Preflight
Interview: Stephen Frick
The
STS-110 Crew Interviews with Stephen Frick, pilot.
Steve,
tell me first about your mission in a nutshell: what are the main
goals of STS-110?
Well, really
the main goal is to get up to the International Space Station and
add our main piece, which is the S0 truss. We see it as kind of
the foundation of further development. We need to have power on
the station to do the experimentation we need, and that's our job
is to get the keystone for that up there so they can start adding
to it.
STS-110
is your first mission as a member of the flight crew. What was it
like for you to get the word that you'd been assigned to fly in
space?
That was an
interesting story. I was on vacation in England at the time with
my wife, Jennifer. She had just finished her Ph.D. and we were celebrating
with a tour around some of the cathedrals in that area. We came
back to our bed and breakfast that night and found a note on the
door from Charlie Precourt, the head of the Astronaut Office, that
had asked me if I was interested in flying as a Pilot on STS-110.
So the most difficult part was trying to find a phone so I could
call back and say, yes, I was interested in that.
Well,
tell me about, how did you get to be an astronaut anyway? I mean,
what was, for you, the education and career path that got you qualified
to become an astronaut?
Well, I think
like most people I've been interested in it since I was a little
boy watching the moon landings at home in…near Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. I was interested in flying, I went to the Naval Academy
and became a Naval aviator, and after flying in the F-18 out of
Jacksonville, Florida, I went to Test Pilot School and then I started
realizing, now I'm starting to get the kind of education I need
to maybe interest NASA. So I applied, and in 1996, on my second
try, I got an interview and was lucky enough to be selected to come
down to Houston and train as an astronaut.
You
mentioned watching moon landings as a kid; is that why you wanted
to be an astronaut? What is it that made this of any interest to
you in the first place?
Well, it was
certainly a great motivator not just that but watching the development
of NASA as I got older. As someone who's interested in aviation
and flying, there can't be anything more exciting than flying in
space. And that just was reinforced by watching the Apollo program
and then watching the shuttle program. And you just keep your eye
on the goal and work towards it.
As
you think back over your high school and Naval Academy and your
Navy career, who are the people that you think have been the most
influential in your life?
Well, I think
the top of that list would probably be my wife, Jennifer. I was
just married not quite two years ago, and that's changed my life
a great deal and certainly, I think, helped me to prepare better
for this mission than I would have been otherwise. In my Navy career
my first flight instructor back when I was a midshipman was a retired
Navy captain Dick Linnekin, and he was a great influence on me,
both from his perspective as a Naval aviator and as a, just a great
leader with a lot of Navy history behind him. And I had a number
of good commanding officers in my various squadrons; Dennis Gillespie
and Robert Stumpf, they helped me to learn a lot about what it takes
to be a good pilot and what it takes to be a good Naval officer.
And I certainly would have to include my parents, my dad, Neil,
and my mother, Charlotte, for getting me going in the right direction.
Let's
talk about your mission. You mentioned the primary payload being
a piece of hardware that's known as the S0 truss. Introduce us to
it: how big is it, where does it go, what does it do?
It's hard
to get a perspective on it when you see pictures, and that's something
that really strikes us. We go down to the Kennedy Space Center to
look at the truss and get close-up views of all the parts we're
going to be working on, and every time we go down we're astounded
by the size of this thing. It's going to completely fill the payload
bay, almost sixty feet long; it's about as heavy as we can bring
up-tens of thousands of pounds to bring to orbit-and it's just full
of equipment. It's a huge truss structure with computers and power
converters and miles of cable and piping for the thermal control
system. It's just an incredibly complex piece of gear that our four
EVA crewmembers are going to have to get all that stuff hooked up
in just four short EVAs so that it's ready to go for the next flight
that's going to add truss structures onto the station.
Tell
me a little more about the additional truss structures: S0 is going
to be installed on top of the Lab, but it's going to end up being
the base for another, building the station in another direction.
That's right.
What I think about the station is, it's going to be just an incredibly
unique opportunity for, really, mankind to do research and experiments
that we can't do anywhere else. And in order to do any kind of meaningful
research, everyone knows you need to have electrical power; without
that, you're just not going to get anything done. And the only way
we're going to get electrical power is to get these huge truss structures
up there that have large solar arrays, as we've already seen with
the P6 array that Mike Bloomfield and his crew brought up with their
last mission. So we need to have S0 there as a building block so
that we can attach all these solar panels on there and get enough
power to do real research.
