The Color Coated Shuttle Mission (#sctweetup – Part 5)

As much as I enjoyed the last two dinners with my fellow Tweetup attendees, I’m not a happy breakfast person. I love breakfast and I really loved spending time with my new friends, but morning? That’s my “GRRRRRRR!” time. Don’t wake the bear until he’s finished eating. Lights low and let the realities of the waking world slowly introduce themselves. I like to bask in the afterglow of a night’s sleep, oh sweet sleep. After an hour or two, then I’m finding myself ready to socialize with the world. So, this morning, like the day before, I ate my breakfast alone and avoided my peers until the bear was satisfied that hibernation was indeed over and it was time to move on.

As the fog of sleep began to lift I started checking my tweet stream for activity from the others. This morning we knew we would be on a tight schedule so there was some back-and-forths regarding when we needed to be at our conference room, when our mission would start and most importantly, when did we have to be at the theater for the launch of STS-135, the final shuttle launch in history. In my head, the shuttle wasn’t launching until 11:30 am, which is the correct time from my time zone in Florida. However, I kept forgetting about the fact that Huntsville is in Central Standard Time, so the actual launch for us was 10:30 am. With our own simulated shuttle mission before the launch, we had a pretty small window of opportunity to work within.

I think it was around 8:30am when we assembled in our command center conference room. The day before we had received Space Camp t-shirts and had all agreed to wear them today. The shirts were bright red so the 14 of us sitting there before Jackie, our host, must have made the room look afire. Actually, there was some confusion about our wearing the shirts for Lissa, who was the only one of us that did not have one on. Lissa struck me as the independent of the bunch. Her name wasn’t pronounced “Lee-sa” like everyone initially called her, but “Lis-sa”, like “Melissa” without the “Me”. She also had the unpronounceable Twitter handle of @QlbHom. It seemed like she relished being unique and doing things her own way. So maybe the mix-up on the shirt was intentional, I don’t know. I would have loved to have gotten to know Lissa better, but she never seemed to be around when I was socializing with the others – where did she keep disappearing to? Regardless, she was a worthy addition to our group and very knowledgeable on all things space related.

Today, like yesterday, I was seated in the front row of tables in the conference room, between Jennifer and Mike. Isn’t it funny how we are all creatures of habit and pick the same seats to sit at when the same group of people get back together. You would have thought we had assigned seats. I looked back a couple of rows to make sure we had Robert – yep, he looked alive and clear headed, recovered from his MAT experience the day before. I knew he’d come back strong. We all shared some good natured laughs with him while welcoming him back.

The night before we had made all the local news broadcasts so those that saw our interviews with the TV crews were sharing how we looked. Our lady in red had even entered our #sctweetup tweet stream later in the day yesterday to promote her segment with us. As is usually the case, hours of news crew footage gets cut down to about 10 seconds of clips, but that didn’t stop us from searching through the stations’ web sites for glimpses of our broadcast footage.

While awaiting our mission, a few Space Camp administrators came to say hello to us and tell us a little more about everything they had to offer. Turns out Space Camp is not just for kids, which I was already beginning to see. They have programs for all age groups and interest levels. Family groups are available as are special groups for businesses and organizations that are looking for fun team building activities. Advanced Space Camp Academy participants have simulated missions lasting 2 days where they bring in all their needed supplies and don’t come out until the mission is over. In addition, they have a whole other academy we never even got to see called Aviation Challenge. This is where they have jet fighter simulators and a rigorous outdoor, Navy Seals-like training facility. It is truly an amazing place!

We headed down to the sims to start our mission. The first order of business was to suit up for our mission – we were all very excited to don our orange shuttle flight suits. There had been talk among many of our crew since day one of buying one from the gift shop. Not really sure where they would wear it if they bought one, but I admit I would have liked one myself. You know, hang it in the closet just in case. You can’t go into space if you’re not prepared when NASA calls you up on the phone, “Haeseker, we need a pilot and understand you received training at Space Camp – how soon can you be at KSC? Oh, and make sure to bring your orange flight suit as we’re all out of them here. You do have an orange flight suit, right?”

Standing outside the fitting room for our suits I noticed a group of kids huddled around what looked like a small porthole window in the wall next to me. Actually, the wall was rather curved, so I assumed they were looking into some type of large circular room. Whatever they were seeing was truly engaging to them. I noticed another small porthole window that was free so I went over and looked inside to see what all the fuss was about. To my surprise was a scuba diver floating around in a giant tank. In the middle of the tank was a large space station-like structure. I had no idea Space Camp had their own underwater training tank! Just like the real astronauts at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Space Camp kids learn how to perform EVA’s (space walks) while underwater to simulate the environment of space. Yet something else to impress me about Space Camp that was previously unknown.

