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Preflight
Interview: Michael Foale
The
International Space Station Expedition 8 Crew Interviews with Commander
and NASA ISS Science Officer Michael Foale.
Q: The International
Space Station Crew Interviews with Mike Foale, Commander of the
eighth expedition to the International Space Station. Mike, you're
set to begin a spaceflight that's going to last for several months,
and while you're there, you will celebrate the third anniversary
of the arrival on ISS of the first expedition crew. Tell me, what
are the goals of this expedition to the International Space Station?
A: Well, the
biggest goal for us as a crew, and it's a two-person crew-myself
and Alexander Kaleri-is to maintain a human presence on board this
international project, the International Space Station. Beyond that,
we have goals that would maintain the Space Station, keep it in
a, an operational condition, and carry out experiments that we are
not only carrying with us-and that's pretty few, actually-and continue
those that are on board already, and there are many of those.
Now you,
of course, have experience training for a long-duration space mission,
the mission that you flew to Mir several years ago. Has that helped
you, having that experience, as you prepare for this long-duration
mission?
Certainly any
long-duration flight helps an astronaut prepare for another one,
and the most anxiety I had before my Mir flight was just wondering
about how I, Michael Foale, will manage to live in a small place
for four or five months with two other people; I had no idea what
the result would be. Now I am faced with a, possibly a six-, seven-month
mission with one other person, but I am absolutely sure that Michael
Foale anyway can handle it, if nothing really changes compared to
the last mission, which was quite hard actually on, on Mir. So,
it's prepared me greatly in confidence, in self-confidence. I know
that there's nothing out there that is really unsurmountable. I
know that there may be difficulties, but, in a kind of step-by-step,
get up the morning, look at what's to be done that day, and go to
bed and get some rest, and do it again the next day-with that kind
of approach you can get through any long mission, and certainly
that's how I'm applying myself to this new experience.
In preparing
for this earlier this year, in February, you and Alexander Kaleri
were in fact assigned to different crews when you were training
halfway around the world from one another at the time that the Columbia
and her crew were lost. Tell me about the reactions and the responses
that you experienced in Star City at the time of that accident.
Well, it was
a very, very emotional time. I actually was yes, as you say, in
Russia and Sasha was here in the United States. Because I lived
in a, in an identifiable house in Star City, to Russians we became
the source of or we became the recipients of condolences from all
the Russians that we knew or did not know in Star City, and we had
a continuous train of visitors, myself and Bill McArthur, with whom
I was training at the time, and living. And, they showed an enormous
outpouring of sympathy and grief for our national tragedy because
they accepted it as a tragedy not only for us but for all people
who want to go into space and explore beyond the Earth's orbit.
And that sympathy, that outpouring was shown to us over two or three
days, and we also conducted memorial services in Russia, in Moscow,
at the control center there, and they were very emotional events,
attended by both Russians and Americans who were present in Moscow.
After a few days went by of course we were aware that there was
a crew getting ready to be launched, Expedition 7: that was Sasha-Alexander-and
Ed Lu, who now is actually on orbit with Yuri Malenchenko. And Ed
called us very soon after the accident-maybe four or five hours-to
make sure that we were doing OK, and he was worried about the fact
that we Americans there in Star City might feel cut off, isolated,
whatever. But in fact I also got a telephone call from Ken Bowersox,
who was on board the International Space Station at that time, so
everybody-and it's strange in an odd way-was worrying about us in,
in Russia, thinking that we might be too cut off from, from information,
and that was not the case. So it was, in a way it was a very, very
sad event, but of course it showed the resilience and the strength
and the support of all our friends and partners, and in some ways
made us stronger.
The loss
of Columbia not only led to the reassignment of crews it also let
a lot of people realize that the danger of spaceflight was never
more real than it was right then. Well, you've flown before; you
understand that danger. You even chose to make another spaceflight
after you experienced a collision while you were on board the Mir.
And yet, here you sit, preparing to go and do it again. Tell me
why you think the rewards that we gain from flying people in space
are worth those risks.
