Preflight
Interview: Jerry Ross
The
STS-110 Crew Interviews with Jerry Ross, mission specialist.
Jerry,
tell me about the mission in a nutshell: what are the main goals
of STS-110?
Well, obviously
the whole payload bay of the orbiter is going to be filled up with
the S0 segment of truss for the station, which is the central core
element of the long truss that will go along the front of the space
station to which, at both ends, we attach the large solar arrays,
one piece of which is already on the station providing power for
the U.S. segment, and once the rest of the segments of the truss
are established on the station, then that part will be moved out
to the very end of the port side of the station. Altogether that
entire truss will be about 360 feet long; our segment we're taking
up is about forty-three feet long and weighs about fourteen tons.
When
Atlantis launches to begin this mission, you're going to become
the first person ever-first person ever-to launch from the Earth
as many as seven times. How do you feel about making a mark in history
like that?
Well, I don't
see it so much as a mark in history as just another opportunity
for me to go do something I thoroughly enjoy. Ever since I was a
small kid back in Indiana, space fascinated me. I grew up with the
space race, I made scrapbooks about flying in space and satellites
even before the first Sputniks and explorers were launched into
space. And I decided in the fourth grade that I wanted to go to
Purdue University, a well-known engineering school back in my home
state, that I wanted to become an engineer, and I wanted to get
involved in the space program. And so everything I did from then
on, including the dollars I made baling hay in the hayfields back
home and everything else I did to help earn money for my college
education was put into a fund and dedicated to getting me there.
And then, all the courses I took through junior high and high school
were specifically planned to make sure that I had all the classes
covered that I needed to be able to qualify for entrance and admittance
into Purdue. So, a pretty dedicated way of doing things, and I felt
very fortunate, that I felt like I had some divine guidance [at
a] very young age to help me focus where I wanted to go with my
life. And, through a lot of hard work and hard study and good breaks
and I think some intervention from above, I've been able to get
here, and I've been in the Astronaut Office for almost twenty-two
years now and, through all the hard work and preparations there
as well not only for my flights but all the other flights that have
occurred during the period I've been here…I've been able to enjoy
every aspect of it, and fortunately getting a chance to fly a seventh
time is kind of a byproduct of all that hard work and fun.
You
going to hold out for an eighth?
Well, I take
them one at a time here and see how things go. Obviously I've always
said that as long as my health held out and, which, fortunately,
it has, as long as it continues to be fun, and it still is, I'd
like to continue to fly in space. But we'll see...there's a long
line of people in the Office that have not had the opportunity to
fly their first time yet, so I understand if I don't get another
chance to fly but certainly would be more than willing and ready
to do it again if they called.
You
said you were fascinated by space as a boy; do you know why? Do
you know what it was about it that captured your imagination?
I think it's
the same thing that captures the imagination of adults and kids
right now. I mean, if you look at the types of things that you see
in advertisements, they're obviously trying to capture people's
attention: they're talking about space shuttles, they're talking
about walking in space, they're talking about the space station,
they're talking about aliens, they're talking about all these things
that capture people's imagination. I think it's the same thing that
drove people across this continent when they first came here, from
east to west; it's a spirit of adventure, it's a, what's over the
next hill, what's beyond that next planet…the same type of
thing. And at the same time, I've always felt that I wanted to spend
my lifetime, my personal life, doing things I thought were of benefit
to all mankind. And I think, you know, the rudimentary, the early
steps we're doing in the exploration of space, we're doing that.
Some of the types of research that we've been able to do on Spacelab
missions that I've been on and what we'll be doing on the International
Space Station, I think are very important, and continuing to help
us expand the data base of knowledge that we have that can benefit
people all around the world.
You
said that you, when you decided you wanted to be an astronaut you
set your sights on getting there as an engineer, I guess as opposed
to a pilot. Tell us again about your education and career path that
successfully brought you to NASA.
