Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [121]
planet set in abysmal black. And I told her I wanted to do it all over again. There were other TFNGs already in line for a second flight. Some were doing spacewalks. Some were operating the robot arm. Some were flying high-inclination orbits where they would get to see all of the United States and most of the inhabited earth. Vandenberg AFB in California was being modified to launch shuttles into polar orbits. Some lucky TFNGs would be on those flights. My just completed mission of whirring around the Earth in a near equatorial orbit and throwing a few toggle switches to release a couple communication satellites seemed ho-hum compared with what was on the horizon. I was discovering what every other TFNG was learning: There were gradations in the title “astronaut” and we all wanted to be on top of the scale. As neophytes we had seen a flight into space,any flight into space, as total fulfillment of our life quests. But as we moved into the ranks of veterans, our hypercompetitive personalities created a TFNG hierarchy. For pilots, the command of a rendezvous mission was the most desired prize. For MSes, the A-list astronauts were those who flew the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) on tetherless spacewalks. Very close behind were MSes who did traditional tethered spacewalks. The next tier down were MSes who used the robot arm to grab free-flying satellites. At the bottom of the pile were those sorry souls doing actual science in the bowels of a Spacelab. While many of the scientist MSes really enjoyed Spacelab, most of the military MSes wanted nothing to do with it. Piloting an MMU or operating a robot arm had a lot more sex appeal and generated a lot more personal fulfillment than watching a volt meter on some university professor’s experiment. The Untouchables of our strange caste system were those MSes engaged in the Spacelab missions dedicated to life sciences. They collected blood and urine and butchered mice and changed shit filters for primates (and I don’t mean the marines). I lit candles at Donna’s home shrine to carry my prayer to heaven that I would never be assigned to a Spacelab mission.
As I recounted for Donna the incredible experience of spaceflight and expressed my intention to do it all over again, I was sure she was disappointed. I was sure she would have much preferred a “rest of our lives” scenario that had me returning to the air force for a staff position somewhere in space command that might lead to a star on my shoulders. I was sure her preferred scenario did not include the selection of another potential escort into widowhood, another good-bye walk on the beach house sands, and another T-9 minute vigil on the roof of the LCC. But she would have died before she would have ever put her feelings first—it was the Catholic in her. In her high school marriage course lesson plan is this statement: “The happiness of the woman is found in dependence on her husband. She’s happiest when she is making others happy. Selfishness is the greatest curse to a woman’s nature.” Through her childhood the nuns had browbeaten her to believe that her feelings didn’t count, that her lot was to mourn and weep in the “vale of tears” called life. Personal happiness? Fuhgeddaboutit. Her existence was to be one of sacrifice; sacrifice for her husband and sacrifice for her children. Her reward would come in the next life. No, Donna would never ask me to leave NASA. Her Catholicism had given me a free pass to pursue my own fulfillment.
Before we had even gotten our Earth legs back the Zoo Crew was in the JSC photo lab editing our mission videos and compiling a movie to take on the road to show the world. No longer would I have to interpret what others had done before me. I had loathed that ritual—going to the luncheons of America and prefacing my comments with, “I haven’t flown in space yet, but those who have say…” It was like a minor league baseball player getting onstage and saying, “I’ve never played in theShow, but those who have say….” Now I had my own space story and movie to support it.
In the rented ballroom of a local country