krypton21
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This email was sent to me by a co-worker. It is from Astronaut George Zamka, and it describes his trip to space during the STS-120 mission aboard the shuttle Discovery. So without further ado....
Hello everybody,
It’s great to be back on the planet and I’ve pretty much adjusted to gravity again. Thanks to everyone for coming down, and those who tried to come down but couldn’t make it. I hope everyone had a great time. I’m slowly getting to all of your emails but I wanted to get one big one out to the group. Those of you who missed the reception but wanted your reception gift bag, (aka “geedunk,” or “bling”
and let Elisa know, should have it in a couple of days. Thanks a lot for sharing in our special event. Even though I missed all the fun it was great hearing about everyone who was in town and the going’s on. I’ve been reunited with “flat George” and it looks like he had a pretty good time. More fun than I’ve had in quite a while, I think!
I figure there are a bunch of “so what’s it like” questions out there, so here is my feeble attempt at putting a few memories into words:
• While you guys were at the various viewing sites, I was with my buds (Pambo, Stephanie (Robeaux), Doug (Wheels or Flambo), Scott (Longbow), Dan (Boichi) and Paolo (Rocky)) riding the “Astrovan” (70’s interior, bench seating, air-conditioning hookups for our suits) to the launch pad. We passed the last line of human beings, maybe 2-3 miles from the pad, mounted in armored personnel carriers. They watch the launch all buttoned up. We gave them a wave of thanks for this toasty duty. Their job was to come get us from a bunker we would have evacuated to in case of a serious emergency at the pad.
• We got out of the van at the launch pad and looked at Discovery. Fully fueled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, drops of water and condensed fog were falling from the external tank all around us, and the tank hissed and creaked like a dragon. There was nobody else around, the pad is evacuated except for the strap-in crew, and us, after the Shuttle gets fueled.
• I was concentrating mostly on my actions in the minutes leading up to the launch. At T=0 though there was a big jolt and I got pressed back into my seat, like a catapult shot off of an aircraft carrier. For the first two minutes on the solid rocket boosters the ride is fairly bouncy, with the G’s going through my chest and varying from 1.5-2 times the force of gravity. We hit Mach 1 at about 42 seconds. There was a bright flash as the separation motors pushed the now-empty solid rocket boosters away at about 2 minutes and 150 thousand feet, about Mach 5. The ride got smoother since we were now just on our main engines, and Pambo told me to look out the window. We were upside down and this gave me a great view of the East Coast of the US as we ascended. When we rolled to heads-up at about Mach 15, the very bright sun came into the cockpit and I could very clearly see the curvature of the Earth. It was about the same as looking over the top of a big beach ball. The last minute of ascent was at 3 Gs, which doesn’t sound like much, except for that it’s a longer time and through the chest instead of in-line with my torso which I’m used to from flying airplanes. At MECO (Main Engine Cut Off) I was thrown forward and up against my shoulder straps. A large, boomerang-shaped piece of ice slowly floated and rotated from the tank back and over the top of my seat and clear of the Shuttle. I felt like I was upside down. We were now going 5 miles a second at some 350 thousand feet. I was no longer an un-flown astronaut.
• The first day I felt like I was constantly falling, instead of floating. The first night I kept waking up with this falling feeling. I got used to zero-G sometime during the second day. Falling turned into floating.
• My first look at the earth limb..the thin line around the dark earth formed by the sun lighting up the atmosphere, was pretty interesting. Starting at the black edge of the earth was a thin line of violet, followed by increasingly lighter shades of blue, up to the porous edge of the atmosphere as it faded into space. It was a blue rainbow. The whole thing wasn’t very thick!
• EVA 3 on flight day 8 was a big day. I had the exhilaration of SAFELY picking up Wheels with the Shuttle’s Robotic Arm from the underside of the Space Station, moving him down into the Shuttle’s payload bay to pick up a 500 pound Main Bus Switching Unit and moving him and his payload back up the station to deliver it to a storage pallet on the main truss. I had a live pink-body (a close friend, to boot!) on the end of my arm and I had been sweating this task for a long time. It felt great to get it done and to drop Wheels off back on the US lab. As great as I felt then, I felt shocked and disbelieving when about an hour later I looked out Discovery’s starboard window after Pambo’s “abort” call and saw a large tear in the Solar Array we had just! moved. I had no idea how bad things were or what we would do next.
• The morning of EVA 4 was adrenaline filled. We were cheerful but not jovial. We had a good and thorough plan, but we had not rehearsed any of the complex arm movements or any of the EVA. We usually get to do each a minimum of 7 times as part of our training. We had briefed the electric hazards if Scott contacted the array and they were pretty stark. I remember feeling (and saying) that this was not a done deal and that to take everything slow so as not to have any mistakes because there was no room for error. It was close to the same feeling I had manning up for combat flights many years ago.