Well, you have
to take two positions here. One is the explorer, the adventurer.
And that's certainly my position today-it's what's driven me since
I was a child. I want to, I want to explore, I want to see something
new. Well, I've been in space, as you say, five times before, this
is my sixth flight; I have seen many, many things from space, and
they were wonderful; I want to see more, I'm hooked. So, I am a
little bit of an addict for spaceflight, and I have seen so many
interesting things that haven't repeated, and I want to somehow
touch them again. And so that's what's driving me personally. But,
on the other side of it you have to say, what does my wife think?
What does the manager who's responsible for our lives think? What
does the President of the United States think about sending, you
know, our people into space? And those are different decisions;
different, different comments and values. And to that extent, you
have to balance risk versus what you think you're getting back from
this adventure. In my mind, I, because I'm the prime recipient of
the adventure, I certainly think it outweighs the risk. In other
people's minds it may not and that's a, that, as I say, the reason
why I'm putting myself forward isn't, shouldn't be, is not surprising
to me; however, if I was putting other people forward, I would be
much more worried.
You said
that you, as, since you were a child were looking for that adventure.
How did that desire for adventure turn toward astronaut-why did
you want to be an astronaut?
Well, you know,
Lewis and Clark, we're celebrating the anniversary of their long,
long journey, so that anniversary goes on and on and on. We, I read
books about explorers, great British explorers, also. I learned
a lot about expeditions in the early part of the last century for
example, going to Antarctica and to the Arctic - Shackleton and
Amundsen, they are certainly heroes for me…Peary. And as such,
the idea of some hardship, some exposure to environment, some exposure
to just new vistas, without all that many people there telling you
what you're going to see around the next corner, that has always
enthralled me. It was like a good storybook. And to be quite honest-
I'm not going to hide behind it-that is the, that's what drives
my interest. Of course, I've become much more sophisticated as I've
grown up and learned why we do things, etc., and so we clothe this
emotional, childish curiosity with all kinds of reasons to go and
find new places and explore new things. But what it comes back to,
it's an innate instinct, I think, within us. And of course we know
historically that those countries that have actually valued exploration,
have encouraged it, or at least not suppressed it-often it's been
done grudgingly, I believe; the mavericks of a society will go out
and explore, and they'll be given just enough money so that we can
be rid of them. They would actually bring back riches untold, and
over, again, the development of the trails that those explorers
led, then, behind them and in the memory of them, were developed
incredible routes, highways, trade routes, and eventually civilizations.
So, it's a very romantic view of exploration, but that is the case
in human history.
Was there
some incident in your life that led that desire to participate in
that exploration into the path that you've ended up on?
Well, I don't
know…I certainly grew up all over Europe; my father was a Royal
Air Force pilot, my mother is American; I was born American at birth,
also I had the rights of British citizenship because I was born
in Britain. And we lived, within two years of my birth we moved
to Cyprus, and then after that we came back to the UK, then we went
to Germany, and then we came back and then we went to Malta, and
then we went back, and then back to Malta again. So I, and then
when we were living in Europe we moved all over. So I was a typical,
what we call Air Force brat, and it meant that I got a taste of
different cultures, I got a taste of just different, traveling all
the time, getting tired in the car, you know, we'd complain of course
to our parents, "When do we get there?" but that background,
I think, made it, accepted in me, anyway, that one should see new
places on a regular basis and constantly. My only, you know, regret
is that oh, I never got to grow up in one place for, you know, twenty
years; that, that's something that didn't happen to me. And I look
at people who have done that and I think, wow, there's some, there's
some neat things in that, too. Although I realize that they're probably
dying to get out of that town and go explore like I did.
Tell me
about then your path of education and into your career then that
has led you to be a NASA astronaut.
Well, the,
my mother was extraordinarily powerful in that, not I don't think
in any intentional way-she didn't want to force me towards a career.
