Preflight
Interview: Michael Bloomfield
The
STS-110 Crew Interviews with Michael Bloomfield, commander.
Mike,
tell us about your mission, in a nutshell: what are the main goals
of STS-110?
Well, the main
goal, the overall objective of the flight, is to attach this big
truss that we call S0 to the top of the International Space Station.
And that's what the whole flight is centered around is S0 itself.
On S0 there's also a thing called a Mobile Transporter, which is
basically a railroad car that will be able to move from one end
of the truss to the other, but basically the whole mission is centered
around attaching S0 to the top of the International Space Station.
This
shuttle mission is the third time you've flown in space, but it's
the first time you're flying as the Commander. How has it been for
you this time, taking the responsibility of leading this group and
preparing to execute this mission?
Well, I got
a great group of folks. They're smart, they're easy to get along
with, and I've got just the right mix of experience and inexperience.
The inexperience is neat because the new guys, the rookies, because
they bring all the excitement to the flight and they ask all the
questions about, well, what do we do here, and what's this like,
and it's going to be neat to see their face[s] when we finally get
into space and begin the mission. The experience is awesome because
you can just let those guys go. I mean, Jerry, this is his seventh
flight; for Ellen and Steve Smith, this is their fourth flight each.
And so, when you have that type of experience, [you've] just got
to make sure everybody's talking together so we're all heading the
same way, but for all the technical details you can just let [them]
run with it. And having, basically, three experienced guys and three
inexperienced guys, you can team 'em up real easily, and so I can
let the experienced guys help out the inexperienced guys as we get
ready to train, and when we get up on orbit that's kind of the way
we're going to operate as well. So it's been a real pleasure to
work with such a great group of folks.
Pairing
[them] up like that, it's working so far?
Yeah; it's
worked up, it's worked extremely well. And the young guys-not the
young guys, the inexperienced guys, or the rookies, if you will-they
ask all the questions, and a lot of times the folks that have been
there before have to stop and think about, well, now why do we do
it that way? And so, kind of they trade off one against the other,
and it works very well.
Tell
me about yourself: how did you get to become an astronaut? I guess
I mean, what [were] the education and the career path that you followed
to become someone who was qualified to be an astronaut?
First, that
wasn't something that I set out to do from the very beginning. There
are groups of those folks in our Office that did, you know, when
they were very young decided, I want to be an astronaut, and they
went right down the path, and they knew what they wanted to do.
I didn't know. Basically, my path took me through the Air Force
Academy out in Colorado Springs, and then I joined the Air Force
out of the Academy and I spent many years flying F-15s at three
different locations around the world. Then I went to Test Pilot
School, spent some time flying F-16s out of Test Pilot School, and
that, basically, gave me all the qualifications that I needed in
order to become an astronaut. Along the way I got my master's degree
in engineering management from Old Dominion University, and then
I was fortunate that when I put in my application NASA was getting
ready to build the International Space Station so they were looking
to hire a lot of folks, and I met the qualifications. And that was
my path to becoming an astronaut.
Did
you consciously pursue that path wanting to be an astronaut?
No, it was
something that kind of, as I was going through my career, I was
checking off all the blocks that you needed to do in order to become
an astronaut. And when I got to the point where I thought this was
something I wanted to do, it was interesting, you look back at my
résumé and, hey, look, I filled all the squares, and
this is what NASA wants. And so I was able to become an astronaut
then.
Well,
as you said, that started with your attending the Air Force Academy.
For a lot of people who go to the, into the Air Force it's because
they want to fly planes; that wasn't necessarily your prime motivation,
was it?
No. When I
was in high school, trying to figure out which college I wanted
to go to one of the things I enjoyed doing was playing football.
That was one of my…just something I enjoyed doing. And the
Air Force Academy came and recruited me, and when you looked at
all the major colleges where I could play football, the Academy
was about the only one that was really interested in me, because
I wasn't very big, I wasn't very fast, but I was smart enough where
I could get into the Academy and still play ball, and so that was
kind of my main reason to go into the Air Force Academy, is to play
football. And then, that opened up all the other doors for being
able to become a pilot, and that kind of set me on the path to NASA.