While I lolly-gagged around watching the scuba diver the rest of my crew was suiting up inside the fitting room. Our mission control team was leaving our group to head to their control room. Someone with mission control stated on the way out, “Have a nice flight and don’t crash the thing”.

I went inside to find everyone slipping into their flight suits. Wow, a room full of bright red t-shirts and bright orange flight suits – “My eyes! Oh, my eyes!” Someone handed me a flight suit and I hurried to put it on. We were already getting a late start and the STS-135 launch was coming up. I had been thinking it would have made more sense to do our mission after STS-135 launched, but didn’t realize at the time that much of the staff would be needed later in the day for graduation ceremonies for the kids leaving Space Camp that week.

Sierra was one of the first to be suited up and was anxiously bouncing up and down. She looked at her watch and exclaimed out loud as incentive for the rest of us, “We better hurry up or we’re going to miss the shuttle launch.”

The Atlantis crew who would be flying a separate mission were already lining up to head to their orbiter. This group consisted of Michael and Krissy as Mission Specialists, Robert as Pilot and Katy as Commander. Of particular interest was Katy who apparently would be flying Atlantis in flip-flops.

I put on my suit, first trying to save time by slipping my feet through the pant legs without taking my shoes off. This was a big mistake. I hoped around on one foot as I tried to pull my stuck foot back out of the suit. Now running further behind, I tried again without my shoes. Now successfully suited up, I was realizing my suit was a few sizes too small. The legs looked like I was wearing high-waters and the sleeves only made it halfway down my forearms. The seat of the pants were riding uncomfortably high – the seam running down the middle felt like I was straddling a telephone line. There were hangers of other suits to try but we were out of time and our mission was starting – I’d just have to make due.

With our orange flight suits on we made our way out of the suit-up room and into the large hangar-like room that housed all the simulators we would be using for our mission. This felt like our “Right Stuff” moment and I envisioned an orchestral score playing behind us while the teams of instructors maneuvered around us like members of a close out crew. If only we could walk in slow motion.

We entered the Discovery orbiter and took our positions. Mike climbed over the center console and into his left-side Commander seat, Sierra into the right side Pilot seat. I took my Mission Specialist 1 (MS1) seat behind Sierra and looked over to Mission Specialist 2 (MS2) and happy to report she was now with us this day.

Jessica (@JessCarlton) was our second Mission Specialist. Jessica seemed quiet but was always smiling. Our mission was the first time I really got to talk to her so I didn’t have a good read on her just yet. My thinking was since she had missed our training the day before she was nervous about what she needed to do. This seemed to be confirmed by a nervous laugh and comments such as “I’ll just follow your lead” as I began to orient her to what we needed to do. She enthusiastically took in everything I shared so I was feeling pretty good that we just may have a shot at pulling off our EVA assignment.

We put on our headsets so we could hear and talk back to mission control. An endless stream of mission jargon was going on and Mike and Sierra were busy prepping the orbiter for flight. There was nothing for Jessica and me to do but sit, watch and wait. We had just a little over an hour until STS-135 was scheduled to launch and our mission was expected to last roughly an hour, so any delays in our mission would have an impact on seeing STS-135. Mike explained to Mission Control that we weren’t getting any data on our center screen while Sierra rushed to complete her checklist of flipping switches all over the flight deck. One switch seemed to confound Sierra as she hunted back and forth, “Come on, you were just here yesterday.”

Minutes continued to pass as Mike resolved the display issue and Sierra continued to flip appropriate switches. Finally we were getting closer as Mike exclaimed, “Pre-launch programming complete.” This was followed by Sierra confirming various switch configurations such as “APU started and ready for launch.”

We had a “Go” check in our headsets while I was sneaking in some video footage. Mission Control asked for Commander status and Mike replied, “Go”. Mission Control asked for Pilot status and Sierra replied “Go.”

“This is great,” I thought, “I’m getting footage of us confirming ‘go’ for launch.”

Mission Control asked for MS1 status and there was silence. Thinking about getting good footage I waited for MS1, whoever that was, to say “Go”. After a few seconds ticked by Mike turned back to look at me and gave me a look of “Well?”

