Shuttle, Houston

by Paul Dye

  The Mir was configured with a central node (essentially a ball). Cylindrical modules stuck out of the ball in the cardinal directions. It looked heavy and stout, but looks can be deceiving with spacecraft. In truth, space structures like Mir are light and springy. To give you an idea just how light and springy, we were told by one long-duration astronaut that if they were at the far end of one module, and looking through the central node to the far end of another, and someone began exercising on the treadmill, there was enough flexing from the vibration that the far end of the opposing module actually disappeared from view. Now that’s flexible! It was more robust than it might have looked though, at least from a systems standpoint. Astronauts who were on board when it lost attitude control (and, therefore, solar power) reported that it would go completely dark. Then when the sun came back, everything just came right back on—fans, lights, pumps, computers—it just kept on ticking. There were no reports on whether the digital clocks were flashing “12:00” though.

  Remember that the Russians had ways of bringing things to the Mir, but they were not able to bring much of anything back until we started flying there with the Shuttle. As a result, the Mir’s interior became progressively more cluttered as the years went on. Eventually, it looked a lot like a World War II submarine—cramped, with things hanging all over every wall. It would have been nice for us to help them clean it out, but we had lots of experiments and other cargo to return (like Russian docking computers). Our astronauts even added to the clutter, leaving little bits and pieces of their personal collections behind on every increment. Shannon Lucid, the second astronaut to live aboard the Mir, told me that when the station finally reentered the atmosphere and burned up on its way to the Pacific Ocean, she thought of her reading library, the books she had brought along to keep her occupied in her spare time. They’d been left there for future astronauts (and they couldn’t come back, because they weren’t on the “down manifest”). So they went down with the ship, and she was a little sad about that. A waste of good books, but science down-mass comes first.

  After the docking module was installed on STS-74, the Shuttle-Mir Program continued. About every third Shuttle flight went to the Mir. Atlantis was the primary vehicle until near the end, when Endeavour took a turn. Discovery docked the final time on STS-91. There were nine docked missions all told, from June 1995 until June 1998. The final mission carried aloft the last Russian to fly in the program, a surprise passenger, Valeri Ryumin, a former cosmonaut who effectively became the manager of the Mir flight program in Russia. It would have been the equivalent of sending the Shuttle Program Manager aloft to see just what the vehicle was like. Ryumin hadn’t been to space for a very long time, and he was a big guy—we always figured that he was a retired pilot who had no ambition or need to fly in space again. But there he was, going back up. Ryumin didn’t do a lot of training for the final trip to Mir, but he did enough to qualify for the flight. He had few assignments during the mission, and he spent much of his time simply observing or keeping to himself, according to some of the astronauts on the flight. It was probably one of the oddest incidents in the entire program, one that shows just how autocratic their program could be.

  The Shuttle-Mir Program set the stage for ISS in a way that is hard to underestimate. It is difficult to imagine how we would have gotten started with a brand-new vehicle at the same time we were trying to understand the Russian space culture (and they were trying to understand ours). There were fundamental differences in the way we looked at risk and safety. In one of our very first meetings with the Russian operations team, for instance, we asked them about their landing philosophy. We knew that they brought the Soyuz down in the middle of Kazakhstan, whereas we landed our similar Apollo vehicles in the ocean. For us, one of the advantages to the ocean landing was that the debris associated with reentry would never pose a risk to anyone on land. (The service module, which was larger than the crew capsule, separated after the vehicle was committed to reentry, and there was a possibility that large pieces could make it to the surface.)

  In the Russian system, pieces of their service and orbit modules could, if they survived reentry, impact land somewhere in the steppes of Central Asia. We asked them how they managed the risk of this, and if they were worried about hitting anyone. They were puzzled at the question, so we had our interpreter explain it again, asking if the risk of hitting anyone out on the steppes concerned them. It was if a lightbulb had suddenly gone off over their heads as they understood what we were asking—and their answer was, “But… they’re just Kazakhs!” That gave us a little bit of a window into their post-Soviet feelings on risk, for sure. While we were shocked at the answer, we later learned that they had a very robust view of what was considered to be acceptable risk. In fact, there were risks that we were satisfied with that appalled them. It wasn’t better or worse, it was just—different. And this was true about most of the differences we found.

  Our respective views on medicine were a source of humor for both sides. When we traveled to Moscow, we were quite leery of getting sick or injured and then having to be treated by the Russian medical community. We had heard things that made us worried about their grasp of medical science. So when we traveled, we each had a card with a set of phone numbers on it clipped to our badges. It was a way to get ahold of a medical evacuation service that was contracted by NASA to get us out of the country and back to “civilization” in case we had an accident or illness. I know that sounds both grim and rude—but the humor is that the Russians essentially felt the exact same way—but in reverse! They wanted to make sure that if they had a problem, they were treated in Russia, by the Russian medical community. It was simply a matter of perspective, and how (and where) you grew up.

