System (STS). The legislation that followed virtually guaranteed that every satellite the country manufactured would be launched into space on the shuttle: every science satellite, every military satellite, and every communication satellite. The expendable rockets that NASA, the Department of Defense (DOD), and the telecommunications industry had been using to launch these satellites—the Deltas, Atlases, and Titans—were headed the way of the dinosaur. They would never be able to compete with the shuttle on a cost basis. NASA would be space’s United Parcel Service.

But this meant that, of all the planned shuttle missions, only a handful of science laboratory missions and satellite repair missions would actually require humans. The majority of missions would be to carry satellites into orbit, something unmanned rockets had been doing just fine for decades. Succinctly put, NASA’s new “launch everything” mission would unnecessarily expose astronauts to death to do the job of unmanned expendable rockets.

As we TFNGs were being introduced, NASA had to have been feeling good. They had a monopoly on the U.S. satellite launch market. They also intended to gain a significant share of the foreign satellite launch market. The four shuttles were going to be cash cows for the agency. But the business model depended on the rapid turnaround of the orbiters. Just as a terrestrial trucking company can’t be making money with vehicles in maintenance, the shuttles wouldn’t be profitable sitting in their hangars. The shuttle fleet had to fly and fly often. NASA intended to rapidly expand the STS flight rate to twenty-plus missions per year. And, even in the wake of post-Apollo cutbacks, rosy predictions said they had the manpower to do it.

The shift from the Apollo program to the shuttle program represented a sea-change for NASA.
Everything
was different. The agency’s new mission was largely to haul freight. The vehicle doing the trucking would be reusable, something NASA had no prior experience with. The flight rate would require the NASA team to plan dozens of missions simultaneously: building and validating software, training crews, checking out vehicles and payloads. And NASA would have to do this with far less manpower and fewer resources than had been available during Apollo.

I doubt any of the TFNGs standing on that stage fully comprehended the dangers the space shuttle and NASA’s new mission would include. But it wouldn’t have mattered if we had known. If Dr. Kraft had explained exactly what we had just signed up to do—to be some of the first humans to ride uncontrollable solid-fueled rocket boosters, and to do so without the protection of an in-flight escape system, to launch satellites that didn’t really require a manned rocket, on a launch schedule that would stretch manpower and resources to their limits—it wouldn’t have diminished our enthusiasm one iota. For many of us, our life’s quest had been to hear our names read into history as astronauts. We wanted to fly into space. The sooner and the more often (and who gave a shit what was in the cargo bay), the better.

Chapter 7

Arrested Development

On my first official day as an astronaut candidate I faced two things I had never faced before: picking out clothes to wear for work and working with women. In my thirty-two years of life, beginning with diapers, there had always been a
system
to dress me. I had gone to Catholic schools for twelve years and worn the uniforms of that system. In four years at West Point I never had a piece of civilian clothing in my closet. The air force also told me what to wear. Not once on a school or work morning had I ever stood in front of my closet and pondered what I should wear that day. As a result, I was a fashion illiterate. And I wasn’t alone. I had already seen a handful of the veteran astronauts wearing plaid pants. Even I, completely clueless on the subject of style, sensed this might be a little too retro. When my children saw one of the plaid-panted victims, they hid their faces and giggled. To this day, whenever my adult children see a golfer wearing plaid, they’ll comment, “Hey, Dad, check it out…an astronaut.” A military astronaut might show up for a party dressed in a leisure suit or Sansabelt slacks and, most telling, no other military astronaut present would know there was anything even slightly amiss.

Fortunately for my children, my limited wardrobe did not include plaid. Rather, my first attempt at workday attire required me to satisfactorily combine one of four solid-colored slacks with one of four solid-colored shirts. I failed. At the breakfast table my wife recoiled as if I had walked in with a nose ring. “You’re not going to work dressed like
that,
are you?” It was a question I would hear many times in the first few weeks of my NASA life. Donna even threatened to put Garanimals hang tags on my slacks and shirts. She would mock me: “The lions go with the lions and the giraffes go with the giraffes.” I had no problem with the suggestion. I thought it was an excellent idea.

If I had no clue about how to dress myself, I was in another galaxy when it came to working with women. I saw women only as sex objects, an unintended consequence of twelve years of Catholic school education. The priests and nuns had pounded into me that females were equated with sex, and sex brought eternal damnation. Girls were never discussed in any other context. They were never discussed as real people who might harbor dreams. They were never discussed as doctors or scientists or astronauts. They were only discussed as “occasions of sin.” The shortcut to hell was through a woman’s crotch was all I learned about the female gender as a teenager. Their breasts would earn you an introduction to Beelzebub, too. In fact, just
fantasizing
about their breasts and their other parts (the soul-killing mortal sin of
impure thoughts
) would also send you straight to hell. Only in marriage did the rules change. Then, sex was fine—productive sex. In marriage a woman achieved her highest state in life—getting on her back and producing children. “The primary purpose of marriage is procreation of children” was dogma in my wife’s 1963 “Marriage Course” curriculum guide from St. Mary’s High School.

The same guide also includes a lesson on “Masculine and Feminine Psychology” with a table of “characteristics.”
Males are more realistic, females more idealistic. Men are more emotionally stable, women are more emotionally liable. Man loves his work, woman loves her man.
And, my favorite,
Men are more likely to be right, women more likely to be wrong.

I accepted these twisted sexist messages of Catholicism so completely that in my senior year of high school I wrote a term paper on why women should not be allowed to attend college. After all, I eloquently reasoned, they never did anything with an education. They only attended college to find a husband. They were needlessly filling classes and taking seats from males who would require the education to get jobs…real jobs. I received an A on the paper. I had learned my lesson well.

The Hollywood movies of my childhood did nothing to dispel what I was learning in school. The men were always depicted as the
action
gender, be they cowboys in action against the Indians, a soldier in action against the Japanese, or an astronaut saving humanity. The women were always the passive gender, waiting at home, cooking, and caring for the children. They were only active when the letters and telegrams came that their heroic men had taken an arrow, bullet, or meteor. Then they cried. After all, they were more
emotionally liable.

To further guarantee my ignorance of females, I had lived and worked in environments awash in testosterone my entire life. I was raised in a family of one girl, five boys. My sister was nine years younger than me. This was no Brady Bunch house filled with teen girls to give me a clue about how to act and what to say around females. I recall one of my wildlife-enthusiast brothers had a basketball on which he had written,
I hate girls. Bighorn sheep, I like.
That about summarized the Mullane boys’ attitude toward females. We were more comfortable around four-legged animals than a human carrying an X chromosome.