Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [157]
After the presentation was concluded, someone put the escape question to Bagian and Carter. “If this had occurred during OFT [the first four shuttle flights in which the two-man crews had ejection seats], do you think the crew would have been able to bail out?” Their answer was a definite yes. The OFT crews had worn pressure suits. Even if cabin pressure had been lost, those suits would have kept the crew conscious and they would have been able to pull an ejection handle.
Carter next informed everybody that the flight surgeon’s office was going to archive a clip of our hair and a footprint to facilitate our identification in the event of a future shuttle loss. That comment suggested how difficult identification of theChallenger crew remains had been. Even dental records hadn’t been enough. John Young sagely observed, “When extraordinary methods are being taken to make sure you can be identified after you’re dead, everybody ought to think twice about the job they’re in.” He was right.
He was also right when he added, “We shouldn’t fly again until we have an escape system.” Already some NASA managers were suggesting we should return to flight as quickly as possible and the escape system modifications could catch up. As much as I disliked Young for his attempts to torpedo my astronaut career, the position he took on some issues were the right ones.
Carter reminded everybody, “Keep the information you just heard to yourselves.” At that Dick Richards (class of 1980) lashed out, “Who does NASA think it’s protecting? The families? They don’t care if the information is released.”
John Young answered him. “NASA is protecting NASA.” He had it right again.
After the meeting broke up, I went to the gym for a run. It quickly became a sprint. I wanted to punish myself. I wanted the agony of burning lungs and a pounding heart and aching legs to overwhelm me so I wouldn’t have to deal with the reality of what I had just heard. Sweat stung my eyes but I made no effort to wipe it away. I had become a self-flagellating penitent. Pain was good. I relaxed my jaw to its limits and tilted my head back, trying to form a straight pipe to my lungs. Strings of saliva grew from the corners of my mouth and were jerked away by the pounding of my legs. My respiration took on the sound of an emphysemic wheezing and gasping for breath. Several NASA employees passed opposite me and I caught the question in their eyes: “What’s he running from?”
I was running from my thoughts…and predictably losing. Judy or El had flipped Mike’s PEAP to on. There had been no cockpit floor buckling, therefore no explosive decompression. Those twin facts opened the door to the possibility that the cockpit had held its pressure as tightly as a bathysphere and the crew had been conscious throughout the fall. Try as I might I could not find shelter in the evidence of crew inactivity. Would I have written a note? I seriously doubted it. Would I have jettisoned the overhead hatch? No. Of that, I was certain. Had I been Scobee or Smith, I would have been fighting to regain vehicle control all the way to the water, knowing that if I didn’t, death was certain. The hatch on-off status was irrelevant to survivability. I also thought it was a big leap to assume the crew would have felt it necessary to raise their visors and communicate