Preflight
Interview: Lee Morin
The
STS-110 Crew Interviews with Lee Morin, mission specialist.
Lee,
tell me, in a nutshell, what's this mission about? What is STS-110
going to do?
STS-110 will
use the Atlantis shuttle spacecraft to take a big hunk of the space
station up in a prime assembly flight. And basically what the piece
is that we're taking up is the S0 truss. And the S0 truss is the
connection between the large solar arrays, which will be built over
the next several years, it's the main piece of that array connecting
to the U.S. Lab. So in a sense it's the crossroads of the station,
or the backbone of the station. So we're going to be taking that
first piece of that truss up and installing it.
Now,
this is your first space shuttle mission as a member of the flight
crew. Tell me what it was like to get the word that you'd been assigned
to fly in space.
Well, it was
very exciting, and actually it was sort of a surprise. I happened
to be coming in and ran into the head of the Astronaut Office in
the parking lot, and as we walked in I had some other work to show
him and asked to come and, if I could come to his office to give
him this other material. And he said, sure, and he said, "Oh,
and by the way I have something else for you"; very deadpan.
And I walked into the office and shut the door, and then Steve Smith,
who was his deputy at the time walked in and held out his hand and
said welcome to the 110 crew. And so that was really quite a shock,
really, and I was, you know, it was very, and then, Jerry Ross walked
into the office at that time, too, so we were really excited to
get that news last April.
Tell
me how did you [get] to be an astronaut anyway? I mean, what did
you do in terms of education and your career to make you a person
who was "astronaut material" in the first place?
I had a very
roundabout career path. I started off as [an] electrical engineer
and a math major in college; decided to go to medical school, and
went down to New York University and then the opportunity came up
to get into their M.D./Ph.D. program. And so I became a medical
scientist and did that for, that was a seven-year program…went
and began training as a general surgeon in New York City, in the
Bronx Municipal Hospital system, which really was a lot like the
TV show ER. And after doing that for a couple of years I decided
I didn't want to spend my life in rooms without windows, so I joined
the Navy, ended up in the submarine service and spent the next two
years on a Trident submarine as a diving medical officer, an undersea
medical officer. And having done that, I decided I'd like to…see
the aviation side. I liked operational medicine-operational medicine
means you're there supporting the troops, working with the troops
directly on military operational issues as a physician- became a
naval flight surgeon in Pensacola, Florida, and stayed on staff
there, and also ran their hyperbaric program. And those combined
skills made me very competitive to become an astronaut so I applied
and was selected to the class of '96.
Why
did you want to? I mean, after MD, Ph.D., Navy officer, why did
you want to be an astronaut?
Well, the
astronaut thing, there's a number of reasons for that and one is
that in the career I was in, as naval aviation, the Astronaut Corps
is kind of the peak of that career path, and only a few get to do
it. And it's a long shot for every applicant. I had felt that if
I had never applied I'd always wish I had applied, so I decided
to apply. And was very surprised to get an interview and even more
surprised when I got selected. And looking back at the things that,
you know, one can do with one's life I see stepping back and looking
at becoming an astronaut, or serving in this capacity of furthering
man's reach into space, I feel myself very privileged to serve a
role in a fundamental expansion of the range that life can live.
And by that I mean, looking back at evolution through millions of
years life has completely filled every nook and cranny of this planet
over the last five hundred million years, and life has also, humans
have filled every nook and cranny, starting about a hundred, hundred
and forty thousand years ago from a thousand individuals in a central
plain in Africa, basically humanity has walked and filled the entire
planet and there's no part of this planet that humanity hasn't visited.
