Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [112]
To my surprise I did not wake up alone. My closest friend was alert and waiting. I had an erection so intense it was painful. I could have drilled through kryptonite. I would ultimately count fifteen space wake-ups in my three shuttle missions, and on most of these and many times during the sleep periods my wooden puppet friend would be there to greet me. Flight surgeons have attributed this phenomenon to the fluid shift that occurs in weightlessness. On the Earth, gravity holds more blood in our lower legs. In orbit that blood is equally distributed throughout our bodies. For men the result is a Viagra effect. There are beneficial effects for the female anatomy, too. The same fluid shift makes for skinnier calves and thighs and larger, nonsag breasts. If NASA wants to secure its financial future, it would be smart to advertise the rejuvenating effects of weightlessness. Taxpayers would demand that Congress quadruple NASA’s budget to finance the construction of orbiting spas where visitors from Earth could turn back time.
Fortunately for me, my brain was quickly flooded with thoughts of the workday and my body melted in response.
On day two we successfully launched our second satellite, Syncom, but not without mishap. As Hank was filming its release with the huge and unwieldy IMAX camera, a shank of Judy’s frizzed-out hair was snatched into the machine by the belt drive of the film magazine. It was as if her hair had been caught up in the fan belt of an automobile. She screamed and I grabbed at her tresses to prevent them from being ripped out of her scalp, but, with nothing to hold me in place, I tumbled out of control. Judy did the same. Through her increasingly urgent screams, I heard the camera labor to a grinding stop. The hair had clogged the motor, finally stalling it and popping a cockpit circuit breaker.
We cut Judy free with scissors. Strands of loose hair floated everywhere. They were in our eyes and mouths. Mike Coats, who was the principal operator of the IMAX, took the machine to the mid-deck and began work at restoring its operation. The hair was so thoroughly jammed into the motor gears we doubted the machine would ever pull another frame of film. IMAX was going to be severely disappointed. They had spent millions to fly their camera in space and we had only recorded a fraction of our film targets. Even if the camera could be cleaned of hair and made to work again, a quick glance at the flight plan showed the next several film opportunities were certainly going to be missed. IMAX would have to do some replanning. We all knew this was the type of trivial screwup that would become the focus of an otherwise successful mission. The press wouldn’t talk about how our crew had successfully takenDiscovery on its maiden flight or how we had successfully released thirty thousand pounds of satellites. Instead, they would zero in on our hair incident. But we had no alternative other than to come clean with MCC. The flight planners needed to assume the camera could be repaired and get started on rescheduling our targets.
But we males had been missing thereal issue. As Hank picked up the microphone to call MCC, Judy lashed out at him with something along the lines of, “If you so much as breathe a word to MCC about my hair jamming the camera, I’ll cut your heart out with a spoon.” Or perhaps she threatened a more vital area of his anatomy. There was a brief moment as we struggled to understand Judy’s rage. Then it dawned on us. She was only the second American woman to fly in space. The press had her under a magnifying glass, looking for the slightest flaw in her performance. The hair jam incident was just that: a mistake with her name on it. Not only that, it contained the worst possible sin against feminism. Judy had demonstrated, however innocently and however insignificantly,