Page 7 of Atmosphere

She pretended to be searching in the refrigerator for her lunch but, instead, considered her options. Ten minutes later, she was at her desk, writing to request another application.

That year, one hundred and twenty-one applicants were invited—in groups of twenty—for a week of interviews at the Johnson Space Center.

This time, one of them was Joan.

The first night, Joan checked into the Sheraton Kings Inn and got settled in her room. She was ten minutes early for the evening orientation.

She was the third person to sit down. The two already seated were men, and both looked to be military. Then, just behind Joan, another woman walked into the room.

The woman had curly brown hair and light brown eyes, which looked especially striking with the olive-green button-up shirt she was wearing. There was a thin gold chain around her neck.

She sat down just a few seats away from Joan. This woman did not smile or say hello. Joan had no particular reason to feel a connection to her except that, now, Joan was no longer the only woman in the room.

Joan watched as more people filed in. Soon a set of classifications emerged in her mind: scientist and military. Later, Steve Hagen would make it even simpler: “The astronaut corps has two types: dorks and soldiers.” Still, that evening, Joan could not classify the woman in the olive-green shirt.

A man at the front cleared his throat. He had salt-and-pepper hair, closely cropped and combed to the side, with a mustache that was beginning to gray as well.

“I am Antonio Lima, the director of flight at the Astronaut Office,” he said. “Welcome, everyone.”

Joan looked around, seeing them all from what she imagined of his perspective. They all must seem so green.

“If you made it here today, you are one of the select few applicants who we believe may be an asset to NASA and to this nation. Over the course of the next week, you will be assessed in terms of your unique abilities and how they may be a benefit to the larger astronaut corps. Our astronaut candidates—those of you who are fortunate enough to be chosen to join the training here at NASA—must be physically fit and mentally sound, as well as superlatively prepared for the task that lies ahead.”

Just then, a man snuck into the room, taking the chair closest to the door. Joan looked at her watch. He was two minutes late. Certainly this man knew that he was done for.

“You are here,” Antonio continued, “because NASA is about to embark on its greatest and most groundbreaking enterprise yet: the space shuttle program. Until now, space exploration has been exceptional. It has been rare. Soon it will become routine.”

Antonio lifted the cover off the easel and showed a blueprint of a spacecraft. Everyone in the room leaned forward. Joan was familiar with the concept of the shuttle, but learning this level of detail about how it would work made her pulse quicken.

“The shuttles are the first spacecraft in NASA history designed to be reusable,” he said. “With a fleet of shuttles, we can fly into low space orbit over and over again. Launches will happen monthly, even weekly. We will carry cargo to deploy to space. We will perform experiments. Eventually, we believe, we will establish a permanent presence in space, including a space station and manned flights to Mars, built by the shuttle missions we are developing today.”

Antonio grabbed the pointer from the easel.

“This is the orbiter,” he said, pointing to the bulk of the shuttle. “It will launch with an external tank and two solid rocket boosters, one on each side.” He removed the top diagram to show another, more complex one.

“Once the shuttle is launched, the external gas tank and the solid rocket boosters will fall away. And the orbiter will enter low-Earth orbit. As for the crew…” He pointed to the nose of the orbiter. “They will occupy the flight deck here and the mid-deck here.”

The flight and mid-decks were tiny compared to the rest of the orbiter. Joan was starting to get a sense of scale, and she could not keep a smile from escaping.

“Once in orbit, the shuttle will be traveling at approximately five miles a second at a typical altitude of around two hundred miles, circling Earth every ninety minutes. After the astronauts havecompleted their mission, they will return to Earth. Unlike previous programs here at NASA, we will not be using a splashdown landing in the water. Instead, upon successful reentry into the atmosphere, the shuttle will fly—much like an airplane—and land, wheels down, at one of our bases.”

Antonio stepped back and allowed everyone to take that in. Then he resumed his introduction:

“By now I hope you have surmised that you are looking at a spacecraft unlike anything we’ve seen before. The shuttle is not one piece of machinery. It is three. On launch, it is a rocket. In orbit, it is a spaceship. On landing, it is an airplane. This is what will allow us to usher in the future of space exploration.”

Joan felt a flutter in her belly. It was the same feeling she’d gotten the first time she saw the glowing band of the Milky Way when her parents took her to Joshua Tree as a child.

“Our missions here at NASA are not without risk,” Antonio said. “You will put your life into the hands of your directors and your fellow astronauts, as well as the researchers and engineers who make space exploration possible. But, if chosen, you may become one of a very small number of people who can say they have left the Earth and who can report back to the rest of us on what our planet looks like from afar. You will usher us into the future. I can assure you that thiswill bethe greatest technological achievement in the history of NASA. It may well be the greatest endeavor in the history of mankind.”

Joan tried to process just how close this opportunity was to her grasp, but as she did, her eyes met those of the woman with the curly hair, a few seats away. The two of them held each other’s gaze for a moment.

Was this really happening?

That week, she sat for heart-rate monitoring, hearing and vision tests, blood draws, and full assessments from the flight surgeons. Her body was poked and prodded in ways that shocked her.

But she was determined to show all of her NASA evaluators that what she had to offer was exactly what they needed: determined, stoic composure.

She stepped onto a treadmill connected to electrodes and ran for over five miles before even beginning to slow down.

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