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By Root 673 0

and downward. Astronauts would then clip their harnesses to rings on the pole and slide out. When they came free of the pole, they would be underneath the wing. But even this design was a joke. The very reason ejection seats were invented was because aircraft crewmembers were being pinned inside cockpits by wind pressures and the G-forces of an out-of-control craft. Ejection seats overcame these forces by blasting the crewmembers out of the cockpit. The idea of getting out of an upstairs shuttle seat wearing nearly ninety pounds of equipment and encumbered by an iron-hard pressurized Launch-Entry Suit (LES), then climbing down the narrow interdeck ladder and making it to the side hatch while the shuttle was in powered flight and/or tumbling out of control (the two most common conditions of aircraft ejections) was a fantasy. The only scenario in which a backpack parachute would save a crewmember would be in controlled, gliding flight at subsonic velocities, and below 50,000-feet altitude. It was difficult for astronauts to imagine a failure that would put us in those conditions. Astronauts were still living with the consequences of anoperational shuttle design.*

Many of us placed the slide-pole bailout procedures in the same category as the pre-Challengercontingency-abort procedures—busywork while dying. But we all completed the training. A mock-up of the side hatch and pole were installed on a platform over the WETF pool, and we practiced sliding down the pole to smack into the water.

While most of my time was spent in STS-27 classified training, I was occasionally required to perform other short-term duties. One proved enlightening. Pinky Nelson and I were given the task of polling the spouses for suggestions regarding the family escort policy. One wife responded that she wanted to sleep with her husband on the night before launch. Pinky and I short-stopped that recommendation. We could not imagine any astronaut wanting to be with their spouse in those hours. I certainly didn’t want Donna in my bed. The beach house good-bye was agony enough—I couldn’t imagine enduring an all-night good-bye. If the wife making the recommendation was alluding to having prelaunch sex, then her husband was a better man than me. Even a doughnut-size Viagra pill wouldn’t help me at T-12 hours.

Many of the wives were extremely critical of what had happened to theChallenger spouses after the disaster. June Scobee and the other widows had been held at KSC so Vice President Bush could fly down and meet them. The wives were of one voice—in the event of a disaster they wanted to immediately return to Houston with their children. Screw the politicians. Pinky and I couldn’t have agreed more and said so in our recommendations.

The spouses also complained that the part-timer politicians and Abbey’s “buddies” were exempt from the rules; for example, the number of family guests allowed on the NASA buses. One wife wrote, “Senator Garn had no problem getting anybody he wanted to attend any of the dinners, ride on the family buses, etc.” It was just another example of how NASA management had allowed the politicians to have their way with us. We recommended there be no exceptions to family escort policy for any crewmembers regardless of their pedigree. Theoretically this recommendation was irrelevant sinceChallenger had ended the passenger program. But neither Pinky nor I believed NASA HQ would ever say no to any politician who still wanted to fly (and we were proven right when, years later, Senator Glenn asked for a flight).

Another major source of irritation was the fact that wives could fly to the launch aboard NASA’s Gulfstream jets at government expense, but their children could not. Since NASA required the spousesand children to be on the LCC roof for the launch, many of the wives felt Uncle Sam should pick up the transportation tab for the children, too. They also wanted their lodging needs handled by NASA. In prime tourist seasons and around holidays—where no-vacancy signs were the rule—a mission slip could make reservation extensions problematic