In the next few weeks I will be posting several articles on some of the unique experiences that astronauts have while onboard a space shuttle. Most people, including myself until I became an astronaut, have no idea what life is like in space. I hope to give you some insight into the weird world of zero gravity and how we eat, sleep and live while floating around earth in our orbiting home.
In this first article we will explore how astronauts get dressed for a space shuttle flight. This may seem simple, but really it is one of the more complex things we do during our training for a shuttle mission.
The Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) suit (commonly referred to as the spacesuit) is what astronauts wear when they are doing a spacewalk outside the shuttle or International Space Station (ISS). The EMU weighs about 300 lbs and needs a lot of power to operate. So, getting an astronaut suited up is not something that can be done quickly or easily.
Since each astronaut has a specific job to do during their mission and we only have a limited number of EMUs available onboard, each astronaut must be trained in advance on how to use their assigned spacesuit and be familiar with its operation and limitations.
If you had your own
In the early morning hours of April 15, 2010, the space shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its final mission. The seven-member crew will spend more than a week in space as they deliver and install the Permanent Multipurpose Module, deliver supplies and spare parts, and perform four spacewalks to perform maintenance on the International Space Station.
This will be my first flight as a NASA astronaut. I have been training for this mission for more than three years, but I have been dreaming about it since I was 12 years old and watched the first Space Shuttle launch on television. I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts and experiences with you during this time.
On Wednesday night at 11:59 p.m., we will depart quarters for the launch pad. The ride to Pad 39A is only two miles long but is certainly one of the most exciting drives in the world! For all of us who were born after the Apollo moon landings, this will be our first opportunity to view a manned spacecraft as it prepares to fly into space.
We are scheduled to lift off at 4:50 a.m., so there will be a few hours of last-minute checks while we wait in our seats on the orbiter. And
The space shuttle is a complex spacecraft, and it is important for astronauts to be able to locate certain parts of the shuttle quickly in case of an emergency. There are hundreds of buttons, switches, levers and other items on the shuttle’s control panels. To help astronauts find important items quickly, most of these items are labeled with symbols instead of words.
For example, imagine you were an astronaut on a space shuttle mission and there was an outbreak of fire inside the crew cabin. You would need to find and activate the Fire Suppression System switch as soon as possible. If all the switches were labeled with words instead of symbols, you might have trouble finding it because there would be so many words to read through before you spotted the right one. However, if all the switches were labeled with symbols, you could scan through them more quickly because there are fewer symbols to look at than words. It is also easier for astronauts to remember where certain switches are located when they are labeled with symbols that resemble what they do.
The symbol for the Fire Suppression System switch looks like two squiggly lines connected by a vertical line that resembles a flame. The symbol for the Vents/Valves switch looks like three curved lines that resemble vents or valves. The symbol for the Communications
The Shuttle is a very busy place. I was surprised at how much there is to do. My mission was just over 10 days long and I still never had a chance to finish all the tasks I had planned for myself.
For the most part we get to choose what we want to do on orbit, but some things are mandatory. One of them is talking with reporters from the ground.
We talk with reporters once per day on average, sometimes more often. We talk with them twice every day during our mission: once in the morning when we wake up and once in the evening before we go to bed.
Sometimes a reporter will ask us to describe what it feels like to be in space or what it’s like to launch into space or things like that. It’s hard to describe those things because they really don’t feel very strange–which is why I think so many people are interested in them!
The last time I flew, I was in a T-38. The only difference between the two flights was that the shuttle has a lot more windows, but it was night anyway, so that didn’t make any difference.
The ride up on the shuttle is very similar to an airplane ride. It’s about 500 feet per second for the first two minutes and then it accelerates to about 1,100 feet per second for the next two minutes before you shut the engines down. And then there’s a coast period until you hit about 100 miles in altitude and speed starts going down again as you drop back into the atmosphere. Then you’re doing about 7,000 feet per second as you come back down.
So it’s really almost exactly like an airplane ride except that when you start coming back down, there’s no pilot sitting next to you and there aren’t any other airplanes around you.
The most common question we are asked at the STS-129 crew autograph session is “What does it feel like in space?”
Here is a quick summary of what it feels like as you float in the International Space Station (ISS):
1. You have to wear a special astronaut costume, which has elastic bands that keep your gloves and boots attached to your suit.
2. You will see your breath floating in front of your face, because it’s so cold in space.
3. The air pressure inside the ISS is lower than on Earth, so you will feel like you are stuffed up or about to sneeze when you first arrive on board. This feeling goes away after a few days.
4. When you move around, you will have to push off the walls or handrails because there is nothing else to push against in weightlessness. This means everything on board has to be tied down or screwed into place so that it doesn’t float away when someone bumps into it!
One of the questions I get asked a lot is why astronauts wear orange pressure suits on the Space Shuttle. The answer is simple: so they can be seen.
If there is an emergency and the crew needs to evacuate the spacecraft, visibility is critical to getting everyone out safely and quickly. So it makes sense that astronauts would wear bright orange suits when they are training for emergencies in the water (here’s a photo). But why do we still use the suits on orbit, even though we don’t expect to be in an emergency and having to escape from a sinking spacecraft?
The answer is that the orange suit has become part of the astronaut uniform. It’s not a great fit for our mission profiles, but changing it for something more appropriate would create more problems than it solves.
We train extensively for emergency situations in simulators, in airplanes and in water survival training. During these activities, we wear what are called “cranial helmets” and bright orange flight suits. Why? Because if you have to go into the ocean, you want something that will keep your head above water (the cranial) and provide visibility to rescuers (the orange flight suit). That’s also why astronauts practicing for launch pad egress wear a long-sleeved shirt over