Out of Orbit

by Chris Jones

  Now there were still no doors. But neither were there floors or ceilings, nor was there any up or down. There was only the reasonable facsimile of walls, and just about every square inch of them was occupied with tools, spare parts, boxes of food, control panels, cameras, laptops, racks of scientific experiments, and personal effects—Nike sneakers bound behind elastic straps and photographs taped up, as well as sleeping bags, toothbrushes, shaving mirrors, utensils, portable compact disc players, an Australian didgeridoo (owned by Pettit), and one really ugly necktie (brought up by Bowersox).

  Floating their way through this cluttered, closed-in tunnel, they now felt like actors on the most elaborate set ever built, put together by hundreds, even thousands, of designers, builders, and prop masters. Station had been in orbit just long enough for it to feel experienced; its sharpest edges had been worn down and its fresh-from-the-factory luster had been scratched and tarnished. But it was also new enough for it to feel as if it was still being built, even invented—which, of course, it was. As with a house stuck in the middle of a perpetual renovation, there was a kind of sketched-out order to things, but there was also plenty of chaos and dust. Until the last module had been dreamed up and launched, until the final piece of the puzzle had been put into place, it would always feel as though the workers had gone home for the night but were ready to come back and pick things up again tomorrow, having left their chop saw on the kitchen table in the meantime.

  When the International Space Station is finally finished, it will look like an enormous mobile, revolving around an axis of modules—silver, vaguely cylindrical rooms bolted to each other mostly end to end—built and equipped by one or more of sixteen countries: principally the United States and Russia, but also Canada, Japan, the eleven nations of the European Space Agency, and Brazil. Although the station’s blueprints have been continually scribbled over and updated since its inception, the long list of planned modules includes at least six laboratories; a couple of dedicated living spaces with room for as many as seven astronauts; a checklist of nodes, adapters, and docking ports; and an ever-ready Soyuz capsule, Russia’s age-old means of space exploration, now fulfilling the role of lifeboat. The entire structure, running perpendicular to the backbone of trusses that Endeavour’s crew had just added on to, will be powered by almost an acre’s worth of solar panels. And at an estimated final dimension of 356 feet across and 290 feet long (weighing in at more than one million pounds), the completed station will easily eclipse the next largest manmade object ever in space. It will be more than four times as large as Mir, the world’s first multimodule space station. It will look as though we’ve slipped another star into the sky.

  But in November 2002, the International Space Station was still a long way from throwing off its own light. Only three principal modules had been strung together, making it look more like a tin-can telephone than one of the wonders of the modern world, the whole of it electrified by just eight slim solar panels. The truth of it was, Expedition Six had moved into a home that was more dream than reality, and Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit were left trying to make themselves comfortable in a basement that had just been poured.

  · · ·

  At one end was Destiny, the scientific laboratory built and financed by the Americans. It was also one of the newest modules, launched less than two years earlier, in February 2001. Where the shuttle had been docked, there was now a closed hatch. Sometime in the future, it might be propped open, leading the way to another, as yet absent module. But for Expedition Six, it was a portal only to nothingness.

  Turning their backs to it, they saw a long, narrow space about the size of a school bus, packed with a tangle of power cables, computers, panels, and scientific gear. For most of us, it would seem cramped to the brink of collapse. For someone like Don Pettit, it was the only playground in the universe that stood a chance at satisfying his insatiable curiosity.

  He liked it so much that he slept in it, in the most isolated of the station’s three sleeping compartments. Inside, a sleeping bag had been strapped to one of the walls. (When the station is complete, this particular sleeping compartment will be moved to one of the proposed habitation modules; for now, it was just the most convenient place to stow another body, among the racks of plants, fluids, combustibles, and medical paraphernalia.)

  Across from and next to Pettit’s bedroom, there was space for as many as thirteen racks of experiments. Running along the module’s two “sides,” they helped manufacture an artificial sense of ceiling and floor—with top and bottom further defined by Destiny’s few patches of white space and hand- and footholds painted electric blue. They helped the astronauts orient themselves in a world otherwise without landmarks. The racks had the added advantage of being interchangeable, their function dependent on the interests of the current residents and the wishes of government and civilian scientists on the ground. Each of the experiments had inaccessible names like the Fundamental Biology Habitat Holding Rack and the Materials Science Research Rack, but really they were just the boxes in which the rats were kept, or where dishes of proteins and crystals were seeded.

  Jumping out from the clutter was also something called the Microgravity Glovebox, which Expedition Five had installed and quickly broken. Like an incubator for a premature baby, it was a sealed container with built-in gloves, allowing the crew to handle more exotic experiments—those involving fire, say, or gases—without having to worry about poisoning themselves or turning their home into a nebula. Whenever Pettit floated past this dormant, precious thing, he let out a little sigh, hearing the echoes of the stern orders from the ground: DO NOT TOUCH. He wondered how they could ever find out if he ignored their demands—and, more important, how they might punish him if he did. That broken glove box gave him the resolve to earn his way into a longer leash.

