Preflight Interview: Daniel Barry

The STS-105 Crew Interviews with Daniel Barry, mission specialist.

We're talking with Dan Barry, mission specialist 2 on STS-105. First off, tell me why did you want to be an astronaut?

Well, to be an astronaut is something I've dreamed about as long as I can remember, as far as before first grade. I was growing up in a time when astronauts were sort of the heroes of the moment. And, I think every kid in first grade wanted to be an astronaut. But as time goes on and things change, most people change their mind. And, I never did. I always loved to fly. Always just finding the highest thing I could locate to jump off of. And, the motivation as a child, of course, to go to space is different than that as an adult. But, some of that excitement and idea of just fast things and loud noises follows through all the way to, to adulthood. So, the things that attracted me as a child are not quite the same things that are final motivations. But, some of those things are still there. Then as I found out what astronauts really do, I actually found that the job was even more appealing to me. Because of the variety of different subjects that astronauts study; and the combination of physical work, such as going outside for a space walk, and intellectual challenge, such as solving problems, that might go wrong in the space shuttle. And, then finally the teamwork of working together with some other very bright and talented people. All of those things really appeal to me, you know, right now. Those are the rewarding parts of my job. So, for as long as I can remember, I wanted to be an astronaut; but for different reasons.

Tell me about the work that got you here, about the education and career path.

Well, I started out going to college at Cornell University in electrical engineering. I went to graduate school at Princeton University, also in electrical engineering, where I completed a Ph.D. Stayed on for a year as a postdoctoral fellow in physics. And, I was interested in biophysics; I was interested in how engineering and physics techniques could be used to study biology. But didn't really have much of a background in biology. So, there was an opportunity to go to medical school in a program at the University of Miami that allowed people with Ph.D.s to obtain an M.D. in 2 years. So, I went to medical school. I thought I would go right back to bioengineering, but got interested in rehabilitation medicine. So, I went on to do a residency at the University of Michigan in rehabilitation medicine, which is a field of medicine that is really oriented toward allowing people to achieve their own personal goals despite having sometimes physical or mental disabilities. It's a very challenging field. And, it's a very rewarding field. And, it also has direct applications to space.

Were there any particular people along the way that helped guide you to get you where you are?

Sure. The, one particular inspiration for me was my brother-in-law; his name was Wayne Keote. My sister is 11 years older than I am and when she met Wayne, I was in a, I was in elementary school. But, he was an electrical engineer. And, I had no idea what electrical engineering was, but he showed me what it was and took a real interest in teaching me about engineering, and really inspired me to go on in that area. In terms of space flight, the first person I ever wrote to that was an astronaut was Ed Gibson, who flew on SkyLab. And, he again, he wrote back a very personal letter, encouraging me to go on, to continue in science, and that the goal really was achievable.

Let's talk about the goals of this flight, STS-105. Give me an overview of what this mission's all about.

Really the key to STS-105 is that we're going to be exchanging space station Expedition crews. We're going to be bringing home the crew that is currently up there, the second Expedition crew; and we're going to be delivering the third Expedition crew. And, in support of that mission, we are also going to resupply the space station with water; do a number of payload transfers; and also one, possibly, two space walks to support space station logistics and construction.

Have you had much training with the Expedition Three crew?

We have had some training with them. Much of their training is in Russia. And, we've not taken a trip to Russia to train on those systems. So, for the most part, really it's just been four of us training together for shuttle and orbiter operations. But, we have had some training with the Expedition crew in areas that we will be working very closely together; in particular, on ascent and getting the space shuttle ready to, prepare for our docking.

Before the flight can achieve any of its goals, you've got to rendezvous and dock with the space station. Talk me through that process and tell me what you'll be doing during the rendezvous and docking.

Sure. Well, of course, for rendezvous, you have one object, which is going 17,500 miles an hour and you've got another one that you've got to match up speed and location with. So, it's a complicated, process requiring a number of different rocket burns and to align with the space station. And, in that process, we make a very team effort so that our commander, Scott Horowitz, will actually be flying the orbiter, causing it to, to fire its rockets, while I will be monitoring the computer systems that tell us where we are and where we need to go. At the same time, Pat Forrester and Rick Sturckow will be also monitoring our trajectory and looking at the different stages of things that we need to do to achieve a successful rendezvous. Right toward the end, one of my jobs will be to use a handheld laser device -- just like police use on the highway -- to shoot at the space station and determine how far away we are and how quickly we are approaching it. And, then finally at the end, I'll be looking out the window, telling Scott Horowitz what the final very close distances are so that when we get within a just a few inches, we know the right time to make the contacts that we need to make to get a successful docking. And, then after that, having connected to the space station doesn't mean we're really docked yet. The connection is just the first part. After we've made the initial connection, we then have to pull the pieces together; we have to pull the space station together with the orbiter and make an airtight seal. And, Pat Forrester and I will be operating that mechanism together.