And, as life [has] evolved through the years, there are many, there's
a pressure there that's innate and an inherent part of life, and
we're expressing that and that is to expand and to explore and to
expand the range. And there are many, many species that have become
extinct, and they have not adapted and they have not expanded their
range. And, at one time there was a creature that came out of the
sea onto the land that was entering from a very nice environment
to a very harsh environment, and we have and it probably didn't
make a lot of sense to go from the nice environment to the harsh
environment, but there was a pressure there, and some of the life
forms did that, and they found ways of taking some of that nice
environment with them. And we have that nice environment flowing
in our veins today: if you look at the makeup of your blood it's
very, very, it has the same salt concentrations as those ancient
seas of a couple of hundred million years ago. And so we've captured,
we've taken that environment that we need and put it into a harsher
environment, but we've greatly expanded our range. And, the species
that find ways of expanding their range and going into a bigger
area end up persisting through time. And so I feel that…that's
a…we are expressing one of life's imperatives. And to be part
of the species that has made that break off of the planet certainly
you don't need, you can look at the pictures of the Hubble and see
the tremendous range that the universe represents, or the rest of
the galaxy represents; that represents an expansion of the range
of space that is available to life, much, much greater than any
prior expanse. And so to be part of that, to have that happen, basically
in our lifetime-because I was around when the first Sputnik went
up and remember seeing the Echo satellite go over my house when
I was a little boy in and saw it fly over, and saw the, you know,
our initial space pioneers, both Russian and American, so this is,
just happened in our lifetime- it's happened in a wink of the eye
from a historical thing, and so we're right on that threshold. And
so to be part of that is, you know, it's an amazing privilege.
When
you think about the things that you have done in your life, who
do you consider the person or people who have been most influential?
Well, they've
been my various teachers. And you know, obviously that one of the
biggest teachers that you have are your parents. And as a matter
of fact my mother was my third-grade teacher, so she was a formal
teacher as well as the informal teacher that all of our parents
[are]. So they obviously would be very, and they're both living
today and continue to influence me so…other people, there are
a number of teachers through college and graduate school who've
influenced me in various ways and many other people who I've come
in contact with who have taught me things formally or informally.
And I turn that around-I've had an opportunity to teach other people,
and that has crystallized my knowledge, or understanding, of something.
And so it's really the process of sharing the knowledge with the
people around me who I've had contact with, either getting or passing
it on, I think has been the thing that's really influenced me.
The
primary payload on this shuttle mission, as you mentioned, is the
piece of equipment called the S0 truss. Introduce me to it: how
big is it, where does it go, what does it do?
S0 truss is
a, looks like a hunk of a bridge support; it basically fits in the
shuttle bay, the payload bay, and with the airlock that we have
in there, it's about the space that's left over, is a little over
forty feet, so that's the length. And that's basically the bite-size
chunks of the space station are pieces that can fit in the payload
bay, for the most part. And it attaches right to the top of the
Lab, US Lab, and that forms the foundation, and on each end of that
truss basically it is a, has a hexagonal cross section, and on each
end further, similar-sized pieces will be added extending outward,
and then at the ends of those will be the large solar arrays. And
the one solar array that's up there already, that whole assembly
will be moved out to the end of the truss as the intervening pieces
are put in there. So basically it's a support for the large solar
arrays, and it connects that whole assembly to the Lab. And, it's
connected with four struts, and basically we'll be installing those
struts on this mission. And, it's held on with thirty bolts, and
so we'll be connecting those thirty bolts.
While
the S0 provides a structural function, it does more than that-it
has, it's a place that has operating systems for the station, too,
right?
Oh, very much
so. The S0 truss has built into it a number of black boxes and other
things. One of the big jobs that it has is it provides a, along
the front of that truss there's a, what would be a small railroad
track, and there's a transporter unit, which is about the size of
this stage, that rides on that track. And the arm will be mounted
on the end of that transporter unit, and that will be how the next
pieces of the truss are added. And so as the truss is built, sections
will be added end-to-end, and they'll be carried out there on the
arm, which will be on this little cart, which will be running down
this track. And so it'll extend and the railroad on the front will
grow. So it's the foundation for that little railroad track that,
so to speak, that holds the cart. It also, it serves as [an] electrical
power station. So if you could, if you drive down the street and
you see an electrical power station where it's, has transformers
and other equipment that provide power distribution, there's a number
of large boxes that provide power distribution equipment, and that
makes sense because, remember that you have the big solar arrays,
which are generating the power, out on the ends of those arms, and
then we need to switch and condition that power to bring it into
the Lab and use it so there's a large number of that sort of equipment.
