Preflight
Interview: Steven Smith
The
STS-110 Crew Interviews with Steven Smith, mission specialist.
Steve,
I'd like to get you to start by telling me, in a nutshell, what
are the main goals of STS-110?
Well, we
have a couple of main goals of STS-110, and one is of course to
deliver the S0 truss; it's really the center point of the entire
truss structure that'll eventually end up on the space station,
so our main goal is to deliver that. And it, of course, has several
systems on board that will enhance the space station, which will
allow us to do more research. The other thing we're going to do
on this flight is do four spacewalks out of the space station, but
we're going to do four in rapid fire, and that's a capability of
the space station that we want to learn more about and to exercise,
and make sure everything's working correctly so that we can maintain
the space station in the future.
For
you, this is going to be the fourth space shuttle mission; how is
it stacking up against the earlier flights?
Well, this
will be my first flight, of course, to the space station; my last
two I went to the Hubble Space Telescope, and at that time that
was very special-the Hubble Space Telescope is an incredibly magical
spacecraft to visit and to do spacewalks on. Space Station now is
another challenge for me, and it's going to be very exciting because
there are people living up there now, including a couple of my friends
from NASA, of course, Dan and Carl; and seeing an outpost in space
will be an incredibly new experience, something I'm very excited
about. And I believe very strongly in the trend that we're going
in, in terms of exploring in space and having people permanently
live up there to do experiments, so I think that's going to be very
exciting. Doing a spacewalk from the space station will be different
than from the shuttle, and that's going to be exciting, too.
Tell
me, how did you get to become an astronaut anyway? I mean, what's
the career path or education path that led you here?
I was one
of those children that, growing up, loved airplanes, and would watch
the airplanes take off and land from San Jose International Airport
with my mom and dad, who would take us out there to watch the airplanes
take off and land. But, about in the mid-'60s, of course, the Apollo
program was starting to get into full swing, and that would be broadcast
on TV and that really captured my attention, just watching those
spacewalks and space flights on the television. I liked it so much,
in fact, that when my dad would bring home a Polaroid camera from
work, I would sit in front of the TV and take pictures of the TV
of the spacewalkers on the moon, not knowing that NASA sold those
pictures, also, but I had my own source of them and I still have
those pictures, as a matter of fact. From that point on, though,
this is what I always wanted to do. And I ended up going to Stanford
University and got…technical degrees there, and then on to IBM to
learn to be an engineer and work there, and in parallel learned
to fly airplanes but always with the goal of coming here to NASA.
I eventually did come as a flight controller to NASA and worked
as a payload officer in the front room of Mission Control for a
few years, learning more about the shuttle, more about operations,
and finally was selected as an astronaut on my fifth try.
One
of your crewmates -- your spacewalking partner, Rex Walheim, also
worked at NASA as a flight controller -- talked about having worked
missions years ago and now being very surprised at… flying with
some of the same people, including Jerry Ross, in fact, as his example.
Do you find that, too?
Yes, I had
the same experience. There were several astronauts that I worked
with as a payload officer, and then ended up working with now in
space, and Jerry's one of those. On STS-37, which was the deployment
of the Gamma Ray Observatory, I was one of the payload officer personnel
in Mission Control, and it was great to work with him on that side.
I think it's actually made being an astronaut a little bit easier,
because I did know what it was like to be on the other side, and
now when I work with the hundreds and thousands of very capable
support people it's neat to have been on their side of the equation
and be sensitive to their issues and their challenges.
We
may have touched on a couple of the people who would be your answers
to this question, but tell me who was or still is the person, or
the people, who have been really inspirational in your life.
Well, I've
had maybe two categories of inspirational people. The first are
my family and friends, of course. I have a very supportive mother
and father, who have worked diligently to this day to enhance my
life and the life of my sister. My sister also is a very inspirational
person: she's a FBI agent and has been for over twenty years, so
she set a pretty good path. The other category is the public figures
that influenced me. I had three very strong influences. One was
Charles Lindbergh, because of his great adventures and his diversity-
not only his spectacular aviation achievements, but also his interest
in the environment late in his life. The second was Jacques Cousteau.
I grew up watching The Undersea Adventure of Jacques Cousteau diligently,
and ended up meeting him about ten years ago and becoming very good
friends with his family; a very positive influence. And the third
is of a different category, a different flavor, and that's Lloyd
Bridges. I also watched him on Sea Hunt very many times because
of the adventurism and the exploration, and actually ended up meeting
him, too: as a way of saying thank you, I contacted he and his family
to say, thank you. So, those are probably the three biggest public
influences, and still are.