After that seal is made, you'll open up the hatches and go in and see the Expedition Two crew. What do you think that moment's going to be like for you?

I think that's going to be very exciting. I've been to space station once before. But, it was unoccupied and much smaller. So, I'm thrilled to have the chance to go up and see people really working on the space station. This project that I've been involved with for a long time, finally coming to fruition. So, I'm very excited to see a space station, not just in the process of being built, but also in the process of being used. And I'm thrilled to be able to go up and meet a crew, which has been working for months on board toward the goal of really making the space station a home in space.

After you go onboard and say hello to those guys, what kind of work goes on in the hours just after docking?

Just after docking, what we're going to be doing is getting some of the immediate items that we brought up on the space shuttle over to the space station. We want to take the things that are most important for them to have for the Expedition Three crew to have a successful mission. So, we'll be transferring water, for example. We will be transferring some of the things that we need to do in order to complete our space walks. And we will also start the process of transferring the crew, which means bringing over the liners that they will use for their escape vehicle on orbit.

Tell me more about that process of exchanging the crewmembers from the shuttle to the station and vice versa. Does that all happen in one day?

For us, we are going to transfer all three together. And, it's, the official transfer takes place when we have moved this cushion, which they use in the Soyuz vehicle for an emergency return. That's the point at which a person goes from being a shuttle crewmember to a station crewmember. And, of course, the station crewmembers themselves will be involved in a substantial amount of briefing back and forth so that the crewmembers coming onboard understand the state of the station; what work needs to be done. If there are any issues or problems going on with the station, they need to have all of that information exchanged. So the actual process of, in the nominal normal sense of handover can take days. But, the official "When are you now an Expedition crewmember?" takes place in an instant, and that's when you transfer your cushion.

Are you guys going to be bringing any new science experiments to the station?

We are going to bring a number of science experiments onboard, a cargo carrier, which we call the MPLM. It's the Leonardo module, made by Italy; and there will be experiments on the MPLM, which we will transfer over to the space station. There'll be a few on our mid-deck as well, which will transfer over to the space station. We won't really be activating those experiments while the shuttle is docked. They're really expected to be used during Expedition operations. We're going to keep them alive and, and allow them to be in a state that will be prepared to take data. But, for the most part, the experiments that we bring are going to be operated by the Expedition crew after we're gone.

STS-104 has just installed the Joint Airlock, named Quest, to the International Space Station but you guys aren't going out of that airlock. Why not?

We're not going to use the Joint Airlock for our EVAs primarily because when it came down to the time that we had to finalize our EVA timelines, it was not clear whether we would be flying first or 7A would be flying first. So since we couldn't be really certain that the airlock would be there even, and available for use, we had to make the decision to come out of the shuttle airlock. That allowed us to get into our final phase of training and understand exactly what our tasks were going to be the moment we left the airlock; very different situations if we come out of the shuttle airlock versus out of the Joint Airlock. It also affects our flight plan because coming out of the shuttle airlock means that the hatches between the shuttle and the space station have to be closed. And, that kind of impact to our timeline we had to determine early on. If we waited until today, effectively for, to determine that we did have the joint airlock available, it's really too late to make the final planning changes to our flight plan and to our EVAs.

People have had a few different thoughts about what would be happening during your EVAs. Has that been difficult for you guys adapting to the changes along the way?

We have had a lot of changes to our EVA plan fairly late compared to most flights, but I think that's part of the way we do business, for what we call dot flights, 7A.1, where we really are trying to respond to the things that the station needs to have. Things that might break on station, new issues or items that come up. And I think that is a contrast with the more, sort of 7A or 8A type of flights where the plans have been laid for years and people have been studying very hard for the very specific tasks that they have to do. In some ways, it's more interesting to do it, to make some of these late changes. It certainly is a challenge and we have, trained for some things which, it turns out, we're not going to do. But I think that's part of business of being on space station, and it's rewarding when you get out there and do the task on short notice. There's some sense of accomplishment in that.

The plan is finally set now for what you're going to be doing during 7A.1. On the first space walk - what's it's main goals? What's the purpose of you on that, your work outside the station?