You also have a lot of…to use that arm you need TV cameras
so you can see what you're doing, and so there's video equipment
to support the TV cameras. Those, that arm and the cart and the
arms also have a lot of computers that run them and operate them
that are built into them and those computers are mounted in various
places and a number of them are on our S0 truss. There's also something
that may not be as familiar. I think everyone's familiar with the
solar arrays taking electricity and making sunlight into electricity,
and making that available; but for every watt of electricity you
make you also need a watt of cooling, because otherwise you don't
have anywhere to put that heat. And so there's also cooling systems,
and the cooling systems are basically a very sophisticated form
but very similar to the refrigeration system on a large office building.
And that involves a refrigerant of ammonia, which is what they use
in large buildings for refrigerant. And so that there's a lot of
ammonia servicing equipment and ammonia servicing lines and instrumentation,
and that, again, is a crossroads in that, those large…we don't
actually install any of those cables, it's the subsequent missions
that do; but we take a lot of that equipment up, and it's built
into S0.
After
the shuttle successfully docks to the station, the rest of that
day most of the ten of you who are going to be there are going to
be involved in a dry run of the S0 installation. Tell me what your
part is and why, what are you all, what are you all going to do,
and why are you going to be doing that then?
The S0 installation
involves a precise choreography of a number of tasks, and we need
to be able to take a moment or some time to refresh our memories
of all these details so that we get the choreography right. And
basically, the way the choreography goes is the first thing that
happens is that the S0, which is in the payload bay, has to be taken
out of the payload bay with the station arm. And so Ellen will go
into the station and, together with the station crew, will operate
the station arm and pull the S0 truss out of the payload bay, and
move it and position it on top of the US Lab, where it'll be mounted.
So that's a whole trajectory, and a carefully choreographed movement
of this thirty-thousand-pound payload that has to be very precisely
positioned to within centimeters to where it goes. And then the
S0 truss will be temporarily stowed and connected to the Lab. And
there's a device called the LCA, and basically what that is…it's
a, there's a claw-it kind of looks like an ant's pinchers-and there's
a bar on the S0, and right now already up on the space station there's
this claw which has these two jaws, and those jaws will close and
draw in that bar, and that will hold the truss on the Lab. And my
job will be to operate the software on the space station that closes,
and commands that jaw to close. So I'll be doing that during that
initial time, in conjunction with the robotics people, and that
will be done on board the space station. And that's especially exciting
to me because I had a role as, in my technical assignment which
was my first technical assignment after just when I was an ASCAN
was to develop that help develop that software, so it's exciting
to use the space station software and actually send some real commands
to a real piece of hardware, and and it's a very critical step.
So now the S0 is connected to the Lab; immediately after that goes
we have Rex and Steve will be in the Airlock ready to go EVA. And
it takes several hours before an EVA-you don't just go in at the
last minute-there's several hours of preparation has to be done,
where you're in the Airlock, for you know, a number of hours before
you go. So they'll be doing all that preparation, both with the
help of the station crew and also with Jerry's help, and to some
extent my help, getting ready to go outside, so they'll be on deck.
And as soon as we dock that with, to the Lab and connect it with
the to the S0, then they go outside. And the first thing that they're
going to do is to connect two of the struts. Those struts are bolted
up in, and they came up with S0, they're bolted on S0; they'll loosen
those struts and fold them down, and then bolt them onto the Lab.
And that…and once two struts are joined, a lot of the people on
the ground will breathe a sigh of relief because they're halfway
home in terms of having it stably mounted. The next thing that has
to happen is…we discussed that the S0 is not an inert box, it's
got a lot of sophisticated electronics and mechanical systems, and
those have to be kept heated. And so it needs "keep alive" power.
In the payload bay it's kept there, safe in the payload bay; the
payload bay is basically facing the Earth. But once it's brought
out of the payload bay a clock starts, which is about twenty-six
to twenty-eight hours; if power isn't gotten to those boxes by that
time they'll freeze up and be ruined, which would be catastrophic.
