Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [223]
Gene Ross, the ever-present and ever-amicable owner of the Outpost Tavern, died in 1995. He didn’t live to see his bar immortalized on the silver screen. Disney would use it as a backdrop for a scene in the 1997 movieRocketMan and a portion of the movieSpace Cowboys would be filmed inside the cluttered, smoky cave.
Under its new management, the Outpost has seen a few minor changes. The shell-covered parking lot has been leveled. Gone are its bunker-buster craters. And a small red neon light proclaiming “The Outpost Tavern” now decorates a side of the building. But for that, the structure still appears abandoned and ready for demolition. The only improvement to the interior has been the addition of modern bathrooms. The old toilets—one-hole closets with tilting floors and rusted porcelain fixtures—had been intimidating enough to prompt Donna to once comment, “I would rather pee in the outside bushes than sit on an Outpost toilet seat.” The interior of the bar remains a time capsule from the halcyon days of the TFNGs: Photos and posters of smiling astronauts and mission crews still cover the walls and ceiling. My NASA genesis photo is still there. In a display of Texas pride, Gene Ross put up the photos of all the Texas-born astronauts in the entryway next to the bikini-girl-silhouette saloon doors. Epochs of cigarette smoke and grease have put a yellow film over those photos but I’m still visible as the thin, dark-haired, thirty-two-year-old astronaut candidate I was in 1978. Whenever a trip takes me to Houston, I always make it a point to visit the Outpost. I will sit at the bar, order a beer, and listen to the TFNG ghosts whisper the stories of joy and heartbreak that have been written there.
John Young retired from NASA on December 31, 2004, after a forty-two-year career that included six space missions covering the Gemini, Apollo, and shuttle programs. He twice flew to the moon, landing on it onApollo 16. In a NASA press release John was praised as an “astronaut without equal.” You will never hear me say otherwise.
George Abbey was appointed director of the Johnson Space Center by NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin on January 23, 1996 (no doubt putting the fear of God in those who had celebrated, too enthusiastically, his JSC departure in 1987). Five years later he was “reassigned” by Goldin from that position to NASA HQ to serve as Goldin’s senior assistant for international issues. The press noted that the announcement of Abbey’s JSC termination came after close of business on a Friday and with little description of the responsibilities of his new title, signatures that the change was actually a firing. Some speculated that cost overruns on the ISS program had prompted Goldin to remove George. He retired from NASA on January 3, 2003, after a nearly forty-year career with the agency.
I was last face-to-face with John and George in 1998 at the twentieth anniversary of the TFNG class. We traded empty hellos and then separated. I was no longer their hostage and would not pretend friendship.
As an outsider I watched the shuttle program fully recover fromChallenger. Though the STS never recaptured its Golden Age, it did achieve an average of seven missions per year throughout most of the 1990s. Among its more significant post-Challengermissions were the launch of Hubble Space Telescope, nine missions to the Russian Mir space station, and multiple missions in support of the assembly and resupply of the International Space Station. The latter was being constructed in partnership with the Russians. The godless commies had become our friends. Even Bill Shepherd, who had penned theSuck on this, you commie dogs inscription on a photo of our STS-27 payload, would morph intoComrade Shepherd and fly a five-month ISS mission with two Ruskies.
The shuttle continued to experience near misses with disaster, providing more evidence that it would never be truly operational. One of the closest calls occurred on STS-93. During the early part of ascent a small repair pin in the combustion chamber of one SSME came loose and