The
S0 truss launches with you, carrying some other major pieces of
equipment, notably the Mobile Transporter and a thing called the
Airlock Spur. Tell me about what those components are.
Well, the
Mobile Transporter I'm pretty interested in 'cause Mike Bloomfield
and myself, along with Carl Walz and Dan Bursch, who are already
up there, are going to do the first translation of the Mobile Transporter.
It's a really critical piece because in order to add further truss
structures onto the S0, as we build out in both directions, we need
to be able to move the space station RMS around in order to be able
to connect those things…got to have the crane out there if you're
going to move the piece to the end, and the Mobile Transporter provides
that. The next flight that's going to go up in May, UF-2, they're
going to bring up the MBS, which is a structure that goes onto the
Mobile Transporter, onto which you attach the arm. So we have to
be able to move the Mobile Transporter back and forth across the
truss so that we can continue to build the station.
And
it moves across the truss how?
It looks like
a small trolley, actually. It's got motors, it's got wheels that,
it attaches to rails that are on the S0 truss, and it will be on
every truss that we put up there, and it works just like a trolley
car going down the street. We control it via computers on the space
station, and we just send it from one end of the truss to the other,
carrying whatever pieces we need to move.
You
touched on the answer to this question, get you to expand on it
a bit. Of all the things that are going to be done on this mission,
there are seven of you and three station crewmembers with the necessary
skills to accomplish [them]; what are your most important jobs on
this mission?
Well, my most
important job, I think, is to help get the crew safely to orbit
and then bring us back to Earth at the end. Now once we're on orbit
I'm really more of a support person: I'm there to make sure that
our five mission specialists, who are either going to be doing EVAs
or doing all the very complicated arm operations, along with Carl
and Dan and Yury on the station side, I just have to make sure they
have what they need to get the job done. For Ellen, who's going
to be working the SSRMS, moving the truss out of the payload bay,
attaching it to the top of the Lab, my main job, really, is to move
the shuttle arm to where it can provide camera views to Ellen so
she can see where she's going, and also handle all the video that
we have on the orbiter to send that across to her, so it's really
a support role. For the EVAs I have the opportunity on EVA 3 to
move Steve Smith around on the shuttle arm to do some connecting
some cables and moving some wires on top of the Lab and then again
on the bottom of the Lab, so I'm pretty excited about the opportunity
to do that. But really, it's just to make sure that they have what
they need to do the complicated operations to get the S0 installed
correctly.
First
big event that comes along after you've successfully reached orbit
is to dock Atlantis to the International Space Station. Tell me
about what you do as part of the team, and describe for us the rendezvous
profile.
Well, Mike
Bloomfield and Ellen Ochoa keep reinforcing to us that it's going
to be like nothing we've ever seen when you see the actual station
out there. We have great simulators, and we have a good idea of
how the shuttle's going to fly and what we have to do to get it
safely docked. But when we get within about a thousand feet of the
station and you look out the window and see that huge station looming
up, it's going to really be exciting, and we're hoping we're going
to still be able to concentrate on the task at hand. Mike Bloomfield,
Ellen, myself, and Rex Walheim are the core folks that are going
to be doing a lot of the work during the rendezvous, and then at
the undocking. My job is really to make sure everyone stays on track:
I have the checklist, and while Mike is busy flying and Ellen's
busy making sure that all the information that we need about how
close we are to the station, how fast we're closing on the station,
is available to Mike, and Rex Walheim is going to be using our handheld
laser ranger as a backup to make sure we know exactly how far away
we are. I'm going to be just making sure everybody's right where
they're supposed to be and getting things done on time.
Is
the approach and docking on this mission similar to what we've seen
the last several missions?
Hopefully,
it will be very similar since they've gone quite well for a while.
We're going to be coming up from the bottom of the station, like
all the flights have, and then moving around into the front, and
then coming slowly back towards the station until we dock. And as
long as everything goes like it has in the past, it'll go just fine.
The
agenda for the rest of that day after the docking is completed calls
for some transfers and a dry run of the S0 installation. Tell me
about what you're going to be doing during that time.
