Leaving Orbit (41 page)

Everyone piles back into the buses and rides back to the News Center at the Press Site. Most of the journalists race to grab desks, plug in their laptops and devices. Just as at the launch, they shout facts and figures to each other, and generally cause a lot of commotion grabbing handouts, asking questions of the Media Office employees, and eventually, it seems, writing things. I assume they are throwing together breaking-news pieces and blog posts for their publications. We all watch the monitors showing replays of the landing. Some of the journalists read information loudly into their phones, as in old movies—exact times, the spelling of names. I elect not to try for a desk since I don’t really need one; I didn’t even bring a laptop. Not for the first time, I reflect on the luxury I have in not having to write about all this
today.
I can take in these events more fully, precisely because I don’t have the burden of writing as I’m experiencing them. I’m free to wander around eavesdropping on journalists’ conversations, chat with the Media Office people, page through a book of laminated bios of journalists whose names are up on the wall in metal letters under the heading THE CHRONICLERS. I can go for a walk and take pictures of things around the Press Site, think about what I’m seeing and what I’ve seen and what it all means to me. I can watch events replay on NASA TV. I can slump against a wall and take a nap. I do all of these things in the time it takes the journalists to pull together their first stories about the landing. When I go to write my own chapter about the landing, I will be able to use their news stories to get the details right. I will watch their videos and study their still photos and listen to their audio recordings, and that hardly seems fair. At the same time, their work of documenting what happens today, as challenging and important is it is, will be done by the time they leave the Press Site today, while my self-appointed job of reflection will just be beginning.

The monitors show the live feed on NASA TV, where the astronauts are being helped out of
Atlantis
’s hatch. They wear the same expressions that astronauts always wear upon returning to Earth—tired, elated, a little confused by the unaccustomed pull of gravity, an expression of a child shaken from a happy dream.

Nearby, I hear two journalists greet each other.

“Boom-boom.”

“Hey, and a
boom-boom
to you as well.”

A sign posted on the wall in the News Center reminds us that we aren’t to go anywhere other than the Press Site or the Launch Control cafeteria without an escort. After passing this sign a few times, it occurs to me that the implication is that we
are
allowed to go to the Launch Control cafeteria without an escort. I ask a journalist wearing a Mars rover T-shirt whether we can really cross the street to go to the cafeteria, and he answers “of course,” with a look as though I am crazy for asking.

“The food’s not great, though,” he warns me, as if I came here for the cuisine.

Walking to the cafeteria, I stop at a crosswalk on VAB Road to let a tour bus go by. The visitors riding the bus look out at me with great curiosity, their faces shadowed by the smoked glass. It occurs to me that they probably think that I work for NASA, that I’m an engineer or a physicist or even an astronaut. I wave at them experimentally; several wave back. One mother points out the window at me, and her children lean in to wave as the bus disappears around the bend.

The Launch Control cafeteria seats a couple hundred people, and judging from the colors and materials, I’d guess it hasn’t been updated since the mideighties. It’s relatively empty at this hour, 9:30 a.m. or so, but by some miracle they are still serving breakfast. I order eggs, hashbrowns, an enormous biscuit (another notch in the “central Florida is part of the South” column), and coffee. As I eat, I scribble notes, and though I sneak looks at my fellow diners, none of the few badged employees eating nearby seems to recognize me as an interloper. They pitch their voices low, either because they are discussing something classified or because they don’t want to disturb me. I wish they wouldn’t—I’d love to hear what they’re talking about. Even when I can make out what people are saying, I keep losing the threads of their conversations in my exhaustion. The space workers all eat quickly and get back to work, but I linger over a second cup of coffee, killing time before the next scheduled photo op: the towback.

The area where we wait to board the buses to take us to the towback is unsheltered, and though no one has passed out completely, we are all starting to wilt a bit in the unrelenting sun. It’s over 90 degrees and nearing 100 percent humidity. I tried to plan ahead for a range of temperatures—I’ve already peeled off several layers—but I still have a serious problem: I have no sunscreen with me. If I’d packed any, security restrictions would have forced me to check a bag on my flight, and a wait at luggage claim might very well have made me miss the landing. Some people knew to cover their heads, but a lot of journalists still insist upon dressing in some version of professional attire, which precludes shade-giving hats. A few enterprising journalists have made makeshift hats out of handkerchiefs by tying knots in the four corners. I am wearing a white cotton scarf I had the good sense to throw around my neck before heading to the airport—it helped keep me warm this morning before the sun came up, but now that the sun is beating down, I’ve draped it over my head like Lawrence of Arabia.

Not nearly as many of us have elected to watch the towback, I realize when I climb onto the bus. It’s a smaller bus than the one we rode out to the Shuttle Landing Facility this morning, and not nearly as luxurious. I also soon realize that I am the only person on the bus without cameras, tripods, and bags of other equipment. This is, apparently, a photo op, but not an event print journalists feel the need to view in person. It makes sense, I suppose—there will probably be a live feed of the towback on closed-circuit TV that one can watch from the air-conditioned comfort of the News Center, and seeing with one’s own eyes the sight of
Atlantis
being towed back to the hangar from the runway would not in any way add to the veracity or detail of the stories most of the journalists are writing. I feel self-conscious finding a seat on the bus carrying only my notebook. I am also the only woman here.