  When we visited Russia, we were amazed at the way they drove in Moscow. Lane lines were simply suggestions (most of which were ignored), turn signals were for sissies, and aggressive driving was rewarded, not punished. We’d occasionally take a ride with a Russian colleague and came out amazed and a bit shaken that we’d actually gotten to our destination in one piece. The large ring road (a surface street) around the inner district of Moscow was allegedly six or eight lanes wide—but in practice, the drivers made room for about twelve. Yes, there were traffic police, and, yes, they cited infractions. But there were too few of them and too many drivers, so most got away scot-free. It was exciting, taking a ride with a local in Russia—and exciting in a way that you might not want.

  We were able to get even when the Russians visited with us in the United States. On weekends, we liked to show them around south Texas, just as they shared their city and country with us. So one weekend, a group organized a driving trip to San Antonio, about 250 miles west of Houston on Interstate 10. The speed limit was always 70 miles per hour on the highway, but the prevailing speed was more like 85 in those years. Our folks managed to snag a few large passenger vans and loaded them with Russians for the trip west to enjoy the sights, sounds, and food of San Antonio—and a good time was had by all. But the following Monday, we found out that the Russians had been pretty terrified by the driving portion of the trip. Sure, they were a bit crazy when driving around Moscow, they said, but at least they weren’t going at such ludicrous speeds! Eighty-five miles per hour was about twice what they could ever get to in their crowded city—or with the ancient Soviet automobiles they still drove.

  Like I said—not better, not worse—just different!

  Within the Flight Director Office, we had a small but dedicated cadre that flew most all of Shuttle-Mir missions. Bob Castle, Phil Engelauf, Bill Reeves, and I worked most of the missions in some capacity or another. It made sense; there was enough overhead in learning the ins and outs of the Shuttle-Mir Program that it paid to have a dedicated team. We had the Russians over to our houses for parties, and they got to know us while we got to know them. Likewise, the key flight controllers—especially the RIO team—worked most of the missions and let the rest of Mission Operations work the other two-thirds of
the Shuttle program during that time. Another cadre was getting ready to fly the ISS, which was only two years from first element (the first piece of the space station) launch when we wrapped up STS-91. A number of our RIOs were selected as Flight Directors—the first group of Flight Directors to prepare to fly the ISS with the Russians. In this way, the experience and relationships gained during the Shuttle-Mir Program really paid off. While there were technical challenges along the way, and it was a constant struggle to keep up with failures on the aging Mir so that the program could continue, we did our best to support the Russians and we both learned a great deal from one another. But mostly, we learned how to work together, 24/7.

  There was a hiatus in Russian-American flight between the end of Shuttle-Mir and the first launch of an ISS component. The behind-the-scenes work and the relationships continued apace, however, and there was never a time when there weren’t a significant number of Americans in Moscow, and a similar number of Russians in Houston. This is why the Shuttle-Mir Program name was changed to Phase 1 early on—it was simply the beginning of the ISS, only with different hardware and software. The people were the constant, and the seeds of an international space culture had been sown. They would come to fruition in due time, and it’s a culture that continues to grow and mature to this day.

  Chapter 8

  SRTM and the Mast

  LeRoy looked worried. Not that I blamed him; there were a lot of unknowns in what he was doing. I turned up the sound on the TV in my kitchen—it was always on and tuned to the NASA Select Channel whenever we had a mission in orbit—and listened for a minute. Technically, I was sleeping. But as the Lead Flight Director for a mission, you don’t get much rest in between shifts, especially when flying a one-off mission like STS-99—the first flight of the Space Radar Topography Mapper (SRTM). The SRTM payload consisted of two large antennas—one that took up the majority of the Shuttle’s payload bay, and one that sat on the end of a 200-foot-long mast that extended out of the bay to the Orbiter’s left. The mast had to be deployed after the Shuttle got on orbit and the payload bay doors were opened. It needed to be stowed again to get the doors closed so that the Shuttle and its crew could come home. As I listened to the commentary from the Public Affairs Officer, it didn’t take long for me to share LeRoy’s concern. It was entry day—and the mast wasn’t stowing. I realized that I was going to need a tie because there was no way I wasn’t going to head into the Control Center. This was my mission, and if we had to make the decision to jettison the mast, I needed to be there. After all, I’d been working this flight for over a year.

  The first Shuttle flight of the twenty-first century was a simple-sounding mission that will probably have more of a lasting effect on a greater number of people around the world than almost any other mission flown. It wasn’t glitzy or glamorous, didn’t have any space walks, didn’t deploy any satellites, and didn’t launch a planetary probe. It didn’t create or service a space station. But what it did do was create a topographical map of the entire Earth—a map that will be used as the baseline data set for all geographical work for the next century. It will help plan transportation and communications systems. It can show people the best places to live and the places to avoid. And it serves as a baseline for educating anyone with a connection to the internet on where everything is on our planet. Human beings have been trying to accurately map the entire planet for as long as human beings have been around, and before we launched STS-99, there were still significant spots labeled “terra incognita.”