Well, one
of the big things we have to do is make a lot of changes with our
video system inside the orbiter between what we needed for docking,
to show the camera views of the station, and what we're going to
need the next day when we take the S0 out of the bay and install
it on the Lab. So I'll be changing cameras and recording devices
inside the orbiter while Ellen is working on the station side getting
the arm ready to go. And then when we run through the dry run I'm
going to be providing video and pictures to Ellen and Dan, who are
going to be on the station side, so that they can see exactly where
the arm is and exactly what they're going to need to see to take
the S0 out of the bay. There's not much clearance on either the
front or back or the sides, and it's a very delicate operation to
take that huge truss out of the bay and move it all the way to the
top of the Lab to get it ready to install within a few inches.
Before
we get into the details of that installation or the other spacewalks,
I'd like to get you to tell us a little bit about the plans for
the use of the two robot arms, the shuttle's arm and the station
arm. You and Ellen and Carl and Dan, among you as well as Mike Bloomfield
some, are assigned to be running those two arms. Give us an overview,
if you will, of how the strategy that's being used of how those
two robots are going to help in this assembly task.
Well, it's
an interesting bit of choreography. My main job, with Mike Bloomfield,
is to keep the shuttle arm out of the way, because the station arm
is doing all the heavy lifting work and for the, for three of the
four EVAs, it's going to be the one that's moving the EVA crewmembers
around to do their task. So I basically have to keep the station,
the shuttle arm out of the way, but still in a position where I
can provide the camera views that Ellen needs. And the way we do
that, really, is only, we only move one at a time, we try not to
move both arms together. The EVAs are almost eight hours long, so
we have plenty of time to get done what we need, so it's just important
to be slow and careful, and watch where we're going.
Well,
the next day, Flight Day 4, is the day that S0 is to be installed,
and that starts with robot arm operations hours before your crewmates
come out the Airlock. Pick it up at the beginning of the day for
us, if you would, and describe the processes that are going to lead
to this installation.
Well, there
are a number of hours before the EVA starts. The EVA crewmembers
are very busy getting the suits ready, getting themselves ready
to go outside. While they're doing that Ellen will be moving, along
with Dan, the station arm into position to grapple the S0 truss
and then lift it out of the bay, and move it all the way over to
the top of the Lab-that's going to take quite a while for such a
complicated maneuver. At the beginning of that I'm going to move
the shuttle arm, along with Mike Bloomfield, over to the side of
the shuttle to provide camera views so that Ellen can lift the S0
out of the bay and see the ends-to make sure she's clear-and then
I move the shuttle arm over towards the Lab so that she can see
the Lab Cradle Assembly, where she's going to attach it to the Lab.
So we're moving both the arms around, we're lifting the S0 out of
the bay, we're moving it all the way to the top of the Lab, and
we're getting it actually, physically attached to the Lab, all before
the EVA crewmembers come out of the Airlock. It's important to get
as much done as we can early because, once they come out of the
Airlock their clock is running and we don't want them to have to
waste time waiting for us to get the S0 attached to the Lab before
they can get going on their work getting the struts, which are going
to be the main supports for the entire truss structure, attached
to the Lab.
So
Ellen and one of the station crewmembers will, in essence, snap
the S0 onto the top of the Lab?
Well, really,
it's everybody together. Carl will be, along with the EVA crewmembers,
getting them ready; Ellen and Dan will be on the station side; Mike
Bloomfield and myself will be on the shuttle side; and we'll all
be working together to get that thing firmly attached before the
EVA crewmembers go out.
All
right; assume that that's done then, Rex and Steve are ready to
go out the Quest, the door of Quest. Talk us through what happens
then: what has to happen for those guys outside to complete the
goals of EVA 1?
Well, the
most important things are to get the truss structure firmly attached
to the Lab, which are two struts, which they have to bolt on. It
looks sort of like a NASCAR pit crew out there with a high-speed
drill attaching the struts in. As long as they get the two struts
attached and they get some electrical power on the truss, then we're
in a good, safe configuration for the next EVA. And that's really
the main goal, is to get ourselves set up for the next three EVAs
and stay on track. We have a limited amount of time docked with
station, and it's important that we don't take longer than we need
to, to get the truss attached.
Well,
in fact, on this spacewalk, there's something of a deadline that
you all are working against in order to get power connected to the
S0, right? What's the deadline, and what drives it?