The main goal for the first space walk is to place an Ammonia Servicer, called the Early Ammonia Servicer, onto the space station from the shuttle payload bay. And what that device does is it provides a cooling; effectively, a reservoir of coolant in case there's a leak of coolant onboard the space station. The coolant, which is ammonia, is vital to keeping the space station alive, because you have to be able to cool the instrumentation that is operating in station and the station itself using ammonia that goes through radiators. There are two completely separate coolant loops which are redundant, for the most part, but if there were to be a leak and it were to, be severe enough to lose a significant amount of coolant, this device allows us to replenish that coolant.

So talk us through that first space walk from the time you guys come out of the airlock. What's gonna be happening? What do you do first? What happens then?

The very first thing that we do when we come out the door of the airlock on the first space walk is that I come outside and we arrange a few tools. And then go right over to starting to release the Early Ammonia Servicer from the structure that attaches it to the space shuttle. Actually both Pat Forrester and I will be involved in that release because, the way the bolts that hold the device into the shuttle are arranged, requires one crewmember to break the initial torque, which I will do, with a hand held tool and then Pat will come in with a power tool and actually drive the bolts on out.

Then what happens after that? Talk us through the rest of the space walk.

Yeah, once we've actually released the Early Ammonia Servicer from the shuttle bay, the robot arm will lift it, along with Pat and I, up to the installation site, high up, on the zenith side of the space station. And, when we get up there, Pat and I will get off the robot arm, move into position, and then, since the shuttle arm can't quite reach to install this device completely, it will release the Early Ammonia Servicer into my hands. And then Pat will give me directions since I can't see the to other side of it - will give me directions on how to manipulate it onto a pin, which will secure it in place on the space station. So that's really the primary task right off the bat. Once we've got the Early Ammonia Servicer safely tied down and secured to the station, we then need to hook up some heaters because it needs heat to stay alive in the environment of space. And, that requires running some cables down the, what we call the P6 and Z1 sections of the space station to connectors, which will supply the electrical power needed to heat the Early Ammonia Servicer. And there's two cables. I will take and run with each of those cables, translate to their installation point, while Pat takes care of tending them and feeding them out from their storage location on the Early Ammonia Servicer. Then we have to tend those cables, get them nice and tightly secured so that they aren't floating around in space. And that effectively completes the installation of the Early Ammonia Servicer and puts us through about two-thirds of our space walk. Following the Early Ammonia Servicer, we will go back down to the payload bay and we will pick up two devices that are going to look at the environment that the space station flies in. These devices, known as MISSEs, M-I-S-S-E, we will remove from the pallet, again very near where the Early Ammonia Servicer was stowed, and each of us will bring one with us back up onto space station. Again, we will ride the robot arm, the shuttle robot arm back up onto the space station. Pat will place his device -- his MISSE device -- out on the airlock, and I will place mine on a tank also attached to the airlock. When we bring them up, they look like suitcases -- about yea big around and they're closed. And, once we have them mounted on the space station, we will open them up and they open up sort of a hundred and eighty degrees up and then another hundred and eight degrees open so that there's two inside faces that are exposed to space. And one of those faces will face directly into the orbital path of the space station. The idea being to allow the types of things that are up in space; atomic oxygen other, sort of, irritants and contaminants and things that are in the space environment to react with the materials that are inside the MISSE boxes, and there are hundreds of samples in there. We will leave them there for months and then a future crew will go back up, close the boxes up and bring them down. And the idea is to understand how the space environment reacts with a variety of different types of materials to give insight into how to build future devices that will sit out there in space: cables, coverings, even, you know, structural elements. Once we complete the MISSE task, that effectively wraps up our EVA 1. We will go back down to the payload bay. If there's time, we may take some photo documentation of the things that we did on that EVA. If not, the photo documentation can wait until the second EVA.

That second EVA is a couple of days later, after the first EVA. What's the big goal of that second EVA?

Two days after EVA 1, we'll begin EVA 2. And, the primary task that we have on EVA 2 is to deploy two long cables, two long electrical cables along the Laboratory Module. So these, each cable is about forty five feet long; one goes straight down the starboard side of the Lab of Destiny, the other goes straight down the port side from the forward end to the aft end. The purpose of these cables is to supply power for a future module that 8A will be bringing up. And, in fact, the cables may not ever get used. The issue for the 8A truss is that it will have to be deployed in a fairly short period of time. If the device that they're bringing up, this big truss with many different, types of avionics boxes onboard, stays un-powered for too long, the devices inside will be damaged. So should 8A run into trouble during their space walk and be unable to get the truss completely installed, these cables provide an emergency source of power. So they're really there just in case things don't go as planned during 8A's space walks. The process of installing them requires us to put handrails in place on the Laboratory module, again along the port and starboard side, a total of about eleven or twelve handrails. Once we put those handrails in place, we have a place to tie the cable to. So we'll put the handrails down and then we'll take these cables and run them along the handrails. We'll hook the cables up to three connectors on the starboard side, one connector on the port side on the forward end of the Lab. The other end of the cables we're going to leave attached to the space station in bags for 8A to use in a location that's convenient for them should the need arise.