OK. Well I
didn't really intend to be an astronaut; I just wanted to get involved
in the space program. I knew I liked math and science, and I knew
it was those types of backgrounds that the engineers and scientists
were needing to be able to participate in the space program. So
that's where I focused myself. I didn't even know what an engineer
did at that point; you know, ten years old, you really don't have
that good of an idea what it's all about. But I read enough and
listened enough that I knew that it was those types of educations
that helped people get into the program. So I grew up in northwest
Indiana, and I had some excellent teachers, and encouragement from
my folks, and as I said, I studied hard, I didn't, wasn't a straight
"A" kid, I'm not, you know, a really, really brilliant
person, I have to work hard at whatever I do. Once at Purdue I got
a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and also a master's
degree in mechanical engineering before I came on to active duty
in the Air Force; I was in Air Force ROTC while I was at Purdue
partly because I thought that might help me get further in the direction
I wanted to get to in the space program, because the Air Force was
the Department of Defense's lead military branch for space efforts,
but also I don't think that my folks would've been able to put both
of my younger sisters through college also, so that was my way of
helping to pay my way through school so that my sisters would hopefully
have a chance to get college educations also, which they did. So
I came on to active duty in the Air Force, first I was at Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base where I was an engineer working on the development
of ramjet-powered missiles, and also spent a year as the executive
officer for the colonel, the boss of the laboratory, which gave
me some management experience in dealing with people and all those
kinds of things. And then I was fortunate enough to be selected
for the Air Force's Test Pilot School out at Edwards Air Force Base
as a flight test engineer, not as a pilot. It had been earlier determined,
back when I was in ROTC, that someday I was going to need glasses,
and so therefore they didn't opt to send me through pilot training.
At the time I was disappointed-I was young enough, I didn't know
to fight it-and, as the way things turned out it was all for the
better anyhow. So I went to the Test Pilot School at Edwards as
a flight test engineer, a really great experience, and did well
in the school and was selected to be a flight test engineer on a
B-1 bomber test program, which was then the Air Force's highest
priority project. It was while I was working on that program that
Jimmy Carter canceled the program, but we continued to do the flight
testing and we wrote, I wrote this great, big, thick report on the
flying qualities and flight control performance of the airplane,
which I thought was going to be a doorstop somewhere but fortunately,
the airplane under President Reagan's administration was resurrected
and built, and that report was put to good use and some of the mods
that were put into the airplane were based upon what we had done.
I applied for the astronaut program while I was transitioning from
Test Pilot School into the B-1 test program at Edwards, and that
was in 1977 for the class that was hired in 1978. And it's my understanding
they had nine- or ten-thousand people that applied that time around,
and NASA brought 210 people here to Houston for interviews; and
I was really excited when I was one of those 210 people but also
extremely disappointed when I was not one of the thirty-five that
was selected that time around. So after some discussions with the
management here, the people that had been on the selection board,
I was encouraged and opted to come here as a military person to
work in the payload operations area to help integrate military payloads
into the orbiter from an operational perspective. And I did that
job for a year, a year-and-a-half after I got here, and fortunately,
in another selection process that time around, I think out of about
six-thousand people they interviewed a hundred and twenty and picked
nineteen, and I was one of the nineteen that time.
As
you look back over the course of all that time that you've described
and since, who are the people that you think that have been the
most influential in your life?
Well, I think,
obviously, my folks. I mean, they were very, very encouraging. They
expected a lot out of us. They wanted us to study hard and do well
in our lives; they instilled a sense of responsibility and all those
other things that I think, you know, the red-white-and-blue stand
for. Obviously also there are a lot of teachers and coaches and
other people, you know, that, the support community, grandparents,
aunts and uncles and cousins and all that, so I think my parents
would be the number one standout and then maybe one or two teachers
along the way that were strong influences as well.
Let's
talk about the star of this mission: your primary payload, the S0
truss. You started before; I'll get you to repeat some of it. Introduce
us to this piece of hardware: how big is it, where does it go, what
does it do?
OK. S0 is
the core of the station's exterior, if we can put it in those terms.
It's about forty-three feet long, it's on a diagonal across, the
largest dimension's around fourteen or fifteen feet, it weighs about
28,000 pounds, about fourteen tons. It looks kind of like a girder
in a bridge, but it's a lot more than that. It has a lot of plumbing,
and a lot of electrical systems, it has a tremendous number of black
boxes, including four computers that are mounted on the outside
of the station in the truss. It has, I've been told, about ten miles
of wiring, about four hundred feet worth of plumbing, it has almost
a hundred, or a thousand, electrical connectors on the outside,
and around a hundred fluid connectors on the outside. Fortunately,
we're not going to have [to] touch all of those on our four spacewalks,
but we'll touch a significant number of them. But, it basically
is the Grand Central Station of all the hardware that's on the outside
of the station that has to communicate and contact with the systems
that are on the inside of the space station. Where the Laboratory
is the key element on the inside of the US part of the space station,
S0 is the key part on the outside because everything that's on the
outer elements of the truss that go out another hundred and eighty
feet in both directions, they all have to communicate through and
to the systems that are mounted on the S0 element. And then, the
S0 element also has some trays or umbilicals that will pull off
from the structure and attach onto the Laboratory, and then they
also have plumbing and electrical systems that will attach between
the Laboratory and the S0, and then from there further out the truss.
