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By Root 529 0

to eradicate that fear. George Abbey, the JSC director, and the NASA administrator all should have been frequent visitors to the astronaut office, actively polling our concerns, and each visit should have started with these or similarly empowering words: “There is nothing you can say to me that will jeopardize your place in the mission line. Nothing! If you think I’m doing something crazy, I want to hear it.” I had experienced this form of leadership many times in my air force career. I saw it on an F-4 mission in which a general officer was serving as my pilot. I was a first lieutenant—and terrified. I had never flown with a flag officer before. But this man was a leader who understood how fear could jeopardize the team and did his best to eliminate it. As my foot touched the cockpit ladder, the general stopped me and said, “See these stars,” and pointed to his shoulder. “If I make a mistake they won’t save our lives. If you see anything that doesn’t look right on this flight, tell me. There’s no rank in this jet. Flying is dangerous enough as it is without having crewmembers afraid to speak up.” It was an empowering moment. The astronaut office desperately needed the same empowering moments, but they never came. Fear ruled—a fear rooted in Abbey’s continuing secrecy on all things associated with flight assignments. We kept our mouths shut.

It was in the Golden Age that Judy Resnik was assigned to her second mission, STS-51L. She would join TFNGs Dick Scobee, El Onizuka, and Ron McNair as well as pilot Mike Smith (class of 1980) for a flight aboardChallenger. Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire schoolteacher, would later join the crew. Her assignment to 51L was linked to Judy’s. NASA logically wanted Christa to fly with a veteran female astronaut. Greg Jarvis, another part-timer, would ultimately draw aChallenger slot when Congressman Bill Nelson bumped him from STS-61C.

I don’t blame Nelson or Abbey or anybody else for how the chips fell on theChallenger crew composition. Only God can explain the how and why of that. In fact, many months prior toChallenger, Mike Smith was named as a backup to a mission pilot who was suffering a potentially career-ending health problem. That pilot recovered and Smith wasn’t needed. But had the sick pilot’s convalescence taken just a few more weeks, Mike would have flown on the earlier mission and another pilot would have died onChallenger.

I congratulated Judy and the others at their Outpost celebration. With a gold pin in my bureau drawer it was easy to be sincere. No more fake smiles. Still, I felt a touch of envy. The 51L crew would be deploying an IUS fitted with a NASA communication satellite. The Boeing engineers had finally fixed that booster rocket so Judy had a proven payload. It was one less thing to get in the way of her launch date. She would have a second flight long before I would and that was something to envy.

In spite of the record number of missions in 1985 and flight opportunities for astronauts, morale continued to suffer under the leadership of John Young and George Abbey, particularly the morale of the USAF pilots. Air force pilot Fred Gregory filled my ear on a T-38 mission. “Of the twenty-eight CDR and PLT seats available on the first fourteen missions, only six have been filled with air force pilots. Fifteen went to navy pilots.” Fred went on to complain that of the six CDR and PLT seats available on the first three Spacelab missions, four were being filled by air force pilots. (He was one of those four.) He didn’t have to explain the meaning of the latter statistic: If any space missions could be considered routine, they were the Spacelab missions, and the USAF astronauts were getting more than their fair share of those. The navy pilots were getting the challenging and historic missions that included hands-on-the-stick rendezvous time and interviews on national TV. The most egregious example of an air force TFNG being screwed was when pilot Steve Nagel was assigned to fly his first mission—not as a PLT, but as a mission specialist! Even some navy astronauts