Chasing Space

by Leland Melvin

  Other training took place offsite. In October, I joined Steve, Alan, Rex, Hans, and Stan for a NOLS survival skills course in Canyonlands, Utah. We carried eighty-five-pound backpacks for ten days, traversing washed-out roads and withstanding the treacherous effects of a one-hundred-year flood. Our NOLS instructors pushed us to our limits to see how we reacted as a team in adverse conditions. We all had our breaking points. My training with three-a-day football sessions had prepared me for those all-day survival-type sessions. The military guys had undergone similar training, especially the special forces types. We wanted to be ready for whatever the space shuttle, space station, or space itself threw at us. We couldn’t allow personality conflicts or discomforts to get in the way of the mission: Deliver the payloads and get home safely.

  In the spring of 2007, I did more training, including a stint at the Memorial Hermann–Texas Medical Center in Houston to learn the basics of emergency medicine. Every space shuttle mission has a designated medical officer. Often it just so happens that one of the astronauts on a mission is a medical doctor, and that was the case with my second mission, STS-129. On that flight, there was Dr. Robert Satcher, a Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon with a doctorate in chemical engineering from MIT. We had no such person on my first shuttle flight, so I volunteered to take on the task.

  Given the limitations imposed by my incident in the Neural Buoyance Laboratory five years earlier, I figured I should make myself useful in every way possible. I wasn’t squeamish and liked the science of the human body. As a professional athlete I had developed an appreciation for physiology and anatomy—I knew what the body could withstand.

  The medical officer is responsible for handling any medical problems and emergencies that come up during the mission, along with routine stuff like doling out the sleeping pills that some astronauts take to help them get through the zero-gravity nights. The training took eight weeks and covered everything from inserting a catheter (training I unfortunately had to put to use on the mission) to stitching up wounds and giving injections.

  The most incredible part was that I was assigned to work with Dr. Red Duke. He had been a young surgical resident at Dallas’s Parkland Memorial Hospital on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald as the presidential motorcade rolled past the Texas School Book Depository. He was the first doctor on hand to receive the president before he had to turn his attention to saving the life of another patient brought in that afternoon. Though he didn’t realize it immediately, that other patient was John Connally, the Texas governor who also took a bullet that day but survived.

  Dr. Duke was a force. He was a skilled physician in the operating room who possessed a folksy, country-doctor bedside manner. He liked to hum Willie Nelson songs around the ER; the two apparently were close friends. “He was a world-class surgeon trapped in a Texan’s body,” Congressman Ted Poe once said, describing him as “John Wayne in scrubs.” Luckily for NASA, he revered the space program.

  On my first day training in the ER, a teenage boy was wheeled in with a large gash on his leg, the result of a car accident. “Go stitch him up, Leland,” Dr. Duke barked. The cut was several inches long, but I first had to stitch the muscle underneath. If there’s one thing they train you in the Astronaut Corps, it’s how to act confident in the face of uncertainty. “How many of these have you done?” I remember the boy asking, his big eyes staring into mine. “Enough,” I responded in a casual voice. The truth was that I had, if you consider cadavers in that meaning of “enough.” It was part of my training.

  Under Dr. Duke, I learned how to find arteries, draw blood, and put clips on blood vessels to keep patients from bleeding out. We started on cadavers, but as time went on and our confidence grew, we worked on live patients in the ER. NASA had a way of putting astronaut trainees in stressful situations, and I couldn’t think of too many more stressful than working on a Friday night in a big-city hospital emergency room.

  My medical training also included learning how to insert and use catheters, a skill that can save lives in outer space. On Earth, gravity exerts force on a full bladder to let you know that you have to use the bathroom. There is no gravity in space, where after a few days a full bladder can explode.

  On that same day that the car-crash patient asked about my experience, I had to insert a tube into a man’s stomach, through his nose. That was a first for me, too. But, perhaps the most dramatic trial by fire that day came in the form of a drunken young woman covered in tattoos and piercings. She had been the driver in a collision that had killed her friend. We had to insert an IV but her veins had collapsed, and a rattled young resident was having no success inserting the needle into her jugular vein, the only accessible blood vessel. “Leland, take over,” Dr. Duke said. I knew I just had to do it, and my success earned me a reputation in the ER.

  Not every day of training was so dramatic. Back at the space center, the crew sometimes celebrated a good run in the simulator by going to local watering holes like Boondoggles or the Outpost to let off some steam. Mostly, though, we trained, and training continued until the day the mission began. An engine-cutoff sensor problem pushed our planned December 2007 launch until February 2008. We were able to rest for a short while but mostly we took “refreshers,” exercises that kept our skills sharp and up to date.

  About a week before heading to Florida, we sequestered ourselves in Johnson Space Center crew quarters for a week. Any visitors had to be cleared by a doctor because no one wanted to take any germs into space. Our families weren’t with us but our robotics simulators were, and we practiced until we flew to Cape Canaveral for the final five days before launch.

