Riding Rockets (44 page)

“In the last eight years or so, the dissatisfaction level relative to management style has risen significantly, if I am to judge from all the unsolicited comments offered by astronauts and their spouses. The level of dissonance is much higher than I experienced in my military career as a flight surgeon-psychiatrist working almost exclusively with pilots and their families. Nor have I seen its equal with the elite flying units or special projects air crew for whom I was a long-term consultant…. Though they are exceedingly careful about the setting in which they [astronauts] give voice to their dissatisfaction, there is no doubt that the current managerial style constitutes an important morale issue with the astronaut community and, for many, has a stultifying effect on creativity and open discussion.”

The writing was couched in scientific mumbo jumbo and not a single manager’s name was mentioned. The opening paragraph implied it was nothing more than a technical paper. “This is a background document on leadership as it relates to the astronaut group, more specifically, on the impact of various leadership styles upon the morale, creativity and productivity of the astronauts.” But much of the remainder of the work focused on a particular leadership style as it related to astronauts—the autocratic power merchant. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see the similarities between that style, as described by McGuire, and the way Abbey operated:

“Like a good Pavlovian psychologist, he has learned not only that rewards and punishments reinforce behaviors, but also that there are times when an inconstant system of incomplete rewards can evoke even stronger adherence to desired behaviors than a predictable full-scale reward system. This second approach also lowers his predictability and keeps people off balance.”

“…No one in the cadre is allowed to know all parts of the grand plans the power merchant may have.”

“Inconsistency, ambiguity, silence, evasion…all have their place in his studied unpredictability.”

Later in the document, McGuire makes the point, “The autocratic managerial style is the most antithetical to the needs of the astronaut corps, a group who in most settings would be chiefs rather than indians [
sic
]. Though calculated to be the least effective, if the autocrat is open, non-devious and fair, he can still be acceptable to the prototypical astronaut. But if he is the type of leader who is oriented toward the accumulation of personal power for power’s sake, rather than for the good of the company, his impact on the corps will be destructive. Men of such inclination are drawn by nature toward the autocratic style. So I have gone to special pains to identify the hard-core autocratic power merchant because, of all leadership approaches, it has the greatest potential for negative impact not only on personnel clusters such as the astronauts, but also within the total institution….”

He continued, “For many years astronaut morale has been, I believe, considerably below its potential. Many of the fine men who have moved on from its ranks to other endeavors have told me of the negative role astronaut management has played in their decision to leave. As is so often true, the most capable men, those with more options and more confidence, are the most at risk to depart NASA for new challenges. Usually they elect to leave with as little surface disturbance as possible, out of deference to NASA as an organization. In my several decades of association with NASA, I have never seen a more propitious time to institute change, nor a time in which the morale-boosting effects of realistic positive change would be more welcome.”

I set aside the document completely befuddled. What did it all mean? Had someone in management commissioned McGuire to document astronaut frustrations and scientifically show how Abbey’s leadership style was the direct cause? If so, to what end—as justification to get rid of George? His comment “…never seen a more propitious time to institute change…” certainly sounded like a recommendation to somebody. It certainly wasn’t the type of statement you would expect to find in a technical paper written for publication in a medical journal. But I wasn’t about to go back to McGuire and question him. More than ever I felt like I was living in medieval times with plots swirling about. I had one objective…not to get burned by any castle intrigue. If somebody was attempting to assassinate John and/or George I wished them luck, but I didn’t want to be a participant. Like a serf in the field, I wanted to be invisible when the opposing armies swept past. I just wanted to hold on long enough to fly another space mission and then I would be gone from this madness.

*It did happen. Pre-MECO OMS burns are now regularly done during nominal ascents and are part of shuttle launch abort procedures.