• The sheer enjoyment I had flying the Shuttle away from the Station and then for one vertical lap around it. We flew right over the “toe” of Italy and Sicily and could see our handiwork on the Station back-dropped by the earth below us. The flying was more like ship-handling than close-formation flying in airplanes, but I had to anticipate the effects of orbital mechanics. I had done it several times in simulators but to see things out the window look the way they were supposed to was very exhilarating. Even after we did our separation burns to get some distance from the station, we would see her the rest of the day, as if we were playing a game of hide and seek in space.
• During Entry I made a deal with my buddies who would be on the windowless middeck to call out altitudes, speeds and distances to Kennedy. We made landfall over the Western Canadian coast but it was cloudy. I could see mountain ranges flying by. Pambo’s side of the cockpit was still dark (mine was lit, an oddity of flying in space) and out her window I could see the orange glow caused by our ionization of the air around the Shuttle. I saw crop irrigation circles during our first roll reversal and called that out to Clay Anderson, our returning Space Station crewmate. He’s from Nebraska and that is where our first roll-reversal was planned to happen, at Mach 19.4. We saw the Red River, and flew over Mississippi (shout-o! ut to t he Walkers!) and across the Gulf Coast so fast I wasn’t sure it was the Gulf. Then I saw the Cape, welcoming us home!
• Getting out and walking around the Shuttle after landing. I was very dizzy and it was windy, so I was concerned about falling down. I was very happy but the dizziness was near overwhelming. I got gradually better an on the third day back the dizziness had completely disappeared.
• Having my 6 year old son Allen tug on the President’s sleeve and ask for a high Five. The President said sure..then as the President took aim, Allen pulled his hand away! (Thanks for this special moment, Uncle Mark!) Then the President put his hand up and Allen gave it a hard smack. “Strong kid!” said the President, who was very relaxed and cheerful. This quick visit was put together at the last instant. I had no expectations, but the normal and the casual nature of this meeting was surprising and very enjoyable.
Anyway, there’s more where that came from with proper encouragement, but I didn’t want to kill you with all my sea stories. This was a surreal experience, the adventure of a lifetime.
I’m ready for normal now.
Thanks again to all for being great friends and family. I hope to see you all sometime soon.
George
Hello everybody,
It’s great to be back on the planet and I’ve pretty much adjusted to gravity again. Thanks to everyone for coming down, and those who tried to come down but couldn’t make it. I hope everyone had a great time. I’m slowly getting to all of your emails but I wanted to get one big one out to the group. Those of you who missed the reception but wanted your reception gift bag, (aka “geedunk,” or “bling”
and let Elisa know, should have it in a couple of days. Thanks a lot for sharing in our special event. Even though I missed all the fun it was great hearing about everyone who was in town and the going’s on. I’ve been reunited with “flat George” and it looks like he had a pretty good time. More fun than I’ve had in quite a while, I think!I figure there are a bunch of “so what’s it like” questions out there, so here is my feeble attempt at putting a few memories into words:
• While you guys were at the various viewing sites, I was with my buds (Pambo, Stephanie (Robeaux), Doug (Wheels or Flambo), Scott (Longbow), Dan (Boichi) and Paolo (Rocky)) riding the “Astrovan” (70’s interior, bench seating, air-conditioning hookups for our suits) to the launch pad. We passed the last line of human beings, maybe 2-3 miles from the pad, mounted in armored personnel carriers. They watch the launch all buttoned up. We gave them a wave of thanks for this toasty duty. Their job was to come get us from a bunker we would have evacuated to in case of a serious emergency at the pad.
• We got out of the van at the launch pad and looked at Discovery. Fully fueled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, drops of water and condensed fog were falling from the external tank all around us, and the tank hissed and creaked like a dragon. There was nobody else around, the pad is evacuated except for the strap-in crew, and us, after the Shuttle gets fueled.
