“Hurry, Michael, hurry,” he said.
But Foale sensed something was wrong. The hatch didn’t feel right when it closed.
“Hurry,” he heard someone say.
“Look, guys, you’re rushing me,” Foale said. “This does not feel right. I have to reopen the hatch and do this again.”
John Glenn’s shuttle flight
The launch time was civilized by Project Mercury standards – 1400 hours. We awoke in crew quarters, suites that were an improvement over the bunk beds I remembered. Their walls had no windows, since shuttle schedules sometimes require crews to shift their normal wake-sleep routines in advance by way of artificial light, but outside we found the bright, clear morning that the meteorologist had predicted.
We put on our crew-shirts for the traditional breakfast photo opportunity. I reprised my meal of steak and eggs with orange juice and toast. Looking around at what my fellow crew members had ordered, it seemed that steak and eggs had also become a launch day tradition.
The atmosphere was businesslike as the launch approached. We were eager to get going.
After breakfast, we went back to our rooms to tidy up. We also packed two small bags with basic clothing and personal effects, shoes, and a flight suit and toilet kit. One of them would be shipped across the Atlantic if we didn’t achieve full orbital speed or something else went wrong and we had to land at one of the TALS – transatlantic landing sites. There’s one in Spain, and another in Morocco. NASA would send the second bag out to Edwards Air Force Base in California, our alternative landing site, in case conditions weren’t right for landing at the Cape when we came down.
Suiting up, each of us worked with the same small crew of suit technicians who had helped us during training. My crew was Jean Alexander, Carlos Gillis, and George Brittingham. We each sat in a big leather chair, and the suit techs hovered around us as if we were actors being made up for our stage appearance.
Getting into the suit took forty-five minutes. I had to be something of a contortionist as I pulled on the special underwear rigged with cold-water tubes for cooling. It wasn’t easy at my age to get into the suit itself, either – feet first into the legs, then maneuvering to get my head and torso into it before the suit techs zipped it up the back. They fixed the gloves so they were pressure-tight, and fastened the helmet to the neck ring. When the visor was sealed, the entire contraption was pressure-tested to insure there were no leaks. Around the suit room, the crew looked like Poppin’ Fresh doughboys in bright orange.
Then I loaded my pockets, one on each thigh and each shin, one on each shoulder. You have to know where your emergency radio and signalling equipment are – left-leg pocket. And your knife and other survival equipment – right-leg pocket. The rest of them held various tools and gear.
Suited up, we headed toward the elevators, past the technicians and cooks and workers who had helped us throughout training. The suit techs followed, holding our helmets. This, too, was a trip I was familar with. But the expressions were different this time. When I took my walk from crew quarters on the day Friendship 7 was finally launched, I was going solo and it was a first flight. There was more uncertainty on the faces then.
Still, there was the same silent acknowledgement that we were going to be riding a rocket that could kill us if anything went wrong. The ground team was there to say goodbye and wish us luck: their expressions said they were pulling for us. They wanted us to have a safe, trouble-free, and successful mission. The spirit of team-work and camaraderie was written on each face. It was as if their thoughts and wishes were going to be riding on that rocket, too, and none of us could have thanked them for everything they’d done.
A pool of reporters and photographers watched behind the ropes as we walked from the elevators to the transfer van. I don’t think there was room for a single person more in the crowd. The atmosphere in the van was casual and jocular during the six-or seven-mile ride to the launch pad, though as I looked around at my crewmates I could see that we were getting ready to be serious. Then we reached the gate to the pad. The guard stepped into the van, and Curt said, “Launch passes, everybody.” The crew reached into the pockets on the left shoulders of their suits and pulled out small blue cards. I felt in my pocket, thinking somebody must have put mine there, but there was no card. Pedro was doing the same thing. Amid our fumbling. I was about to ask when the cards had been issued when I noticed that the rest of the crew – Shuttle veterans – were looking at us, rookies, trying to hide their grins. We had bitten, hook, line, and sinker. They all had a laugh, Pedro and I had our initiation rite, and the van proceeded toward the pad.
At the pad, we walked back out along the ramp and looked up at the shuttle. That’s another launch day tradition, and it’s quite a sight.
The space shuttle is the most complex machine ever made. It has two million parts, and a million of them move. Its wiring laid end to end would stretch 230 miles, and it has six hundred circuit breakers. The orbiter itself has three eighty-thousand-horsepower engines that each develop 393,800 pounds of thrust. They are fed by the huge rust-orange tank to which the orbiter and the boosters cling during launch, and the two solid-fuel rocket boosters each develop 3.3 million pounds of thrust. The weight at liftoff is about 4.5 million pounds, and total thrust at liftoff is over 7 million pounds.
It was up there ready to go, and the liquid oxygen oxidizing the liquid hydrogen fuel venting out the top in wisps of vapor adds to the sense of drama. It’s a huge machine containing an almost unfathomable amount of power. That’s the point when it hits you. It’s for real – you’re going up.
The elevator took us up. It was a beautiful day, and I paused to glance around at the Cape and the space complex that had changed so much since the time of Project Mercury. As I looked south to the Canaveral lighthouse, the Atlas and Titan launch gantries that are the remaining occupants of Heavy Row were reminders of the early days. Pad 14, where Friendship 7 and the rest of the Project Mercury Atlas flights had launched, was still there, but its gantry had been dismantled long ago. The blockhouse is a museum. It was hard to imagine that virtually the entire history of space travel had occurred between my first flight and my second. Somebody had pointed out that more time had passed between Friendship 7 and this Discovery mission than had passed between Lindbergh’s solo transatlantic flight and Friendship 7. It didn’t seem that long to me, but that is the way lives pass when you look back on them: in the blink of an eye.
I don’t think anyone was scared. Apprehensive? Yes: I felt the same constructive apprehension I’d felt as a forty-year-old, keyed up and ready to go. Everybody knows something could go wrong, but you just put that behind you and go do what you’ve been trained to do.
Chiaki had said that I ought to remember that in Japan, seven is a lucky number, and my age, double seven, was doubly lucky. That was a good way to look at it, too.
I couldn’t have been happier that morning. This was about to be the culmination of a very long effort, both a chance to go up again after I thought that chance had been lost forever, and the beginning of a precious opportunity. I was a data point of one, but it was a start, and I saw the flight as the first step in a process that I hoped would lead to a new area of research that could eventually benefit tens of millions of people.
Curt was the first into the spacecraft, and he climbed up to the flight deck, followed by Steve Lindsey and Pedro. I was next to last. No phone call from the gantry this time. Steve Robinson and Chiaki were already in their