So, we've got our hands full. And then, of course, on top of the
truss also, the S0 element, is the Mobile Transporter, which is
a little train engine, if you will, that will track, that goes up
and down the track that's on the forward face of the truss. And
that's where we will mount the Canadian-built arm, and its home
will be on there from then on and will allow it to go up and down
on the truss to add the additional segments onto the truss outboard,
where we can't reach otherwise, and also allow us to do things like
putting payloads out there in the future, to expose them to long-duration
exposures to the vacuum and environment of outer space. And it will
also allow us to do repairs in the future as well.
Now,
to complete the mission the seven members of the shuttle crew are
bringing together a wide group of talents and abilities in order
to complete the job. What are your top jobs on this mission?
Well I've
got the responsibilities for pulling together the post insertion
plan, also the deorbit plan. So the very beginning and very end
of the missions are my responsibility to dole out who's going to
do what at certain times, to make sure that we can get our nest
established on orbit as soon as possible. We have to go to sleep
five hours after we get onto orbit, which is kind of tough; we have
to change it from a rocket into an airplane or into a living compartment.
And then the same thing on the way home, we have to re-stow everything
and get ready to come home, and make sure everybody's in their launch-and-entry
suits and secured in their seats, and everything's where it needs
to be to support the reentry profile. In addition to that, I have
responsibilities for the number of payloads that we'll be transporting
to and from the station; I'm also…the transfer guru, the guy
that's responsible for making sure that everything that, at the
end of the mission, is on the right side of the hatch before we
separate from the International Space Station. And, of course the
EVAs, where I'll be the lead for the second and fourth EVA, and
be IV support crewmember on the suit-ups and de-suitings of the
other crews on the first and third one as well as IV support for
the entire first spacewalk.
Now,
you've been to the International Space Station before-you're one
of the very first people who was ever there-albeit a different space
station now than it was then. But has the experience of having been
there been of benefit to you and your crewmates in preparing for
this mission?
I think so.
Certainly some of the hardware we'll be dealing with is the hardware
that I helped put up there on 2A three years ago but beyond that
I think having gone through the preparation for that flight three
years ago I know the people that are involved, I know the systems
that are in place, I know how to communicate our needs and desires,
and to work out any issues as they come up. But I think also beyond
that since that last flight, I've spent a significant period of
my time down at the Cape working on the various different pieces
of hardware as they've been prepared for launch in the interim here,
so I've got to see a lot of that hardware, got to participate in
a lot of the testing of it, so I have a much closer familiarization
with a lot of the hardware that's up there since I've been there
than many other people might.
Now,
once Atlantis is docked to the International Space Station, one
of the first items on the agenda that day is for you and your crewmates
to conduct a dry run of the installation of S0. Tell me about what
you do during that activity, and why you all do it.
OK. Well,
I won't be specifically involved in that-that'll be primarily the
people that will be in the orbiter that will be providing the RMS
people who will be operating out of the International Space Station
video and communication. And then Ellen Ochoa, our MS2, will be
over working with Carl Walz and Dan Bursch to operate the station
mechanical arm, to go through the profile to make sure that all
the routing of the communications and all the various different
video feeds that we're going to route from the station to the orbiter
and vice versa are properly plumbed together, wired up, and are
working. While they're doing that, we'll be, the EVA guys will be
primarily involved in transporting some of the payloads immediately
from the middeck of the orbiter over to the International Space
Station, and also fully employed in transferring our spacesuits
and our EVA tools over to the station, setting those up, checking
out the suits in preparation for the spacewalk on the next day.
Well,
let's talk about that first spacewalk of the mission. The installation
of the S0 on top of the Destiny Laboratory begins actually hours
before two of your crewmates go outside the Airlock. Tell me what
your role's going to be during the first spacewalk, and then talk
us through it, if you will, from the time they lift S0 out of the
payload bay through Rex and Steve's six hours outside.