As the bus grinds through its gears, I realize that it is something like the converted school bus that Norman Mailer rode for Apollo 11. Rather than being completely un-air-conditioned, as Mailer complained his was, this bus does have air-conditioning—at least it boasts air-conditioning
vents
—but the system seems to lack the wherewithal to stand up to fifty sweating journalists, many of them oversized. The temperature inside is probably similar to that outside, only more stagnant and fragrant. After about ten minutes, the bus pulls over right where a tow road leading from the landing strip connects with Kennedy Parkway. We pile out of the bus. The photographers’ shirts are stained with enormous sweat spots. And the mosquitoes have come out as well, tiny vicious mosquitoes. It occurs to me that in addition to having no sunscreen, I also have no bug spray.

“This
sucks!
I’m never coming to one of these
again!
” cries out a huge sweating journalist. Everyone laughs.

The roadside at the intersection is uneven, moist without quite being swampy, the ubiquitous canebrake brushing against everyone’s pants legs. Running parallel to both roads are ditches filled with brackish water. One of the more experienced photographers points out to us an alligator lurking in the ditch on our side of the road. It is a safe distance away, but I’ve been told alligators can move surprisingly fast. We all keep one eye on it as we move around finding our vantage points. The photographers busy themselves setting up their tripods and stepladders; a few intrepid stand-up journalists attempt to smooth themselves out enough to appear on camera. Judging by the logos on their microphones, none of them are from networks or news agencies I have ever heard of, and I wonder whether they now regret the idea of attempting to speak briskly into the camera as
Atlantis
rolls by behind them, whether it has now become clear to them that this was not a good plan.

We see the caravan coming a long way off.

First a black SUV.

Then the convoy command vehicle, a converted motor home that’s used as a sort of mobile mission control during safing procedures after landings.

Then a stair car. It had never occurred to me that NASA must own stair cars, but of course the astronauts have to get out of the orbiter somehow. This pleases me unreasonably.

These lead vehicles are moving exquisitely slowly, barely a slow walking pace. Behind them, soon, we can see the silhouette of
Atlantis
, its enormous tail fin and the curved shape of the orbital maneuvering system pods against the sky. In the minutes it takes the orbiter to come fully into view, the photographers scurry around, revising their guesses as to where the best vantage points will be. The few stand-up TV journalists run through their patter, all of them speaking earnestly into their cameras, all of them turning now and then to gesture toward
Atlantis.

As
Atlantis
comes near enough that we can make out more details, we see that there are people walking alongside it, men and women, wearing work clothes and jeans. They walk slowly and reverentially, pallbearers, and though I know from my reading that this towback is always done slowly, today it seems intentional that they move as slowly as a funeral procession.

I hear a single pair of hands clapping behind me, and when I turn to look it’s a photographer’s assistant who has tucked his camera pole under his arm to applaud. He holds his chin up a bit self-consciously, knowing everyone is looking at him, but he has decided to go through with this gesture. Maybe he knew for weeks he wanted to do this, or maybe he’s only decided right this moment, when those people came into view, the workers walking beside
Atlantis
, hugging close to its side. Even from here we can see that the spaceworkers are not chatting, are not smiling or drifting off thinking about what they are going to do after work or what to make for dinner. They face straight ahead, their expressions solemn. They can see the clump of us journalists on the roadside; they know they are having their pictures taken, and this is the face they want to wear in these pictures. A lot of them are going to get their layoff notices tomorrow, Omar has told me, but for right now it is their privilege to walk alongside their spacecraft. This is what makes me tear up, finally, as more and more people around me pick up the applause,
photojournalists actually let go of their cameras
, let their cameras dangle from their neck straps, to clap as loudly as they can, holding their arms up so our applause can be seen by those we are applauding. Unencumbered by equipment, I tuck my phone into my back pocket and clap until my palms sting. I’m moved by the sight of the great ship, now forever flightless, crawling along with its keepers at its sides.

We stand on that roadside forever, watching
Atlantis
go by, still keeping one eye on that alligator. We are in no hurry to leave. We watch patiently as
Atlantis
slowly passes us in its own sweet time. And then we watch it navigate the soft turn onto Kennedy Parkway, and we watch it make its way up toward the area outside the Orbiter Processing Facility, where the employee appreciation party is under way. We watch until we can see only the outlines of the tail fin again, and as
Atlantis
navigates into its place of honor at the head of the area where the party is to be held, we hear a cheer rising from the crowd gathered there.

Once we’ve all piled back into the stagnant, fragrant bus, we sit motionless for a long time. Our driver, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Nelson Mandela, keeps the bus idling in a vain effort to get us some air.

Waiting long periods of time in close quarters makes people chatty. The photojournalists strike up conversations. They gossip about others among their number who couldn’t make it to this event. They gossip about layoffs, journalism being another one of the occupations, like space work, in which even the best among them are being laid off in large numbers. The photojournalist who made the joke about not coming back has decided to give nicknames to those sitting closest to him. A tiny videographer carrying a giant camera is dubbed Gator Bait; soon everyone is calling him that. The journalists swap stories of previous space events, and the discussions spread out to more rows of seats as they call out mission numbers and the names of orbiters. I was here for the last launch of
Columbia.
I was here for the last
landing
of
Columbia.
I was here for return to flight after
Columbia.
I WAS HERE. All of us, it seems, were here for the last launch of
Atlantis
, only thirteen days ago. That feels like another lifetime.