Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [162]
Imagine my shock when, several months later, Blaha ran into my office with a newspaper article describing how the Soviets, for the first time in history, were going to allow their basketball team to play an exhibition game with an NBA team. “I told you that vase was bugged,” Blaha shouted. We laughed at the image of an army of KGB spies hunting for that F-99 fighter.
Our journey into the heart of the enemy camp wasn’t the highlight of that evening. Back at our hotel, four of us donned our bathing suits and headed for the sauna. There we encountered a middle-aged fräulein with a Mr. T physique who handed us towels and shower clogs and then pointed to our suits and said,“Nein.” The suits were not allowed. It was a nude spa. We exchanged a few self-conscious glances. But there were no other females present and only a saliva test would have confirmed our receptionist’s gender. We stripped. What a photo that would have made…four of America’s heroes marching to the sauna like we marched to our space shuttles, except we were marching completely bare-assed. We opened the door and entered a steamy room. When our eyes adjusted to the dim light we realized we were sitting with a half dozen naked women. The spa was coed. Oh well, when in Rome…
Later I was climbing out of a small pool when a very attractive and very naked German woman came to me. Someone in our group must have dropped the astronaut bomb because she wanted to ask a few questions about flying in space. I could barely understand what she was saying…not because her English was poor. On the contrary, it was excellent. Rather, it was because 99 percent of my meager mental powers were being used to force my eyes to look straight ahead. As she spoke, my brain was screaming, “Don’t look down! Don’t look down!”I felt it would be a serious breach of naked etiquette to talk to her breasts, something we denizens of Planet AD regularly did with clothed women. Given my struggles it was a wonder I could form a coherent sentence.
Meanwhile, as I did my best to be a naked gentleman, I noticed she had no qualms about looking atmy body. As she spoke her eyes wandered up and down as if she were appraising a cut of beef. I feltso violated.
Even the naked ladies weren’t the most memorable part of our re-bluing trip. Events five thousand miles away trivialized everything we had encountered. We received word from Houston that John Young’s tenure as chief of astronauts had ended. He had been reassigned to the position of JSC deputy for engineering and safety, a technical rather than team-leadership position. The celebration was immediate. Most of us had been looking forward to this day for a long, long time. My celebration was probably the most unrestrained. For the past year, John had made my life miserable. While I had heard of only two incidents in which he had suggested I was lacking as an astronaut and should be replaced, God only knew how many other times he had said it and to whom he had said it. Despite Abbey’s “forget it” comment, I couldn’t believe my reputation hadn’t been damaged. Young had been my tor-mentor, and my joy at his departure was unalloyed. That’s not to say I couldn’t admire the man for his achievements in the cockpit. He had flown in space six times, including a moonwalk mission and the first space shuttle mission. The latter had probably been the most dangerous mission ever flown by any astronaut. While many of us questioned John’s leadership abilities, no one doubted his flying skills and guts.
On April 27, 1987, TFNG Dan Brandenstein was picked to replace Young. I knew he would do a superb job as chief of astronauts. But at the same time I was angry that Abbey had screwed the air force again. The grapevine had it that the selection criteria for the position had mandated a TFNG who had flown as a shuttle commander. There were three navy TFNGs who qualified: Brandenstein, Hauck, and Hoot Gibson. There was only