  Launch day: I remember all of us in the elevator leaving the second floor of astronaut crew quarters, starting to walk out, seeing the lights and cameras, our friends shouting and screaming. My high school chemistry teacher Cornealea Campbell and her son Cornel were among those on hand to cheer us on. I remember hearing him yell my name as we prepared to enter the silver Astrovan to ride to the launchpad. Typically, an astronaut could be assigned to a mission after basic shuttle and station training, which takes about a year and a half. Because of my medical situation, my path was far from typical: I ended up training for nearly ten years, starting from my AsCan days in 1998.

  In the van, I looked over at Rex, whom I would be sitting next to in the shuttle. We exchanged grins. Finally, it was about to begin.

  9

  The Final Frontier

  I am about to take the ride of my life. Our seven-member crew is strapped into the shuttle Atlantis, according to seat order. Dex and Steve went first, then Rex and me on the flight deck, followed by Stan, Leo, and Hans on the mid-deck. Suit techs and astronaut support personnel make sure we don’t bump anything while getting in our seats. They connect the crewmembers to the oxygen and the chiller that will keep us cool in our suits over the next three hours. The techs hand us our checklists, notepads, and pens that are tethered to us, enabling us to pull them back if we drop them. Actually everything is tethered, in case our gloved hands make us clumsy. After getting situated, we perform a suit check to make sure we have no leaks.

  The clock at Cape Canaveral counts down to the moment of liftoff, when the shuttle’s three main engines roar to life. Seconds after the main engines start, the solid rocket boosters will ignite and lift us through the heavy parts of Earth’s atmosphere. In less than three minutes, the boosters will be jettisoned from the shuttle after their fuel is spent. Still on the ground, we have a ten-minute window to fix any problems that may be detected in the shuttle’s hydraulics, electrical, or fuel valve systems and still launch.

  If the launch is forced to occur during that window, it’s important to make sure there’s enough fuel, proper weight, and perfect weather conditions to chase the International Space Station. It seems I have been chasing goals placed before me—the NFL, a career in engineering, and now a space station orbiting high above the Earth.

  I fist-bump Dex, S
teve, and Rex as the safety systems are armed, the balance and pressure systems checked, and the water activated. The thrust of the main engines tilts us forward and back, a motion we NASA folks call “the twang.” Suddenly there is the wondrous thunder of the solid rocket boosters roaring to life.

  Imagine you’re in a sports car going about one hundred miles per hour. Our acceleration was one thousand times more intense. We were pinned in our seats, feeling three times our weight on our chests. I remember laboring to breathe during the two minutes before the solid rocket boosters were finally jettisoned. At that point, I thought, OK, we’re heading to space.

  A minute later, we reached 10,000 miles per hour, rocketing over the east coast of the United States with the Atlantic Ocean shimmering in the background. Another five minutes passed as we reached 17,500 miles per hour, fast enough to shut off the engines and jettison the external tank.

  When the main engines cut off, I felt I was no longer chasing space. I had arrived. I had made it to that spacious habitation, the phrase that came to mind when I first looked down from space and saw our home, the Earth. A reporter asked me after the Atlantis mission what was it like to be up there. I initially spoke about floating and seeing things that weren’t attached to anything in the shuttle floating around us. The talk quickly turned to that magnificent view of Earth. I saw the planet for the first time without borders. I thought about all the places on Earth where there’s unrest and war, and here we were flying above all that, working together as one team to help advance our civilization. That was an incredible, incredible moment for me.

  From space, our views of the rivers, seas, and oceans—with all their various shades and pigments—would challenge any painter’s vocabulary. There aren’t fifty shades of blue to describe the Caribbean because its blues from space are so intense. Turquoise, indigo, azure—I quickly ran out of words that would do it justice. I didn’t think about color a lot before going to space. Although I appreciate sunrise, sunset, the blackness of the night sky, and the blinding white of snow-capped mountains, I hadn’t anticipated such a stunning array of blue water.

  But we weren’t up there to take in the sights, amazing as they were. Hans and I unstrapped ourselves from our seats and prepared to take images of the shuttle. I shot video and he shot stills. In one image we captured the fan-shaped spread of light that is the propellant-residue flares from the external tank. The tank itself plunged toward the Indian Ocean. After we reached orbit, we set about converting the shuttle from a rocket ship into our home away from home. First we had to open the payload bay doors before activating the shuttle’s robotic arm, the device I had been training so long to operate. On flight day two, our first full day in orbit, we used the arm to grapple an inspection boom. Moving it up the side of the payload bay, we scanned the orbiter to make sure our heat shields hadn’t been damaged during takeoff. We also started prepping for the first of our three spacewalks, and the chance to put all that extravehicular activity training to good use.

  On flight day three, we connected with the International Space Station. We began the day about forty miles behind the space station, checking off our rendezvous protocol and using laptops, a laser ranger, and other tools as we maneuvered to get below the station. By the time we completed our procedures and approached docking, the shuttle and the space station were moving slowly toward each other, while each was moving in orbit around the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour.

  The station is essentially a series of interlocking modules in low Earth orbit. After initial assembly of the station—which began in 1998, the year I became a Penguin—most modules and compartments, usually research laboratories of some sort, have been delivered and installed via shuttle missions like ours. Once in operation, the Columbus lab, which we were delivering, would be used for experiments in biology, biomedical research, and fluid physics.