If
we look at your growing up in Michigan and high school and college
and the various postings in the Air Force, as you look back on those,
are there…certain people that stick out in your mind as being
pretty influential in the…taking the steps and being successful?
Without a
doubt, I think your parents, and in my case, my parents, had an
incredible influence on my life. Very encouraging, very loving,
opened a lot of doors: when I was in third grade we moved out to
the country, as we call it; it was a big farmhouse on forty acres
of land, and we were able to explore, build tree houses, all that
kind of stuff. And also, as I'm going through high school and also
through college, sports played a big part in my life, and so if
you're playing sports then you have all the coaches that are pushing
you, trying to see how far you'll go, how good can you get. The
teachers that I had in school, I had some math teachers and some
English teachers that just didn't give you the A because you showed
up, they gave you the A because you went the extra mile, you worked
a little bit hard. And those were the people that had a primary
influence in my life.
Is
there any parallel to a football coach trying to get the best out
of his team and a shuttle Commander trying to get the best out of
his team?
I think so.
You have to realize that everybody's a little bit different, and
everybody has their own strengths and their own weaknesses. And
your job is to try and make sure that we bring all those strengths
to the surface and we use that for everybody. And that if there
is a weakness, is that we're able to bring somebody else that has
the right strength in to try and help in that area. A lot of encouragement,
a lot of telling people, hey, you're doing things the right way,
and trying to figure out if we're not doing things the right way
how do we redirect things and get it going in the right direction.
A big part of it is just coming up with a plan: if I think that
everybody knows what the plan is, then, you know, the motivation
is there and they want to do good, and so we'll head down the right
path.
In
this case, the plan is to deliver the S0 truss to the International
Space Station, as you mentioned. Introduce me to the payload: how
big is it, where does it go, what does it do?
Yeah, S0 is
let's see, physically, it's forty-three feet long, weighs in at
about 29,000 pounds; it fits on the top of the U.S. Laboratory-there's
actually a mechanism up there called the Lab Cradle Assembly, and
that's what will hold, initially, S0 in place-and then, its function,
once it's on the International Space Station, is to act as a support
for the rest of the trusses and the big solar arrays. When, if you
ever looked at a picture of the International Space Station, one
of the predominant features that you see are these huge solar arrays-bigger
than the size of a football field. And those arrays have to be supported
by something, and what they're supported by is this big truss. And
S0 is a part of that truss that actually attaches to the International
Space Station, so it's up on top of the Laboratory. So, structurally,
it's very important because all the loads are transmitted through
S0 to the Lab. And so because of that we have four big struts that
the EVA guys are going to put on, put in place to make sure that
it's, it will stay where it needs to stay. And then the other function
it serves is, we mentioned those big solar arrays and all the electricity
that has to flow back from those solar arrays into the Lab; so on
S0 itself we have a bunch of what we call Main Bus Switching Units-all
they are, are these big electrical boxes that collect the power
and send it to the right places inside the Lab.
So
if I understand then, it's not simply a piece of support structure
that other things get built on, it's got systems of its own that
are critical…
Oh, it has,
well, it has the Main Bus Switching Units, like we talked about;
it also has some what we call the GPS antennas are up there, which
the station can use to maintain its attitude; it has some things
we call MDMs, which are…it doesn't matter, but they're basically
computer boxes, is what they are, that are outside, some of [them]
are used for videos; other…some of [them] are used from other
things as well.
You
mentioned earlier that on the S0 truss there is another piece of
equipment called the Mobile Transporter…there's also a thing
called an Airlock Spur. Tell me about what those items are and where
they are, and what they'll do in the functioning of the space station.