Suddenly it dawned on me who MS1 was, so I quickly spoke up, “GO!” Everyone had a good laugh at my slip up on my only official mission line as Jessica confirmed her ‘go’ status without delay.

Based on our training the day before, I was informed we would have only about 45 minutes for our EVA. With our hurried mission, I wouldn’t be surprised if that time got shaved. To waste as little time as possible, I was going to start our EVA as soon as we hit orbit.

At launch our orbiter emanated a loud rumble to tell us our engines were were doing their job. The launch tower that was out Mike’s window to his left dropped out of sight as our stack lifted off the launch pad. Clouds whizzed past our forward cabin windows as Mike indicated we had initiated our roll maneuver. Minutes passed as we awaited SRB seperation and main engine cut off (MECO). Out the forward cabin windows we could see the sky turn from a bright blue to a dark purple and then finally to pitch black. At MECO, the noise of the engines went silent. Mike told Mission Control “We see stars” and I took that as my cue for Jessica and I to head through the airlock and begin our EVA.

After crawling through the airlock to the dark room in the back I noticed this time we had two sets of EVA outfits awaiting us. Each outfit consisted of a white jumpsuit, white rubber boots, gloves and a giant helmet mounted to what looked like a football shoulder pad harness. The shoulder pad harness was to help keep the helmet in place as it would normally be mounted to a ridged space suit on a real mission. Without the shoulder pad harness our helmets would have taken our heads off with their heavy weight. The inside of the helmet was enormous, there was enough room to fit two heads in. On each side was a pair LED lights and battery packs for seeing in the darkness of space. In the back was an electric fan to help circulate air through the helmet to help keep us cool. However, I don’t recall turning that on in my haste to get dressed.

I suppose in hindsight it would have made sense to change out of our orange flight suits before putting on our white EVA jumpsuits, but time was too limited. Now fully dressed in three layers of clothing, bulky gloves, boots and a heavy helmet we made our way out the lower hatch into the main floor. The first thing our instructors noticed was we had our helmet assembly on over our white jumpsuit. They indicated we had to fix this before continuing. Of course, this was more precious time wasted as we had to remove our helmet assembly, our white jumpsuit and then reattach our helmet assembly and pull our jumpsuit over.

Our instructors then guided us over to our zero-G simulators. These two machines were very odd looking contraptions. They were made of thick steel framework sitting on top of three circular pads. A seat was at the top of the structure about five feet off the ground. This seat pivoted up and down and swiveled left and right on its vertical axis. The three circular pads on which the structure sat were actually like the pads on a floor polisher. Compressed air shot out of the bottom of the pads to raise the entire zero-G simulator a few millimeters off the floor to allow it to float freely in a horizontal plain on a surface of air. I had no idea what to expect, but I was looking forward to giving this thing a try as I have always been fascinated with the weightlessness of space.

I climbed up into my chair as my instructor positioned my straps for me – good thing outer space has helpful aliens. I took my seat and my instructor locked me into the 5-point harness. I looked over to see Jessica getting strapped in as well. She was about 20 feet away and sitting between us was the space station platform upon which we would be building our space truss. Once we were confirmed as ready, the compressed air was turned on and our zero-G simulators started drifting across the floor below. My feet came off the platform I used to climb up and into the sim and now I was hanging like a rag doll from this crazy contraption. I had little to no control over which direction to make the sim go so my instructor pushed the sim over to the platform where I would be working. Once at the platform I had a heck of a time getting my legs out in front of me in order to put them on the platform. The harness had me hanging with my head forward and the rest of my body at a 45 degree angle behind me. I finally was able to swing myself forward on the chairs pivot point to get myself on the station platform. Jessica was having the same problem, pedaling her feet in front of her bicycle-style until she got them close enough to make contact.

With both of us now with feet on the station platform we could maneuver ourselves around as needed to perform our tasks. Our zero-G simulator floated gracefully under us, reacting to our slightest of leg movements against the station platform. Our bodies twisted into any position needed on our two axis chair. It wasn’t a weightlessness feel, as gravity was still there to pull our bodies against our harness, but the movements we could accomplish was an entertaining sensation. We tethered ourselves to the platform to keep us and our zero-G simulators from floating away.

With both of us in place, one of our instructors handed us our bag of nodes. Wearing highly padded hockey gloves, I reached into the bag to pull a node out to show it to Jessica. With no real sensation of grip on the node it slipped from my hand and bounced across the floor with a loud metal-on-concrete whack. One of our instructors chased it to a stop under an ISS module yelling “Watch out! Space debris!”