On
to the mission. You made mention of the fact that the primary payload
is something called the S0 truss. Introduce me to it: how big is
it, how much does it weigh, where does it go, what does it do?
Well, the
S0 truss will be in Atlantis's payload bay. It weighs about fifteen
tons, it's about forty-three feet long; it's six-sided, and is about
fourteen feet wide and fourteen feet high. And it's going to go
on top of the United States Lab, which is in space already. Currently,
the space station is in kind of…two dimensions right now: it
extends a lot in this direction [Smith points forward], a lot in
this direction [Smith points up]. In kind of a, kind of a plane
right now. And what we're going to do is start the building this
direction [Smith points left and right]. It's going to be the centerpiece
right there, and eventually we'll place a piece on the starboard
side, the port side, and continue on building out in this direction.
So it is really a structural backbone for building the station in
the direction to the left and the right now. It also is the backbone
in terms of power routing, computer routing, etc., to allow us to
make the space station even more valuable in terms of a research
facility. Right now we have a certain amount of power available,
and to do more research we need more power. And the way we will
do that is to put our truss on, followed by other truss sections,
and those truss sections will include more solar arrays, for example,
to provide more power. So, the whole goal of putting S0 onto the
space station is to start this next phase-it's sometimes called
Phase 3 of the space station build-where we will increase its capacity
to do research. Right now it has all its basic capacity to do spacewalks
and maintain human life, etc., but now we need to increase its scientific
capability.
So
S0 is not, if you will, simply a piece that other pieces get hooked
onto; it has systems, an operational aspect of its own.
Sure, absolutely.
It has a lot of power switching, it has a lot of computer power
that will go with it. It also has a new guidance information system,
called Global Positioning System, or GPS. GPs is very popular in
many other areas now in terms of being able to track trucks and
airplanes and boats and things like that, and we are going to add
that capability now to the space station to allow us to precisely
track where the space station is and its orientation, which are
very important, of course, to have successful space flight and successful
scientific capability.
It
also comes to space with you with another piece of hardware known
as a Mobile Transporter already attached to it. Tell me about the
MT.
Sure. As we
put our truss section on followed by truss sections to the left
and the right, the front of this entire truss section will have
what I call a "railroad track" on it, and that's the way
I explain it to my own children. And on that railroad track will
be a little train, and that train will be able to carry both people
and the station's robotic arm to the distant ends of those two truss
sections. So, we will take up what's called the Mobile Transporter,
as you said, it's the little train; on a follow-on flight they'll
take up another piece that will sit on top of the Mobile Transporter,
and then the station's arm, which is already up there, can actually
walk onto the Mobile Transporter. And then, from inside the space
station, we'll be able to move that arm and people and cargo and
boxes-new boxes, new computers, etc.-to either end of the space
station. So, it's going to be a fantastic sight to see the first
train in space.
And,
we'll get a chance to maybe even see it on your flight. It's a piece
that is going to allow one of the partners in station, Canada, to
complete its contribution.
That's correct.
And what we will do on our flight is, it's securely bolted to S0
at the start of the flight to, of course, survive the launch environment,
but during the flight we'll actually release some of the bolts that
will allow us to translate it, remotely, to test it, to make sure
that it can actually translate up and down this railroad track.
To
accomplish the mission the shuttle crew needs to possess a wide
range of talents and skills. Tell me what are your top jobs as a
member of this crew?
Well, the
main job that I have on this flight is to help organize the four
spacewalks that we're planning. And in doing that I have to think
about, are we being trained on the right things, do we have the
right tools with us, do we have the right spacesuit components,
how does the space station airlock work-so my main responsibility
is to kind of be the manager of all this preflight work on the spacesuits
and the spacewalks, working with the spacewalking experts here at
the Johnson Space Center, so that as a team we can prepare the spacewalkers for the flight. I also have some secondary responsibilities in terms
of transferring items to the space station-I just read where last
year we took up a hundred thousand pounds of goods to the space
station, and we will have a lot with us, also. I also will help
take pictures of the space station during the rendezvous and flyaround;
I'll be running some of the cameras and some of the recorders to
make sure we document all that.