Well, the
problem we always have with any large space structure is thermal
concerns. When you're up in orbit you're going from bright, harsh
sunlight to dark, cold vacuum of space twice every hour-and-a-half.
And with that kind of a harsh environment, a complicated piece of
equipment like the S0 truss isn't going to last very long unless
you get heaters on it so we can keep the thing warm when it gets
so cold up there. So they're really trying to get it firmly attached
so that it would be safe to undock the orbiter if we had to, and
also get power on it so that the thing won't freeze before we can
get out again the next day to continue connecting it.
Now
as you said, the job in the first spacewalk is to attach a pair
of these struts, to keep it in place; the job of the second EVA
is to attach some more?
That's right.
Jerry and Lee are going to go out the next day and attach the last
two struts, and once we have all four struts firmly attached we're
in a very good configuration to continue on with the other two EVAs.
Those are both very difficult tasks, they are tasks that they can't
replicate on Earth. These are huge, heavy struts; big pieces of
metal that you just can't practice with on Earth. So the first time
they'll be moving these things for real will be in space, so those
are very important tasks.
On
one spacewalk a pair of your crewmates have attached one set of
struts, and on a second spacewalk they've attached a second set;
what have you been doing during both of these? What is the role
of the space shuttle arm?
Well, the
shuttle arm for the first two EVAs, again, is, it's providing a
backup role to the station arm. The station arm is moving Rex on
the first EVA and Lee on the second EVA, all over the truss to mainly
attach those four struts. They have to be firmly attached to the
arm so that they can provide the torque they need with their large
Pistol Grip Tool to get those bolts attached. So what I need to
do is I need to stay out of the way, but still be in a position
to give the camera views to Ellen to show how close the station
arm is to the Lab and to the shuttle, and how close the EVA crewmembers
are to things they can't see. They've got a huge EMU on-their spacesuit,
with a large backpack and a big helmet-and it's very difficult for
them to see a lot of the times how close their back is to the Lab
or to the S0 truss. So we need to provide views so that we can tell
how close they are and Ellen can keep, make sure that they don't
hit anything they shouldn't.
Now,
the third spacewalk of the mission is going to change the job that
you've got to do because the work is going to involve shutting down
the space station arm. Tell us what happens and what your role is
going to be.
Since the
S0 truss is going to be such a critical part of SSRMS options, or
operations, in the future, we have to change a lot of the wiring
so that it can be run from up there which like you said means we
have to take the thing completely down, take all the power and the
data capability away from it, which leaves only the shuttle arm
to provide a strong support for EVA crewmembers. So we're going
to bring the shuttle arm up on to the top of the Lab which is kind
of an unusual position for it to be in-it was, wasn't really designed
to go up there-so we have pretty narrow corridors we have to wind
our way through to get up on top of the Lab to work. And then Rex
and Steve are going to attach the foot restraint to the shuttle
arm, and Steve is going to get on the arm and I'm going to move
him around to make a lot of connections. He's got a large number
of cables he's got to swap out on top of the Lab, and then we go
all the way out, around to the bottom of the Lab-which should be
kind of interesting to see on video because in order to get him
there we have to swing Steve way out away from both the Lab and
the shuttle, so he's going to have some views of both the station
and the Earth that no one's ever seen before, being that far away.
And once we get him to the bottom of the Lab he's going to change
a lot more connections in order to re-power the station arm. And
after that, at the end of the EVA, we should be able to power the
station arm back up, and it should be in a good configuration for
the rest of our flight.
Now
the day after that spacewalk you'll be running the shuttle arm and
working with Carl Walz to check out the Mobile Transporter. Tell
me what you two do, and, as you did earlier, tell us more about
what we might see that day.
Well, you
know, a lot of the work is going to be behind the scenes. Probably
while we're sleeping, the station flight controllers are going to
be going through some very long checkout procedures of the Mobile
Transporter to make sure everything's up and operating and ready
when we're ready to move it. So, they're going to have worked for
hours before we even get ready to go. And then Carl and I are going
to get on the PCS, the control software on the station, and we're
going to command the Mobile Transporter to move from its launch
site-which is not any place where it's going to work in the future,
it was just a good, safe place on the truss for it to be located
to take launch loads-and we're going to move it to two worksites.
We have one called worksite 4 and one called worksite 5 on the S0
truss. It's going to be exciting for us because it'll be the first
time we'll get to see it move, but I've got to say it moves at an
inch a second so I don't want people to get their hopes up too much
about a NASCAR race up there on the truss.