Jessica got the concept of what we had to do pretty quickly and we dived into our task. However the concept was easier than the execution as the gloves continued to be a source of difficulty. In addition, I was starting to feel the muscles in my back complaining about all the awkward positions we found ourselves in as the contraption we were in didn’t keep our back straight – instead we hunched over. While dealing with this, my harness was continually slipping off my left shoulder as we hung. Next my neck was getting a workout as my head was fighting to get the best field of view in my helmet visor. And worst of all, there was a big seam in the floor that my zero-G simulator kept getting hung up on. The seam had enough rise to it so that the few millimeters of lift from the air pads of the simulator were not enough to clear it. It was a bit like getting grounded on a boat – one minute you’re just floating along and then the next you’re stuck at a standstill. I would shake myself as best possible in my harness to try and un-stick myself, but usually an instructor would have to come over to free me from the seam. I’m sure I’m not the first person this happened to, so I was surprised adjustments were not made to the layout of the EVA setup. By moving the station platform over the seam and adjusting us over a few feet in our simulators would have cleared up the issue.

Jessica and I continued to fight time as we bumbled our way along in our bulky gear. The nodes continued to be a major source of difficulty for us as we just couldn’t get things to line up. We had to build our truss as a triangular structure and if we didn’t have the nodes positioned correctly, nothing fit together. We got about 75% complete with our structure when we realized major alignment issues. We had to tear half our structure down to fix the alignment. This ate even more precious time off what little we had available.

Eventually we completed our structure and gave it a sturdy shake to make sure it was sound. Jessica held up her hand for a high five. I tried to high five her back but doggone it if my simulator wasn’t hung up on the floor seam again. I stretched out towards her as far as I could and she floated over to complete the gesture.

We untethered from the station and our instructors pulled us away. I enjoyed the last moments on the simulator by swinging my body around while hanging in my harness. Couldn’t we have just floated around for awhile instead of having to do work building stuff?

After climbing down from our simulators all that was left to do was change out of our EVA gear and re-enter Discovery to join the rest of our crew. I was actually starting to think we might make it back in time. However, what I didn’t know then was conversions Discovery was having with Mission Control back on the ground:

Mission Control: “Prepare for re-entry. Close bay doors.”

Mike: “Should we really do that? We have space walkers out there still.”

Mission Control (after some back and forth): “You have to close the doors now for re-entry.”

Mike: “Closing payload bay doors – whatever!”

We were being left to die!

Oblivious of our potential tragic fate Jessica and I came back in through the open hatch to the airlock to remove our EVA gear. Turns out, despite our crews attempt to leave us behind, it was quite easy getting back in. Unaware of our presence in the airlock, Mike and Sierra continued with their re-entry checklist:

Mike: “How are we doing?”

Sierra: “I have 600 switches to throw over here!”

Mike: “Well, for what it’s worth, we’re coming down without our space walkers.”

Just then the cabin lit up with error lights.

Mike: “Oh shoot. We are red across the board. I won’t even have to bother to crash us at this rate.”

After a few more minutes and stripped of our extra layer of EVA gear, Jessica and I crawled back up the tunnel and through the cabin hatch. We were still unaware of the fact that technically, we were dead. We resumed our seats and I was shocked to see Edwards Air Force base out our forward cabin windows. “Did we miss re-entry?”

“We tried to wait for you all but Mission Control made us proceed.” said Mike.

I don’t know if I was more bummed that Jessica and I were dead or in that we didn’t complete our EVA in our scheduled time allotment.

As we made our approach for landing I couldn’t help but notice how smoothly we were coming in. In my surprise I said out loud, “We’re landing?!”

Mike had made a point to study up in his off time. Last night, while the rest of us slept, Mike was on a shuttle simulator on his laptop in his hotel room going through landing approaches over and over. The next morning while the rest of us were still waking up, Mike was in one of the Space Camp training simulators applying what he had learned the night before. No doubt about it, Mike was ready to land this bird! However, he never thought to tell the instructors that he had figured out how to land the shuttle as they basically had us coming in on auto-pilot. Either way, Mike and Sierra got us on the ground safely even if they did leave Jessica and I out in space to die.

As we exited Discovery, excitedly recapping our mission to one another, an instructor approach us anxiously “We need to get to the theater now! STS-135 is about to launch!

(This is part 5 of a 6 part blog series on my experience at the Space Camp Tweetup.  Click here to continue on to part 6.)