My father's this glamorous jet pilot, my mother was a thoughtful,
intelligent woman who studied liberal arts in Minnesota, at the
University of Minnesota, and what they did was they basically took
myself, my brother, when my sister was born, to science museums,
museums of all kinds, all kinds of large exhibitions and events,
and the one that really focused in my life was the, in terms of
space, was when we went to the World Fair, as it was called, in
Minnesota, in Minneapolis. And, I was about six years old there,
and we saw John Glenn's capsule, all charred and black. And then there were other exhibitions of rocket flying vehicles, for example
the X-15 Test Program, that was shown well. And I asked my father
questions-I always knew he took off in fast, screaming jets and
would fly overhead, so I was aware of Air Force life-and I said,
you know, is that, I kind of put that together, the glamorous dad,
together with the capsule and the rockets, and it all kind of started
to gel in me. And then I read one of von Braun's books, First Man
On the Moon, I think it was called, at a pretty early age, about
seven-again, my mother got the books out of the library for me.
And then my grandma, U.S. grandma, would, started buying me books
on astronomy. And so my knowledge of spaceflight, my knowledge of
the U.S. space effort in particular, really grew from an early age
and never left me.
You studied
that in college as well, didn't you?
Well, then,
once you, once you've been fired up with interest, then you kind
of pick your path. And…it, I tried to anticipate what an astronaut,
who he, who he or she should be to be selected as an astronaut,
and I started plotting that career path when I was about twelve
or thirteen. I think that was the first time I really thought about
it, you know: what should I do? But, it really didn't matter- I
would basically fit my, you know, round interests into the square
hole of NASA selection, NASA astronaut selection, which was, you
know, do what you like doing and do it well, and then convince NASA
they want it. And so, I was a physicist, a scientist, I'm interested
in various things. I knew at that time they wanted geo, either geologists
or, we heard, for moon landings, or test pilots. Well, I tried the
test pilot route, and for a number of reasons, I couldn't make it.
And so then I thought, well, I'll try and be a scientist, 'cause
I knew that's [who] they were potentially selecting for Shuttles.
But again, I didn't, luckily I didn't fall into the trap of trying
to do everything to chase this forever-receding-and-changing requirement
to be an astronaut. In the end I followed my own advice that I give
to other people now, which is do what you like to do as well as
you possibly can, and then convince NASA that they need it.
Well, you're
getting ready to go to a Space Station for a number of months with,
as you mentioned, just one crewmember; just two people to cover
all the jobs that need to be done. What are going to be your responsibilities
as a member of this crew?
My responsibility
as a member of this crew is to work well with Sasha. Clearly Sasha
is a highly-experienced cosmonaut: he's flown three times on the
Mir space station, he has almost a year and a half in space, total
time. He is the Commander of our Soyuz spacecraft, so he's the Commander
during launch, and I'm sure that when we come home in the Soyuz
he'll be the Commander when we land. Once we are on board I am the
Commander of the Space Station, and Sasha and I have a joint responsibility
to conduct our missions as, to the best of our ability, and the
way we do that is by working well together. So, that is my number
one priority is work well with Sasha; Sasha, I believe, has the
same priority, to work well with me. And we're very comfortable
with our friendship and our professional relationship that's developed
since the Columbia tragedy. That said, we now have technical things
to accomplish on board the Station and that is, first of all, to
make sure that our U.S., my job, especially now as a U.S. crewmember
and a, now we're going to the parochial interest, is, not only as
the Commander but as a U.S. crewmember, I represent the U.S. investment
in the International Space Station. So my job, as I see it, is to
make sure the United States gets as much as possible out of its
investment in that fantastic structure that's orbiting the Earth
right now. Sasha has the same responsibility to the Russian side,
to look after their investment in the International Space Station,
and so to some extent we've got two different jobs to do. But we're
both looking over and looking after each other to make sure we both
achieve our needs. And sometimes the U.S. will have specific interests
that we, that I need to accomplish for the United States. And if
Sasha can help, we'll ask Sasha and we'll pull him in to do that.
And the same goes for Sasha. And I, and my job as Commander is just
a little bit broader, I believe, than Sasha's in that I have to
make sure not only that the United States gets its interests, you
know, satisfied on the International Space Station, but I also have
to make sure that Sasha accomplishes that for the Russian side.
