Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [68]
I continued my drab life. I would pull into the Building 4 parking lot by 7:30A.M . so I could fight for a parking space (cringing at the sight of the assigned TFNGs pulling into their reserved parking places), attend some SAIL-related meetings, go to the mail room to sign autographs (wondering why anybody would want mine), go to the gym to exercise, eat lunch in the cafeteria (to catch up on the latest rumors), attend more meetings or study shuttle-training schematics, perhaps take a T-38 flight (if the assigned crews had left any), then go home. On my SAIL days I would pull one of the eight-hour shifts of its 24/7 operation. If I was lucky, I would be called to the SMS for some real shuttle training as a substitute crewmember. When Guy Bluford was absent for an STS-8 simulation I received such a call and eagerly jumped on it.
From my perspective the racial integration of the astronaut office with Bluford, Gregory, McNair (all African American), and El Onizuka (Asian American) had occurred seamlessly. The entire astronaut corps seemed color-blind. I certainly was. My family upbringing, so abysmally lacking when it had come to the topic of females, had been radically progressive on the subject of race. “When you’re in a foxhole and the damn Japs are shooting at you, you don’t care about the color of the American at your side,” was my dad’s version of an “I Have a Dream” speech. And my religion, so medieval in its attitude about women, was enlightened in its preaching on race. Jesus Christ had said, “Love your fellow man.” He hadn’t added any footnotes on color. Hell’s fire awaited the racist, just as it did for boys imagining the cheerleaders naked. I never gave a second thought to the skin color of the minority astronauts and I got the impression the other palefaces in the astronaut office didn’t either.
While there was no racism in the astronaut office, the topic of race, like that of gender, religion, sexual orientation, the pope, motherhood, apple pie, and just about anything else, was fair game for the office humorists. Nothing was sacred to them. While substituting for Guy Bluford in the SMS I had a ringside seat to some of this humor.
During the course of the sim, we received a call from the Sim Sup, “I want you guys to come up with a medical problem and call the surgeon about it.” We were used to such requests. There was a “surgeon” console in the MCC manned by a NASA physician and the Sim Sup wanted to ensure he had a crew health problem to work. In the cockpit we put our heads together and the suggestions flowed.
“Let’s tell him Dan has a sharp pain in his stomach. It might be appendicitis.”
“Let’s tell him Dick has flulike symptoms.”
“Let’s tell him Dale has a bad toothache.”
We were mulling over these and a few other ideas when Dale Gardner snapped his attention to me, the Guy Bluford substitute, and exclaimed, “No! I’ve got it. Let’s tell them that Guy has turned WHITE!” NASA HQ had been in orgasmic ecstasy over the impending flight of America’s first black astronaut. Knowing this, the suggestion was outrageously funny.
Somebody mimicked the call with anApollo 13 header, “Houston, we’ve got a problem. Guy has turned white!” It would be a call certain to turn a few people in HQwhite.
Dick Truly looked at us and said, “If you guys make that call, the closest you’ll get to space is the ninth floor of Building 1 while Kraft fires you.”
We all understood. Even color-blind astronauts couldn’t publicly joke about race. It was career suicide in America. We had to settle for Dan’s stomachache.
During another simulation in which I was a substitute crewmember, I thought my career had ended and the circumstances had nothing to do