And so as soon as we get the struts down, the next thing is to connect
power. And so there's some large umbilical trays, which will be,
are also mounted on the S0, and those umbilical trays will be connected
to the Lab and then up to the truss, and once those are on there
then the ground can send the commands to the space station to start
sending power, "keep alive" power, to all those boxes. Now, just
as a backup, in case something goes wrong, there's also a set of
cables, called the LTA, launch-to-activation, cables, and they were
brought up by a previous crew and actually partially installed.
And so if something goes wrong, it doesn't go as expected, instead
of doing the steps I described previously, Rex and Steve will install
those LTA cables. And, that will provide the "keep alive" power.
And so that's basically a hole card if we need it; hopefully we
won't need it, but that's there as a backup. Once they've gotten
that stuff complete, they'll come inside, and then Jerry and I,
on a later day, will go outside and we will resume where they left
off.
Before
we get to the details of your first spacewalk, I want to ask you
something about your preparations for it. I know that you've, of
course, been learning what to do on these spacewalks as well as
how to work in zero gravity at all; do you have any sense of what
it's going to feel like, not just-you'll already know what it's
like to be weightless-but, anything, any sense of what it'll feel
like to actually be your own spaceship, floating outside?
The…what
I've learned from talking to my classmates who recently have done
spacewalks is that the training that we get, and we might talk about
that in a minute, the training that we get really prepares you to
do the task, and that you feel right at home on the space station
and you know your way around. But that the difference between doing
that in the underwater facilities that we use is that, during the
daylight the Earth is whizzing by, and you kind of feel like you're
washing windows on the outside of the Empire State Building. During
the nighttime you don't see that, and it's just like being in the
pool and you're at your worksite and they're, all the tools and
bolts and other things are familiar, and you just do your task.
But in the daytime it's startling. And the other thing is that some
of the things that aren't in the pool are the large solar arrays
overhead, and that those are, those can be, those can be startling.
So apparently there's some things that can startle you: reflections,
I mean, one of the fellows told me that when he was in the airlock
waiting to go out he put down his gold visor and then looked at
himself with his wrist mirror, and he noticed this big "2"
on the gold visor and he had no idea what that was until he realized
he was looking at a reflection of a reflection, and that's something
that you just wouldn't see in the water, but it's the example of
the sort of subtle things that will startle you that are unexpected.
But, for the most part, you are trained so that you'll feel at home.
All
right, as you've said, you, working with Jerry Ross, are going to
be the team to go outside for the second spacewalk of this mission.
Take us outside with you, and describe the work that you and Jerry
are going to do on the second EVA of the flight.
Starting off,
we will be using the Joint Airlock on the space station; this will
not be out of the shuttle airlock, it'll be out of the station airlock.
And we will be in the Airlock, and the Airlock is actually, when
you have those big EMU suits, the white spacesuits on, you are very
confined in that Airlock. And it's kind of like, how many students
can you get into a phone booth-I mean, it's almost like that; you're
really confined in the Airlock, and you're head-to-foot. And so
I'll be up at the top of the Airlock, so to speak, the part that
opens up into the space station working some controls and valves
up there as we finish our transition from being inside the space
station to being outside and Jerry will be down, facing the hatch.
And so finally we'll get to vacuum, and Jerry will open the hatch
and there'll be a…when he opens that, that hatch basically
looks straight down at the Earth. And so Jerry will go outside,
and then after he connects me to the arm and by connecting me I
mean I have a reel of wire, which is a safety tether, and so I'm
connected inside the Airlock with other tethers, he takes my safety
tether and connects it to the end of the arm, and how I'm safety-connected
to the arm so I can disconnect my tethers inside the Lab. And then
I will climb out feet first, and go out and basically feel like
I'm climbing through a manhole that is suspended twelve hundred
thousand feet over the Earth-and that should be quite a sight. And
I'll take some tools and put them on me; I will have a lot on me
already but there'll be some others, and we'll move some other supplies
out. And then I will shut a thermal cover that goes over that Airlock
to keep it warm inside, and then I'll go ahead and do what's called
translation adaptation. Translation adaptation just gives me a couple
of minutes to see what it's like moving around in space as opposed
to in the pool, and there's some subtle differences: you don't have
the viscosity of the water slowing you down and there's some other
subtleties, including having the Earth fly underneath as well as
working with a flight-like suit, which is going to be a little stiffer
than our training suits which get broken in a little bit differently.
