Chasing Space

by Leland Melvin

  The reality is that NASA played a major role in the government’s efforts to integrate the South. In the 1950s and 1960s, the space race was accelerating during the Cold War just as the struggle for civil rights was erupting in the South. President Kennedy saw an opportunity in the expansion of the space program to try to break Jim Crow’s tenacious grip.

  In We Could Not Fail, Richard Paul and Steven Moss presented a study of the first African Americans in the space program and the national consequences of their inclusion. The authors argue that NASA’s role in southern desegregation hasn’t been fully appreciated. “The work NASA did as part of federal civil rights efforts, as well as the social consequences of its presence in the South,” they contend, “bridges two great American stories of the early 1960s.”

  Another important character in America’s space program emerged in 1966, when Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry decided to include Nichelle Nichols, an African American actress, in the show’s original cast. As Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, communications officer of the starship Enterprise, Nichols enabled television viewers to see a black woman in a television series who was not a servant. She had a role of authority.

  “When I was nine years old Star Trek came on,” the Oscar-winning actress Whoopi Goldberg once told a reporter. “I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, Mom, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”

  Nichols didn’t completely grasp her character’s significance until the conclusion of the first season, when she told Roddenberry she was leaving the show to take a part in a Broadway-bound production. Roddenberry was determined to keep her. He told her to take the weekend to think it over. That weekend, during an NAACP fundraiser at a Beverly Hills hotel, Nichols was told that a fan wanted to meet her. Oh no, another Trekkie, she thought.

  Nichols turned to meet the fan and found herself looking into the smiling face of the iconic civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I was breathless,” she said.

  “Yes, Miss Nichols, I am that Trekkie,” King told her. “I’m a Star Trek fan.” Star Trek, King said, was one of the only shows that he and Coretta would let their small children stay up late to watch, largely due to the fact that the role of the ship’s communications officer was played by a black woman. Nichols thanked King for the compliment. She also told him she was leaving the show.

  Nichols later, during an interview with the Washington Post, recalled King’s reaction. “He said something along the lines of, ‘Nichelle, whether you like it or not, you have become a symbol. If you leave, they can replace you with a blond-haired white girl, and it will be like you were never there. What you’ve accomplished, for all of us, will only be real if you stay.’ That got me thinking about how it would look for fans of color around the country if they saw me leave. I saw that this was bigger than just me.”

  Star Trek was canceled in 1969 after only three seasons, but Lieutenant Uhura’s capacity to inspire continued. NASA hired Nichols to help the agency recruit women and minorities into the space program, and that she did. Among the astronauts she helped recruit were Guion Bluford, the first African American in space, and the first woman, Sally Ride. While Star Trek motivated many people to come to work at NASA, few of its characters had such a direct and lasting influence as Lieutenant Uhura.

  • • •

  A few years back I had the honor of speaking on a panel at the National Air and Space Museum with Julius Montgomery, the first black engineer to work in the space program. Morgan Watson was also on the program. He grew up picking cotton before setting his sights on a career in science. He joined NASA in Huntsville, Alabama, and eventually worked on the launchpad for the Saturn V rocket that flew to the moon. Our third panelist was Dr. Mae Jemison, the first black woman to go to space. She arrived at NASA nearly thirty years ago after Watson joined the space agency.

  Montgomery was an electronics technician, hired to work at Cape Canaveral on a NASA project overseen by RCA. It was 1956, and in those days there may have been no worse place to be an African American than Florida. Authors Paul and Moss wrote that a black man had a better chance of being lynched in the area around Cape Canaveral than almost anywhere else in the United States.

  Racial segregation didn’t dampen Montgomery’s drive. Besides becoming the first African American to be hired as anything other than a janitor, Montgomery also helped found the Florida Institute of Technology, a one-time night school for NASA employees that is now a respected university. To this day, the school gives out a prestigious annual award named for Montgomery.

  When I met Watson and Montgomery in 2010, Montgomery was nearing ninety. Still, he remembered the terror he felt nearly fifty years ago when he first walked into that NASA lab full of angry white men who didn’t think he belonged there. After the panel ended, I had a chance to speak with him during the reception. He came up to me and shook my hand. “You know,” he said. “You astronauts, you’re the bravest people I ever met.”

  I couldn’t believe he was saying this to me, this from a man who opened doors at the space agency so I could someday fly in space. I’m sure the notion of a black astronaut at NASA was unthinkable during Montgomery’s time at the agency. “No sir,” I said. “I heard your story. You are the bravest person I ever met.”

  Reluctant Astronaut

  Langley seemed far away from the action associated with being an astronaut. It had its own culture, its own politics. But in 1995 my research colleague Charles Camarda applied for the Astronaut Corps and, to my surprise, was accepted—and on his second try. He had applied unsuccessfully nearly twenty years earlier, when he was fresh out of college with a BS in aerospace engineering from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and only a few years’ work experience. In the intervening years, he’d gotten a master’s degree in engineering from George Washington University and a PhD from Virginia Tech. He also raised a daughter on his own. He’d waited until his daughter was old enough to understand the importance of space exploration before trying again.