So that's where my responsibility goes just a little bit further.
We'll talk
about a couple of the, hit on some of the high points of the mission,
and start at the beginning- despite your five previous flights you're
going to start this mission in a way that you haven't started missions
before, and that's in a Soyuz spacecraft. Tell me about what you've
trained for and what you anticipate is going to happen inside that
vehicle as you and Alexander Kaleri and Pedro Duque make your way
to the Space Station.
Well, I've
had a lot of experience, compared to other U.S. astronauts, anyway,
training for Soyuz flight. First of all, on Mir we had to train
for Soyuz emergency descent, and that was basically as a passenger
cosmonaut-astronaut in the right seat. On this last training flow
before Columbia I was training for the left seat emergency descent
with a cosmonaut in the center seat. After Columbia, Sasha and I
were named to be the backups to Ed Lu and Yuri Malenchenko that
are on orbit right now, and there I had to train both for launch
in the left seat, rendezvous, and then descent. And then at the
same time I had to take the same classes that Sasha, the Commander,
was taking and do those in the center seat. So I have seen the whole
smorgasbord of crew roles and responsibilities on board the Soyuz.
On launch, because Spain is specifically putting its own country's
money into a launch, into this Soyuz launch, and Pedro Duque needs
to satisfy his mission objectives visiting the Space Station and
at the same time delivering Sasha and myself and the vehicle to
the Space Station, Pedro is launching in the left seat and fulfilling
the roles that I trained for in my last training flow, and I will
be riding in the right seat with not much to actually operate, but
with a lot of experience and I guess I will have performed the duties
of a Flight Engineer in any, in any American cockpit terms…rather
like the Mission Specialist #2 does on board the Space Shuttle,
between the Commander and the Pilot, I see myself doing the same
thing on board this Soyuz, launching on October the 18th. From the
point of view of personal sensation it won't be any different from
that of Sasha or Pedro. We will feel a launch acceleration not so
different from the Space Shuttle. I expect the vibrations to be
much less than the Space Shuttle because we don't have boosters
that are asymmetrically positioned opposite the center of thrust;
instead, the Soyuz vehicle has most of its thrust straight through
the centerline and it's all liquid fuel so it's a bit smoother.
On the other hand there will be three stages as opposed to two stages
on the Shuttle, so we'll get one extra kick in the pants before
we actually finally get to orbit. The time to orbit takes about
the same time as on board the Space Shuttle. So I don't expect to
see anything very different from my previous flights on board the
Space Shuttle, except that the ride will be smoother, the vibration
less, and one extra staging.
You're going
to spend about your first week on board the Station with all five
of you there before Yuri Malenchenko and Ed Lu come home with Pedro
Duque. What do you guys spend that week of handover talking about?
How does it help you get off to a better start?
Well, the,
there are a number of goals to be achieved during the joint operations
of the visiting, of the oncoming crew and the off-going crew. First
and foremost, as I said, Spain, through ESA, the European Space
Agency, are paying the lion's share of this Soyuz flight, and they
have serious science objectives to accomplish during the five days
that Pedro is planned to be on board the Station with us. And so,
to be honest, I feel even as, even though I am not the Commander
at that time-Yuri Malenchenko is-I feel obliged, just as Sasha does,
to help Pedro get kicked off to a running start as soon as we arrive.
There is nothing more important than getting Pedro running. The
remaining four days I will spend my time with Ed Lu, and hoping,
and I hope with Ed to learn everything he has learned about the
United States' space segment. That's the Lab, the Destiny module,
learn about the Airlock, the Node, and all of our stowage there
and all of our equipment there, and its operations with the control
center here in Houston. However, I must not ignore what's going
on in the Russian segment, where Sasha Kaleri will be spending a
lot of time with Malenchenko and learning about Russian operations,
work in the Service Module and in the FGB, and in their docking
module. So these two, again, we're going to kind of split off a
little bit-Americans are going to go to the right, Russians are
going to go to the left, we'll work but then we'll come back together,
tag up, say, at midday for lunch, whatever, and then go off our
separate ways to continue what we call handover. By the time four
days have gone by, I will know just the bare minimum to be able
to find my clothes, wash my body, do my exercise, and work the radio.