OK. Well,
we'll be in the preparation phases for the spacewalk while the S0
is being grappled by the Canadian arm that's on the station and
pulled out of the payload bay and maneuvered around, and actually
structurally affixed to the top of the Laboratory. And that'll all
be happening while we're inside busily doing other things and so
it, we'll be pretty much not following that except interested bystanders
to make sure that things are going well and that the timeline's
working out well. I'll be helping get Steve Smith and Rex Walheim
through their prebreathe protocol, into their suits, making sure
that everything is ready with their suits, that their SAFER units
are installed on the back, getting all the tools and equipment that
need to go outside with them into the crew lock, and then closing
up the hatch and, at the appropriate point, walking them through
the cue cards and procedures that allow them to depress the Airlock,
open up the hatch, and get outside. And then while they're outside
I'll be the IV support crewmember, I'll be the one talking them
through the procedures, step by step, and then helping them get
back in at the end of the spacewalk, getting them out of their suits,
and starting to prepare the suits for a subsequent spacewalk. The
EVA itself is primarily composed of two different aspects. One is
to start the structural attachment of S0 firmly to the outside of
the Laboratory, and also to get most of the electrical connections
made between the rest of the space station and S0. That's critical,
time-wise, because as soon as we take the S0 out of the payload
bay of the orbiter, various different black boxes that we spoke
about before which are basically electronic units, they start to
cool down because in the payload bay they're fairly stable and happy,
thermally, but as soon as we get them out of that environment they
start to get colder because they're now irradiating to the colder
temperatures of deep space. We need to get the electrical systems
attached and the heaters at least turned on in those boxes so that
they will stay within their certified limits of operating and survival
capabilities. So right away, we will come out and we will attach
the two forward struts-there's four total struts that come down,
telescope down, from S0 and are then bolted into some plates, some
structural attachment plates, on the outside of the Laboratory-and
so Rex will primarily be the one involved in doing that, but Steve
will also be doing some of the setup and cleanup work after Rex
has done the bolting of those big struts to the outside of the Laboratory.
Steve will also be involved with helping Rex to install two large-I'd
say almost thirty-five-, forty-feet-long trays-umbilical trays that
he will remove from the outside of S0 and come down and install
on the top of the Laboratory, and then make electrical connections
at both ends. One end will be at the forward end of the Laboratory,
and the other end will have a swing arm that will swing up and structurally
attach to S0, and then there's a series of about ten or twelve connectors
that, at that end that will attach to various different points on
the outside of S0. So Steve will be helping with both of those forward
trays, one on the port and one on the starboard side, and the, kind
of the top, or the zenith side of the Laboratory. Steve also has
another task: there's a large aft tray that he will have to remove
some launch restraint bolts on, and then swing down and put into
position, and then he has a series of about twelve, fourteen, sixteen
electrical connections he has to make on the back side of that.
And he's got a dubious honor of working in what we call the rat's
nest: there's a tray that already comes down from Z1 that swings
down towards the aft end of the Laboratory, and this tray on S0
will swing down in the opposite direction so they're pointing out
at each other when they're both fully deployed, both pointing at
the aft end of the Laboratory; and so there's a confluence of electrical
connectors and fluid connectors and lines, all in that same area,
and they're all kind of vying for the same real estate, so Steve's
going to be down in there amongst all the rats, or snakes, trying
to fish his hand down through to make the various different connections
in that area. There's some other auxiliary things that they have
to do in preparation for some of those activities, and the final
act of the first EVA will be to connect up one of the cables to
the Mobile Transporter; again, to provide it with enough electrical
power to keep things alive on it for at least a day or so, until
the next spacewalk occurs. And that's called the TUS cable, or the
Trailing Umbilical System, I believe, and it's a great, big flat
cable-it's about an inch and a half, two inches wide, it has a whole
bunch of different lines running through it-and it's on a great
big spool that's held inside one of the bays of the truss. And we
literally have to unlock that spool and start to manually play out
the cable, and Rex will be on the end of the arm again, pulling
that cable down to the attachment point. And after it's attached
then Steve will come back and put the cable through some guides
and then tension up the cable so that it's properly deployed and
ready to go.
And,
the utility connections, the power connections, really, are what's
driving the deadline, so to speak, that you have on this first spacewalk;
how much time have you got?
