Book review: Riding Rockets

Authored by Mike Mullane in 2006 (ISBN 978-0-7432-7682-5).

I chose this book because a staffer at my local library identified it as a personal favorite. The cover features an astronaut sitting on a chair in the desert and the subtitle: "The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut" and describes the author as an astronaut. I wondered if the book was going to cover mismanagement at NASA; as a large organization spending a lot of other people's money, I'm sure there is some. But, I did not want to read such a book. I find that kind of information depressing. I cracked it open to a random page and saw the words "fire" and "booster" and decided it might be worth a try.

It sure was. Mullane's recall, going back twenty years, is truly impressive, unless he was considering writing such a book all along. He makes no mention of his motivations or his planning. The book jacket describes his current vocation as "motivational speaker". To be fair, his recall does not rise to the level of Frank McCourt, who describes his life from three years forward in Angela's Ashes.

While Mullane is critical of certain NASA managers and policies, and NASA's response to the Challenger* and Columbia disasters, his general attitude is one of thanks. It is a refreshing viewpoint, even if I find NASA's mission a waste of money. I used to also object to the pollution the program generates, but later reading had changed my mind on that subject.

Mullane's only boast about himself was "always giving it my best effort". Otherwise, he criticizes his former attitudes. He entered the astronaut program after serving in Vietnam; he was a married man with little regard for women or for civilians. He describes himself and his buddies as characters from Arrested Development. Over time, though, as he observed the tenacity and professionalism of the women and civilians in the program, he accepted them as equals.

Mullane's descriptions of liftoff were fascinating and arguably inaccessible to all except the few dozen folks who have flown in the space shuttle. Shuttle assignments (seven from a pool of several dozen) are made months in advance. Those seven are known as the "prime crew" and receive perks such as closer parking spaces. They are also monitored more closely; illness could result in postponement or replacement. The prime crew therefore avoided the doctors at all costs; as Mullane states, an astronaut would prefer to cough up a lung than miss a launch assignment. Space travel is dangerous; perhaps 1% of all missions are fatal. In the days leading up to the launch the crew barely sleeps because of the combination of fear and excitement. Then, on the day of launch, the crew assembles hours beforehand to suit up and check their gear. Mechanical malfunction or weather can delay or scuttle the launch. Imagine, then, rising in the early morning, spending hours preparing, sitting on your back for hours as the mission control verifies the launch, countdown to T-30 seconds, then ... pause. Wait thirty minutes for the weather to clear or for a non-nominal reading to be examined or a small aircraft to clear the area. Or, have the launch canceled altogether.

And, the tension extends to the astronauts families as well. Spouses and children, well aware of the danger, gather on building rooftop a few miles from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch shuttle lift off and hopefully not explode (like Challenger). Or, they gather on a rooftop a few miles from Johnson Space Center in Houston to watch the shuttle land without crashing (like Columbia, which disintegrated before reaching Houston).

Mullane received his astronaut wings when he reached 50 miles altitude during his first mission. His opinion: he and all astronauts should earn those wings the moment the engines fire. That's when the risk commences.

On his second mission a piece of foam fell from the front of the shuttle and hit further back. Mullane and his colleagues saw it and were alarmed. They asked mission control to investigate. Mission control did and reported no danger. Mullane and his colleagues were skeptical: after all, if the damage was fatal, would the control tower say so? The shuttle could not return to earth without passing through the atmosphere and heating up. There was nothing to be done about damage anyway. Sadly, falling foam damaged the leading edge of a wing on the Columbia, resulting in its destruction.

As expected from a man whose development was arrested, Mullane's humor is often crude. His first shuttle mission occurred during the tail end of the Cold War. One crew-member had a special dislike of Fidel Castro, and as the shuttle was zipping in orbit at 17,000 miles per hour he asked Mullane to alert him to the next pass over Cuba. The astronaut protocol for handling human waste was to release bowel movements outside the shuttle.

Mullane flew on three space shuttle missions, the final two being classified. He received military awards for the final two, but the awards themselves were classified. He received them in a room and had to leave them behind when he left.

Mullane's story and attitude inspired me. Born in 1945 to a military father, his family eventually settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When he was nine years old he developed an interest in rockets, building homemade devices from metal tubes. His parents would willingly drive him to suppliers, and to the desert for launches. This, despite the fact his father developed polio and spent the remainder of his life in a wheelchair. He marvels that he did not blow himself up.

Among the many humorous stories he related from childhood, he recalls an aunt visiting from the East coast. Together they look up at the sky and observe a beautiful Milky Way, something I myself have been privileged to see in Catskill Mountains of New York as a child and the Rocky Mountains as an adult. The aunt, however, is disappointed at the "clouds". She had never seen the Milky Way and assumed she was seeing clouds, rather than uncountable stars.

* A note about the Challenger disaster. For years I recall hearing about the disaster while sitting in a 7th grade class. Except, I did not. Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff in 1986. I was a freshman in college at the time. My misremembering causes me to think of the gorilla book.

The Space Program is a Waste of My Money

I take as much pride in the moon landing as the next person, but continued spending on the space program is a waste of money. What are we going to do with this research? Do we really expect to colonize the Moon or Mars? Won't that be kind of expensive. If it ends up being better than the earthly alternatives, how do we choose who goes first?

Likewise, the super-collider. Maybe quarks are the smallest component of matter, maybe they are not. What difference does it make?

I see the value of basic research. In other words, just because we cannot say in advance what information certain research will yield does not mean we should not pursue it. Indeed, sometimes the pursuit of one technology yields advances in another. I ask, though, should we not consider which technologies are cheaper to work with? Maybe the effort of building a super-collider or landing on Mars will generate useful science to be applied elsewhere. But surely, there are other technologies, such an environmental, biological and nano that have equivalent probabilities, and these cost a mere fraction of the space program.

I should add that I do not oppose other people spending their own money to send rockets into space or to sent small particles crashing into each other. I object to spending my tax dollars on such activities.

Book review: Pudd'nhead Wilson

Authored by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) in 1894.

I am a big fan of Mr. Twain, but this is not a favorite. A very short novel, it contains typical Twain elements: criticism of slavery and power, a fun storyline, and clever, such clever, phrasing:

To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a negro.

and

[The judge] told them a good many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub, but they were always able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a pretty early vintage, and they had had many a rejuvenating pull at them before. And he told them all about his several dignities, and how he had held this and that and the other place of honor or profit, and had once been to the legislature, and was now president of the Society of Free-thinkers. He said the society had been in existence four years, and already had two members, and was firmly established.