Of course, I'll have some theoretical training in the background
that I'll have been doing for the last year or so, but the practical
knowledge will be there after four days. And at that point, we will
be ready to say, Pedro, you're going to that spacecraft; your seat
liner's in that spacecraft-the old one, the returning one-with Ed
Lu and Yuri Malenchenko, and then we'll close the hatch and breathe
a sigh of relief, because joint ops is a very hard time because
everybody has a lot to do in a short time. Once the hatch is closed
I will ask the ground, and I've already started that process, to
give us a bit of a break and give us…to be tolerant of us being
slow in coming up to speed and starting any new tasks that they
may have for us. And then we'll build up steadily over a month or
so to a decent working pitch as we continue the International Space
Station mission.
You and
Alexander will, of course, have responsibility to maintain the Station
in good working order throughout, but I don't know if we've mentioned
this specifically, but you're not only the Expedition Commander
but you're the NASA ISS Science Officer for Expedition 8 as well.
So, tell me, in general, how do you see that the Station's scientific
mission is going to get advanced during your increment?
Well, I think
it's going to be advanced quite significantly; no less than before
Columbia. And that's a, you know, a bold statement but it's supported
by the fact that I have many investigations to carry out on board
the Station. Not only before flight and after flight, looking at
me as a guinea pig, but specifically during the flight…we have…one
experiment that looks at the melting and then the re-solidification
of metal analogues in the large facility, the glovebox facility,
on, in the Destiny Laboratory module. We have a very interesting
experiment that looks like it's straight out of Star Wars called
SPHERES. In fact, it's supported by, as far as I could tell, they
look very young, young university students, led maybe by post-docs
but from MIT and other universities; supported by DARPA, our defense
research agency. And this experiment is, the set of spheres-actually
polyhedrons-that basically maneuver themselves in relation to each
other and fly in formation to each other. We do this inside the
volume of the Node, and I'll be doing that at different times during
the mission; I'm quite excited about that. They're kind of like
automated robots, but they're very, very sophisticated in their
ability to know their attitude, orientation, and their positions.
And then we have a, experiments that are life science-oriented.
There's an experiment that measures how I move in space…for
a number of days I'll be wearing some pretty fancy, expensive tights
that are fully instrumented with instrumentation that measure where
my, how my muscles are moving, how the nerves that are triggering
my muscles are firing, and indeed, the actual resulting position
of my leg. It's called Foot. Although, actually it's not only the
foot that it's studying, it's studying the whole leg. And so that
will then bring data back on basically how a human being adjusts,
or just naturally assumes, a sort of neutral position in space during
a normal workday. We have a, other investigations in different areas
of science, and I will try and talk about those, probably every
week or so. I've always been a fan of Bill Nye the Science Guy,
and I respect him greatly-I think he would be a wonderful person
to have on board the International Space Station with us. But since
he can't be with us, I would like to show the same enthusiasm for
what I'm learning and seeing up there as he does in his very famous
show to children here on, in the United States.
At this
point in your preparations for your mission, what are the plans
for spacewalks? I realize that might change by the time you get
there, but what are you and Alexander training for right now?
Well, both
Sasha and I have done spacewalks before, Sasha three times on the
Mir, I one time on the Mir, in the Russian spacesuit, and then once
on STS-63, and then the space, Hubble STS-103 mission. And so we're
experienced in EVA; we're not, you know, rookies desperate to go
outside; however, that's not to knock it! And I love spacewalking:
the view is extraordinary, the sensation of being out there, you're
in your own little spacesuit, like a spaceship, sort of free from
the Space Station, is an extraordinary experience. Very exhilarating…so,
I would like to repeat that. On the books today, the Russians plan
to have Sasha and I go out and complete a number of experiments,
both Russian, European, and Japanese, that have been deployed outside
the Service Module. And we will accomplish that Orlan-we call it
the Orlan spacesuit-that Orlan, Russian EVA will take place in the
March time frame. There are other tasks that, depending on how what
crew comes to replace us-and I think it will be Bill McArthur and
Valery Tokarev- depending on when that happens and how it happens,
with Shuttle or with Soyuz, we may or may not do an additional,
or be asked to do an additional task, additional EVA, in the Orlan
suit. U.S. suit, Sasha and I are both trained in, but we've trained
in it only for contingencies, in case some big piece of American
equipment broke or failed and we really had to go outside to repair
it. And in those cases, we'd use the American airlock, Quest.