The Mobile
Transporter is nothing more than simply a railroad car. And it's,
there's a, actually, a set of railroad tracks that will span the
length of this truss once it's up there. And you have the robotic
arm that's up on the International Space Station, and we want to
be able to use this robotic arm, all the way out to both ends of
the truss. And so what the robotic arm can do is, it can actually
grab on to a grapple that's on top of this Mobile Transporter, and
it can move from one end of the truss to the other. And so we can
use it to transport, in the assembly phase, other truss sections
to the end of the truss that's already built: kind of like you're
building a railroad, you put the, you run the locomotive out to
the end of the track and then you lay more track and you keep going,
that's exactly how we're going to build the International Space
Station. So that's what the Mobile Transporter is. The Airlock Spur
is simply an aid for our guys, it allows them to get from the Airlock
to the truss segment much easier. And it just gives them a quicker
path to get to the truss from the Airlock up there.
You
mentioned a couple of moments ago that you've got a crew that possesses
a whole range of talents that are needed in order to do this job.
Tell me, what are your top jobs on this mission?
Operationally
I'm doing I guess three major things. The first major thing I'm
doing is I'm actually going to be hands-on the controls while we
fly the rendezvous. And flying a rendezvous is truly a team effort:
we have four people that are actively involved on the shuttle with
the rendezvous, and then, of course, we have a whole team on the
ground that's supporting us for that. But I'll actually be hands-on
the controls for the rendezvous with the International Space Station.
The second thing that I'll be doing is I'll be backing Steve Frick
up, as he moves the robotic arm around, and so that's the other
thing that I'm kind of hands-on doing is helping Steve with that.
And then the third thing, obviously, is landing the shuttle at the
end of the mission. I've kind of tried intentionally to keep myself
out of all the details so I can sit back and look at the big picture,
and if we have to make changes as we go along, I've got enough time
to figure that out and make sure that people are heading in the
right direction.
Well,
as we said this is your first mission as a Commander, but it's not
your first time to go to the International Space Station. Does having
flown an ISS mission before give you an advantage in experience
and knowing what it's going to be like there?
Well, it's
certainly beneficial to have been there once before, and in fact
our flight was, is basically going to be less than a year-and-a-half
from when I was up there on 4A when we deployed the solar arrays.
The station will have changed quite a bit since we were there: we've
added, obviously, the Laboratory, and we've added the Airlock to
it as well. But it does help, having been there and to have a mental
image in your mind of what things are going to happen, and kind
of to know operationally how we're going to interact with the station.
So it has helped to have been there recently.
Let
me ask you to tell me in a bit more detail about the rendezvous
that you mentioned before. Commanders do get to do flying when they
bring the two spacecraft together, which is absolutely critical
in order for you to do the mission. Tell me about the other members
of your team, and talk us through how you fly Atlantis up and bring
these two together.
OK. The rendezvous
is broken down into three distinct phases. The first phase is done
strictly by the ground, and it basically happens when we lift off.
Once we lift off, there's a group of folks on the ground that are
already tracking the station, they're tracking the shuttle, and
they're figuring out what burns, what maneuvers, we have to do during
the first couple of days in order to get close to the International
Space Station. So that's the first phase, everything is done from
the ground. The second phase is done, basically, using the computers
that are on board the shuttle and a thing we call the star tracker-
it gathers data about where the station is relative to us, and we
also have a radar on board that also gathers data about where the
station is relative to the shuttle, and then we use the computers
on board the shuttle to compute these burns or maneuvers to get
us even closer to the International Space Station. Once we get within
about two thousand feet of the International Space Station, then
that's all done by looking out the window. So I'll be looking out
the window, and we have a bunch of tools on board, if you will,
that are used to help me make decisions about what burns I want
to do by looking out the window in order to fly and do the final
portion of the rendezvous. And it requires a whole team. Steve Frick
will do a series of these burns, these on board burns that we talked
about, so he's going to be running the checklist and making sure
that all the burns are done correctly before I start flying it out
the over…head window. Rex Walheim is going to be in the back with
a handheld laser, and that's one of the ways that we can measure
how far we are from the International Space Station, and that helps
us determine what kind of burns we want to do. Ellen Ochoa and Jerry
Ross are going to run the docking system, to make sure that that's
set up the way it needs to be. And Jerry will also be in the back
helping Rex make decisions about whether or not we do a fly-out.