Well, it depends
on which piece of hardware we're talking about. The various different
black boxes, or avionics units, electrical boxes, have different
limits; some of them can survive to colder temperatures than others,
some of them get colder than others. But the bottom line is, at
about six hours or so we start to have problems with some of those
boxes starting to exceed or potentially exceed their survivable
limits. So, we need to get electrical power onto the structure within,
let's say, the first four hours or so to make sure that we have
a comfort margin there. We have some other cables that are already
out there, on the outside of the Laboratory-they're called launch-to-activation
cables-that if we had problems getting some of these large utility
trays off of the station or if we had problems putting the bolts
in on those large struts, if we got delayed to a certain point,
we've already got decision lines drawn in the sand, if you will,
that we'll say, OK, we're at this point, we haven't got this accomplished
yet; we have to stop what we were planning on doing and go to this
fallback plan, which would allow us to get at least "keep alive"
power established to this, to the S0 element so that we wouldn't
have any problems with the survivability of any of the electronics
that's on it, on that unit.
When
it comes time for the second spacewalk of the mission, you're going
to extend your record of spacewalks for American spacewalkers. Despite
all your EVA experience, though, there're going to be some new things
for you on this mission, like the Quest airlock…
Right.
…are
you eager to get a crack at that?
Oh, you bet!
…you know, I don't know how many people know this but there
is a special plaque that was put on the inside of the Quest by the
crew that put it up there in memory of Dave Walker, one of our friends
from the Astronaut Office who died of cancer not too long ago. And
I was one of the folks that was on one of our "dog crews,"
Dave being one of the inventors of the "dog crews" some
years ago. And so, we have a plaque that's on the station that is
dedicating the Quest module to his memory, and so I'm very much
looking forward to seeing that, that plaque mounted on the inside
of Quest and to also get a chance to operate the Airlock and go
in and out of it. It's going to be a great place to operate from
if for no other reason than when you open up the hatch, the hatch
is pointed directly at the Earth so the first thing you're going
to see is this great, big, face-full of Earth looking at you as
you open up the hatch and, that'll put a big smile on anybody's
face that ever experiences that, I'm quite sure.
In
this new airlock, or being used in this new airlock, if you will,
is also a new procedure for purging nitrogen from your blood before
you start the spacewalk.
Right.
Tell
me what you do, and if you think, from your point of view, you think
this is going to be an improvement over the procedure that you've
used before on shuttle spacewalks.
It's definitely
not an improvement. I fought pretty hard, when we were building
the International Space Station plans, to try to make the environment
on the station be at 10.2 psi as opposed to a normal sea level pressure
of 14.7. We have instigated plan, instituted plans in the orbiter
that allow us to depress the cabin from a normal 14.7 psi environment
down to 10.2 psi, which allows for a much easier prebreathe protocol.
If we prebreathe on a mask for an hour at a hundred percent oxygen,
depress the orbiter's cabin down to 10.2, then after twenty-four
hours, basically, at that environment, we are free to get into a
suit and after basically a forty-minute prebreathe in a suit, go
outside. If we don't have that type of an environment in the orbiter,
where we depress to 10.2 and have done some prebreathing on a mask,
we are in a requirement where we have to prebreathe in the suit
for four hours. In other words, you get into the suit, you purge
it out, the nitrogen out of the suit, and then you have to be in
the suit for four hours prebreathing on a hundred percent oxygen
in the suit. The suit's not the most comfortable thing to be in,
and after you've been in the suit for four hours, then you get to
go outside on a six- or seven-hour EVA, and then it's another half-hour
to an hour before you can get out of it once you start back in.
That's what we were facing on the International Space Station, was
a four-hour prebreathe in a suit. And when you start stacking up
all the times required to get prepared for an EVA, the four hours
in a suit, and then go out and do the EVA, we couldn't do a full
six- or seven-hour EVA outside because there just wasn't enough
time in the crew's day. So we were forced to look at different,
alternate ways of doing business. One way we looked at was kind
of like what you do in the orbiter, where you prebreathe on a mask,
depress to 10.2, and then sleep overnight at those conditions and
then you get into the suit the next day and you can be in a suit
for a shorter, much shorter period of time, then go outside on a
spacewalk. That is not to, totally possible on the International
Space Station because it's not capable of going to 10.2 in the whole
station. So, we built in a, what we had called a campout capability
in the Airlock, which would allow you to just depressurize the Airlock
portion overnight to 10.2 after you'd done this hour prebreathe
on the mask. That's not totally desirable either, because it takes
three people to do that; and if there's only three people on the
station, that doesn't work out very well because you'd have them
all locked up in the Airlock overnight. So, we came up with this
alternate plan, which Mike Gernhardt has worked very hard on developing
and getting certified, which allows you to put on your oxygen mask,
exercise fairly strenuously for a fairly short period of time-ten,
fifteen minutes-and after that then it takes a total of eighty minutes
on, prebreathe on a mask, and during part of that time you're preparing
by getting on some of your gear in preparation for getting into
your spacesuit, and fifty minutes after you started this prebreathe
and exercise protocol you get into the Airlock, close the hatch
between the Airlock and the rest of the station, depressurize the
Airlock to 10.2 psi, and after you've been a total of eighty minutes
then you can come off of your oxygen mask, get into your spacesuit,
purge the spacesuit, and then you only have another one hour that
you have to spend in the spacesuit before you can depress the Airlock
and go to vacuum. So, overall it's about the same length, it saves
some time, but it saves the time that you're in the suit considerably.
