Orbit of Discovery: The All-Ohio Space Shuttle Mission

Chapter Three: The All-Ohio Shuttle Crew

92 Chapter Three The All-Ohio Shuttle Crew It started off as just another day. Exactly one month earlier—July 23, 1994—my STS-65 crew mates and I landed at the Kennedy Space Center aboard Columbia after our International Microgravity Laboratory mission that set a shuttle program flight duration record—14 days, 17 hours, and 55 minutes. Now we were in the middle of our postflight debriefings, which included visits to other NASA centers. But on that day, I was at my home base, the Johnson Space Center. I was in my office doing paperwork when I got a call that Hoot Gibson, chief of the Astronaut Office, wanted to see me. My initial reaction was, “What have I done now?” Since Hoot’s office was only three or four from mine, it took me only about a minute to get there. He told me I was being assigned to the STS-70 mission, tentatively scheduled for sometime the following summer. The primary objective, he said, was to deploy a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS). It would be a five-day mission with five crew members. He wondered whether I had any questions, so I asked the obvious: “Who are the other four?” 93 The All-Ohio Shuttle Crew “I can’t tell you now,” he replied. “You’ll find out tomorrow at the all-hands meeting when we officially announce it to the rest of the [Astronaut] Office.” I thought it was a bit strange and didn’t understand the whole secrecy thing, but I didn’t much care. All I knew was that I was thrilled to be assigned to another space shuttle mission, and that I would be flying in space again very soon. I left Hoot’s office with the telltale signs of having just been assigned to a flight: a big smile and an effort to act like nothing new was happening in my life. I went back to the office where my STS-65 crew mates—Rick Hieb, Leroy Chiao, and Chiaki Mukai—were working and didn’t say a word about my meeting. I finished up the day and went home to tell Simone the good news. I walked through the front door and saw her standing in the kitchen. “I have something to tell you,” I said, a smile on my face. She had no idea what I was about to say, but recalled later that she was a bit apprehensive. “I’ve just been assigned to the STS-70 mission.” Without any hesitation, she asked: “When is the launch date?” “Sometime next summer, maybe June or July,” I replied. After a deep breath and a big sigh, she said, “At least the baby will be born by then.” She was happy for me that I was getting another chance to fly in space, but wondered to herself why NASA couldn’t have given us a bit of a break. After all, it had only been thirty days since I landed from my first flight and here I was immediately being thrown into training for my second. No time to relax with the family. No time to decompress. The next morning, I saw Kevin Kregel, a member of the Astronaut Class of 1992. I knew Kevin before he became an astronaut when he was one of the T-38 instructor pilots at Ellington Field. Kevin was a nice guy, always friendly. But that morning something was different. He was staring at me with a huge smile on his face—a much, much bigger smile than the one with which he normally greeted me. The only thing I could think was that he, too, must have been assigned to STS-70. 94 ORBIT OF DISCOVERY “You on seventy, Kevin?” I asked. “Yeah, I sure am,” he replied. “Do you know who else is on the crew?” I asked. “Yeah, sure,” he continued. “Tom Henricks is commander, and Nancy Currie and Mary Ellen Weber are mission specialists.” I was impressed that he knew all this. I’ll never understand why I wasn’t told the day before like Kevin apparently was, but at eleven fifteen that morning the whole office would find out who was on the crew. The all-hands meeting took place in the same large conference room used for our Monday morning astronaut office tag-up sessions and debriefings. With about a third of the astronauts present...