Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [179]
In the cockpit a shocked silence gave way to shocked exclamations. I called MCC. “Houston, we’re seeing a lot of damage. It looks as if one tile is completely missing.”
The CAPCOM acknowledged my call. “We’ll get back to you.” MCC had our TV downlink so they were seeing what we were seeing, or so we assumed. I wondered if, at that very moment, there was a “Failure is not an option” speech being delivered as the flight director rallied the MCC team to deal with our situation. From our perspective it looked bad.
After a few minutes the CAPCOM came back with the MCC’s analysis. “We’ve looked at the images and mechanical says it’s not a problem. The damage isn’t that severe.”
Say what?!We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. MCC was blowing us off. There was no discussion of having ground telescopes take some photos ofAtlantis to possibly get a better view of the damage. There was no discussion of having us power-down the vehicle to give us the maximum orbit time to deal with the problem. There was no indication whatsoever that MCC thought we had a serious problem.
Hoot was immediately on the microphone. “Houston, Mike is right. We’re seeing a lot of damage.”
But after a short delay the CAPCOM came back with the original ho-hum assessment of “It’s not a problem.”
We all looked at one another in disbelief. Are they blind? Did they think the white streaks were seagull shit? It was obvious to us that we had taken a very bad hit. Maybe the image that was arriving on the MCC monitors was of poorer quality than what we were seeing. I tried to sharpen the image but was no more successful than Hoot had been.
Hoot tried again to convey the seriousness of what we were seeing and, again, MCC casually dismissed his concerns. We were in the Twilight Zone.Who is this speaking to us and what have you done with the real MCC? Maybe, I thought, MCC did know we had suffered major damage and were hiding that fact from us. There was precedence for that. On John Glenn’s Mercury mission the MCC had an instrument indication that his heat shield had come loose from his capsule, but they kept the information from him. Since there was absolutely nothing he could do about a loose heat shield, and, if it was loose, he was going to die, they reasoned there was no reason to tell him the truth. Without giving him an explanation, they had instructed Glenn not to jettison his retrorocket pack in hopes its retention would help keep a loose heat shield in place. It turned out there had been nothing wrong with the heat-shield attachment and Glenn was angry with MCC for withholding information from him. Could MCC be hiding a deadly situation from us? I couldn’t believe that. The MCC never gave up. If they suspected we had a serious problem, they would be pulling out every stop to get us home. It would beApollo 13 all over again. Their dismissive attitude must mean they believed we were okay. But I was going to be really suspicious if tomorrow’s wake-up music was “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and there was a teleprinter message saying we didn’t have to eat our broccoli.
Hoot set the mic aside, obviously frustrated and angry. No matter what MCC was seeing on their TVs, he felt they weren’t seriously considering whatwe were seeing. At the moment I was glad our mission was classified. The public and press had not heard any of our discussion. Unless one of the family escorts told the wives of our problem they would not know about it. I prayed that was the case. There was nothing they could do and they didn’t need the extra anxiety.
I couldn’t sleep and floated upstairs to watch the sights. The autopilot was holding the shuttle’s belly to the Sun, courtesy of our tire leak, so I had to move from window to window to get the best view. I was annoyed at the inconvenience…until our unique attitude served