As you referred
to at this point there is a, still an open question as to whether
or not you will come home in the Soyuz that you rode up on or whether
or not you'll come home on the Space Shuttle. Tell me, what are
your thoughts today about the process that NASA's going through
to return the Space Shuttle to flight, and do you have any preference
as to which ride home you get?
I think, to
be quite honest, I'd like to come home in the Soyuz. And that's
mostly because it's well understood right now. Its ballistic entry
was demonstrated by Ken Bowersox and Don Pettit and Nikolai Budarin
on the last entry. People called that off-nominal-it certainly was
not an expected entry-but it demonstrated yet another aspect of
the Soyuz, which is its robustness. Also it would be a new experience
for me, and again, as I say, I'm a curious individual, I'm quite
adventurous, and so I'd like to try it. I was quite thrilled to
chase after Ken Bowersox and Don and Nikolai out there in Kazakhstan
in May. It was a very exciting adventure for me, also, in the helicopters,
looking out, trying to find them. And I'd like to go to the same
place-no, maybe not quite so far away from the landing site like
they did, but it would be a lot of fun for me. …however, I
do want the Shuttle to succeed. I want it, I want this return to
flight to take place, and the, I do believe when the Shuttle starts
flying again, if we can ever make the Shuttle really safe, it will
be those first few flights. But I don't believe, in my opinion,
that the Shuttle's architecture will allow it to be significantly
safer without adding crew escape to it. And, I just think that's
a function of the huge and enormous energies a spacecraft has to
either attain to get into orbit-this is twenty-five times the speed
of sound, twelve times faster than a Mach 16 automatic weapons bullet,
and then you're moving a hundred tons at that speed: that's how
fast a Shuttle has to go to get into orbit-and then when it comes
back from orbit it has to get rid of that speed, just as the Soyuz
does, also. So how, so just the very, the magnitudes of the energies
that we're dealing with make space vehicles risky. And, I think
to change the risk for human beings in the Space Shuttle, you really
need to allow the human beings to get away from those huge energies
in the event of malfunctions. So, I think the Space Shuttle needs
to fly again, and it needs to be flown as safe as it possibly can.
But we need to look very, very hard at how we reduce the risk to
human lives on board it.
We talked
about your mission-beginning, on orbit, coming home. As you come
home from Expedition 8, what in your mind do you think will have
had to have happened for you to consider that your mission was a
success?
Only that we
didn't cause any permanent damage to the Space Station, and that
we did not cause any permanent rift in our own relationship, both
between the two of us-Sasha and myself-and our control centers.
So, as, if I can say we…we basically spent our time there we
were productive, and we are still friends, and the centers, the
two control centers are still happy with our performance, then I'm
very, very happy. And, that's a lot to ask, to be honest, although
it sounds simple.
Well, the
International Space Station is a very ambitious project. There are
designs on achievements in engineering and science and global relations,
as well as space exploration. Mike, in your opinion, what do you
think is the most valuable contribution that will come out of the
International Space Station program?
Oh, I think,
historically, if, when we look back fifty years to this time, we
won't remember the experiments that were performed, we won't remember
the assembly that was done, we may barely remember any individuals.
What we will know was that countries came together to do the first
joint international project, and we will know that that was the
seed that started us off to the moon and Mars. Because then, I know,
when we're looking back from Mars, for example, it won't be just
the United States, or it won't just be China or Russia: it will
be an international mission. And it will have come out of the very
fact that we're doing the International Space Station today.
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