So to get five minutes, ten minutes to get that feel and the next
thing I'll do is I will climb into the end of the arm. Now this
arm I'll describe it: if you think about two phone poles connected
with a hinge in the middle, and one end of the phone pole is connected
to a big swivel joint that's down on the bottom of the Lab, and
the other end has a plate, which would be about the size of a trash
can lid that's got two ski bindings on it, two water ski bindings
on it, and my feet go into those water ski bindings, and then that
arm can move wherever Ellen decides to take me. And the total length
of that is more than sixty feet, so it's a pretty long thing. But
the first thing that will happen is that Ellen will take me out
and turn me around, and bring me right up underneath the back side
of S0, and I'll remove some bolts and take a large strut, which
will be one leg of a tripod, and I will move that loose leg of the
tripod, and the tripod will form and come down and be pointing down
at Jerry, who will be down waiting at the Lab to get that, and he'll
bolt his end in, and I'll bolt my end in. And the bolts are big
5/8? bolts, they're the largest bolts that we have on the station.
And I'll be putting those in with a Pistol Grip Tool, which is,
basically looks like a, you know, a big power screwdriver and that
was actually developed by one of my classmates when he was at Goddard,
and so it's exciting to use a tool that one of my friends developed.
But that's the tool that we'll use for all of the EVAs to do any
tasks involving rotation and tightening bolts. Those bolts actually
go beyond the capacity of that tool, and so we also use a tool called
a torque multiplier, and also a torque wrench, and the torque wrench
is very similar to the torque wrench you could buy at a hardware
store, and I actually went to the hardware store and bought one
and have been playing with that a little bit just to, you know,
to have that, to become as familiar as I can with that. And we also
have the same tool that we use in training to tighten those bolts
and get a, and remember that these bolts are holding together the
space station, the truss is from, to the Lab, it's really a crossroads
of the station, and so these bolts have to be tightened just the
right way, and so this, we do a lot of training in terms of tightening
them. So after we've gotten those bolts tightened, then we need
to do the same thing on the other side. And so what will happen
is that Ellen will take the arm, and that arm will have to come
all the way out around the station and then fold in on the other
side, and that takes about twenty or twenty-five minutes, which
is really a, going to be a spectacular ride. And we, Rex nicknamed
that the "hiya" maneuver, and so we call it the "hiya"
maneuver. And so I'll do this "hiya" maneuver on the end
of the arm, and basically the arm comes out almost straight, and
I actually will be going right over the rudder of the shuttle. And
so it'll be a, you know, an amazing view. And I'll have a camera
with me-we have some of our Nikon F5 cameras are built with coverings
so that you can take them outside and they have special lubricants
so that they'll work EVA-and we'll be able to take pictures to document
the task. And it also, there's a lot of things about the station
from the outside that it's not so easy to get pictures of. And you
certainly can get pictures, and we do a flyaround with the shuttle
and go all the way around the station twice, and that's an opportunity
to take pictures of the space station from the outside, but this
is another opportunity on the end of that arm, of being able to
look back in at it at fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred feet from
some unusual angles that people aren't usually looking at the space
station from, and to be able to document some things that the people
on the ground want to see about the station. Anyway, after we finish
the "hiya", I'll come in from the other side and basically
do it, another strut. And the, once we have the four struts on,
then the truss is, you know, mechanically connected. And then we
move the arm out and come in from the front and there's another,
a number of other tasks: we will connect some large power cables
that go to that MT-remember, we talked about the little railroad
car-type thing? that has power cables going to it and they are a
big, flat cable, they are about an inch-and-a-half wide-and so Jerry
will feed that cable to a large reel to me, and then I'll install
that; and Rex and Steve will also install a similar one on one of
their EVAs. And then we remove a number of…it's basically shipping
materials that are bolted to the outside of the truss that need
to come off, and we need to put those out of the way. So we'll remove
a number of, they're called keel pins and drag links, and we will
move those off and put those away. And that'll finish up our second
EVA.
