Orbit of Discovery: The All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission

Chapter Eleven: Onward and Upward

327 Chapter Eleven Onward and Upward Astronauts assigned to shuttle missions were molded into close-knit teams, performed the missions for which they were trained, and once the flights were over, returned to the pool of their colleagues to wait their turn for assignment to another mission. New crews were formed, new close-knit teams were developed, new missions were flown, and what seemed like an endless cycle continued. That was the normal progression until the end of the shuttle program in 2011. When a mission was over and the last postflight appearance was completed, it was a little sad seeing the crew disperse. But it also was an exciting time. While knowing that our names were probably at the very end of the very long astronaut mission assignment list, there was a bit of anticipation about when our next spaceflight assignment would come and what that mission would entail. Plus, there was the prospect of the new job we’d be doing within the Astronaut Office. But that didn’t necessarily mean that the personal relationships and friendships developed during our previous assignments came to an end. After training so hard and spending more than a year 328 ORBIT OF DISCOVERY together preparing for a flight, our friendships were quite unique. We experienced something very few human beings had or ever would. In some cases, we very much became an extended family. Some of the friendships I formed with my crew mates were lifelong, others less so. That’s just human nature. Where Are They Now? So what happened to everybody after the All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission? Well, as our postflight appearances started to wind down, I was assigned to the shuttle program’s Payloads Branch where I supervised the development and testing of various experiments that would fly on future shuttle missions. With my extensive payload experience from STS-65 and STS-70, that assignment was a good match for me and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. My home life returned to normal as best it could. Kai, at the time about six months old, kept Simone and me quite busy. We pretty much fell into the normal routine of parenthood with a newborn baby. Except for the fact that somehow, I seemed to be the only one who ever heard him crying in the middle of the night, necessitating frequent trips downstairs to get him a bottle to help him fall back to sleep. After my rapid reassignment to STS-70 only a month after STS-65 landed, I was looking forward to a more normal lifestyle, without the tension and frenetic pace associated with being assigned to a flight. Don’t get me wrong. I definitely wanted to fly on the shuttle again, but I also welcomed the break between flights. It was a time to catch my breath. But the sabbatical didn’t last very long. On January 16, 1996, less than six months (178 days to be exact) after landing aboard Discovery on STS-70, I was told that Ken Cockrell , the chief of the Astronaut Office, wanted to speak with me. Once again my initial reaction was, “What have I done wrong now?” I walked down the hall to find out. I was soon informed that I was being assigned to the crew of STS-83. Like my first flight, it would 329 Onward and Upward be another Spacelab science mission aboard space shuttle Columbia. The launch was tentatively scheduled for the spring of 1997 with no specific date yet announced. I was elated by the news (Who doesn’t like getting assigned to a space shuttle mission?), but at the same time I thought, Here we go again. Training would begin in a month or two and would involve quite a bit of time at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville , Alabama. I waited until I got home that evening to tell Simone. She was happy for me, but couldn’t believe it was happening again so soon. She had some of the same thoughts as when I was assigned to the STS-70 mission only one month after STS-65. Couldn’t NASA give us a little break? Commanding STS-83 would be Jim Halsell, with whom I had flown on STS-65. Our pilot would be Susan Still, a Navy aviator making her first spaceflight. Susan was the second woman assigned to pilot the shuttle...