One of the last things we have to do, as we get close to the station,
is we have to make sure that there is no angular misalignment between
the shuttle and the International Space Station. And so there's
a big target -- and you've probably seen this on all the other dockings
-- that everybody looks at, the centerline camera with the cross,
and we'll look at that target and it will tell us whether or not
we have to make some attitude adjustments with the shuttle. And
so, Jerry and Rex will be making that decision, and then we'll go
in for the final docking.
Your
approach, if you will, is going to be the same as it has been lately?
Right. Yeah,
the approach is…we call it a V-bar approach. And basically
what we do is we'll come up, if this is the International Space
Station, we'll fly up…below the International Space Station
and then we'll fly all the way around out into the front, into what
we call the V-bar, but we're flying now out in front of the station,
and then finally, we'll fly in on that V-bar until we dock with
the International Space Station.
Bumping
a couple of hundred-ton machines together in space has got to be…well,
[you have to] be a little nervous, aren't [you]?
Well…it's
been done before, it's proven, so there's not anything new on our
flight, and so you know if you do it right it's going to work. You
want to do it right, and we have options and we have things where
we can back out if we don't like what we're seeing. But based on
the fact that it's been done before and there's been a lot of smart
people that looked at, have looked at it, we're fairly confident
it's going to work.
That
is supposed to be concluded about the middle of the day on, of your
day, the day that this happens, and after you arrive that day on
orbit you're scheduled, with a number of other crewmembers, to conduct
a dry run of the S0 installation. Tell me about what you're going
to be doing to, I guess, practice what comes the day after.
Yeah. Our
Flight Day 3, which is our rendezvous day, is an incredibly busy
day. We have the rendezvous that happens in the morning, and we
finally dock, and then once we dock we have to open up all of the
hatches so we can get to the crew, to the International Space Station,
with Dan and Carl and Yury that are up there. And then we have to
make a bunch of transfers: we've got to take some of our spacewalking
outfits across, there are some other experiments that we've got
to take across, and then Ellen and Dan are the ones that are going
to go through this S0 dry run. And basically what they want to do
is they want to take the robotic arm, and they want to go through
some motions to make sure that it's going to maneuver the way we
expect it to maneuver the next day. And what we're really looking
at is we're really looking to see if we have the cameras set up
the right way, and if we have the infrastructure around Ellen and
Dan so that they can do the S0 install in the time that they think
they need to do it. If you look at, we call it the robotics workstation
on the International Space Station, and that's where Ellen and Dan
are going to be working from, that's where they're going to be maneuvering
the robotic arm: it's enclosed inside the Lab, there's no windows
there. And so they have all these camera views and they basically
have three screens in front of them, and then we're going to add
another two so they'll have five screens altogether, and we'll feed
them all these views to make sure that they can maneuver the arm
with S0 on it, to the correct position. And so, that's what we're
primarily looking for, to see whether or not the cameras are all
set up the right way where Ellen and Dan can do this maneuver safely.
Let's
assume that that's all gone fine, and everybody's ready; it's the
next day, Flight Day 4, that you're scheduled to pick S0 up out
of the shuttle's payload bay and put it in place. Tell me briefly
what role you've got during this, and then talk us through this
critical activity, as you put S0 where it will go.