  After contact and capture, we joined Steve, our commander, in briefly celebrating our safe rendezvous. A NASA image of the moment shows me congratulating him with a camera in my hand.

  We opened the hatches and entered Node 2, where we greeted space station commander Peggy Whitson and her crew, Yuri Malenchenko and Dan Tani. The month before we arrived, Peggy and Dan had participated in a seven-hour, ten-minute spacewalk, replacing a motor at the base of the one of the station’s solar wings. Dan would be heading home with us on our return flight and Leo would be replacing him on the station. We were pleased to be able to stretch our legs, even while adjusting to our new environment.

  Most of the modules on the station have four sides and they’re put together in a way that enables the crew to work continuously on flat planes, either a wall, a floor, another wall, or the ceiling. All they have to do is turn and their frame of reference changes. Because objects in orbit are in a continuous state of freefall, handrails, tethers, Velcro, and other devices are employed to keep objects securely attached to the work surfaces.

  In addition to all the workspaces, there is a kitchen and two bathrooms. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, used to joke that there were no bathrooms on the Enterprise because the crew just set their phasers on disintegrate to get rid of waste. Bodily functions are handled differently on the space station. The facilities are quite small, containing a tiny toilet for a number two and a corrugated hose topped with a yellow funnel for number one. Going to the bathroom for the first time was an adventure because (1) we didn’t train for it much on the ground, and (2) in zero gravity, everything floats. Fortunately, both devices offer a bit of suction to keep things going in the right direction. A little curtain provides some privacy, but not much.

  On the station, sleeping quarters are similarly confined. Each sleep station is like a tiny phone booth/office, with sleeping bags to the walls, a computer, and room for a few books. On the shuttle we would strap our sleeping bag with bungees and float in our bags in a place that a few hours before bedtime had served as the kitchen.

  There are so many unforgettable aspects of life in space, including the experiments, the robotics, and the spacewalks, but I think my most memorable moment took place when Peggy and her crew invited us to have dinner over in the service module. “You guys bring the vegetables, we’ll bring the meat,” they said, and we all congregated around the small table, with some floating above and others below. There we were, French, German, Russian, Asian American, African American, listening to Sade’s silky vocals and having a meal in space. Out the window we could see Afghanistan, Iraq, and other troubled spots. Two hundred and forty miles above those strife-torn places, we sat in peace with people we once counted among our nation’s enemies, bound by a common commitment to explore space for the benefit of all humanity. It was one of the most inspiring moments of my life.

  While the space smorgasbord with Peggy’s crew included Russian and international cuisine along with canned beef and barley, most of our meals consisted solely of typical American fare. Many people associate astronaut food with that freeze-dried ice cream sold in museum gift shops. In truth, you won’t find that on the space station, but you will find thermally stabilized and irradiated food that tastes much like the entrees served on Earth. Some food needed only to be heated while others required the addition of water. My favorites included beef brisket, mac and cheese, and string beans with almonds. M&M’s and Raisinettes made great snacks, with the added bonus of being fun to play with. We trapped the tiny treats in water bubbles and gobbled them up as they floated by.

  Staying properly nourished and fit was critical to our success at performing the jobs we had to do. The effects of zero gravity on the body made self-maintenance part of our daily routine. Without the pressure of Earth’s gravity, the body begins to do funky things. For example, every vertebra gets room to move, stretching the spine. I’m five foot eleven on Earth but I was six feet on the station. After my spine elongated, when I went to bed on the first night I felt some pains in my lower back. I had to curl up in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort. The heart also changes in space. Its gets s
maller and changes shape because it doesn’t have to pump as hard to pull the blood up from your feet. Without gravity, our bones change shape, lose calcium, and become more brittle. As a preventive measure, we worked out on a treadmill specially designed to help us combat loss of bone density. (We also had an exercise bike and a resistive exercise device or weightlifting machine.) Some astronauts experience intracranial pressure changes that push on their eyeballs, changing the shape of the eyeballs and forcing the astronauts to wear glasses in space. We kept different prescriptions of glasses on board just in case someone’s vision changed.

  Meanwhile, our major objective was to install the Columbus Laboratory. It began with a spacewalk. Before passing through an airlock and a hatch to enter the vacuum of space, Rex and Stan put on suits with bulky backpacks that on Earth would weigh about 300 pounds. Their equipment included oxygen, heating, cooling, carbon dioxide removal systems, and a computer. Once in space, Stan attached a grapple fixture that enabled me to grab and move Columbus with the fifty-eight-foot robotic arm. Working with Dan and Leo at the robotics workstation, I could look at monitors to maneuver the big shiny module. It was very slow work that required a lot of configuration to line it up just right. We had beautiful views of the Earth through the aft window as we pulled Columbus into its berth in Node 2. Following the installation, we had outfitting tasks to do, including removing launch locks and installing handrails. Our second and third spacewalks involved more work with the Columbus, including attaching external payloads. I operated the arm for those procedures and others, such as switching out a nitrogen tank on the space station and retrieving a broken gyroscope for repair and reuse.