Chapter 28

Falling

In mid-October 1986, astronaut medical doctors Jim Bagian and Sonny Carter presented the
Challenger
autopsy results. We expected to hear the answer to the question that had tormented all of us since the moment of
Challenger
’s destruction. Had the crew been alive and conscious in their fall to the water? I had been certain they had not. I had said it a hundred times to Donna, “At least they died or were knocked out instantly.” That belief was my security blanket. It was too great a horror to think they may have been conscious in the two-and-a-half-minute fall to water impact. New revelations throughout the investigation had given me momentary doubts but I had always managed to build a new scenario to hide behind. My “cockpit-shredding explosion” theory had long been proven wrong. The fire leaking from the right-side SRB had weakened its bottom attachment to the ET. As the SRB pulled free it ruptured the external tank, and the aerodynamic forces and the G-loads of the moment caused the catastrophic breakup of the stack. There had been no high-power detonation. The enormous “explosion” seen in the sky was merely tons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen vaporizing and burning. NASA cameras had picked out the cockpit module as a piece of the fragmentation. It trailed some wires and tubing but otherwise appeared intact, suggesting it was bearing a live, conscious crew. But I created a scenario in which the cockpit G-forces at the moment of breakup had pulled the crew seats from their floor attachments and hurled them against the interior of the cabin, killing the occupants instantly, or at least knocking them unconscious. When engineers later determined that the cockpit G-loads were not incapacitating, much less fatal, I created a scenario in which a window had broken or, in some other manner, the pressure integrity of the cockpit had been explosively compromised, causing crew unconsciousness within seconds.

The first fact that Bagian and Carter put on the table was that the time of death could not be determined from an examination of the crew remains. I was not surprised. High-performance-vehicle crashes typically leave little of the human body for pathologists to work with. In the case of
Challenger,
the weeks of immersion in salt water had resulted in additional deterioration of the remains. The story of crew survivability and consciousness would have to be told by the remains of the machine, not the crew. Bagian and Carter began that story.

There was proof, in the form of Mike Smith’s Personal Emergency Air Pack (PEAP), that the crew had survived vehicle breakup. PEAPs were portable canisters intended to provide emergency breathing air to a crewmember escaping through toxic fumes in a ground emergency. They were not intended for use in flight. But Mike Smith’s PEAP, stowed on the back of his seat and only accessible in flight by mission specialist 1 or 2, had been found in the on position. Either El Onizuka (MS1) or Judy (MS2) had to have thrown the switch and there would have been only one reason to do so—they were suffocating. Breakup had ripped away their only source of oxygen, the tanks under the cargo bay. Within a couple breaths, the residual oxygen remaining in their helmets and in the feed lines would have been consumed. The fierce urge to breathe would have immediately driven all of the crew either to turn on their PEAPs or raise the faceplates of their helmets. Judy or El had turned on Mike Smith’s PEAP knowing he could not reach the switch himself. (Onizuka, sitting directly behind Mike, had the easiest access to the switch, though Judy, sitting to El’s left, could have reached it with some difficulty.) Enough pieces of one other PEAP were recovered to determine it had also been in the on position, but crash damage made it impossible to establish the seat location of that canister. The fact that two PEAPS had been turned on was proof the crew had survived
Challenger
’s breakup. I would later learn that some of the electrical system switches on Mike Smith’s right-hand panel had been moved out of their nominal positions. These switches were protected with lever locks that required them to be pulled outward against a spring force before they could be toggled to a new position. Tests proved the G-forces of the crash could not have moved them, meaning that Mike Smith made the switch changes, no doubt in an attempt to restore electrical power to the cockpit. This is additional proof the crew was conscious and functional immediately after the breakup. Mike Smith’s PEAP also provided proof the crew had been alive all the way to water impact. It had been depleted by approximately two and a half minutes of breathing, the time of the cockpit fall.

