University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and University of Nebraska Press Chapters 2013 Wheels Stop Rick Houston Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples Houston, Rick, "Wheels Stop" (2013). University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters. 236. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/236 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Nebraska Press at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Wheels Stop Buy the Book Outward Odyssey A People’s History of Spaceflight Series editor Colin Burgess Buy the Book Rick Houston Foreword by Jerry Ross Wheels Stop The Tragedies and Triumphs of the Space Shuttle Program, 1986–2011 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS ¥ LINCOLN & LONDON Buy the Book © 2013 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Houston, Rick, 1967– Wheels stop: the tragedies and triumphs of the Space Shuttle Program, 1986–2011 / Rick Houston; foreword by Jerry Ross. pages cm. — (Outward odyssey: a people’s history of spaceflight) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8032-3534-2 (cloth: alkaline paper) 1. Space Shuttle Program (U.S.)—History. 2. Space shuttles—United States—History. I. Title. TL789.8.U6s6646 2013 629.44'10973—dc23 2013022160 Set in Adobe Garamond Pro by Laura Wellington. Buy the Book To the memory of the crews of sts-51l and sts-107 To the memory of my mother and father, Betty J. and Sidney L. Houston In honor of the thousands of men and women who worked to make the Space Shuttle an American treasure Buy the Book Buy the Book Contents List of Illustrations ............. ix Foreword. xi Acknowledgments ..............xv Introduction ..................xix 1. Back in the Game ...............1 2. Cloak and Dagger, Science on Orbit ...............29 3. Hubble Huggers ...............92 4. Sleeping with the Enemy. 136 5. A Home on Orbit ............. 174 6.“The Debris Was Talking to Me” . 200 7. “We Came Home” ............243 8. A Kick in the Pants ............273 9. The End of an Era .............308 10. A Magnificent Machine ........ 341 Epilogue ....................369 Sources .....................389 Index. 403 Buy the Book Buy the Book Illustrations 1. Jerry Ross ..................................... xii 2. Rick Houston strapped into the commander’s seat of Atlantis .................................xvi 3. Doug Hurley and Rick Houston ................... xx 4. Rick Hauck ....................................13 5. The astronauts of sts-26 pose in their finest Wild Wild West attire........................19 6. Rick Hauck, Dick Covey, Mike Lounge, Dave Hilmers, and George “Pinky” Nelson ............25 7. Guy Gardner, Bill Shepherd, Mike Mullane, and Jerry Ross inspect Atlantis’s badly damaged underside ........32 8. sts-49 spacewalkers conduct the first and only three-person eva ................................51 9. Jerry Ross during the flight of sts-37.................57 10. John Glenn coaxes President Bill Clinton ............ 86 11. The Chandra X-ray Observatory ...................90 12. Jeff Hoffman works in the payload ofEndeavour as Story Musgrave draws close to Hubble .............108 13. Jean-François Clervoy ...........................120 14. John Grunsfeld says good-bye to his on-orbit friend ....134 15. Atlantis docked with Mir .........................149 Buy the Book 16. A module used to dock with Mir about to be berthed in Atlantis’s payload bay ...................152 17. Pam Melroy, Koichi Wakata, and Bill McArthur .......179 18. Jim Wetherbee .................................183 19. Jim Reilly .....................................189 20. Godspeed the crew of sts-107 .....................221 21. Rick Husband .................................224 22. Les Hanks and Pat Marsh work with a piece of debris . .237 23. Eileen Collins does a pre-flight check................248 24. The crew on board the iss was able to examine Discovery’s exterior very closely .....................253 25. Steve Robinson removing stray pieces of gap filler ......255 26. Mike Fossum ................................. 276 27. Scott Parazynski looks on as Pam Melroy reads a proclamation ........................... 296 28. Barry Wilmore and Charlie Hobaugh .............. 