I'd
like to talk about it in order, so I can keep track of where we
are. The first big event after ascent is going to be the rendezvous
with and docking to the station; critical activity, if you're going
to do the rest of your mission. Tell me about your job on that team
and describe what happens to bring these two spaceships together.
Sure. I have
a support role during the rendezvous, and my job is basically to
make sure everybody else has what they need-if it's a camera or
a food, or anything else they need, run computers, run the laser
[range]-finding devices. The main job, though, will be to photograph
the space station so that we have documents of what it looks like.
For our upcoming spacewalkers, a lot of them have never seen the
space station, of course, because it's in space, so it's very important
that we have the outside of the space station very well documented,
so that will be my main job. And I take it with a lot of pride because
I have used the photographs that my predecessors have taken to prepare
for my spacewalks. It's been a little frustrating, because some
of the things that we're working on are already in space, so to
have pictures of them has been very valuable.
Once
the rest of your crewmates complete the rendezvous, you've got,
you and your spacewalking partner have got a busy day the rest of
that docking day with work that's scheduled in the Airlock, in Quest.
Tell us about what you've got to get done that day.
Sure. The
rendezvous day takes a long, long time, and a lot of work for folks
to get done. By the time that we open the hatches, after we've rendezvoused
and done all the leak checks and done all the safety checks and
then had a briefing, we have not very much time before we're supposed
to go to sleep. And that following day Rex Walheim and I actually
do a spacewalk, so it will be a very, very busy time. Our primary
responsibility, after we greet our crewmates aboard the space station
and get an orientation on the space station, is to get into that
space station airlock with the items that we're bringing with us
to set up the two spacesuits. My spacesuit will be coming up on
the space shuttle, so we have to make sure it works with the International
Space Station airlock; of course it should, but we will take mine
over there, plug it in, make sure all the electrical systems work
and all the oxygen-transfer systems work with my suit. We also will
look at Rex's suit, which is already in space and being sized for
him, because he's about the same size as Dan Bursch, so Rex will
become familiar with his suit. The other things that we'll transfer
are our tools: about 85-or-90% of our tools are already in space-we've
practiced with flight-like ones on the ground, so we know what they're
like-but we are bringing up about 15% of the tools. So we will integrate
those with the ones that are already there. Dan and Carl will have
done a significant amount of work getting the Airlock ready for
us, so we will go familiarize ourselves with what they've done-we
will have teleconferences with them before we get there to make
sure they tell us what to expect when we get there, because it is
their home and they'll be more familiar with it than we are.
Now
you've done spacewalks before, but not on this space station-or,
well, I guess any other space station, for that matter-but based
on what you've been studying and what you know about it, do you
think these spacewalks will be especially different or especially
more difficult, than spacewalks on the Hubble Space Telescope?
Well, it's
an interesting question. I've spent a lot of time on it, and there
are several differences. I think the end result is that there'll
be about the same level of difficulty, and I hope with this, we'll
have the same amount of success. In terms of the preflight preparation,
when you're flying on a Hubble Space Telescope mission the entire
spacecraft is already in space, so it's a challenge to prepare for
those by using simulators that are on the ground and that was very
challenging. On a space station flight, in particular ours, most
of the hardware I'll be working on is still on the ground so it's
been a different flight-preparation approach-I've actually been
able to work with the real hardware and in some minor ways influence
the design a little bit so that's been a little bit different. For
the Hubble Space Telescope, most of the boxes were designed to be
changed out by EVA, or by spacewalking, but not all of them; so
on those two Hubble flights I was on there was always a box or two
which did not have the right kind of fasteners or screws on it,
for example, to be easily changed by a spacewalker. So, we had to
deal with that. Conversely, now we have all of the Hubble experience
that we've incorporated into the space station, and all of the boxes
are designed to be worked on via spacewalking astronauts, so that's
a little bit different. The Hubble Space Telescope seemed big to
our Office for many years because it's forty-three feet high, and
when you're at the top of it the payload bay of the space shuttle's
forty-three feet away. And at times when you're at the top of Hubble,
it was a little disconcerting because it was so far away to a major
structure. And of course that has changed completely-now that, when
you do a space station walk you can be hundreds of feet away from
the spaceship, and in some cases the spaceship's not even there:
the shuttle can be gone, as Carl and Dan can attest. Finally the
Hubble's at a very high altitude; the space station's a little bit
lower, it's at two hundred miles, approximately, whereas Hubble
was at three hundred miles. So that'll be a little different, too.
