One of the things we had to master as new Astronauts was to be good back-seaters for the pilots in the planes part of the time. As they (and we) gained some confidence in our flying abilities they gave us more and more responsibilities. And of course, we had to learn how to handle emergencies. We had checklists with pages of what to do if something went wrong. Sometimes they did. The pilots were training for a number of jobs, one of which was...

Despite NASA’s many accomplishments like the moon landing, the Space Shuttle and the Space Station, there were bound to be errors and mistakes, large and small along the way. Want to hear a few that I was aware of? During one of the Shuttle flights one of the females got her long hair caught in a piece of equipment and it pulled a bunch of her hair out. Ouch! NASA bosses (all men at the time) made a rule that all the women had to restrain their...

  On the morning of January 16, 1978, an invitation went out to thirty-five lucky individuals. I received a call as I entered the VA Hospital in Memphis where I was completing my surgery residency. My beeper indicated a call for me was waiting at the reception desk. “Hello?” “Hi, Rhea,” said the Johnson Space Center Director of Flight Operations, George Abbey. “Are you still interested in coming to work for us?” Stunned, I thought “Who,...

After Challenger With the renewed interest about the Challenger accident from the Netflix series, I’ve been asked about what happened afterward. Reflecting on the aftermath of the accident has given me time for introspection. Everyone knows about the Rogers Commission which determined that a leaking O-ring on one of the boosters was the cause of the loss of Challenger and that the problem could be fixed. One thing that could not be fixed was...

When I got to NASA in 1978, I had a lot to learn. Being a good flight crew member was one of the most important things I would need to know. Shortly after we got to Houston, we began training to fly in the back seat of the NASA T-38 jets. We knew that if we mastered that kind of flying, we might someday train to fly as a crewmember on the Space Shuttle. How was it going to feel flying with some of the best pilots in the nation? Many of my pilot...