Step me through the process of making all that happen from the time you guys come out of the airlock.

When we first come out of the airlock, basically I'm the bag man. Because, what we will do is: Pat Forester will hand out to me a total of four bags. Two bags that contain the cables that I've been talking about and two bags that contain handrails that we will be placing. So I'll attach all four of those bags to the robot arm. Then, Pat will come out of the airlock and he will come on the robot arm. So, EV 1 and EV 2 and four bags will all be, kind of, together on the robot arm right off the bat, and we will come out of the payload bay up to a point where we will be able to get off the arm and onto the Laboratory Module. Once we're on the Laboratory Module, Pat and I will take the two big cable bags and put them in place where they need to be for when it's time to deploy the cables. Then, we'll come back, and each of us will take a handrail bag, Pat will have five handrails and I'll have six and we will go through the process of laying down the handrails. I will put them down on the starboard side, and Pat will put them down on the port side. Once we've completed the handrail installation, Pat will come over to the starboard side and we'll go to where I had placed the bag. He will release the straps that hold the bag down and hand it to me and I will be in place on the starboard side of handrails. The cable itself on the starboard side has sort of three components to it. Two components we're gonna leave in bags, and one component is the cable that we're gonna run down the handrails. So really, I will tend and hold onto the cable that's gonna run down the handrails while Pat does this process of unfolding the two bags and getting the straps off and basically moving one of those two bags over into its position. Then, he'll come join me and the two of us will tend this forty-five foot-long cable together as we lay it along the handrails. I will then, once we have it all laid out, go and connect three connectors on the forward on the Lab and that will effectively complete the installation of the starboard cable. We'll tend it up and make sure that it doesn't get in the way of other objects or having a loop that's way out into space. Once it's properly, configured, we'll then go and do effectively the same thing on the port side switching roles. I'll go over to the bag stowage location, Pat will go down to the handrails, I'll unstrap the cable from the bag, hand it to him, go down and join him, and we will run that cable down. He'll connect the single connector on that cable at the forward end on the port side of the Lab and that effectively completes both cable tasks and is the major objective of EVA 2.

Once we get the cables finalized, we will gather up our materials, our handrail bags and that sort of thing and we'll take a look at our timeline. If we are ahead of our timeline, we do have a few get-ahead tasks that we may be able to help out 8A, which is the next planned space walk to be able to get ahead a little bit. If we are running on our planned timeline, we will take all our bags, put them back into the airlock, bring out cameras and do the photo documentation that needs to be done for the cables. And if we didn't get photo documentation done the day before, or two days before on EVA 1, we'll go take care of that at the same time. And, once that's complete, we will again look at our timeline and if we have sufficient time we will do some get ahead tasks for 8A, and if, not, that will be the end of the EVA. The things that we're looking for, the things that 8A has requested that maybe we could help them with are fairly straightforward tasks. We're gonna move a foot restraint with a what we call a tool stanchion -- something to hang your tools on from one location to another. We may go to a toolbox and, and pre-position some tools for them to be ready to go when it's time for them to get outside.

After you wrap up the space walks and several days of docked operations, you'll pack up the Expedition Two crew and bring them home with you. Now what's the process of undocking from the space station and what will you be doing?

In undocking, my role will actually be similar to the one that I had for docking. I'll be in the aft flight station, looking out the window. But, this time I'll be telling Rick Sturckow, how far away we are and how fast we're moving away as he operates the shuttle controls to move us into a position about 400 feet away from the space station. Once we're about 400 feet away, we'll fly around the space station, and we'll try to get some good photographs so that when we come back, people on the ground will be able to analyze what kind of changes have happened to the space station, understand if there's anything that looks like it's not in its proper place. And, once we fly around at 400 feet, we'll then go ahead and break away and get set up for coming home the next day. But one thing that's interesting on my last flight, STS-96, we did a very similar maneuver. When it gets dark, it gets really dark. And, the space station in the light is so huge and bright and shiny. In the dark, it just disappears. So, it's a challenging task to maintain a constant distance around. You have instrumentation that helps. But it's a little unnerving when you watch this very large object just suddenly disappear into the black of night.