One
other new thing that you're going to find for these spacewalks is
the new airlock on the station, Quest. You eager to give that a
try?
Definitely!
The space station airlock we've learned about a lot over the years,
because we've done over a hundred spacewalks now successfully from
the space shuttle airlock; the space station airlock is a new challenge
for all of us-it's always fun to have a new challenge. And the main
difference when doing a spacewalk out of the space station airlock
is that it will start at sea level pressure, which affects the way
our blood gas is dissolved in our bodies. The space shuttle…on
a Hubble Space Telescope mission, we could change the atmosphere
in the shuttle before we got to Hubble so that we could get most
of the nitrogen out of our body, and as you know nitrogen coming
out of the blood is sometimes called "the bends" if the
nitrogen doesn't come out correctly. So, on a Hubble spacewalk,
when you got to Hubble and you put your spacesuit on, you could
basically go right outside after about a forty-minute sit inside
the spacesuit to rid your blood of the nitrogen. On space station
we don't have that luxury: because our bodies will still be at sea
level when we put the suits on, we had to come up with an alternative
way of getting out the door. And that's called the prebreathe, alternate
prebreathe protocol, and what we will do is don oxygen masks and
wear those for about eighty minutes, so, almost an hour and a half;
during that time we will actually ride an exercise bike to help
get our blood flowing and to help get that nitrogen out of our blood
even faster. Finally what we will do is, as we put the spacesuits
on we will put the helmets on and then sit in the spacesuit for
an hour to get that final nitrogen out. This protocol, as we call
it, obviously takes us longer to get outside than on a Hubble flight,
so in some ways we will be a little bit more tired, and we'll have
been up a little bit longer, so that makes the day, how you manage
the rest of the day different. But it was the only way that we could
find people could get out safely. And it, the protocol, was developed
by astronaut Mike Gernhardt; he has extensive experience in undersea
diving and the dynamics of blood gases, so…it's different,
it'll be different.
It
takes a little longer than a Hubble spacewalk, as you've described,
but shorter than the other prebreathe protocols that would be, could
be used on board the station, right?
Sure. Yes.
In the early days of planning for spacewalks from the space station,
several experts tried to determine how we could get outside and
all of the protocols that they came up with were very painful, because
they were so long. And so having this alternative was really a brilliant,
clever way to get us out faster-it's still not as fast as if you
could depress the whole space station to around ten pounds per square
inch, 10 psi, which is what we do on the shuttle but this protocol
is really a brilliant spin-off of protocols that are used by U-2
pilots and other personnel who are exposed to low pressures in their
jobs.
It's
a new procedure for you to learn, also for one of your crewmates,
Jerry Ross, who's done the preparation the old way more than anybody
else.
Yeah. Flying
with Jerry Ross is an incredible privilege. Not only will he be
the first human to have taken off from the Earth seven times, which
is an incredible feat, but also he is what we call the King of EVA
in the United States: he's done more spacewalks than any other astronaut
ever has, including all of the folks who have walked on the moon.
So, learning from him has been absolutely incredible. We'll sometimes
be in a training session and be wondering how to do something, and
any time you have as much experience as he does he comes up with
a solution that he has heard about on his previous six flights.
So, that has been a real privilege. The other incredible benefit
to having Jerry on this flight-and I think one of the main reasons
astronaut Charlie Precourt, our chief, selected Jerry-is that we
have three new people on this flight and that's fairly unusual.
We have done it before; it's been a little while, and having someone
with that much experience with those three new people is [an] incredibly
positive thing to do, it's the good way to transfer knowledge. We've
actually had a little bit of comedy associated with that, because
one of the new people might be with Jerry in a meeting and respond
to a question and say, "Between Jerry's and my six flights,
we've seen this and this and this..." so, they've actually
had some good, we've had some good laughs with that, too.
Let's
talk about the spacewalks. The first of the four spacewalks is planned
for the day after docking; you and Rex Walheim have the job of going
outside. Take us with you-take me outside the door and describe
the tasks that are involved as the S0 is secured onto the top of
the Destiny Laboratory.
Well after
we wake up, Rex and I will spend about three hours preparing for
the spacewalk, doing this alternative prebreathe protocol approach.
In parallel, Ellen Ochoa, our Flight Engineer, will be using the
space station's arm to install S0. And, once that has been completed,
we have the "go" to go exit the Airlock, the space station airlock.