306 29. Chris Ferguson, Rex Walheim, Doug Hurley, and Sandy Magnus .............................316 30. The crew of sts-135 .............................327 31. The four astronauts who flew the final Space Shuttle mission are welcomed back home ............339 32. Concept art for nasa’s proposed Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle .............................345 33. David Hilmers checks a Nepalese woman for signs of leprosy ..............................372 34. Scott Parazynski ................................377 Buy the Book Foreword All these years later, I can still close my eyes and be right back on the end of that robotic arm, suspended high above Atlantis’s payload bay and 160 nautical miles above the surface of the earth. The view is one of immea- surable beauty. It was 8 April 1991, and my sts-37 crewmate Jerome “Jay” Apt and I were on our second and last extravehicular activity (eva), or spacewalk, of the flight. The rest of the crew was working with Jay, and I had a few moments to myself. We were on a night pass, and as I leaned back, I turned off my helmet-mounted lights and peered into the deep black vastness of space. All of a sudden, a strange sensation washed over me. In that instant I was one with the universe, doing exactly what God had designed me to do. The sensation was unexpected but it was one of peace, comforting and re- assuring. Although I was in one of the most hostile environments to which mankind has ever been exposed, I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing precisely what I was supposed to be doing. Spacewalking is in- credibly complicated, but it just came naturally to me. An engineering back- ground, growing up as a farm boy in Crown Point, Indiana, and my innate mechanical aptitude came together, pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle that somehow managed to fit together perfectly for me as an eva astronaut. Named to the astronaut office in May 1980, I had no way of knowing that I would one day become the first person to be launched into space sev- en times. From 1984 when I began training for my first mission, sts-61b, I was in training for a flight about half of the next eighteen years. The pro- cess of getting ready to fly in space was rigorous, but I lived for it. As an astronaut, I had the job I had always wanted. I did not see myself moving up the management ladder. Over the course of my career at nasa, I was offered several management positions. I turned them down, telling whoever would listen that as long as I could fly, that is what I wanted to Buy the Book 1. Jerry Ross, having the time of his life. Courtesy nasa. do. Executives and headhunters from the private sector came to me with some pretty attractive job proposals as well, but I wanted to fly in space. I took to spaceflight like a duck to water. As time passed, I learned to recognize the telltale signs when some of my astronaut friends were nearing the end of their space-flying careers. While training for their upcoming flights, I would hear them complain about hav- ing to go to this class or that class or to a simulator training session. They would even complain about “having to do” one of the coolest things as- tronauts get to do on earth, a space-suited eva training run in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (nbl) water tank. Sometimes they didn’t even want to do another of our most cherished things, to go flying in a t-38. If an astronaut couldn’t get excited about getting ready to fly in space, I knew it was going to be his or her last mission. Fortunately for me, I never got to that point. Ever. I was like a kid in a candy shop on my seventh flight, sts-110 in April 2002, just like I had been on my first. I loved the training and I loved to fly. I looked forward to the training opportunities, even though I had done most of them many times Buy the Book foreword | xiii over. From the first flight to the last, I enjoyed every minute of training, because training meant I was getting ready to fly! Between my flights I worked on developing shuttle eva tools and proce- dures, evaluating International Space Station (iss) eva hardware and tasks, and developing iss assembly procedures. The eva work was almost as chal- lenging as training for a flight. While serving as the astronaut office eva and robotics branch chief, I worked sixty or more hours a week. I brought my computer and paperwork home and worked until it was time to go to bed and got right back up to do it all again the next day. I spent many Sat- urdays at work, but that is what it took to get the job done. I was glad to be the one doing it. I have been asked how I would like my career to be remembered. That is an easy question for me to answer. I would like to be remembered as a person who had a dream as a young kid and was allowed to pursue and achieve it. I had more fun than it is probably legal to have. I loved every as- pect of what I got to do. I loved the people I got to do it with. I loved the challenges of the flights. I loved seeing the earth from space. The beauty of the earth from space is not describable.