It's still not an easy day, it's still a very long, very energetic
day; we just did one in preparation for the flight yesterday out
in our training facilities, and I think we all walked away from
it with a new awareness of how busy we're going to be, and how tired
we'll be at the end of those days.
Understanding
that, when it comes time for the second spacewalk, you and Lee Morin
are going to go through that procedure and then go outside. Tell
us about the jobs that the two of you have on the second spacewalk
of the mission.
OK. Well,
we're going to be continuing on with the, many of the activities
that were done on the first spacewalk. Lee and I will be putting
down the large aft struts that attach S0 to the Laboratory. The
front two struts are smaller struts-they only have bipods, two legs
on the struts; the ones we have on the back are larger ones, and
they have three struts, so they're tripod struts. So, we'll be putting
those two on, which have more bolts on [them], they're beefier,
and will be taking more of the loads…so we tell the other guys
that we're doing the harder part of the job there. After that's
complete we will be then doing a series of other things. I'll be
moving a strut, a drag link, let me see how to explain this…there
are two large keel pins that are on the forward face of S0, which
are there to hold S0 into the payload bay and support it structurally
during the launch environment. They're on the forward face, as I
said, but that's also the face where the railroad track is, so we
have to remove those keel pins and a drag link, which is a support
bar, if you will, that holds the keel in place for the launch loads;
we have to remove those and stow them on the outside of the S0 truss.
So, I'll be going over and removing one of those drag links and
putting it up into a stowed location; I'll also be going over and
taking off a DDCU thermal cover-again, a thermal cover that was
put onto one of these electronic boxes we talked about earlier that
helps to keep it within proper thermal limits until we get power
established to the S0 element. Once we do that, then we need to
take that thermal cover off, and we'll bring it back inside at the
end of the spacewalk. I'll also be putting a handrail onto the outside
of the Airlock, one that didn't fit properly, or didn't work properly,
on an earlier mission; we'll be installing that. I'll also be bringing
a bag of five additional handrails around and stowing them for installation
on the fourth spacewalk. And then we'll be putting out the second
of the two TUS cables attaching electrical power, redundant electrical
power, to the Mobile Transporter, and then Lee and I will be removing
the other drag link from the second keel pin, stowing it, and we
also have the two large keel pins that we have to remove and then
stow on the back side of the truss. And there's some other odds
and ends- getting some tools, putting some tools away-but that pretty
much summarizes what the second spacewalk will be doing.
Is
that you crawling around for six hours to do all of those things…
Precisely.
…or
do you get to ride?
No, Lee will
be on the arm for EVA 2, I'll be on the arm for EVA 4. As you'll
see, I think we've tried to give everybody equal opportunities to
see all aspects of what the spacewalks are about. Steve Smith and
I are the experienced EVA guys; Lee and Rex are the folks who are
flying for their first time. But Steve and I both feel strongly
that we ought to give those guys as much exposure and experience
as we can so that they can be leaders on the next time around breaking
some other new guys in.
The
third spacewalk of the mission comes up the very next day, and the
other pair of spacewalkers [goes] outside. Take us through that
one, if you will: what's up, scheduled on the third spacewalk of
the mission?
OK. Well,
we're going to be [doing] some rewiring of the outside of the station
that allows us to operate the station arm off of the Mobile Transporter,
after another flight has brought some additional hardware up. So
we'll be going outside and there's a 300 panel, which is on the
top of the station; we'll have to remove some of the micrometeorite
debris shields, pull them back, and plumb up six cables in that
area, put that shield back on, and then go down, back underneath
close to where the arm is attached to the station right now, on
the outside of the Laboratory, remove some other panels there, and
then in a stage-wise fashion we'll be relocating some of the electrical
connectors in that area so that we can reroute the cabling. As you
build things in pieces and in segments in a time-wise fashion, you
have to reroute where the cabling goes at various different points
to make sure that the functions are there as you need them. So,
we'll make a couple of different visits down there to do rewiring
of the cables as we realign the commanding and power paths of stuff
inside the station…a lot of it being done from the ground.