• I was concentrating mostly on my actions in the minutes leading up to the launch. At T=0 though there was a big jolt and I got pressed back into my seat, like a catapult shot off of an aircraft carrier. For the first two minutes on the solid rocket boosters the ride is fairly bouncy, with the G’s going through my chest and varying from 1.5-2 times the force of gravity. We hit Mach 1 at about 42 seconds. There was a bright flash as the separation motors pushed the now-empty solid rocket boosters away at about 2 minutes and 150 thousand feet, about Mach 5. The ride got smoother since we were now just on our main engines, and Pambo told me to look out the window. We were upside down and this gave me a great view of the East Coast of the US as we ascended. When we rolled to heads-up at about Mach 15, the very bright sun came into the cockpit and I could very clearly see the curvature of the Earth. It was about the same as looking over the top of a big beach ball. The last minute of ascent was at 3 Gs, which doesn’t sound like much, except for that it’s a longer time and through the chest instead of in-line with my torso which I’m used to from flying airplanes. At MECO (Main Engine Cut Off) I was thrown forward and up against my shoulder straps. A large, boomerang-shaped piece of ice slowly floated and rotated from the tank back and over the top of my seat and clear of the Shuttle. I felt like I was upside down. We were now going 5 miles a second at some 350 thousand feet. I was no longer an un-flown astronaut.
• The first day I felt like I was constantly falling, instead of floating. The first night I kept waking up with this falling feeling. I got used to zero-G sometime during the second day. Falling turned into floating.
• My first look at the earth limb..the thin line around the dark earth formed by the sun lighting up the atmosphere, was pretty interesting. Starting at the black edge of the earth was a thin line of violet, followed by increasingly lighter shades of blue, up to the porous edge of the atmosphere as it faded into space. It was a blue rainbow. The whole thing wasn’t very thick!
• EVA 3 on flight day 8 was a big day. I had the exhilaration of SAFELY picking up Wheels with the Shuttle’s Robotic Arm from the underside of the Space Station, moving him down into the Shuttle’s payload bay to pick up a 500 pound Main Bus Switching Unit and moving him and his payload back up the station to deliver it to a storage pallet on the main truss. I had a live pink-body (a close friend, to boot!) on the end of my arm and I had been sweating this task for a long time. It felt great to get it done and to drop Wheels off back on the US lab. As great as I felt then, I felt shocked and disbelieving when about an hour later I looked out Discovery’s starboard window after Pambo’s “abort” call and saw a large tear in the Solar Array we had just! moved. I had no idea how bad things were or what we would do next.
• The morning of EVA 4 was adrenaline filled. We were cheerful but not jovial. We had a good and thorough plan, but we had not rehearsed any of the complex arm movements or any of the EVA. We usually get to do each a minimum of 7 times as part of our training. We had briefed the electric hazards if Scott contacted the array and they were pretty stark. I remember feeling (and saying) that this was not a done deal and that to take everything slow so as not to have any mistakes because there was no room for error. It was close to the same feeling I had manning up for combat flights many years ago.
• The sheer enjoyment I had flying the Shuttle away from the Station and then for one vertical lap around it. We flew right over the “toe” of Italy and Sicily and could see our handiwork on the Station back-dropped by the earth below us. The flying was more like ship-handling than close-formation flying in airplanes, but I had to anticipate the effects of orbital mechanics. I had done it several times in simulators but to see things out the window look the way they were supposed to was very exhilarating. Even after we did our separation burns to get some distance from the station, we would see her the rest of the day, as if we were playing a game of hide and seek in space.
• During Entry I made a deal with my buddies who would be on the windowless middeck to call out altitudes, speeds and distances to Kennedy. We made landfall over the Western Canadian coast but it was cloudy. I could see mountain ranges flying by. Pambo’s side of the cockpit was still dark (mine was lit, an oddity of flying in space) and out her window I could see the orange glow caused by our ionization of the air around the Shuttle. I saw crop irrigation circles during our first roll reversal and called that out to Clay Anderson, our returning Space Station crewmate. He’s from Nebraska and that is where our first roll-reversal was planned to happen, at Mach 19.4. We saw the Red River, and flew over Mississippi (shout-o! ut to t he Walkers!) and across the Gulf Coast so fast I wasn’t sure it was the Gulf. Then I saw the Cape, welcoming us home!
• Getting out and walking around the Shuttle after landing. I was very dizzy and it was windy, so I was concerned about falling down. I was very happy but the dizziness was near overwhelming. I got gradually better an on the third day back the dizziness had completely disappeared.
• Having my 6 year old son Allen tug on the President’s sleeve and ask for a high Five. The President said sure..then as the President took aim, Allen pulled his hand away! (Thanks for this special moment, Uncle Mark!) Then the President put his hand up and Allen gave it a hard smack. “Strong kid!” said the President, who was very relaxed and cheerful. This quick visit was put together at the last instant. I had no expectations, but the normal and the casual nature of this meeting was surprising and very enjoyable.
Anyway, there’s more where that came from with proper encouragement, but I didn’t want to kill you with all my sea stories. This was a surreal experience, the adventure of a lifetime.
I’m ready for normal now.
Thanks again to all for being great friends and family. I hope to see you all sometime soon.
George