But,
it, as you say, after a lot of work that will be done by ground
controllers, you folks will, what is it that you guys have to do
up there to then allow, to continue the checkout and get it ready
to move?
Well, really
our most important role up there is as a safety observer. The commands
we're going to send could be sent from the station; we're actually
going to send them from the shuttle on the station laptop; and the
reason we're going to be over there is because we can look directly
out the overhead window and watch the Mobile Transporter as it moves.
The software has been checked out on the ground and it's worked
very well actually, when they've checked it out at the Kennedy Space
Center on the truss, translating from end to end. But it's never
been done in space, and if anything should happen that's not predicted
or is unexpected, we want to be there, ready to just stop it and
give us a chance to look at what happened and what we can do to
fix the problem. So really we're safety observers: we're going to
command it to leave one launch site, translate across, stop at the
next one, plug itself back in, and then we're just going to be watching
it very closely to make sure it does exactly what we expect it to
do.
The
day after that is when we're supposed to see the fourth spacewalk
of the mission. Tell me what's on the agenda for that.
Well, it's
really our last chance to get the truss in the right configuration
for us to leave. They have some cleanup connections to make, they'll
probably do some work to get ready for further spacewalks-collecting
some tools, relocating some hardware so that when folks do spacewalks
on UF-2 coming up in May or from the station on increments that
they have what they need to be ready to go. And, but really, it's
our last chance, it's our fourth EVA. When you're on the ground
and you're planning these you don't really know how it's going to
go; nothing ever goes exactly to plan. So we have that opportunity
to clean up anything that has gone slowly or we've had problems
on in the past, before we have to undock and leave the station.
Now,
before you do that there is some other work on this mission, not
spacewalk-related work, if you will…some transfer of supplies
and delivery of experiments. Tell me a bit about the kinds of things
that you folks are going to leave behind for the Expedition 4 crewmembers.
Well, there's
the one I'm most interested in is the BPS. It's going to be a biological
research experiment, which actually my wife, who works in Space
Station Payloads, has been very interested in. And I'm interested
in it, too, because I sleep right next to it on the shuttle during
the days before we dock, so I'm interested to make sure that it's
not too loud for me to sleep. But it's going to be a great research
facility. We're going to transfer it across, and that's very carefully
choreographed because it's a powered payload, and we have to make
sure that it's not un-powered for too long, so we're going to work
closely with Dan and Carl and make sure that they're ready to receive
it and we're ready to bring it across, and then we're going to transfer
some payloads back to bring back home. So as long as we choreograph
that correctly, and get everything moving smoothly from one side
to the other we should be in good shape.
Steve,
you and your crewmates are going to be delivering things that are
going to help advance the mission of the International Space Station
as a science laboratory. Of course, it's also a place to develop
technology and to do research and development, and learn more about
how people can live and work in space. Finally, I'd like to get
your opinion: what do you think is the most valuable aspect of the
International Space Station?
A very complicated
question. I think my answer is, that really I think there's two
things. One is an opportunity to learn about things in an environment
that we can't do anywhere else. This is a one of a kind opportunity
to do research in space that can't be done anywhere else on Earth,
or even in space, 'cause, since we're the only facility of our kind.
So, learning about things that are going to help on Earth is a very
important part of what we do. But I also think that the opportunity
to spend months in space, like our increment crewmembers are doing,
is the opportunity we need to learn the things we need to go farther
out into space, to go to Mars or beyond. We have to learn what it
takes to keep the human body healthy, and we have to learn the things
we need from a technology point of view to be able to develop the
equipment to go to Mars or beyond. And there's no way we're going
to do that without spending long periods of time in space. The folks
that are going up there for months at a time, they're making a big
sacrifice to spend not only the time away from their family while
they're in space but the tremendous amount of time it takes to train
for a mission of that duration. But we're going to get things out
of their experiences that we're going to need to be able to go farther.
That
said, how do you feel about the idea that you get to play such an
important, and a visible, role in the project?
Well, it's
an exciting opportunity; we're only going to be up on station for
really a few days, so I'm just going to get a taste of what it would
be like to be up there longer. But it's really a great opportunity,
to get a chance to be a small part of this team that's going to
go and help to increase the capability and the size of the space
station.
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