The question remaining was whether the crew had stayed conscious beyond the few seconds needed to activate their PEAPs and for Mike Smith to throw some switches on his panel. They could not have remained conscious if the cockpit had rapidly depressurized to ambient (outside) air pressure. Breakup occurred at 46,000 feet, an altitude 17,000 feet higher than Mount Everest, and the nearly Mach 2 upward velocity at breakup continued to carry the cockpit to an apogee of approximately 60,000 feet. To stay conscious in the low atmospheric pressure of these extreme heights, the crew would have needed pressurized pure oxygen in their lungs and the PEAPs only supplied sea level
air,
a mixture of about 80 percent nitrogen and 20 percent oxygen. But had there been a cockpit depressurization?

An explosive depressurization—due to a window breaking, for example—would have been a blessing and I prayed fiercely that had been the case. But
Challenger
’s wreckage said it didn’t happen. If it had, the cockpit floor would have buckled upward as the air in the lower cockpit rapidly expanded. The wreckage revealed no such buckling. That news was a dagger in my heart.

Bagian and Carter explained there was still the possibility of a nonexplosive but rapid enough depressurization to cause quick unconsciousness. Such air leakage could have occurred due to numerous penetrations at the rear cockpit bulkhead. These provided pathways for wire bundles and fluid lines to pass between the cockpit and the rest of the orbiter. At breakup those wires and tubes were violently ripped apart, and it was possible the pressurization sealing for those manufactured penetrations could have failed. There was also evidence of breakup debris striking the cockpit from the outside. A piece of steel had been found jammed into a window frame. While that particular piece of debris did not penetrate the cockpit, other debris might have, resulting in a depressurization rapid enough to cause unconsciousness.

But it was all conjecture. There was no way to know the pressure integrity of the cockpit and, therefore, the state of crew consciousness. Bagian and Carter did have some ancillary evidence suggesting crew inactivity, which some thought could be a signature of crew blackout. Every piece of paper recovered from the wreckage was examined to see if any crewmembers had written a note. Nothing had been discovered. Neither had the cockpit overhead emergency escape hatch been blown. Some astronauts had suggested they would have jettisoned it as they neared the water to facilitate escape if impact was survived. The status of Mike Smith’s PEAP also hinted at crew inactivity—the canister was only depleted by two and a half minutes, which meant his visor had remained closed during the fall. If it had been open, all five minutes of PEAP air would have leaked out. But, if the crew had been conscious, wouldn’t they have
raised
their visors to talk to one another in their fight for survival? That was Bagian’s and Carter’s hypothesis. After all, we were trained to react to emergencies as a team and that required communication. At breakup the intercom failed, leaving visors-open, direct speaking as the only means of communicating. (Crash damage had obliterated all the helmets and all but Mike’s PEAP, making it impossible to know if the visors of the others were up or down.)

After the presentation was concluded, someone put the escape question to Bagian and Carter. “If this had occurred during OFT [the first four shuttle flights in which the two-man crews had ejection seats], do you think the crew would have been able to bail out?” Their answer was a definite yes. The OFT crews had worn pressure suits. Even if cabin pressure had been lost, those suits would have kept the crew conscious and they would have been able to pull an ejection handle.

Carter next informed everybody that the flight surgeon’s office was going to archive a clip of our hair and a footprint to facilitate our identification in the event of a future shuttle loss. That comment suggested how difficult identification of the
Challenger
crew remains had been. Even dental records hadn’t been enough. John Young sagely observed, “When extraordinary methods are being taken to make sure you can be identified after you’re dead, everybody ought to think twice about the job they’re in.” He was right.

He was also right when he added, “We shouldn’t fly again until we have an escape system.” Already some NASA managers were suggesting we should return to flight as quickly as possible and the escape system modifications could catch up. As much as I disliked Young for his attempts to torpedo my astronaut career, the position he took on some issues were the right ones.

Carter reminded everybody, “Keep the information you just heard to yourselves.” At that Dick Richards (class of 1980) lashed out, “Who does NASA think it’s protecting? The families? They don’t care if the information is released.”