We'll also be doing the removal of a lot of the launch locks and
preparing the Mobile Transporter for its operations; we'll be checking
out its motion on the next day after this third spacewalk is complete.
We'll be putting some, most likely we'll probably be putting some
CIDs, some circuit interrupt devices, installing those inside one
of the bays of the S0 truss, and this allows us to control the electrical
power flow from the outer elements of the truss as we continue to
build those segments onto the outside edges of the S0 truss. That's
pretty much what we're going to be doing on that day. There may
be some additional things thrown in as time permits but, it's another
fairly busy day; it may not sound quite as complicated as the others,
but it will be.
And,
you referred to the fact that on the day after that third spacewalk
is the day that the Mobile Transporter is to be checked out, and
I guess, if all goes right, we'll actually see it move.
Yes. Don't
get too excited by the speed at which it will move-I think it moves
about [an] inch per second, is what I remember the speed to be.
Most of the operations will be done from the ground. We'll have
video and photo documentation requirements that we'll be doing and
monitoring it, certainly, to make sure that everything's working,
working all right. But again, most of the operations, I believe,
will be done from the ground commanding, and maybe some from inside
the station as well. But it'll be very interesting to see and very
satisfying to see it moving from its launch position up and down
the truss, and then parking where it will be expected to be for
a future mission when they install additional hardware.
The
day after that, you and Lee have your second spacewalk of the mission,
the fourth for the crew. Tell me the story of what's on tap for
what's to be the final excursion.
Right now
we plan on installing a couple of lights on the outside of the station;
we will be installing those handrails that we took out and placed
a bag out there on the second EVA, we'll be taking those handrails
out and installing those on the outside of the truss; there's two
shock absorbers, energy absorbers, that we're putting on both ends
of the Mobile Transporter-it's a way of protecting it and other
hardware should something get stuck or jammed on the track as these
various different units are going up and down the track-Lee will
be removing some thermal covers from the Z1 truss and stowing those,
because they're worried that now with S0 in place that some parts
of the Z1 truss will be, could be getting too warm with those covers
there; we'll be moving some foot restraints around for future crews
to use; we'll be putting some tools away that we no longer need,
we'll be maybe rounding up some other tools and positioning them
for other crews that will be using those in the future…but
that basically is it. We'll be doing a lot of photo documentation
on this EVA: up until this point we've not had much of a chance
to do picture-taking, and one of the more critical things that future
crews need is a documentation, photographic documentation of what
the configuration of the S0 and the Laboratory and the other things
that we're working on will be when they get out there, so that they
can train and plan appropriately for what they can expect when they
get there.
I
suppose there's always a chance that the installation of S0 won't
go exactly as it's been planned, and I know that you guys have trained
to, on various ways to respond to those. What are some of the more
critical failure scenarios, if you will, that you are prepared for,
and tell us what we might look for you guys to do.
OK. You hope
that you're smart enough to think most of the, through most of the
things ahead of time, but there's always surprises that can be thrown
at you. I think probably the two most critical things that could
happen is that we could not get a good structural attachment of
the S0 to the Laboratory, or we couldn't get proper electrical connections
made in a timely fashion. We've already talked about the fact that
we have other cables that have been pre-positioned up there that
would allow us [an] alternate way of quickly attaching electrical
power to S0, at least enough to keep it alive, the heater power
on, so that the various and different electrical units on the outside
of the S0 would be able to survive. The little bit harder one to,
quite frankly, work around, is if you can't get enough of the struts
installed and enough of the bolts, and the plates at the end of
those struts, installed and torqued to the right levels. We would
have, be hard-pressed if we couldn't get enough of that done. We've
asked hard questions on, how much is enough for the orbiter to undock
and for another orbiter to dock so that we know what those levels
are; but if we had a significant enough problem with those struts
deploying or the bolts engaging or things like that, then we'd be
in a fix, I think. It depends upon how big a fix we were in as to
what we would ultimately do. I guess the worst condition would be
that maybe we'd have to bring S0 back home but I don't think that's
the case. I think that we'd be able to get enough structural integrity
there so that we can leave it, and then have other orbiters come
up with maybe some replacement parts if that was what [was] required
to complete the job.
