Hanging on racks in the suit-up room were three Apollo pressure suits, each custom-made for the crewmember, all of them in white to reflect the Sun’s intense heat. To save weight and stowage space, Chad and Luke would wear the same suits to walk on the Moon.
Michael waddled out from the washroom, wearing a urine collection condom, heavy absorbent underwear, stick-on medical sensors and a full-body cooling suit woven with water recirculating tubes. Luke came out after him.
“Hey, Michael, your ass looks big,” he said.
“Have you glanced in a mirror? You look like a snake that ate a toad!”
They padded to their suit techs, waiting patiently by tables loaded with spacesuit gear. A tall rack covered in dials and knobs stood nearby, ready to test pressurization and communication.
As the tallest of the three, Michael had the hardest time getting into his suit, a one-piece garment that opened from the back with a heavy zipper. He bent his head and narrowed his shoulders, squeezing in until his hands and feet found the arm and leg holes, finally stretching to full height as his head popped through the neck ring and his feet slid into the built-in booties.
He glanced at Chad and Luke, who were still squirming into their suits. “Every time I do that I feel like a baby climbing back into the womb.”
Luke chuckled. “Freud would have a field day with you.”
Michael pulled hard on a long, webbed tab between his legs, tugging the stiff zipper all the way around until it was sealed. His tech guided a black and white cloth cap over his head, and Michael pulled the chinstrap tight, getting the ear cups snug. He grabbed the flexible twin mic booms and bent them into place by the corners of his mouth; once he had his helmet on, there’d be no way to adjust them.
The tech raised his eyebrows. “Ready for air?”
Michael nodded, already overheating in the sealed rubber suit. The tech clipped a hose into a matching valve on Michael’s chest and threw a switch on the control panel, and Michael could feel cool, dry air blowing through the suit, up and out around his neck.
“That’s better,” he said. He put his Omega Speedmaster watch on his wrist and pulled on thin white cotton gloves.
The tech held up a thick black rubber glove, and Michael pointed his fingers and thumb together to slide his hand inside. The tech expertly clicked the glove’s pressure ring into place against the matching blue ring on the suit’s left cuff, and then did the same with the glove and red ring on the right.
“Are they color-coded so we know our right from our left?” Michael asked. It was an old joke, but the tech laughed, cutting the guy some slack since he was about to go ride the world’s biggest rocket.
Michael glanced at the wall clock. “Time to start breathing oxygen?”
The tech nodded and lifted Michael’s helmet from the table. It looked like an inverted fishbowl with cloth stuck down one side. Michael took it from him and wiggled it over his head, the cloth section to the back, careful not to let the metal locking ring scrape the skin off his nose. He’d done that once in training, and now knew better.
The tech disconnected Michael’s cooling airflow, locked the helmet latches in place and then hooked up recirculating oxygen and water lines. Michael was now relying on a machine to breathe, and would be until they landed back in the ocean at the end of the mission, over a week later.
The endless training and practice were over. Shit was getting real. He, Michael Henry Esdale, an unlikely little kid from South Chicago named for his two grandfathers, was about to get into a rocketship and blast off the face of the Earth. So many times he’d been told no in his life, a Black man trying to succeed in the white man’s realm. It had been years of slogging to always be the best, to leave no doubt, and even then some people told him he was only here because of race politics. That he hadn’t earned his opportunities, but had been handed them as some sort of favor. Michael shook his head to clear the thought. He’d earned his ticket, and it was him who was going to fly that thing.
The pure oxygen tasted dry and clean, and Michael felt his head clearing as his body absorbed the gas. Over the next few hours, the nitrogen in his blood would be gradually replaced by oxygen; that way, when he got to orbit and popped his helmet off in the low-pressure all-oxygen atmosphere, his blood nitrogen wouldn’t suddenly bubble and give him the bends. As scuba divers knew, bubbles in the blood were bad, causing huge pain in the joints, and potentially death.
There were brown leather La-Z-Boy recliner chairs for each crewmember, and Michael settled into his while the tech cranked up the suit pressure, checking for leaks. As the suit stiffened, the neck ring of his helmet was pushed up to his mouth. It was uncomfortable, but workable; this is what it would be like during an emergency deorbit and splashdown. Michael moved his arms and flexed his fingers, picturing how he would reach switches against the hard resistance of the suit. The tech looked intently back and forth at the pressure gauges and a stopwatch, and eventually nodded in satisfaction. He twisted a large knob counterclockwise, and Michael gratefully felt the suit soften and his neck ring lower to its normal height. Suit check complete, he pulled out his launch emergencies checklist, flipping through it with his black-gloved hands.