  In the meantime, Destiny offered plenty more to occupy his time. In addition to the bundles of experiments, the module housed a series of IBM ThinkPads that monitored and controlled the health of station. (Rather than running things with old-timey switches and buttons, Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit could issue commands through on-screen tabs.) There was also the joystick that was wired into the robotic arm, as well as the means to fire up cameras that could scan the station’s exterior and project the images on a collection of monitors, making it look like the security guard’s desk in the lobby of a high-rise.

  But Destiny’s architectural highlight was a huge, beautiful, circular window near the center of the module, surrounded by rows and rows of silver bolts. (A break in that seal would release a high-pitched, ultimately heart-stopping whistle.) Almost two feet wide and an optical gem, that window offered the clearest views of earth from station. More often than not, someone was next to it, unblinking, open-mouthed. Through its perfect glass, astronauts had taken pictures of avalanches and plankton blooms that looked like high art.

  · · ·

  At the end opposite to the hatch, Destiny tapered into an open-ended cone, through which Expedition Six kicked into a small space called the Node, or Unity, because it helped bridge the American segment and whatever modules Russia chose to send up—Zarya and Zvezda, thus far. In some ways, it was a neglected space, more of a way to get somewhere else than a place of its own. But for some of the station’s past crews, and soon for Bowersox, it became a favorite sanctuary. There wasn’t much in it: a few large white bags filled with laundry and supplies, a wall of water-filled containers, and on the “ceiling” there was a resistive exercise device, on which the crew could do upside-down squats using giant rubber bands. But there was something more to it. Whether by accident or by design, it was somehow more welcoming than the rest of station, warmer, more homelike. It was a kind of cocoon. The lighting was soft, and it was usually quiet, and its interior had been painted a different color from the rest of station’s stark white—almost a shade of pink, closer to coral. Astronauts who hadn’t visited the International Space Station sometimes poked fun at the Node’s anonymous interior decorator
and his burst of wacky flair, but those who had been there expressed an appreciation for it that bordered on love.

  Jim Voss, who had spent 163 days in station with Expedition Two (and who had spent parts of many of those days tucked away inside the Node), summed up those good feelings best: “I had always laughed when they talked about using that color for the Node interior,” he had said after his return. “I thought, Who came up with this? But whoever it was did a wonderful job, because it made it the most pleasant place. That was where I went whenever I wasn’t able to sleep, or when I wanted to be alone to listen to music.”

  It would become the same sort of retreat for Bowersox; he thought of it as a place in which he could unwind, dream, relax. It had become the station’s Finnish sauna.

  Off to one side of it was another small space, but one that wasn’t the scene of much easy breathing. The Quest Airlock was the jumping off point for American space walks. In it, the torsos of two bulky white spacesuits were stored, lined up like powered-down robots. And beyond them, a large hatch waited for the next time someone would open it up and see nothing but black.

  Back into the Node, Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit passed through a narrow tunnel, two more open-ended cones bolted together. It was made to feel tighter for all of the supplies stored in it, as well as a couple of fat white ventilation tubes that ran through it. Down through its floor was another docking port, one that the Russian Soyuz capsule could latch on to. And just a little farther along, Zarya (the Russian word for sunrise) opened up.

  Zarya would always hold a certain distinction for being the International Space Station’s first segment, slung into a solitary orbit on an unmanned rocket in November 1998. But it never had much more going for it, including a technical name about as unromantic as it gets: Functional Cargo Block. Boiled down, the module was little more than a big closet, glossed up by two small solar panels that extended out into space from either side of its hull. Its four interior walls were filled with boxes of food strapped down by bungee cords, along with more containers of water and dozens of batteries. It also housed an amateur radio, marked by a set of headphones clipped to the wall. With them, Expedition Six could listen in to whatever eager ham radio operators they happened to pass over on their ever-changing orbits. But more often, they would use Zarya for more mundane purposes, like hanging out their laundry to dry. There were usually at least a few pairs of shorts and a couple of T-shirts pinned down by their waistbands or a single sleeve, the rest of them floating in the air, stiff-looking, as though they had been given a nearly lethal dose of starch.

  What Zarya lacked in charisma, Zvezda (suitably, Russian for star) made up for. If Destiny was the station’s brain and Zarya was its whiffy armpit, Zvezda was its heart, without a doubt.

  For mid-deck-bound Expedition Six, entering this, the largest of the station’s modules, was like opening the flaps of a circus tent. Also called the Russian Service Module, Zvezda was forty-eight feet long and airy, peppered with fourteen windows. Relative to Destiny, at least, it was also more shipshape, with most of its purely functional equipment having been locked away behind panels. The spareness hid Zvezda’s true importance to station. With its flight control and propulsion systems, its occasional rocket firings helped keep Expedition Six in orbit. With its galley, toilet, exercise equipment, and sleeping compartments, it helped them meet their more human needs, too. Given the magic inherent in spaceflight, sometimes it’s easy to forget that astronauts, as otherworldly as they might seem, still need to sleep, eat, and go potty. This was the place for it.