I will go out first and attach myself to the space station, while
I'm attached to Rex; once I've attached myself to the space station
I will attach Rex to the space station robotic arm, which was just
used to install S0. For the remainder of the EVA Rex will be riding
the robotic arm, and I will be what's called free-floating-kind
of the free player that can move around on the space station just
using my hands-and we will begin to physically attach the truss
to the space station. The first thing we do is attach two struts
that are in the front of S0, physically, to the space station, so
those are called the forward struts…they have very large, 5/8? bolts
that will be driven actually into the Lab. Those bolts were driven
into the Lab before it left the Earth, so we've made sure that that
worked. After we physically have attached the truss to the Laboratory
then we will electrically attach the truss to the Laboratory. There
are two very large, about three hundred pound, umbilical units that
are launched on top of the truss. They are not attached, except
by bolts, to the truss, they're not attached electrically. So Rex
will go up to the top of the truss with the arm, take these two
very large umbilicals down to the Lab, place them on top of the
Laboratory, so they will attach physically to the Laboratory, then
at both ends he will attach electrically the truss element to the
Lab. So now the electricity will be able to flow through the space
station, through the Laboratory, up to the truss section, which
of course will then power the Mobile Transporter, etc., and all
its computers. That will take the majority of the spacewalk, these
two struts and these two very large umbilicals. The last thing we
will do is supply power to the Mobile Transporter itself. It will
use something called the Trailing Umbilical System, or TUS is the
abbreviation, and that is a very, very, very large reel of cabling
that is currently wound up, and we will release that cabling and
string it across the front of the truss to the Mobile Transporter,
which is launched on the other side. And that will then provide
the capability to send power and commands and data to and from the
Mobile Transporter and will help it start to heat itself, for example,
because it will have been without power during the flight until
then. So, that's kind of what happens on the front of the truss.
While Rex is completing some of the connections on the forward part
of the truss, I will go in the back of that truss, which would face
something called Z1 -- that was delivered about a year ago by the
3A crew -- and on the back of the truss is a tray that folds down
like this, and it also has connections that go from the truss to
the Laboratory. And so I will be working back there to make those
connections. When that tray comes down it will meet a tray that
was deployed by the Z1 crew, and there are all kinds of cables back
there-many, many, many, many cables, all routed among themselves,
so we call that the rat's nest, because it looks a little bit like
a rat's nest. So when I go work back there you might hear one of
us say, "Well, Steve's heading back to the rats' nest to do that."
So at the end of EVA 1 we should have the truss physically attached
to the space station and electrically attached to the space station,
in addition to finally providing power to the Mobile Transporter.
In
fact, there's something of a deadline for when you have to get these
things done, isn't there?
That's correct.
There is once the space station element that's in our payload bay
is exposed to the vacuum of space and the coldness of space, all
of the temperatures associated with each of the computers on it,
for example, on all of the equipment, start to plunge, they start
to drop, and at some point the boxes would be too cold to use, so
we have to get power to those boxes so that they can turn their
heaters on as quickly as possible. The plan during that first spacewalk
is to go down the normal timeline; if at any time we don't think
we can get all of those connections hooked up, our predecessors
on the 7A.1 crew Dan Barry and Pat Forrester, have already laid
out very thick cables that would allow us to provide power to S0
very quickly. It's called the launch-to-activation cables, or LTA
cables. And they provide a minimum amount of power to supply to
S0. So if at some point during that first spacewalk we're worried
we can't get the normal planned umbilicals and electrical connections
made, we will just stop and just hook up these cables that are already
there for us.
The
second spacewalk of the mission comes up after a day's work inside
the station. When it comes to the second spacewalk, tell me what
you're going to do and the station crewmembers, well, the whole
plan of operation for that second spacewalk.
Sure. During
the spacewalks the space station crewmembers all have important
roles. They will, of course, have gone spacewalking already, so
they're going to be able to teach us how to use the Airlock, and
they will actually control all of the operations of the Airlock.