The installation
of S0 is…there [are] a lot of parts to it so I'll just start
from the beginning and go to the end. Basically the first thing
you have to do is you have to go into the payload bay of the shuttle
with the arm that's on the International Space Station and you have
to grapple S0. And then once we've grappled it and we know that
the station arm has hold of S0, then we have to release it from
the shuttle-it's held in place with these things we call PRLAs [payload
retention latch assembly], they're basically just, they're some
latches there. And so Steve Frick and I will undo those latches,
and once we've undone those latches, now Ellen and Dan are free
to take S0 out, and they'll basically move, maneuver S0 all the
way around and get it up on top of the Lab. And then once they get
up on top of the Lab, what we have to do is we have this system
up there called the Space Vision System, and Space Vision System
uses cameras and a bunch of dots that you've seen on station, and
knowing the geometry and the relationship of those dots to each
other, and knowing the exact position of the cameras, it can tell
the relationship between S0 and the Lab. And now, it will give us
guidance as far as whether it thinks we need to move left, right,
up, or down in order to successfully mate S0 to the Lab. As I mentioned,
there's a thing called the Lab Cradle Assembly on the Lab, that
S0 mates to; so we'll bring that down and Ellen will mate that…actually,
it'll be Dan [who] will mate S0 to this Lab Cradle Assembly, and
then once it's in place there's a big claw that comes over this
capture bar that's on S0 and pulls it in place, and we'll pull it
down nice and tight to the Lab Cradle Assembly. So that's the whole
sequence; it takes, you know, a couple hours to do this. And my
job during this whole thing, as I mentioned, will be to kind of
open up those latches that are on the shuttle side that keep S0
in the payload bay, and I'm also going to be helping with camera
views, to make sure Ellen and Dan have the correct camera views
so that they can move S0 around. And I'll also be helping with the
SVS system to make sure that we have a good solution, as we call
it, that Dan and Carl can use to mate S0 to the Lab.
Now,
once it's snapped into place, if you will, that's the signal to
begin the first spacewalk of the mission. What's the job then for
Steve Smith and Rex Walheim to go outside and do?
Well, the
first EVA, what we're running against is we're running against a
clock, a thermal clock. And S0, once it's taken out of the payload
bay and exposed to the vastness of space, it starts to cool off;
and as it cools off it can get to a point where we can actually
break some of those boxes we talked about earlier on S0. And there's
about a twenty-four-, twenty-eight-hour time limit on S0. So basically
once we get it in place, we have to attach some electrical power
to S0 so that the boxes stay warm, and the second thing we have
to do is we have to attach some struts to it, to keep it in place.
The LCA, the Lab Cradle Assembly, provides some initial support,
but it's not enough to withstand larger loads on the station, so
we have these struts we have to put in place. And so that's the
whole goal of EVA 1 is to get two struts in place and to get the
power hooked up so that S0 is mechanically safe, and we also have
electricity to it.
The
second spacewalk of the mission comes up after a day of work inside
the station. Tell me again what your job is going to be and what
the station crewmembers will be doing, and what's the plan of action
inside and outside during this second EVA?
The second
EVA is trying to pick up where the first one left off. There's four
struts altogether that hold S0 to the Lab, and Steve and Rex will
do two of those on the first EVA so the second EVA involves going
ahead and getting the other two struts attached, and also finishing
up some of the electrical connections, and the other thing we're
going to try and do on EVA 2 is, there's a bunch of keel pins that
are up there that we're going to try and take and these keel pins
are used to hold S0 in place when it's in the payload bay. Well,
once you get up to space, you don't need these keel pins anymore,
and in fact they're in the way of the Mobile Transporter. And so
they have to take those keel pins off, and they have to stow [them]
someplace, and that's a huge part of the second EVA is making sure
those keel pins are in the right, are removed so that we can move
the Mobile Transporter back and forth.
And
in this one you're going to be backing-up Steve Frick from the shuttle
flight deck?
And I'll be
in the shuttle flight deck, and we have some cameras, again, that
we have to run for Ellen; the other thing that we'll be doing is,
we have a system up there called the Wireless Video System, WVS,
and basically the EVA guys have a couple of small cameras that are
mounted to the top of their helmet, and it allows us to see exactly
what the EVA guys are seeing. And so my job will be, one of my jobs
will be, to run that WVS system so that the guys inside and the
folks on the ground can see exactly what Jerry and Lee are doing
while they're outside.
And
we appreciate getting the opportunity to see it. The third spacewalk
of the mission is scheduled coming right back the very next day.
Right.
What's
on the schedule for the third spacewalk?
