posted 11-17-2008 05:02 PM               

Mike Mullane also discusses this incident in his book (Riding Rockets) but also holds back from telling us the name (since there is no need to embarrass the person in question... who probably now regrets his/her actions and statements from the time).

Mullane's main argument was the program to fly payload specialists in the 80s was flawed, because many of the payload specialists didn't go through the same screening and training that the pilot astronauts and mission specialists went through (even while expressing respect for certain payload specialists like Charlie Walker, whom he flew with). He viewed the payload specialists as somewhat of an unknown factor for the missions... especially the ones picked to fly for political or PR reasons.

If nothing else, one could argue that perhaps not all of the payload specialists were fully trained to appreciate the dangers and risks inherent to spaceflight... especially in an era when NASA was trying hard to make spaceflight appear to be safe-enough and routine-enough for the "average" person (such as a teacher or a congressman) to participate in.

I don't recall a story of the hatch being duct-taped shut (nor could I envision how one could even do such a thing effectively), though it has been discussed elsewhere that duct tape is a tool available for restraining an astronaut who is out of control (especially around the time when the Nowak incident was in the news).

posted 11-18-2008 09:08 AM               

So finally, in desperation, I said, "Hey, if you guys don't give me a chance to repair my instrument, I'm not coming back."

Well, NASA got very nervous at that point. They actually got a psychologist to talk to the other crew members and ask, "Is Taylor going nuts?" Fortunately, my commander, Bob Overmyer, said, "No, he's okay. He's just depressed, and he really wants to repair the experiment. We'll help out." They were on my side. Finally NASA said okay...

...I was relieved, because I hadn't really figured out how not to come back if they'd called my bluff. The Asian tradition of honorable suicide, seppuku, would have failed, since everything on the shuttle is designed for safety. The knife on-board can't even cut the bread. You could put your head in the oven, but it's really just a food warmer. You wouldn't even burn yourself. And if you tried to hang yourself with no gravity, you'd just dangle there and look like an idiot.

posted 11-18-2008 10:48 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by mjanovec:
I suspect you saw the episode of The Universe that I saw last night on the History Channel.

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posted 11-18-2008 02:07 PM               

From Shaw's JSC oral history:

SHAW: Anyhow, that was a fun flight. We also had Rodolfo Neri Vela on that flight. This was really the first -- I don't remember if it was the first time we flew somebody like that or not, to tell you the truth. The first time I had flown with somebody that we didn't know very well. You know, Ulf Merbold was a German, but he'd been training with those guys a long time. They knew him well. We didn't know Rodolfo very well. He kind of showed up late in the process and wasn't here all the time and stuff, and so you didn't really get to know him well. So I wasn't too sure about his human reliability. I'm probably a paranoid kind of guy, but I didn't know what he was going to do on orbit.

So I remember I got this padlock, and when we got on orbit, I went down to the hatch on the side of the Orbiter, and I padlocked the hatch control so that you could not open the hatch. I mean, on the Orbiter on orbit you can go down there and you just flip this little thing and you crank that handle once [demonstrates], the hatch opens and all the air goes out and everybody goes out with it, just like that. And I thought to myself, "Jeez, I don't know this guy very well. He might flip out or something." So I padlocked the hatch shut right after we got on orbit, and I didn't take the padlock off until we were in de-orbit prep. I don't know if I was supposed to do that or not, but that's a decision I made as being responsible for my crew and I just did it.

RUSNAK: Did any of the rest of the crew notice it?

SHAW: Yes. I don't think Rodolfo noticed it, but some of the other crew noticed it. But everything went just fine. He turned out to be a great guy, and we had a lot of fun on that mission. That was a very successful mission, as were all three of the times I got to fly. In fact, we have not really had an unsuccessful Space Shuttle mission except for Challenger.

posted 11-28-2008 06:40 PM               

Sometimes, like on a tall building, get a controllable urge similar to jumping off which is to open a hatch to vacuum - or to take off a glove or pop a helmet - fortunately, these are passing impulses that you can control but it is interesting to know they take place.

posted 09-12-2013 05:32 PM               

I suspect that most people that have been at the edge of something tall have wondered what it would be like to jump, not to kill oneself, just that oddball feeling.

posted 09-15-2013 04:16 AM               

It had been preceded earlier that day with a jump off the Pont de l'Araignée (Spider Bridge) at Niouc (623ft) and followed up on the Sunday with a jump off the Verzasca "007 Goldeneye" Dam Wall (722ft).

posted 10-31-2014 11:06 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by ilbasso:
Isn't it interesting that even one of the most terminally upbeat of all astronauts would get these urges on occasion?

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I saw it often myself in the military. Once I was prepping some ordnance, things that would kill you so badly that they'd be able to fit your remains in a small baggie. I, too, was thinking about what'd happen if someone pulled or pushed the wrong thing and what sized crater that would leave as well as how little of me would be found later. Not long afterward, one of my Sergeants made a comment like that, then worried we were thinking he was going to blow us up. All of us laughed and said we'd each been thinking the same thing.

posted 10-31-2014 02:33 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by webhamster:
I seem to remember a statement by Brewster Shaw somewhere (maybe it was later in the cited interview from earlier) that he just went down to a hardware store before launch and bought an off-the-shelf padlock.

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posted 11-01-2014 06:59 PM               

Last year, I talked with Mary Cleave about the 51B incident and I categorized it as an "urban legend." She replied, "That was no urban legend. It happened."