So they will lend us their experience there. Also, the two American
astronauts on the space station, Dan Bursch and Carl Walz, have
extensive experience with the robotic arm. So, one of them will
always be with Ellen in the United States Laboratory as she moves
the robotic arm around. For the non-on-duty spacewalking crewmembers
who are the two [who] are not outside at that moment during a spacewalk,
we call them the intravehicular activity officers, they're the IVAs,
and their role is to orchestrate and conduct the spacewalk. And,
they are basically in charge. So on spacewalk number two that will
be my job as Jerry and Lee are outside, I will be the one with the
script-we call it the checklist, the EVA checklist-and I will be
conducting, basically leading the orchestra there as they go through
their spacewalk. Any issues that come up…I have all the data
in my book there that I can help resolve the situation and be the
information conduit, for example, between the spacewalking astronauts
and the great support team we have on the ground. I will be watching
the clock, I'll be telling them when the sun's coming up, when it's
going down; I'm going to be their buddy out there- it's important,
for example, to tell them when the sun's coming up so they don't
get blinded as the sun comes up; as you know, it comes up very quickly,
in a matter of thirty seconds or so. And also when the sun goes
down I don't want them to get cold, because the temperature plummets.
So, our job is to, as the IV, is to take care of the folks who are
outside spacewalking.
What
are they planning to do during the second spacewalk? What are the
jobs?
As Lee and
Jerry come out, as we did on…spacewalk number one, the new
person will ride the robotic arm, so in [this] case Jerry will hook
Lee Morin up to the robotic arm of the space station, and Lee will
ride the robotic arm the entire time while Jerry Ross can float
around and do the different miscellaneous tasks. And their first
task is to physically attach the back side of the truss to the United
States Lab. The truss is attached to the space station with four,
what we call, struts; the first two will have been installed on
the first spacewalk, and they will install the tripod struts in
the back on the beginning of their spacewalk. A very, very challenging,
challenging thing to do and in fact, the first strut will be on
the starboard side, and the robotic arm will come under the space
station to do that, and Lee will be on the arm; after they attach
that strut they will come all the way back under, all the way under
the Lab, and come up to the other side. So it will be quite a ride
for Lee at that point: he won't have anything between himself and
the Earth so he'll have quite a view. I know he's going to be taking
a camera with him to take some spectacular shots. After they finish
the physical attachment to the Lab, they start to do some miscellaneous
things to help us out for the rest of the flight. The first is that
the Mobile Transporter is the little train that's going to move
back and forth on the front of the space station, and in its way
right now are the two very thick girder structures that hold S0
to the space shuttle during the launch. Well, those are not needed
in space, so we take those off; those are called keel pins, they're
attached to the S0 truss with something called drag links. So they
will remove the two drag links and stow them, and they'll remove
these two big girder structures, called keel pins, and stow those
also so that, at follow-on activities will allow the Mobile Transporter
to move back and forth. As we did on the first spacewalk, they will
also hook a long cable to the Mobile Transporter so that it can
have a second set of power and data cables, so that throughout its
life it will have the capability in case one of those is lost. So
they will stretch out one of these long cables that goes about forty
feet from the big reel that's holding the cable to the Mobile Transporter.
The
next day, you and Rex Walheim are supposed to go back outside. If
you would again, tell me what you're planning to do on your second
spacewalk of the mission.
Sure. Spacewalk
number three will involve the reconfiguration electrically of the
space station arm, so it will be largely not usable during that
spacewalk. Before we go outside we will park the space station arm,
or the Big Arm, so that it's out of the way. Steve Frick, the Pilot
of Atlantis, will use the space shuttle arm to move me around, so
in this case I will be on a robotic arm for the entire spacewalk
and Rex will be the free-floater this time, because now he will
have experience and I will go to the robotic arm to take his spot
there. And, we have several tasks to do on that day, largely reconfiguring
electrically the space station so that the space station robotic
arm can eventually walk on to the S0…truss section. So, we
will park that arm early, I will make several connections right
at the front of S0 to the United States Lab, then we will go underneath
the U.S. Lab and open up a panel there and work on some of the connectors
that are there now. The connector configuration there has always
been temporary, and we will make it permanent so the space station's
arm will have two power strings and have its power available no
matter where it is on the space station. As you may know, that space
station arm can actually walk around the space station with both
ends, so we'll provide power for it to be able to do that. So that's
the main purpose. While we are letting the ground reconfigure electrically
the arm, after we make those connections, we will release several
launch restraint bolts that hold the Mobile Transporter, solidly,
to the space station truss section during the launch.
Those
are also designed to keep it from moving back and forth on the tracks
as you've described it, 'cause the next day is the day that it gets
checked out and may get to "choo-choo" up and down a little
bit, right? What's involved with that?