  Our friends at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, have always been known for cutting-edge science and the hardware and software to make it happen. They had flown two previous missions with space radars mounted in the Shuttle’s payload bay. These were used to learn what they needed to know to fly the big topographic mapper. I was not the first Lead Flight Director assigned to the mission. I was asked to take it over from my classmate, Bryan Austin, sometime about a year and a half before the flight. I had come off Shuttle-Mir wanting a break from working with the Russians. I had been doing it for the better part of the 1990s, and I knew we’d be in it again for the long haul once the ISS started flying. So it was a pleasant surprise to be offered SRTM. It came with a few key players already assigned—for instance, the Payload Officer and FAO. Much of the conceptual work had been done, and the hardware/software package of the payload were well in the works. That meant my first task was getting myself up to speed so that I could keep up with the rest of my troops! There’s an old leadership joke: “Which way did they go? I am their leader and must catch up!”

  As Lead Flight Director for a Shuttle mission, you are never truly off duty when the bird is in orbit. Oh sure, you work your shift and go home. But when you get there, on comes the TV with NASA Select burned into the tuner. The planning and training for a mission takes so long and is so involved that you simply can’t get it out of your head when you leave the Control Center. The fact is, the Lead is intimately acquainted with the entire flight. The Orbit 2 and Orbit 3 guys—not so much. Sure, they got the briefings, did a sim or two, and watched a couple more. They read the manuals and made sure they understood their role—but the Lead was the one everyone turned to when something went wrong. It was his (or her) job to make sure that all the contingencies had been thought out, that the procedures and rules had been developed and tested. The other guys could execute, but the Lead was the one with the corporate knowledge of why things were going to be done.

  It was traditional for the Lead to take the Orbit 1 shift, which on a normal flight amounted to the crew’s morning. Major activities were generally planned to start first thing in the crew’s day. This allowed for plenty of time to fix problems if they appeared. The Orbit 2 Flight Director took the crew’s afternoon, and the Orbit 3 Flight Director was on while the crew slept. This was the planning shift. If everything was going the way it was supposed to go, the planning shift could be quite peaceful. On the other hand, it could be insanely busy if the entire plan for the next day needed to be rebuilt due to ongoing problems. There were times, of course, when the vagaries of orbital mechanics or night and day cycles conspired to put major mission activities on the Orbit 2 shift—in which case the Lead might choose to take that time slot instead. The Ascent/Entry Flight Director popped in for those dynamic phases, of course, but was often blissfully unaware of the details of the payload—other than what it weighed and if it was hazardous to atmospheric flight.

  Things got trickier on a mission like SRTM. This was a science mission that had to run twenty-four hours a day from start to finish. The crew was split into two teams (red and blue), rotating from sleeping in the Mid-deck to operating the spacecraft and payload recorders on the Flight Deck on twelve-hour shifts. There were no unimportant hours on this mission, so as the Lead I had to make sure that my counterparts on the Flight Director console were well enough trained to keep the ball rolling no matter if I was there or not, or if I was sleeping.

  Planning for the mission was well underway when I was assigned the leadership role, and the last thing I wanted to do was stir the pot in a way that was counterproductive. It was getting close to the time for when the first payload simulations would take place at JPL, and I stopped by there a couple of times to meet the team and let them educate me on the payload itself. There were some remarkably smart people working on the team, and I am not just talking about the engineers and operations gurus. The folks who had figured out the science behind the radar were well above my creativity level, and I was just in awe of what they had created and just how detailed their analysis and design turned out to be. They appeared to be accounting for every potential error—misalignment of the external antenna, for one. They had created a laser ranging and direction system that determined exactly where it was relative to the inboard antenna at all times. They didn’t have to drive the antenna to some perfect position; they could measure where it was every second and correct the data mathematically to make it accurate.
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br />   The mast itself was a leftover from the Space Station Freedom program. It was originally a solar array support mast but was no longer needed for ISS. It was an amazing self-erecting Tinkertoy set (in fact, there were models in some people’s offices made of actual Tinkertoys to help them understand the structure) that was 200 feet long when deployed but fit in a canister about 10 feet long when stowed in the payload bay. Deployed using dual motors, the segments snapped into place as it cranked out of the canister, and it likewise snapped back into a compact stack when stowed.

  Our crew had been assigned for a long time, and they had prepared carefully for their respective roles. The commander and pilot (Kevin Kregel and Dom Gorie) had trained carefully for some special maneuvers that would be needed to keep the Orbiter at exactly the right altitude each day. The Mission Specialist team—Janice Voss, Janet Kavandi, Gerhard Thiele, and Mamoru Mohri—were experts on the radar systems. They were ready to handle any malfunctions that might arise, but they joked that their main purpose was to continue feeding tapes into the high-rate data recorders located on the aft flight deck. All the radar data was recorded on board, and only some was downlinked to the ground during the mission, just so that the Payload Operations Control Center (POCC) could check to make sure that the instrument was working properly and the data we were collecting was good.