You conducted a space walk on your last trip to the International Space Station and now you're going back outside again. How different will this experience be for you with this much larger, much more complex station?

I think it'll be significantly different. My very first space walk on STS-72 was inside the payload bay of the shuttle. And, that now looks like a very warm, inviting place. Because, on STS-96, we went up onto the space station when it was a Node and a Russian Zarya module, which seemed like it was so big at the time. Because you would go up 75 feet out of the payload bay and look down on the orbiter and it looked very tiny compared to the perspective that I had ever had on it before. But, this space walk, not only has the size and the distance from the shuttle, but it has a very complex structure already. This was brought home to me during some of our practice runs in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, which is a 40-foot-deep very large pool that we can submerge the space station in. In our first few runs at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab - at the NBL - we had the space station oriented so its starboard side was up. And, that meant, for example, that the airlock we were coming out of was near the surface of the water. And, the Lab was oriented in a particular direction along the wall of the pool. And, after a few runs like that, we did one with the starboard side down at the bottom of the pool. So, all of a sudden I'm coming out of the bottom of the pool instead of the top of the pool, which I thought was no big deal. But, it turns out that, coming out in that orientation with this very complex station, pieces going every which way, as I came out of the airlock, I didn't know which way to turn. And, this was after studying it from above the water and knowing very well what the configuration was going to be. And, feeling, when I went in, very comfortable. So, I was really impressed with even just the amount of complexity that we have now. The different pieces and parts that are sticking out in different directions really requires a good situational awareness right from the get-go of where you are in the space station. And, one thing I'm bringing back with me is the knowledge that, when you're up high on space station at night, it is extremely dark. In the payload bay, there's floodlights that light everything up. But, up high on station at night, the only thing you have is your helmet lights. And, we don't have mockups here that are sufficient to show every little wire, every little connector, every little detail. So, you can't move unless you've illuminated the site that you're trying to move to. And, your field-of-view isn't that big. And, if your hand is out of that field-of-view, you don't see your hand; it is jet black. So, there is a real challenge on station. And, half the time you're doing the EVA, it's going to be in the dark. So the issues of moving around at night and the complexity of the different orientations to the station, I think it does make for a real challenging space walk.

Now, on three flights you've had three space walks and that's a pretty rare accomplishment. How have you become more proficient? Give me some more examples of what you've learned on each space walk.

Sure. Well, I think the first time out, you have to just get used to working within this fairly clumsy suit. It protects you really, really well. But you certainly aren't going to button a button. It's like wearing heavy work gloves. And, you have mass on your back. So, you just have to get used to moving smoothly. And that takes a little bit of time. I think what I've learned over the course of the three, preparing for three space walks is, first of all, you have to move slowly. You're not going to do anything, you know, rapid-fire. You're going to be very deliberate. The second thing is, you have to be aware of where your buddy is. I think that that's one thing I've grown to appreciate in terms of just having a very good situational awareness of where I am and where my buddy is, is absolutely essential. Now, part of that's because we're both tethered someplace. And, if you don't know where your buddy is, you're inevitably going to end up with tether tangles, which take a long time to work out. The other thing, it's simply a safety issue, just like when you're swimming. You always want to know where your buddy is. So these sound like sort of fairly fundamental things. But, it's interesting how you understand them and appreciate them when you first start a space walk. But, I think that you only realize the importance of them after you've been out there once or twice.

What do you think is the importance of the International Space Station to the future of human space flight?

Oh, I think the International Space Station - it does a number of things. The first thing is, we're really going to learn how to live, for a long period of time in space that would allow us to do an extended-duration mission, say, to Mars. I think it also is an example of international cooperation. I mean, there've been, triumphs and problems in the space station. But, I think we've learned from them all. And, one thing that we've learned a lot about is how to cooperate, government-to-government, on a very large, very technological project which has a lot of public awareness. Some of the time I've spent in the last couple of years before this flight was going to Japan to look at the Japanese components of the space station and to coordinate some of the NASA and NASDA operations. And, that to me was very enlightening and very rewarding. Because the Japanese approach, although similar to NASA's, is not identical. And, I've learned a lot doing that. Just seeing a different way to go about business. And, I think I contributed some to the Japanese program a little bit, telling them how we might get this particular type of problem solved or what our approach might be to this. But, most of all, I think we're starting to see the space station can represent an opportunity for people of the world to come together in a unified effort to do an important scientific goal. And that to me, in the end, may be the most important part of space station, is learning how to cooperate across national boundaries.