Well, it's
very exciting. On that day we will have a day off from doing spacewalks,
but within the space station, working in concert with the ground
controllers, they will actually move the Mobile Transporter for
the first time. And we're all going to be watching from the televisions
and from the space shuttle windows at that point. But the point
is to translate it to certain places on the space station truss;
there are actually parking spots on the truss where it can stop
and plug itself in to receive power and data, those are different
stations that it can stop at. So the whole purpose of that task
is to make sure that the train works so that the follow-on flights
can allow the arm to walk on to that train.
And
the day after that is to be the fourth spacewalk in the mission.
What's left to be done?
Well, the
fourth spacewalk of the mission has many, many, many small tasks
that need to be done. One of the first things we'll do is attach
lighting to the outside of the space station. In this case, Jerry
Ross will ride the robotic arm for the first time during the flight,
and Lee Morin will be the free-floater for the first time. Jerry
will first attach a Lab structure to the Node, so that we have some
outdoor lighting. As you may know, during a space flight we go through
about forty-five minutes of darkness and then forty-five minutes
of light, so about half of the day is in the dark. Currently our
spacewalkers do have helmet lights, which illuminate a small part
of the space station and allow us to continue during the night to
work, but having a broad illumination is very desirable to enhance
not only the spacewalkers' work but also robotic operations during
the night passes. So he will install a light back on the US Node.
Then he will come forward and attach a light to the US Lab, to illuminate
that side of the space station. There's also some spacewalking equipment
launched on S0-foot restraints, tool stanchions, places to stow
tools-that are designed to be used with the little train that moves
up and down; eventually that train will be outfitted with several
spacewalking tools, basically, and the larger of those tools is
launched on our truss section, on the outside. So, Jerry and Lee
will start to prepare some of those for eventual use on the little
train, or Mobile Transporter. So, you can get the flavor, there's
several, very small but important things to be done. They also will
add handrails to the truss section. Right now we have placed all
the handrails we can to allow the spacewalkers to move around, but
because some of the things that we're launching were so large and
needed to be placed in certain places, we couldn't launch the handrails
in place. So we will add some of the handrails to that, also. There
will be several places where we'll need to take pictures, because
again, the people that follow us need to know exactly what they'll
be facing, so they'll be taking a lot of pictures, also. There is
also cleanup work to be done from the first spacewalks. A lot of
times, when we drive a bolt out, in order to save time we will leave
the tethered bolt free-floating; it just floats around but it's
attached by a lanyard, just so we can get the main work done, and
then at a later time go up and clean up all those little things.
So they will also stow what are called launch restraint bolts that
are all over the truss section, also.
Now
I suppose there's always the chance that all this installation of
the S0 won't go exactly as is planned. Tell me about what you think
are the more critical trouble spots and how-more importantly-how
you folks have trained to respond should one of these things happen.
Sure. I would
say the great majority of our training is not necessarily dealing
with the tasks as they are nominally planned, but it's thinking
about what could happen and what will we do if something happens.
The physical attachment of the truss to the United States Lab is
critical, and there are four struts that we will put into place.
We have thought through what to do if some of those bolts don't
drive: do you use a bigger tool, do you use a different tool, etc.
While those struts are being attached we use the space station's
robotic arm extensively; if the space station robotic arm should
have a problem and isn't 100% up to its operational capability,
we've thought what we would, what we would do with two people now
that are free-floating, and what we would do, basically, is plug
in little foot platforms in the various working places so that you
have someone who's nice and solid and anchored to the space station,
so we've thought about that. We try to come up with every task to
have what we would do right away if we can, so that we don't have
to think about it during the flight. It's called the contingency
sheet. Electrically, we've talked a little bit about what we'd do
if some of the connections aren't, cannot be made. I would say about
20% of the connections we have on this flight have to be made-the
other eighty are for future flights. If some of those 20% cannot
be made, we will use cables that are already in place, that were
put there by the 7A.1 EVA crew of Dan Barry and Pat Forrester, and
those cables are in place, they're already strung out, and they're
kind of emergency cables if we can't get the task done. Finally,
the really unique capability we have now is that we can do a spacewalk
any day of the year now. And when Atlantis leaves, if there's things
that haven't been done, Dan and Carl, the United States astronauts
on the space station, know all the tasks already-they have already
done them all in the water, so they can do all the tasks. So, if
there's anything we can't finish they can do it for us. And of course
the space station robotic arm will stay with the station, and it
can be used as a work platform.