  In the main, Zvezda was a near replica of Mir’s principal chamber, now more than twenty years old. Along its walls were some of the expected pieces of computer hardware and a collection of restraint bars, but behind its many panels were machines of a more honed, necessary grace: a system that takes water out of the air and purifies it enough to drink; another that zaps that same water with charges of electricity, breaking it down into clean, fresh hydrogen and oxygen. (The water recycling was particularly important: without it, shipping up enough H2O to sustain the station’s crew would have cost the program $700 million each year.) But like the insides of a watch, most of its complex mechanics were hidden away behind a more attractive face, and for the men of Expedition Six, Zvezda was like a loft apartment without the exposed brick.

  Of its luxuries, the most important was the galley, calling out to Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit from the starboard side of station, toward the far end of Zvezda. Around and behind a red Formica table with plenty of foot restraints bolted underneath it—so that the crew could sit down and eat dinner like civilized people—there were hot and cold (actually lukewarm) water taps, a food warmer the size of a briefcase, and dozens of metal-faced drawers filled with meals, snacks, and drink bags. Like kitchens on earth, it was a busy, social place. It didn’t hurt that a surprisingly good sound system had been hooked up, helping boost the astronauts through their daily routine. During mealtime, Expedition Six would crank one of the several albums that had been brought up to station and left over time. Santana proved a particular favorite. Weightlessness made for some terrific air guitar.

  On the floor next to the table sat a treadmill, on which a strapped-down Bowersox, especially, and again accompanied by music, liked to run for daylight. On either side of the treadmill, two sleeping compartments faced each other, Budarin’s starboard, the galley side, and Bowersox’s port. Like Pettit’s pad back in Destiny, each contained a sleeping bag unrolled against an otherwise empty wall, a laptop computer, and a small window. Come lights-out, it was a little like slipping into one of those Japanese hotels that rents out human-size mail slots rather than genuine rooms, but still, they were private and cozy, havens that provided just enough personal space to keep a man from cracking up.

  For Bowersox, however, Zvezda was noisy, noisy enough to disturb his sleep. In the end, he would occupy his designated bunk for about a month, just long enough to make sure that the Russians weren’t offended by his moving out. He would end up floating his sleeping bag into his beloved Node, where he would spend the rest of the mission snoring with his back against water bottles. He made that call not just because they felt a little like a bed, but because water is an excellent radiation shield, and try as he might to block it, Don Thomas’s fate had never been far from his mind.

  Bowersox hadn’t liked sleeping next to the toilet, either, shining just beyond Zvezda’s sleeping compartments. It was a tiny, square, metal contraption that, when its lid was closed, looked like it might make waffles.

  Going to the bathroom has always been one of the great perils of space exploration. For men, anyway, urinating is usually easy enough, at least with the help of a hose and some suction. Taking a crap is the bigger pickle. The most horrific stories have been passed down among astronauts like the kinds of fables that make children scared to look under their beds. Through them, veterans bestow the lessons they’ve learned with gravitas; rookies, however, will still no doubt find themselves in pitched battle against a wayward shit. The goriest details are usually kept within the astronaut fold—deemed too graphic and uncomfortable to share in polite (read: civilian) company, like the persistent rumors of space sex. But the bottom line is that in space, whatever isn’t pinned down takes flight, including poop. In other words, bowel evacuation in orbit is never a passive exercise—a certain velocity must be given to the offending projectile, enough to deliver it to the surface of the toilet’s bowl and make it stick. It’s just too bad that sometimes there isn’t enough gunpowder in the cannon.

  It was too bad, too, that the station was still without a shower. (It won’t arrive until one of the planned habitation modules makes the trip up.) Because water remains a scarce resource, crews have had to make do with a quick splash and a scrub-down with moist towelettes. Hence, there is a particular urgency when it comes to making a clean getaway from the can. For some astronauts, it’s enough to turn their guts into concrete.

  What goes in must eventually c
ome out, however, a harsh reality in realms beyond the toilet—more specifically, in the end cone that caps Zvezda. Occasionally it served as a docking port for Progress—an unmanned Russian cargo ship used to ferry loads of food, clothing, spare parts, letters, and small gifts from home into the crew’s open arms—but most of the time, the hatch was filled with garbage, waiting to be taken out to the curb.

  With Expedition Five having bundled up their crushed cans and empty foil wrappers and taken them back down to earth, the passageway was clear, but that tidiness would last for only a short while. It didn’t take long for Expedition Six to begin filling up the station’s empty spaces, and not just with their trash. The men and women who had gone up before them had already left their own legacies, each one of their contributions layered on top of the last, like so much graffiti on a once white train. There was a silver ship’s bell mounted on a bracket in Destiny, across from Pettit’s sleeping compartment; a photograph, stuck on a bulkhead above the galley, of a white-bearded Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of modern space flight; and enough musical instruments to put on an impromptu concert, including an electronic keyboard and an acoustic guitar.

  Now it was up to Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit to make their own marks on station, to leave their own fingerprints, to find their own memories. It was up to them to furnish their new home, and to make it theirs alone.