Orbit of Discovery: The All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission

Chapter Five: Open Season on Woodpeckers

176 Chapter Five Open Season on Woodpeckers Rob Kelso, our lead flight director, declared the STS-70 mission a woodpecker humor-free zone—at least until TDRS was deployed. He told everyone to hold off on the woodpecker jokes, and rightly so because he wanted all of us focused on the primary and most critical aspect of the mission. But once the satellite floated from the shuttle’s payload bay and was placed successfully in its own orbit, things got much more laid-back, not only aboard Discovery but also in Mission Control. And it soon was open season on woodpecker references—something that would continue unabated until long after our flight was over. The folks in Mission Control wasted no time in leading the way. To mark the dawning of Flight Day 2, a large stuffed Woody Woodpecker showed up on the flight director’s console, apparently to help keep an eye on things. Woody would circulate among the various consoles in Mission Control during the flight so everyone got a chance to enjoy his company. 177 Open Season on Woodpeckers Aboard Discovery, the day got off to a great start. Shortly after 3:00 a.m. CDT, we were awakened as astronauts usually are—with music, a tradition that dates back to the Apollo Program. The mission-specific musical selections were chosen to promote camaraderie and esprit de corps among the astronauts and ground support personnel. To appropriately mark our first full day in space and acknowledge the travails we experienced getting there, Mission Control chose the theme from the Woody Woodpecker cartoons, which ended with Woody’s staccato laugh. Our second shift Capcom, veteran astronaut Story Musgrave, followed up with a laugh of his owns as he said, “Good morning, Discovery.” Nancy answered for the crew, “Good morning, Houston. Great wake-up music.” To which Story replied, “Just because you’re one hundred and seventy-nine miles up doesn’t mean you can get away from that little guy. He’s after you.” Nancy responded in kind, “We had a feeling we would hear more about that.” That was the first time I was able to enjoy the wake-up music tradition while aboard a shuttle. I played songs on many occasions for other shuttle crews when I was a Capcom but was not on the receiving end until STS-70. During my first flight on space shuttle Columbia for STS-65, we were a two-shift operation with half the crew working while the other half slept. Because there was no single time when the entire crew was waking up, Mission Control had a policy of not playing wake-up music on those flights. So I had been looking forward to enjoying the wake-up music on STS-70 and got a kick out of the Woody Woodpecker theme song as the first such music I experienced in space. One of the first things I learned about wake-up music was that the speakers used on the shuttles were not exactly ideal for listening to music. There was one speaker on the flight deck and a second in the ceiling on the middeck, and both had the same fine acoustic qualities familiar to all on Earth when placing orders at fast-food 178 ORBIT OF DISCOVERY take-out windows. If you ever struggled to understand what the person taking your order was saying, you have a pretty good idea of what the sound quality was like for our wake-up music. The second woodpecker assault—the first, of course, being the actual attack on the external tank—didn’t end with the wake-up music. As part of our morning mail and messages from the Mission Control team, the so-called STS-70 Execute Package, we received the following imitation of David Letterman’s Top Ten List: OK, you knew it was coming. From the home office in Room 3308. The Top 10 STS-70 crew-requested galley items. #10 Fettuccini Alfredo with blackened woodpecker #9 Woodpecker and Swiss Lunchables #8 Woodpecker Boudin #7 Caffeine-free Woodpecker cola #6 International Coffee “Woodpecker Mocha” #5 Woodpecker on a shingle #4 Woodpecker Picante (medium) #3 Slimfast Woodpecker shake #2 Szechwan Woodpecker (spicy) #1 More astronaut ice cream That brought some big laughs from all of us as we passed the list around. Along with this top ten list, Mission Control sent a picture titled “STS-70...