Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [66]
As I returned, Donna’s friend gushed, “You know her?!”
Of course, I assumed she was referring to Sally.
“Sure, that’s Sally Ride.”
“No, not her. The other woman.”
“No. I wasn’t introduced.” I was still puzzled by that table’s hostility toward me. Was it something I said?
“That’s Jane Pauley.”
I shrugged. The name was a mystery to me. “Who’s Jane Pauley?”
Donna’s friend nearly had a seizure. “Who’s Jane Pauley!? You don’t know? She’s the NBCToday show newswoman.”
I honestly didn’t know. I didn’t watch much TV. I certainly didn’t watch those chatty morning shows. If she wasn’t inAviation Week & Space Technology magazine, I wouldn’t know her.
With this new bit of knowledge, it slowly dawned on me why I had been stonewalled at Sally’s table. No doubt Ms. Pauley was talking to her about her recent flight selection. I could just imagine how my cookie recipe comment must have played with those two pioneering females. I made Hugh Hefner look like a beacon of enlightenment. I guess it’s no surprise I was never invited to theToday show.
On October 5, 1982, three more TFNGs were named to a flight, STS-10 (later to be designated STS-41B).*I wasn’t among them.
I put on another happy face and congratulated the winners. A few weeks later Norm Thagard became the eleventh TFNG to draw an assignment when he was retroactively assigned to STS-7. NASA was growing concerned about the incidence of space sickness and wanted Thagard, a physician, to run some experiments on what was being officially labeled Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS). SAS had impacted the recently landed STS-5 mission in a very big way. One of the two spacewalkers on that flight had been so stricken with vomiting the crew had asked MCC for permission to delay their EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity, i.e., a spacewalk) to give him time to recover. Vomiting inside a spacesuit could kill an astronaut. The emesis could smear the inside of the helmet visor and blind the spacewalker, making it impossible to respond to a suit emergency. Also, because there was no way to remove the fluid, the astronaut could inhale it and choke to death or it could clog the oxygen circulation system and suffocate the victim. The STS-5 space-walk, which was to have been the first from a shuttle, had just been a demonstration exercise (and was ultimately canceled for a suit malfunction), but in future missions spacewalks would be essential for mission success. Norm Thagard would be the first of many physicians sent into space to determine the cause of SAS. He, like all who would follow, would have their studies seriously hampered by astronaut paranoia. Spacewalking was the most sought-after prize for MSes. It filled a powerful need to be in ultimate control. The pilots had their shuttle landings to fulfill them. Their hands and eyes delivered a 200,000-pound orbiter to a runway. It was the same with a rendezvous mission. A pilot’s personal skill brought two 17,300-mile-per-hour objects together 200 miles above the earth. It was heroic work. On the other hand, much MS work was mundane—throwing a switch to release a satellite, drawing blood, changing a data tape on some scientist’s experiment. Spacewalks and, to a somewhat lesser degree, robot arm operations were the exception in MS jobs. Like a pilot feeling the kiss of the runway on the space shuttle wheels, MSes could enjoy a powerful sense of being in control as they assembled structures or repaired satellites or performed other hands-on spacewalking tasks.
So physicians studying SAS, like Thagard,