The
third spacewalk of this mission is scheduled to come up the very
next day, with Rex and Steve back outside again. Tell us what your
job will be inside the station while they're outside, and then what
they're planning to do during this third spacewalk.
During the
third spacewalk, I'll be the IV, which will be the crewmember who's
actually providing the choreography: I'll have the script, and I'll
be inside doing the talking, directing them as they go through their
EVA. And likewise, Jerry did their first EVA, and Steve will be
the IV for EVA 2, and then Rex will be the IV for EVA 4. So I'll,
this will be my turn to be IV. And, what they're doing on this EVA
is reconfiguring a number of power connectors. And so they'll be
taking off panels on the Lab and installing and connecting powers
connects, connections that go through from the S0 truss and connect
down to the arm on the bottom of the space station. And while they're
doing this the station arm will be out of commission, they're going
to temporarily put it out of service while they work on it, which
means that they'll be using the shuttle arm for this task. And so,
our Pilot will be flying the shuttle arm, and the station arm will
be parked for that mission. So we'll be doing lots of electrical
reconfiguration during EVA 3.
The
day after that third EVA is set aside for a checkout of the Mobile
Transporter which you described before-you'd removed some packing
materials in that area. What's the checkout of the Mobile Transporter
entail, and is this the day that we might see it move?
Yes, it's,
they're going to move it. The Mobile Transporter has, it provides
a base for the station arm. And the station arm will…the Mobile
Transporter moves to various worksites and then squats down on the
railroad track and plugs itself in there, and then to move in between
those sites it un-squats itself from the track and then moves down
to the next station, and then plugs itself in. And so, when the
MT, the Mobile Transporter, launches, it's actually bolted down
between two of those sites. And on our piece of S0 there are two
places where it could park itself. And as other struts are added
in later missions, other sections of truss are added in later missions,
there'll be other, basically you can sort of think of those as the
subway stations where, it's a place where it gets power. But the
checkout involves basically making sure that the MT can move up
and down the track, and so they'll move it and then move it back.
And they actually move it and leave it in a slightly different place.
So you'd see it move from one side of the truss and move over to
the other side.
You
and Jerry are scheduled to go back outside the station the day after
the Mobile Transporter checkout. Tell me again, what's on tap for
you and Jerry Ross to complete during your second trip outside?
The second
trip outside is more of a "grab bag" of all of these smaller,
lesser-priority tasks that are left over from the mission. And it's
also a time when, if we're going to have changes to the mission,
perhaps something that the ground would like to see done, perhaps
some get-ahead tasks that if things are going well and we have a
little extra time we could do some get-ahead tasks that would help
subsequent crews-staging tools for them, removing shrouds, or whatnot.
But basically what the first thing that I'll be doing out there,
well first let me say it'll be Jerry's turn to be in the arm, and
I'll be the free float on this EVA. Remember we talked about the
how the S0 truss was temporarily stowed with the claws? Now that
all these struts are on, we don't want those claws because that
could cause some binding. And so we need to remove that connection
between the Lab and S0 through any path except for the struts. And
so I'll be going out there and removing some pins that the S0 truss
is basically balancing on that the claw's pulled it down into, and
I'll be backing out those pins so that the only place that the S0
contacts the Lab is through the four struts. So that's one task
that I'll do. Jerry's going to install two spotlights. If you can
imagine spotlights out here on the lawn, lighting up the flag; we'll
have a spotlight on the front of the Lab, lighting up S0, and he
also has another spotlight on the back that he'll be installing.
And so that, another thing that we're doing is we're removing some
covers and configuring a, some tools that are out on the edge of,
out on the far edge of the, it's called the wedge face, it's the
back side of S0; there's some tools and some covers that need to
come off over there. So we'll be putting those in place. The EVA
4 is where they, the mission planners, have a lot of flexibility,
because we've done the essential task, we're in a good configuration
at this point, we've gotten the power so that we're in a safe configuration,
mechanically and electrically, to the S0, we've gotten our other
mission objectives done. And so that if there're other things that
can be done as get-aheads, or if we have a setback and we need to
do some catch-up, the EVA 4 is available to do that.
