Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [124]
I presented the general with a framed photo of the launch of STS-41D and tried to inject some levity into what was unfolding as a severe embarrassment for our group. I joked, “General, the only way the space shuttle could look better was if it hadUSAF emblazoned on the wings.”
The general didn’t find the comment the least bit amusing. Instead, he launched into a discussion on the air force budget and how important it was for money to be spent on the development of a new cargo airlifter, not on a new air force–manned space program. I wanted to scream, “It was a joke, general!”
The rest of the ceremony—if it could be called that—was quick. The general pinned the wings on my uniform, shook my hand, and posed for a photo. He made no comment about the fact I was the first nonpilot air force officer ever to fly in space. Then the aide hustled us out of the office so the general could get back to work on those airlifters. I had never been more embarrassed for my service. USN Admiral Truly had seen the debacle. Mike and Diane had seen it all. The NASA officials with us had seen it. The navy treated theirs like royalty; the air force treated Donna and me like an interruption. I wanted to crawl under a rock.
I held Donna’s arm as we walked from the office, and I could feel her trembling in rage. She had received no acknowledgment from General Welch. This was supposed to have been the highlight of my career, and, by proxy, her life. She had put me in that rocket. To do it, she had buried friends, and consoled widows, and kissed her husband off to war, and endured four shuttle countdowns including one engine-start abort. As we exited the office, Donna cursed under her breath. It was a mark of her extreme outrage: I was the foul mouth of the family—Donna never swore. The aide was close enough to hear the word, but I doubted he had any idea as to the reason for the outburst. I knew the general was clueless about how close he had come to feeling the wrath of a woman scorned. His obliviousness reminded me of something an air force pilot had once said in Vietnam, “We’ve all seen tracers coming at us and think that’s the closest we’ve come to death. In reality, some gomer in a rice paddy has probably fired an old single-shot rifle at us and the bullet passed within a foot of our heads and we never knew.” As a combat veteran, I’m sure General Welch had his “I was this close to death” stories, but in reality the closest he ever came to death was by the hands of my wife in his Pentagon office, not in the skies of Vietnam.
The manner in which I had been treated cleared up one source of wonder for me. Over the years, I could not understand why the air force hadn’t done something about Abbey’s preferential treatment of the navy astronauts. The next three missions to follow STS-41D were all to be commanded by navy pilots. On one of those, navy captain Bob Crippen would be flying his third mission as a shuttle commander before his peer, USAF colonel Karol Bobko, would fly his first. Why didn’t the USAF see this as I and the other air force astronauts did—a slap in the face of the air force? Now I had my answer. The shuttle program and its air force astronaut corps were invisible to the top leadership in the U.S. Air Force. We were interruptions to more pressing business. When I got back to JSC, I spread the depressing word to others within the air force community. “Don’t expect help from the Pentagon. We’re on our own,” was my message. Abbey could do whatever he wanted with us and there would be no outrage from our leaders. We were a forgotten squadron.
Chapter 24
Part-time Astronauts
The shuttle program introduced several new crewmember positions, besides mission specialists, to the business of spaceflight. There were payload specialists (PSes) like Charlie Walker, who operated his McDonnell Douglas Corporation experiment on STS-41D. There