  Charlie is hardly the picture of a NASA astronaut. Standing at about five foot four, he sports a thick brown mustache and a thick Brooklyn accent. While most astronauts will tell you they had wanted to be an astronaut since they were a kid, Charlie would have told you he wanted to be a boxer. Second to that he’d probably have told you he wanted to be a research scientist, but the lure of the ultimate challenge proved too much to resist, and Charlie took the plunge and applied.

  Charlie, an astronaut? If Charlie can do it, I can do it, I thought. But even at the urging of my good friend and Langley engineer Thomas Kashangaki, who actually gave me an application, I still didn’t apply.

  I’m not sure why, other than the odds seemed long and the process exhausting. Yet about a year later, Charlie flew from Houston to Langley in the sleek blue-and-white NASA T-38 training aircraft piloted by astronaut John Young, possibly the most decorated and accomplished astronaut in the space program. Young was a legend. He had flown almost every aircraft known to man and flew on every space vehicle from Mercury to Apollo. In April 1972, he walked on the moon. If that wasn’t enough, he went on to command the first space shuttle mission STS-1, Columbia. He had the longest career of any astronaut ever, and yet here he was, visiting me at Langley.

  The T-38 Young flew that day is an amazing aircraft, capable of flying supersonic up to Mach 1.3 and above 50,000 feet, 10,000 feet higher than the cruising altitude of a commercial jet. I would eventually come to know the T-38’s mind-numbing acceleration at seven G’s, seven times the force of gravity. On that day, though, I was drooling at the idea of riding in one.

  During their visit, I had a chance to present to Charlie and Young the research on optical fibers I was doing to improve safety in the space program. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Charlie had talked me up to Young the entire flight to Langley, knowing that Young’s input in the selection process
could prove invaluable. I was in awe of Young, but wouldn’t you know it, he slept through my entire talk. Still, he was John Young so nobody dared rouse him. But when he finally woke up he turned to me and said, “Great job, Leland. You should apply to be an astronaut.”

  Years later, Charlie would go on to fly on space shuttle Discovery’s first mission after the Columbia disaster—known as the Return to Flight mission—a flight that took extraordinary courage and nerve, and Charlie would prove himself time and again to be an excellent mission specialist and engineer.

  The requirements for becoming an astronaut have gone through several transformations since the first class was selected in 1959. Back then President Eisenhower required that all astronauts be military-trained pilots with a minimum of one thousand hours piloting jets. That rule was in place until the fourth astronaut class in 1965, when the pool included candidates chosen for their science and academic backgrounds.

  I had finally applied, just before Young’s visit to Langley. When I was selected, I learned that NASA, much like the National Football League, was looking for players with certain skills to give depth to the team.

  Patience is the first requirement to become an astronaut. When the pool of 2,500 applicants had finally been whittled down to 120, I was beginning to think that I actually had a chance of making it in. The medical exam was straightforward and certainly more extensive than anything I’d encountered. There’s a vision exam and a dental exam. An MRI looks for any undiagnosed conditions, and they check your heart and your cardiovascular health. There’s a VO2 max stress test on the treadmill to check your endurance level. Every interaction with NASA personnel is an opportunity for the selection committee to better understand your character, through your treatment of others and your ability to get along. Being condescending to the janitor cleaning the bathroom would be a strike against you. I recall getting fitted for a flight suit and seeing Charlie Precourt, then head of the Astronaut Corps, listening to my conversation with the technicians.

  Then the five-day interview process begins, culminating in an hour-long discussion with the selection committee, made up of senior leaders, administrators, and five fighter jocks, highly decorated Navy pilots who actually appeared in Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff. I don’t usually get nervous but I was then. When the questioning started, a committee member had to catch me when I leaned too far back in my chair and almost fell over. My demonstration of “the right stuff” was off to a bad start.

  Like the other candidates, I also had been required to write an essay explaining what I could contribute to the human exploration of space. I began mine by discussing the values I learned from my parents.

  “At the age of five, my father drove me to my first Little League basketball practice,” I wrote, “where he emphatically stressed for me to work hard, have fun, and share the ball. Those few simple words have resonated in my head countless times throughout my school years and professional life. Though simple, they emanated the commitment and selflessness required to work and play as a team. My parents taught me early on that virtues such as courage, integrity, and faith were assets that would guarantee success. By fully embracing these values they assured me that being myself would be enough. Therefore, I offer myself to be used further in the human exploration of space like so many others before me.”

  I didn’t have to go quite as far back during the interview. The committee asked me to trace the path of my candidacy, starting with high school. I’m sure a lot of applicants talk about how they’d wanted to be an astronaut their whole lives, but that wasn’t the case with me. Growing up, the space race was in full throttle, and at night my dad would take me outside to look at the sky. I was fifteen years old when Bluford became the first African American astronaut, and nineteen when he traveled to space. But until I worked at NASA Langley, it had never crossed my mind to become an astronaut, just like it had never been my goal to play in the NFL. And even at Langley, I didn’t give it any serious consideration until my buddy Charlie got in. I had enough sense to know not to tell that to the interview committee as I responded to a range of questions, including queries about my experience handling tools, my manual dexterity, and how I faced the hardest times in my life. I had no idea how well I had done because all of my interrogators remained stone-faced and were careful not to give any indication of their thoughts.