The third
spacewalk is primarily to reconfigure some power to the station
arm. Up to this point most of the power has, in fact all the power's
coming from P6 through Z1 through the Lab and then up into S0. And
eventually, P6, the solar arrays that are up there right now, is
going to be moved out to the very end of the truss. And to accommodate
that we need to rewire how the arm on the International Space Station
is powered, where, not where it gets its power from but how that
power is routed to the arm. And so what we're going to be doing
is disconnecting and reconnecting some cables on top of the Laboratory
to reroute that power for the station arm, and that's the primary
objective of EVA 3. It's very intense with the ground: we have a
lot of…ground has to do a lot of commanding to make sure that
there's not power on those cables when Steve and Rex are outside
disconnecting and reconnecting those cables.
I
would imagine, then, if you're connecting and disconnecting power
to the station's arm, it won't be in operation during the spacewalk.
No, and in
fact, it's not. It's basically put in a position where it's not
going to move at all. And it's, and then the shuttle arm will be
moved…well, I'm sorry, the shuttle arm will be used to move
Steve Smith around so that he can disconnect and reconnect these
connectors.
You
mentioned that during the second spacewalk keel pins were in the
way of the Mobile Transporter ultimately moving back and forth.
Well, after the third spacewalk there is an item on the schedule
to check out the Mobile Transporter. What has to be, what's supposed
to be done here, and might we actually see the moving pieces move?
Yeah. Well,
that's the goal. In fact after EVA 3, before EVA 4, we've got a
day where we're going to have the Mobile Transporter move back and
forth on its railroad track. We applied power, there's two power
cables that go to the MT, and so we had, on EVA 1, we had applied
one source of power, on EVA 2 we applied the second source of power,
and so after that was complete the ground has had the opportunity
to do some commanding to the MT to make sure that it, all the boxes
that were internal to the MT, the Mobile Transporter, were working
the way they were supposed to. Now we have an opportunity to take
this Mobile Transporter off of its launch position and move it to
a couple of its sites: there's two sites where it can park, if you
will, on this railroad track, and so we're going to move it to both
of those sites and make sure that when it gets to each of the sites
it can hook up with some connectors that are at each of those sites.
And so that's what we're going to do with this translation is actually
move it back and forth. It doesn't move very fast-one inch per second
is as fast as it goes, at its top speed, and that's actually the
fastest speed on it, there's actually some slower speeds, as it
gets close to the site, it slows down a little bit more. But that
is the goal of that day between EVAs 3 and 4.
Fourth
EVA then scheduled for Flight Day 9; once again, what's on the plan?
What's on your agenda?
Flight Day
4 is…is kind of tidying up all the things that we've been doing
on EVAs 1, 2, and 3. It could very easily be used to catch anything
that fell off of EVAs 1, 2, or 3: if we didn't get [them] complete
or some issues came up, then we can catch [them] in EVA 4. If all
that stuff went well, then we can do this Airlock Spur, we can do
some lights up there-we're basically making life easier for the
next guys, we're doing get-ahead tasks for the folks who are going
to come up on the following flights and install more truss segments
to the International Space Station.
OK.
Before we get away from EVAs 1, 2, and 3 then, I'm going to suggest
that we would consider that there's always the possibility that
the installation of S0 and the MT won't go strictly according to
Hoyle; what are some of the more critical failure scenarios that
you folks are preparing to respond to, and tell me what those responses
are.