We
talked an awful lot about the spacewalks on your mission, but there
is other work scheduled for your flight, including the transfer
of some supplies and delivery of experiments. Tell me about the
items, some of the items, that you and your crewmates are going
to be bringing up for the Expedition 4 crew to use after you're
gone.
We, any time
a space shuttle visits it really takes two categories of items.
One is the basic supplies that the space station crew needs. They
delivered about a hundred thousand pounds of supplies last year
on several space shuttle flights. So we'll be bringing them basic
supplies like food and clothing and things like that. We also have
a locker of personal items for them, things that their families
have thought of to encourage them and to make them feel more comfortable
while they're away. The other class of things we have are experiments,
and the whole purpose of the space station is to provide a place
to do experimenting, to provide knowledge that will help us solve
problems on Earth and to make us smarter. And in fact the whole
goal for this whole space program is to make life better on Earth.
And so as the space station grows, its experimental capability grows.
And on the space shuttle this time I believe we'll have four or
five experiments that we'll be taking over to the space station
so that they can begin their research. And some of the experiments
that are already on the space station that are completed will come
back to Earth, so that the experimenters can have that. And so,
on a flight where you have something large in the payload bay, you
can't take a whole payload bay-worth of experiments, but in the
middeck, where we actually live, there are some experiments that
we will give to the space station and, in return, that we will bring
some back.
You've
got a lot of work scheduled over a week, a week-and-a-half; you
going to have any fun?
Oh, we'll
have a lot of fun. It's, they are very long days; it's very stressful
in some ways, because the space station's worth a lot of money and
a lot of people have put a lot of effort into it. But at the end
of the day, it really is a magical experience to be able to float
in the cockpit and to be able to sleep on the ceiling or have dinner,
everybody sit down on the ceiling, or going over to this wonderful
spaceship called the International Space Station. For me, I think
one of the really neat things will be to see a house in space, to
see what it's actually like to live in space. It's something that,
from now until the end of history we'll do-I mean, we will have
people permanently living in space. One of the really unique things
is to see a spacecraft from another country. I think being able
to go into some Russian spacecraft will be incredibly exciting;
I never would have thought, when I joined NASA twelve years ago,
that I'd ever be able to go inside a Russian spaceship, so that'll
be exciting, too. And finally, I have really, two really good friends
that are living on space station, and they will have been there
about eighty days or so when we get there. So it'll be neat to hear
their perspective on what it's like to have a human living in space.
You've
touched on a couple of these things; to wrap up, let me make you
do it again, if you will. Right now, the International Space Station
is a science laboratory, but it's also a place to develop technology
and to foster commercial research and development, and to learn,
to teach us how people can live in space, and to teach countries
how to work together. Tell me in your opinion, what's the most,
what's the most valuable aspect of this project?
Well, I see
two major, major positive things coming out of the space station.
The first is that it is allowing nations to work together…some
nations that weren't very friendly to each other for many years.
And, there are a lot of different interests around the world, and
a lot of different conflicts around the world, and to think that
some of the nations are working together towards a really positive
thing is really, really positive. And I think some of our military
crewmembers, for example, who would have ever imagined that they
would be docking with a structure…from another country, that
they used to be adversaries? So, there's a lot to be said about
that message that it sends to the people of the world in terms of
peace. The second part is that the reason the space program exists
is to make people's lives on Earth better, to solve problems. And
that's why we go into space, is to go into this very unique place
where we can either study the Earth, study the stars, or do work
inside the space station in this special area called microgravity,
to gather information that makes us smarter. And when you're smarter
you gain knowledge and can solve problems. So, I think those are
the two incredibly positive things to come out of this program,
and it's really a delight to work in the program.
Well,
with that, with those things in mind, how do you feel about the
idea that you get to play, have an important and pretty visible
role in the project?
Well, it's
really an honor to be in this program at all. I think every worker
I've ever had association with in this program feels very strongly
about working here. As a flight controller I had great pride in
what I was doing. It's a unique privilege to be able to ride an
American spaceship into space and to see the beauty of it. In many
ways I think we feel like ambassadors. It also makes it a challenge,
though: I think probably the biggest challenge of being an astronaut
is to share the experience with our coworkers adequately, and to
say thank you to them as an American representative, thank you to
them for making our country so great, and for making our lives,
of our children, for example, better. I'm the father of two children,
and I'm completely convinced that their lives are where they are,
and their standard of living is where it is based on what the space
program has done for our country in the past forty years.
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