A
few moments ago, you talked about the fact that there is other work
on this mission, other than spacewalks; there're things to be transferred
and things to be brought home. Tell us about the, some of the things,
the kinds of things, that you and your crewmembers are bringing
up to leave for the Expedition crewmembers.
OK. Since
the payload bay is pretty well filled up with S0, we're not bringing
up a whole lot of spare parts or replacement equipment. We are bringing
up about four or five different payloads, experiments that we'll
be transferring to the station, and we'll be bringing home, basically,
an equivalent number of experiments or completed experiments back
to the ground. Two of the more important experiments I think are
a couple of crystal growth experiments that we'll be taking up,
and there's also a very interesting new plant growth experiment,
or enclosure, that we'll be taking up and placing onto the station.
We'll be bringing home a series of completed samples, biological
samples, things like that. The rest of the things we'll be transferring
across is some more EVA equipment and tools, some replacement parts
or swapping out of like some of the SAFER units-that's a little
rocket backpacks or parachutes, is what I like to refer to them-
we'll be swapping out some lights and other things that are out
of cert or otherwise no longer needed up there. We'll be taking
up some special care packages to the increment crew, some "love
letters" from home and some special foods that they're craving
at that point in time…and a series of other spare parts, replacement
parts, some computers, some mechanical mechanisms that need to be
replaced on the station.
You've
got a heck of lot of work to do in ten days or so.
Very busy.
Any
chance you're going to have any fun?
I think there's
probably a great chance we'll have a lot of fun. We've already got
some things planned for the increment crew to be able to enjoy some
quiet times together. And just being there is enough fun for me.
I mean, it's an incredible experience. God created a beautiful place
for us to live on and to be able to observe from 200-and-some miles
up, it's just [an] incredible experience. Living in zero gravity,
being able to share that with ten other individuals is something
that's very, very hard to express to other people the impact of
that to me, individually.
The
International Space Station, we know, is a science laboratory, and
that it's also a place where we go to develop technologies and to
do research and develop products and to learn how people can live
in space, and how people from different countries, and different
countries, can work together. From the perspective of somebody who's
been involved in this project for as long as you have, tell me,
from, in your mind, what do you think is the most valuable aspect
of the International Space Station?
I think there's
two or three. I think probably the first one is just the aspect
of getting international partners to work together. The world continues
to get smaller, it continues to get more complex, and I think at
any and every level that we can learn to work together to achieve
common goals and to understand what makes different nations tick,
how their cultures have developed, why they've developed that way.
I think all of those things are very important for us to do. And
not only for our future exploration of space, but also for just
the survival of mankind here on the surface of the Earth: I think
that if nothing else, 9/11 helps to point that out. I think that
the International Space Station is an important mark in the evolution
of the exploration of space because of the fact that it is multinational.
I think that once we have established that we can build something
in space and operate it together and be of mutual benefit to everybody
that's participating, I think that lays a tremendous groundwork
from which to build upon. And I think any other future endeavors
out into space, going to Mars or whatever it might be, is going
to be requiring an international effort. You know, America doesn't
have all the money in the world, it doesn't have all the smart people,
it doesn't have all the good ideas. And we need to be able to draw
upon all those resources from around the world to make what I think
is going to be eventually mankind's future efforts in space.
Well,
with that said, how do you feel about the idea that you get to play
this important and visible role in the project?
I'm very pleased
and very honored to have the opportunities to do what I've done
in the program throughout, even the invisible, or less visible,
aspects of it. And the one thing that I think all of us try to relate
to everybody is the fact that it's a tremendous team that's required
to do anything; not any one individual does anything. It's a tremendous
team of people that have planned, developed, manufactured this hardware
over twenty years now: you know, I was in, I was at Edwards Air
Force Base on the Fourth of July in 1982 when President Reagan said
we're going to go build an international space station; it takes
a long time to do those kind of things. And I've spent you know,
many, many trips around the world, not just in this country but
around the world, looking at the hardware and the developmental
planning stages and the manufacturing stages and the testing stages,
and now in the operational stages. I've literally touched billets
of aluminum in about four different countries that have developed
into hardware that's now either in space or is preparing to go into
space. And, that's been a very rewarding aspect of the space program
in and of itself is to meet those people, to help talk through things,
to decide how we're going to do things, to see the hardware mature
from a blueprint into actual hardware, to see it processed through
the Cape, and then actually be launched into space. And it's been
tremendously rewarding to be in all those aspects for such a long
period of time.
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