Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [118]
Claudia and Claire were allowed to cross the rope line and give me a hug goodbye. Those were long hugs. Then it fell to me to end the goodbye ceremony.
“OK,” I said to my crew. “Time to go.”
We all got back into our convertibles, waved goodbye, and sped away to crew quarters.
That night, alone in our quarters, my crew and I watched The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson. Gabby doesn’t like Mel anymore, since his infamous anti-Semitic remarks a few years back. I understood that. But I had watched The Patriot on the evening before my first launch in 2001, and that mission went well. I thought it would be good luck to rewatch the movie.
A lot of astronauts are prone to superstition and ritual. My brother in 2010 flew into space aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. He talks about the half-century-old tradition in which cosmonauts urinate on the right rear wheel of the bus used to take them to the launch site. They do this because Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, did that before his first flight—and lived. Some female cosmonauts have tossed a cup of their urine on the right rear wheel. (Scott joined his comrades by the back wheel of the bus before his mission, but he couldn’t go.)
By the time I woke up on the morning of launch day, I wasn’t thinking superstitiously. I was thinking pragmatically.
While Prince William and his new wife, Kate Middleton, were parading through the streets of London, I put a chair on my bed. Then I got into the bed, on my back, and put my feet on the chair for a while. I’d always do this before a mission. I was trying to get the fluid to shift so my kidneys could get rid of some of the urine that otherwise would soak my diaper during the launch, scheduled for 3:47 p.m. I didn’t want a wet sock like I had at the Terminal Countdown Test.
All I had to do after that was jump in the shower, shave, and then it was off to the races.
As it turned out, the race never got started. Just before noon, my crew and I were all suited up and set to depart for the launchpad when we got word that there was an electrical problem. It was a glitch affecting the hydraulic power system that would move the shuttle’s engines and flight controls during ascent and reentry. We still boarded the astrovan and headed for the pad, but halfway there, the mission was scrubbed. We were disappointed, as were an estimated 700,000 people who were already lining the beaches or were on their way to viewing sites.
While we were making the U-turn to return to crew quarters, President Obama was in Alabama, visiting areas devastated by tornadoes. He and his family had planned to fly from there to Cape Canaveral. Even though the launch had been postponed, they decided to come anyway.
When the president arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, I joked with him. “I bet you were hoping to see a rocket launch today,” I said.
He said he’d come to see me, my crew, and Gabby.
Because we were still in quarantine—it was still possible the launch would go ahead three days later—the NASA physician Joe Dervay had to make a request. “Mr. President, is it OK if I examine both you and your wife?”
“Absolutely,” the president said. “We don’t want the astronauts getting sick.”
Joe took their temperatures, looked down their throats, looked in their ears, and listened with a stethoscope. They were healthy.
Before the president and First Lady entered the room where Gabby was waiting, I prepped them. “Gabby is going to feel like she wants to say a lot, but she won’t be able to,” I said. “She’ll be a little nervous. She might say things more than once. She might repeat what you say to stay engaged.”
The president thanked me for the heads-up.
When the Obamas entered the room to see Gabby, she was sitting. She thought it appropriate to get to her feet, but she stood up so quickly that she almost fell. My brother, Scott, had to reach over and grab her. It was lucky she didn’t hit the ground because she wasn’t wearing her helmet. (She had