We
talked a lot about four spacewalks on this mission, but there is
other work that all goes on inside: there's the transfer of supplies
and delivery of equipment, and science on board. Tell me about some
of the things that you and your crewmates are bringing up for the
use of the Expedition crew later on.
Well, we're
bringing up a number of payloads that'll be plugged in. A lot of
these are protein crystallography payloads, and there's also a plant
growth chamber; it's a small device, like two bread boxes, and it
grows various plants, including a dwarf wheat and some other plants.
And that's really a checkout of that growth facility. They picked
plants for this, one of the plants that they picked makes a lot
of pollen and dust and leaves, and the idea is to tax the chamber
to make sure that it can handle those challenges. So it's like one
of the messiest plants that it could have as a good test case, so
we're taking up wheat plus that plant, and we'll be transferring
that…and the station crew will actually use that. So we'll,
it's powered on the way up, 'cause those plants need light and they
need other things, but we will transfer that over to the other side
and then the station crew will conduct studies with that. We also
have a small special refrigerator that we use to bring down medical
samples that the station crew's been collecting over the weeks and
months, so we'll bring down those samples. And we also will take
up a number of tools. One of the biggest things that we're doing
with the swap-out is spacesuit parts, and, spacesuits…spacesuits
aren't all the same, they have to be sized-it's like a suit of clothes,
and people are different sizes-and so having the spacesuits, plus
the backup parts you need to support them, and keeping track of
all those, is a real challenge because the parts expire after a
period of time and so they have to come down and others have to
go up. And so a big part of what we're doing is swapping out spacesuits.
And we'll use them and then leave parts of them behind, through
a very carefully choreographed script to make sure that the right
stuff is left in the right place. So between the payloads and the
spacesuits that's the, you know, the main things that we're going
to be taking up.
Aside
from all this movement of stuff back and forth and walking in space,
do you think you're going to enjoy yourself?
Well, I hope
so; I'm sure I will. This is a really, a culmination of well, six
years since I've been here and many years before that, so it's a
remarkable opportunity and something I'm really looking forward
to.
Lee,
the International Space Station is many things, not the least of
which is that it's a science laboratory, and that it's a place to
do research and development of commercial products, and it's a place
where people learn how to live in space. There are other things,
too. I would like your opinion: what do you think is the most valuable
aspect of the International Space Station?
I think the
most valuable thing is, you know, as you said, the mechanism so
people can live and work in space, and it's, as a long-term thing
as opposed to a one-week expedition or two-week expedition, it's
a long-term living in space, learning how to live and work in space
for a long time, and really learning how to do that, developing
the technologies to do that, so that it can be done in a more affordable
way. Basically reducing, one way of looking at it is reducing the
risk for future groups so that they can do space flight and start
to have it even more economically attractive. And that's going to
be the real key to having a sustained presence in space long term
is going to be to develop the technologies so that the entrepreneurs
can be doing it and it moves beyond -and we're starting to see that
a little bit-but have it move beyond the government-sponsored programs
into an entrepreneurial-sponsored programs. The same way that unmanned
space flight has is, you know, if you look at technologies that
humanity has, there's things like fire; I think it's unlikely that
humanity would learn how, lose the ability to learn how to…you have
fire. But for a long time we didn't have it, now we have it and
we're not going to lose it. And space flight is in that category
because not, not because a government has decided it, but because
it's enmeshed in the economic fabric of our society. And so every
time you turn on, make a phone call or turn on cable TV you're basically
economically supporting space flight. And so we have the ability,
the commercial sector and many countries have the ability of moving
a several-ton object into geosynchronous orbit, and they're going
to maintain that because…it fits in with business plans. And by
developing the technologies of long-term living and working in space
on the space station we need to facilitate that process, expanding
to support manned space. And that'll be, provide the long-term and
that'll be the basis for long-term colonization of the entire solar
system and beyond.
Well,
with that said then, how do you feel about the idea that you get
to play this role in this project?
It's just
a remarkable privilege, and it's…I would have never have thought
that, you know, being the case: 1965, watching the Gemini missions,
and looking back there I never thought that I would end up being
able to be on a space mission myself. And it's just a, it's just
a remarkable privilege. It's hard to put into words. In many ways,
it doesn't seem quite real.
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