Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [118]
We followed the flight surgeon’s recommended protocol of consuming salt tablets and fluids. The excess liquid would increase our blood volume and help minimize the possibility of the reentry G-forces pulling blood from our brains and causing blackout. I also donned my anti-G suit as another defense against G-induced unconsciousness. The suit looked like cowboy chaps and was zipped over my legs and around my stomach. It contained air bladders that could be inflated to squeeze those body parts and restrict blood flow from the upper torso and head. I would later find out Judy did not put on her anti-G suit and suffered for the omission. After landing she was deathly pale, sweating profusely, and unable to stand from her seat for many minutes.
We closed our payload bay doors, strapped into our seats, and then flippedDiscovery backward so the thrust from the firing of her OMS engines would slow us down. The deorbit burn only braked us by several thousand miles per hour but that was enough to dip the low point of our orbit into the atmosphere. After the burn was complete, Hank maneuveredDiscovery into a nose-forward 40-degree upward tilt so that her belly heat shield was presented to the atmosphere.
Discoverywas now a 100-ton glider. She had no engines for atmospheric flight. We began the long fall toward Edwards AFB, California, twelve thousand miles distant. We were coming to America. On the way,Discovery would be enveloped in a 3,000-degree fireball and at the end of the glide Hank would get only one chance at landing. In spite of these daunting realities I didn’t fear reentry as I had feared ascent. There were no SSMEs or turbo-pumps to fail and endanger us, and reentry lacked the rock-and-roll violence of ascent. I shouldn’t have been so confident. There were still plenty of ways to die on reentry and landing. The STS-9 crew had almost found one with their hydrazine fire. In 1971, three cosmonauts were killed on reentry when their capsule sprang a leak. They had not been protected with pressure suits and their blood boiled inside their bodies. We were not wearing pressure suits, so a pressure leak would kill us in the same manner. Of course, none of us could see the future, but on February 1, 2003, the STS-107 crew would find death on reentry due to damage sustained toColumbia ’s left-wing heat shield. Foam had shed from the ET during launch and punched a hole in it.Discovery was flying with the identical heat shield and Mike and Hank had seen foam shedding from the tank during our ascent. We could have been falling into the atmosphere with a hole in our wing and been blissfully unaware. No, I shouldn’t have been so confident in a safe trip home.
For the first half hour after the deorbit burn, there was no indication anything had changed. It felt as if we were still in orbit. We had fallen a hundred miles closer to the planet but the air was still so tenuous it had no observable effect. Then a lost M&M candy appeared from a corner and began a very slow fall. It was my first indication we were no longer weightless. The fringes of the atmosphere were finally slowing us.
At 400,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, atmospheric friction began to heat the air. The glow in the cockpit windows changed from orange to red to white hot. I twisted my head to look upward through the ceiling windows. A vortex of white-hot air streamed away, flickering like a ribbon in the wind. I was seeingDiscovery ’s wake. The superheated air on the belly was wrapping around the vehicle and combining above her to form a wake of plasma. It streamed off into infinity. In spite of the incredible light show, the cockpit was quiet. There was no wind noise, no vibration.
Discoverycompleted several role-reversals to manage her energy. As thin as