Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [70]
Chapter 17
Prime Crew
I knew there were binoculars focused on us as we made the trek to Building 1. I was in the company of four others who had also been called for the same appointment: Hank Hartsfield, a veteran of STS-4, and fellow TFNGs Mike Coats, Steve Hawley, and Judy Resnik. There was no mistaking the meaning of this gaggle. It screamedflight assignment . It was all I could do not to break into a sprint for the headquarters building.
It might have been the very first time in my five years as a TFNG that I had been to Abbey’s office. As befitting a deity, it was a large corner office on the eighth floor that looked out on our home, Building 4. None of us believed that sight line was an accident. George wanted his shadow to fall over his subjects at all times.
The secretary waved us through and we entered to find him standing behind his expansive desk. He wore a coat and tie, the coat unbuttoned and his belly prominent. Though it was midmorning his jowls were already darkened with a faint beard. Several documents and an overflowing in or out box (I couldn’t tell which) littered the mahogany. I had a momentary wonder,What was all the paper about? It was a standing TFNG joke that Abbey never left a paper trail. Few could recall ever seeing his signature on any document.
“Have a seat.” He motioned us to a ring of chairs.
“We’ve been looking at the mission manifest…” As was his custom, George never made significant eye contact and he mumbled his words. I could sense everybody leaning forward to gain another decibel. “…and think it’s time to assign some more crews. I was wondering if you would be interested in STS-41D? It would be the first flight ofDiscovery. ” It was beyond what I had prayed for. Not only was I being offered a mission, I was being offered a position on the first flight of the orbiterDiscovery. Aviators live for the day they might be the first to take a new jet into the air, and we were being offered the first flight of a space shuttle. Like the Stockholm Syndrome hostages we were, we all groveled in thanks.
George asked us not to publicly mention the assignment until the press release was made in a couple days. Mike Coats whispered to me, “When I get home, I’m calling everybody in my Rolodex.” There was no way I was going to withhold this information from my family, either.
On the walk back to Building 4, I considered my incredible fortune. Besides getting the first flight ofDiscovery, I was also part of a great crew. At age forty-nine, snowy-haired Hank Hartsfield was the old man. He had come to NASA in 1969 as an air force test pilot with more than seven thousand hours of fighter jet flying time. STS-41D would be his second space mission and first as a commander. Unlike a number of his peers who were so anal that even the rest of us anal-retentives noticed, Hank was easygoing and quick with a laugh. He was an Alabama boy who had retained the drawling speech and the political ideals of the Deep South. Hank was so far right on the political spectrum he made even the John Birch Society look like a collection of hankie-wringing, pantywaist liberals.
Mike Coats would be our PLT. He was a former Navy A-7E attack pilot with movie-star good looks. My daughter hadn’t been wrong when she likened him to Christopher Reeve’s Superman character. A curl of black hair would periodically fall across his forehead, making the Clark Kent appearance complete. Mike was a quiet