Other tests were more unusual. Because an astronaut cannot be claustrophobic, we all underwent a simple test: we were each outfitted with a heart monitor, zipped into a thick rubber bag not much bigger than a curled-up adult, shut into a closet, and left without any idea of how long we would be in there. For me it was about twenty minutes, and I enjoyed a brief nap. Another requirement was that we go over to the Astronaut Office at some point during the week and chat with some of the astronauts. I dutifully went over one afternoon, introduced myself to the first person I met, and then got out of there fast. I figured there was not much upside to this exercise: in a brief conversation I wouldn’t be able to make a good enough impression to help me, but I could easily rub someone the wrong way and wind up hurting my chances.
One of the events on our schedule was a dinner at Pe-Te’s Barbecue, a popular destination for off-duty astronauts and other NASA employees. This dinner was one of the more informal events, and in some ways that only made it more stressful. I figured the selection board didn’t want someone who was sloppy or unpresentable when off the clock, but I also didn’t want to look like an uptight square who didn’t know how to have a good time. I thought longer and harder about what to wear that night than I did for any other part of the selection process. I actually looked up photos of astronauts at casual events to see what they wore. Based on my investigation, I chose khaki pants and a Ralph Lauren striped polo shirt. At the restaurant, I was faced with more daunting choices: Should I drink only water, to show how health-conscious I was? Should I drink one beer to show I could stop at one, or drink two to show I could stop at two? The social terrain was tricky as well. Should I talk to astronauts as equals and risk sounding disrespectful, or treat them as superiors and risk sounding like a suck-up? Should I avoid talking to them and risk having them not remember me at all? I could see all the other candidates around me making the same calculations.
—
AT THE END of the week, we said our good-byes and went back to our respective homes. NASA was to interview six groups in all, and I had been in the third group, so patience would be required. For me, the wait was made harder by the fact that I thought I had done well. If I’d known that I’d blown some part of the process, or that one of the doctors I’d encountered had betrayed that something was wrong with me physically, I would have had a pretty good idea that I wasn’t going to make it, and the wait would have been easier.
As the weeks went by, I received a new Navy assignment: to join a fighter squadron at a naval air station in Japan. This was a move I would have been excited about under any other circumstances, and Leslie was prepared for the adventure, but I still hadn’t heard from NASA. I didn’t want to move my family there until I had to.
The moving company that contracted with the Navy called me to set up a date to come and pack up our stuff.
“Can you hold off for a couple of weeks?” I asked. The movers reluctantly agreed.
Soon, they called again. This time they had chosen a date they wanted to come and they were less interested in renegotiating it. I managed to put them off again. And again. Over the next few weeks, I started to hear from some of the people I had listed as references that they had been contacted as part of my background investigation. So I knew I had made it to the next level. That gave me hope, though I was still concerned about the fact that I was interviewed in the third group rather than the first. I asked people I had met at the interview if they had heard anything about when NASA would make their calls. No one did.
A few days before Memorial Day weekend, I got a call at home.
“Scott,” the voice said. “This is Dave Leestma.” Dave was one of the astronauts I had met in Houston and was the flight crew operations director—the direct supervisor of the chief astronaut.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“Would you like to come fly for us?” he asked. I paused, because it wasn’t entirely clear to me that this was the call I had been waiting for. I knew that NASA employed a lot of pilots who weren’t astronauts—maybe Dave was asking me to be a pilot, not an astronaut.
“Uh, maybe,” I said. “Fly what?”
He answered with a laugh. “The space shuttle, of course.”
It’s hard to describe what I felt then. I wasn’t entirely shocked, because I thought I had done well, and I had started to think I might be chosen. But I did feel an awareness of everything it had taken for me to get here, from reading The Right Stuff and setting a goal that seemed impossible, to this moment. And I felt humbled by the role I was going to be asked to step into.
“I’d love to,” I said. “Have you called my brother yet?”
Later, when I related this conversation to people, they thought it was funny that I didn’t even take a breath to process my own accomplishment before asking about my brother. But to me, waiting to find out what would happen with his application was almost as suspenseful as waiting to hear about my own.
“I just got off the phone with him,” Dave answered. “Yeah, he got selected too.”
This was the first time NASA had selected relatives. We’d been concerned they might not want to select brothers, especially twins, and in the back of my mind I had been anticipating that they might choose one of us and not the other.
“Mark actually asked me about you, too, and I told him I was about to call you,” Dave said. So my brother knew that I was to become an astronaut before I did. That was fine with me.
I hung up the phone after talking to Dave and I told Leslie: “I’m going to be an astronaut.” She was thrilled for me. Next I called my brother, and we spent a few minutes on the phone congratulating each other and talking about our moving plans. I got on the phone with my parents and they were overwhelmed by the news. Word spread quickly within our small family—the next time we saw our maternal grandmother, she had had a custom bumper sticker made for her car that read, MY TWIN GRANDSONS ARE ASTRONAUTS. I would imagine people thought she was crazy.
The next day, I told my colleagues that I had been chosen to be an astronaut. I particularly enjoyed telling Paul, my friend and flight test engineer, because I knew he would be excited for me. When I told him, he jumped up and, with a huge smile, exclaimed, “You’ve gotta be frigging shitting me!” A few seconds later he followed up with “Will you invite me to come down to Florida and see a launch?” I promised I would. I was surprised and touched by how pleased everyone was for me. They were all so thrilled, their excitement actually helped it to sink in for me what I had achieved. My life had just changed. I was going to have the chance to fly in space.
When the press found out that NASA had selected the two of us, they called the astronaut selection office to ask about it. A reporter asked Duane Ross, “Did you know you picked two brothers?”
His answer: “No, we picked two very accomplished test pilots who happen to be twins.”
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