Visibility is grand...

Yesterday's post was written using the Windows client and waiting for a mouse click on the button labeled "Post" when I decided, unwisely, to check whether one of the photos I took would serve as a suitable adjunct to my words. What I actually did do was cause a bad call to the Visual C++ RTL, which in turn crashed the machine. I decided to go to sleep rather than try to reconstruct my thoughts.

Working on this machine is becoming tedious. I don't think I've gone more than one complete cycle of boot-up and shutdown without something happening to hang the machine somewhere along the way. Fortunately - I think - nothing that has happened has been so horrendous as to make the machine completely unusable.

Anyway, I just got up from a post-work nap, which does not bode well for sleep later tonight (it's going to be a bear to fall asleep), but which was necessary from a keeping-my-sanity viewpoint.

I'm really tired. Of the six days left before I go back to Colorado, five are work days. I just completed a two-day assignment supporting a film crew from NTV, a Russian media network. Tomorrow, I have a gig supporting the Expedition 4 crew (or its backup...I have to look at my paperwork). Thursday and Friday are sim days, and Saturday is my weekly stretch with the Execute Package.

Sunday - glory be! - is my Big Day Off. (Say Hallelujah! brothers and sisters!)

Monday, my assignment is to support air-to-ground interpretation, though the hours for that support may change (meaning, I may end up going in to work at oh-dark-thirty).

But then...Tuesday...it's "addio!" to Houston, and back to Colorado!

At least for a little while.

Cheers...

Working with the media...

Working with the media is something "completely different," to steal a phrase from Monty Python. The past two days, I've been supporting a four-person crew from the Russian NTV network that's visiting the U.S. and gathering material on a documentary that apparently focuses on the military's role during the era of the "space race."

Yesterday morning, I joined the team at the hotel and proceeded to help them get breakfast. Normally, this is not a problem for visitors, but seeing as how two members of the network's crew (the director and the on-screen talent) were fasting for Orthodox Lent, we had to find someplace that served meatless, dairyless food.

You know how difficult that is, given the near-uniformity of fare at fast-food outlets in this country? We finally settled for breakfast at a bagel place, and everyone left happy and full.

Our work took us to - surprise! - the old Apollo-era control room, where the two techs with the crew set up their camera for an interview with a former JSC center director who worked in the room as a flight controller and flight director back in the Gemini and Apollo days. After the interview - which was a challenge to interpret because I got to do my thing only after the interviewee had delivered his complete answer - the film crew reconfigured their camera angle and did a "stand-up" shoot, where they filmed the on-screen guy as he talked to the camera while sauntering among the consoles.

It was interesting to see the variations that occurred among the approximately dozen or so takes they did of the segment. Sometimes the fellow speaking would say things too late, or too early, or pause. All the while, the escorts from the JSC public affairs office (PAO) were having kittens because the afternoon's schedule was in the process of being shot to hell.

Nevertheless, the crew managed to wrap up its work in the old control room and then dropped into the Shuttle flight control room (a.k.a., the "white" FCR) for a few background shots.

Today's schedule was really hectic. The day's events began at the so-called Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, which houses what has to be the world's largest swimming pool. The pool is about 40 feet deep and contains over 6 million gallons of water. Submerged under the surface are mockups of various items that astronauts will be working on (and in) in space. The idea behind working under water is that, properly balanced to near-perfect neutral buoyancy, the experience is said to closely resemble what it actually feels like to work in space. Astronauts who will be doing such work spend a lot of time in the pool practicing what they're going to do, as well as what to do in case of an emergency.

We got to the NBL just as members of the STS-100 crew were starting to suit up for a training run. The astronauts show up at the platforms wearing special "underwear" that's laced with water hoses. These hoses circulate water that will regulate the astronauts' suit temperature as they work (I'm told it gets hot in those things!). The photo shows astronaut Scott Parazynski, dressed in his undergarment, standing on the suit platform, talking to some of the divers who will be providing support during the session.

The whole process of suiting up is pretty awkward, and starts with the astronaut sitting down on the deck, extending his legs, and wriggling into the lower part of the suit. Once that is done and the boots are on properly, our EVA crew member is ready to don the upper portion of the suit. Everyone involved in the process of suiting an astronaut takes their time and makes sure that all of the seams and joints seal properly. Today's trainees were being assisted by fellow STS-100 crew members John Phillips and Yuri Lonchakov.

Watching the EVA crew don the torso of their space suit is pretty amusing, as they seem to have to "dance" into it with a few twists, turns, bumps, and grinds. Eventually, the top part is mated to the bottom, the helmet goes on, final checks are made, and the astronaut is strapped to the platform, which is hauled into the air, swung out over the water, and then lowered into the pool. Once in the pool, the astronauts are unstrapped by the divers and towed over to where they will start their training. Overhead, in the NBL control room, the training director and his cohort monitor the goings-on using a bank of video monitors and voice loops.

After a quick bite for lunch, the crew and I headed off to Building 9, which houses the mockups for the Shuttle and various ISS modules. There, we were going to catch up with Yuri Lonchakov, who is the Russian member of the STS-100 crew.

STS-100 is slated to be the ninth ISS flight (flight 6A), and its purpose will be to deliver the Italian "Rafaello" Multi-Purpose Logistics Module and the Canadian Space Station Remote Manipulator System. Not surprisingly, the crew includes - besides Yuri and the usual complement of Americans - a Canadian and an Italian astronaut.

There are three crew compartment trainers in Building 9. These full-scale mockups of the Orbiter crew compartment are used to train crew members in the basics of living in space, from how to use the toilet, to how to cook food, to how to bail out in case the unthinkable happens. Today, Lonchakov was going to learn all about getting strapped into his seat on the Shuttle's mid-deck, and to make the experience all that more realistic, the trainer was rotated into the pre-launch position.

That means, of course, that the floor of the trainer was now in the vertical position, with the seats and all sticking out horizontally. That explains why all of the straps and such are hanging straight out from the wall the photograph (the instructor let the crew look around inside the trainer while Lonchakov was donning his training gear, and I took my turn with the others. It was an eerie experience, as I've been inside the trainers before, just not when they've been vertical!)

After Building 9, the television crew went out to do another "stand up" shoot at the rocket park that seems to be the trademark of the Johnson Space Center. The centerpiece of the park is a full-sized Saturn V moon rocket (it's said it was the one that was supposed to take Apollo 18 to the moon, except that the flight was cut from the program). By this time of the day, I'm beginning to feel tired, and wouldn't you know, there are no seats out there, at least none that wouldn't put me in range of the camera. For sure, I'd run out of free memory on my PalmPilot, which meant no more pictures, either. Ah, well, that'll teach me.

Eventually, though, the day was over and we said our good-byes. I hope the newsies make good use of the material they've collected.

Cheers...