  After completing an interview round, the selection committee would meet with the twenty or so astronaut candidates who had been brought in that week. The “socials” took place at Petey’s, a divey NASA hangout not far from Johnson Space Center. It was at Petey’s that I got the opportunity to meet George Abbey, a shy engineer who spoke so softly you had to get closer to hear him, but who also happened to be the director of Johnson Space Center (JSC). It was widely known that getting a few minutes of face time with Abbey could help your chances. And, in a stroke of luck for me, he was a huge Dallas Cowboys fan.

  John Young, generally a man of few words, was in a particularly sentimental mood when I saw him at Petey’s. “Leland,” I recall him saying, “once we stop exploring, as a civilization we will fail.”

  • • •

  On a sunny morning in June 1998, I was making fiber sensors in the optics lab at NASA Langley when the call came. My team had just completed making the first optical fiber sensor, and everybody was feeling a great sense of accomplishment.

  In astronaut culture, there are two calls worth celebrating: the one informing you you’ve been accepted into the Astronaut Corps and the one where you learn that you’ve been assigned a spot on a mission—that you’re going to space. On that day in 1998, I knew that the astronaut selection board was starting to make the calls to applicants, and when I got to my office, I had a message from Ken Cockrell, call sign “Taco,” chief of the Astronaut Office. I called him back, but the call got dropped. It happened again a second time. I thought to myself, This is not a good sign.

  6

  The World’s Most Exclusive Club

  I dialed Ken Cockrell’s number again and he picked up on the third ring.

  “Leland, how’s it going?” he asked me. Small talk. Cockrell’s letting me down easy, I’m sure of it. “Huh, fine Ken. How are you?” He paused for what seemed like minutes. Now I knew he was messing with me. Finally, he said, “I’m calling to tell you that we’d like you to be part of the Astronaut Corps. Do you want to be part of the Astronaut Corps?”

  “Yes, definitely. That’s great,” I said. I remember at that moment thinking to myself, Wow, I’m an astronaut candidate. Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.

  But there was more. The second thing an astronaut candidate hears, after the invitation, are the words: “Don’t tell anybody.” The NASA communications office wants to have a press release ready to go when the news breaks, and the communications office asks that you refrain from telling even your parents to prevent the news from leaking before it has a chance to control the announcement. By that point I knew NASA. So these instructions were no surprise. I sat there quietly, reveling in the moment on my own. That lasted about five minutes. “Hey, guys! I made it into the Astronaut Corps!” I called out to my team in the fiber optics lab. My ear was still warm from the call with Ken Cockrell. It just so happened I was accepted to the Corps on the very same day our team made its first optical fiber sensors, so there was already a sense of victory in the air. Then I called my dad. It was a good day all around.

  Space travel remains one of the world’s most exclusive clubs. Yet those long odds of becoming an astronaut have not deterred people from trying. NASA received more than 18,000 applications for its 2017 class, many attracted no doubt by the lure of Mars. The agency plans to choose eight to fourteen for space travel. Before that, the record for most applicants was in 1978, when 8,000 people applied as the space shuttle program was just getting off the ground. Now that the space shuttle has been retired, the opportunities to fly are a fraction of what they were back when there were six or seven launches a year.

  T
he year I applied, for the class of 1998, twenty-five U.S. astronauts were chosen from a pool of 2,500 applicants with six international astronauts added to round us out to thirty-one. Most of those who have made it into the Astronaut Corps had been turned away before, some more than a dozen times. Peggy Whitson had applied and was rejected thirteen times before being selected into the class of 1996. She went on to become commander of the International Space Station, and served in that position during my first mission there. She later ran the Astronaut Office at the Johnson Space Center. But, before all that, she first had to fight to get into the Astronaut Corps.

  Clayton Anderson, a 1998 Penguin, was accepted on his fifteenth try—fifteen years after he first applied in 1983. Equipped with a BS in physics and a master’s in aerospace, Clay kept trying new things to get the attention of the board, like getting a scuba certification. In the end, he has no idea what worked, though he would tell everybody it had something to do with being from Nebraska, as the Corps had never had an astronaut from there. Mike Foreman was a naval aviator from my astronaut class who had logged more than five thousand hours on fifty different aircraft and became a flight instructor. He applied to the Astronaut Corps seven times before obtaining an interview in Houston. Still, it wasn’t until his eighth attempt that he was accepted. NASA encourages applicants to keep trying. So they do.

  Somehow the former football player with no smoldering aspiration to be an astronaut got in on his first try. The NFL Players Association calculates that the odds of a high school player getting into the NFL are about 0.2 percent. In 1998, I became the only person ever admitted in two of the most select clubs in the country.

  • • •

  How does one manage to succeed against such staggering odds? People ask me this all the time. The question is why does anybody succeed? Is it that people are born with a certain set of abilities, the right stuff, that predetermines they will someday fulfill their dreams? Or is it less about talent and more about attitude? A growing body of research shows that achieving big things is not reserved for those with certain God-given gifts. There are a lot more factors involved.