Well, as I
mentioned earlier, the S0 has two things we want to do to it: we
want to be able to put the struts in place, to mechanically hold
it in place, and we want to be able to get power to it, to keep
the boxes warm so they don't break. So everything is focused around
basically those two events. For power, if we start going long in
our EVA, EVA 1 basically, and we're not able to get power to S0,
then we have a second set of cables that we call LTA cables, which
just mean launch to activate-they're some cables that are already
up on the station, they're already in place-and if we can't get
the nominal connectors to work then we'll fall back to these launch
to activate cables, these LTA cables, and we'll hook them up and
that will give us temporary power to S0. If for some reasons we
can't get both the nominal cables and we can't get the LTA cables,
then we always have the option of putting S0 back in the payload
bay to keep it warm, or what we can do is, right now we have a break
between EVA 1 and EVA 2-EVA 1 is when we're supposed to do all this
cable stuff-is we could move EVA 2 up earlier, you know, to follow
EVA 1, and we would still have time to try and go out there and
work the problem, whatever it may be. For the struts that we talked
about, that's the other big thing that we're trying to do is hook
up these four struts; the rules say we need to have two of four,
basically, to undock and dock, and so somehow we had to figure out,
out of the four struts, how do we get two of [them] in place. And
if we start going down the path where we can't make one work, then
we have to go and pick one of the other ones to make it work. So
that's the backup plan if the struts don't attach.
There's
an awful lot of work going on with the spacewalks on this mission;
are you going to have time to have any fun while you're there?
Yeah. We've
as a matter of fact between EVAs 1 and 2 we've got a day off, basically-not
the whole day off, we got the afternoon off-and what we'd like to
do during that time is to get together with Dan, Yury, and Carl
and have a good old barbecue. It's about the time of the rodeo here
in Houston, Texas, and both Dan and Carl enjoy the rodeo, so we're
taking up some barbecue beef, and we're taking up some handkerchiefs,
and Jerry's a country western fan so he's going to bring some music,
and we're going to try and have our own little party up there the
afternoon between EVAs 1 and 2.
The
International Space Station is a science laboratory, its primary
mission, but it's also a place to develop technology and to encourage
commercial research and development, and a place where people learn
how to work together, and where people from different nations learn
how to work together. I'd like to get your opinion: what do you
think is the most valuable aspect of the International Space Station?
Well, what
the International Space Station allows us to do is it allows us
to work in an environment that we cannot duplicate here on Earth,
and that is, zero gravity. We can't do that here on Earth, that's
not a place that we can go, it's not a laboratory we can do. And,
with that, we don't know what's going to come out of it. I mean,
we know that if we start doing research up there in this zero g
environment that we're going to discover some things; what those
are we don't know, and that's the purpose of this is to try and
go figure out, hey, what can we use this zero gravity for. And if
we can use it to develop medicines that can cure diseases, and there's,
and that's what we're doing a lot of right now is growing things
up there we call protein crystals, and by looking at those crystals
we're hoping long-term what we can do is develop a drug that will
attack a specific disease without any side effects; it's a true
designer drug, if you will. And before we were able to do this a
little bit on the shuttle, but as you know the shuttle has a limited
time in space -- fourteen days, seventeen days, max -- with the
International Space Station it's up there around-the-clock. And
so we can run these experiments, we can grow bigger crystals and
better crystals, and maybe someday we can come up with some type
of designer drug. One thing is for sure, is I firmly believe that
the International Space Station is something that's going to make
a difference not only in my life but in my kids' life and in their
kids' life. I mean, it's going to make a difference, you know, ten,
fifty, a hundred years from now because of what we're doing up there
right now.
With
that in mind then, how do you feel about the idea that you, Mike
Bloomfield, get to play such an important and visible role in the
whole project?
Well, I'm
very fortunate to be wrapped up in this. I remember when I first
came to NASA for an interview on whether or not I wanted to be an
astronaut, and I wasn't convinced that's what I wanted to do. And
I came down here for the interview process, kind of checking NASA
out as well, is this someplace I really want to go; and the thing
that struck me when I came down here was how dedicated the people
were to their job, how motivated they were, and how excited they
were about space travel. And, I go, I want to go there because here's
a lot of people that enjoy learning new things, they enjoy doing
new things. When we go do this mission we, there's just a group
of seven us and three on the station so there's ten of us up there,
but there are literally thousands of people down here on Earth that
are supporting us. And they have supported us since we started training;
in many cases they were working on this mission for four or five
years before we even [showed] up. So we're a very small part of
this whole thing. This, what we're doing is a result of the incredible
teamwork that takes place here at NASA. And so I feel very fortunate
to be just a small part of that tremendous team.
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