Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

After another day of work, meals, and a sleep period, day three began with the first of my orbital bloodlettings. Scott, as the flight doctor, took the almost daily blood draws used for the protein turnover, immunology, and blood chemistry studies for which Pedro and I were subjects. Each draw produced two samples, one that I would analyze with an in-flight blood analyzer, another that I would separate by running through a centrifuge and freeze for later analysis. I attached the centrifuge to the ceiling with duct tape. The centrifuge spun at 3,000 rpm, and once when I tried to move it off its axis of rotation I found this was impossible. Its torque was enough to send me spinning.

I’d discovered on the ground that a semipermanent intravenous catheter to supply the blood had proven too uncomfortable after a full day’s activities, so I decided I’d rather take the needle sticks. Scott became my Count Dracula after he floated in my direction for a blood draw wearing a set of plastic Halloween fangs. By a few days into the mission, he started grinning whenever he came my way with the syringe – or maybe it was just my imagination that he got to look more maniacal than ever.

The protein turnover study, the mission’s experiment in muscle loss and rebuilding for which I was a prime subject, required me to take alanine pills and histidine injections several times during the flight, just as I had in preflight testing. The researchers would compare the findings with the baseline studies done back then, and also with on-Earth readings taken after the flight.

Night four of the mission saw me and Chiaki rigged up in our head nets and instrumented vests. The twenty-one leads from the apparatus fed into boxes we wore on our waists, where the information was recorded for later analysis. We repeated everything the next night. These procedures, too, were bracketed by blood draws and urine samples, and were followed by cognition testing.

Sleeping with the elaborate head net and vest turned out to be easier in orbit than on the ground, where the electrode leads were uncomfortable. Imagine sleeping with a dozen buttons over half an inch thick stuck on your head that you feel every time you roll over. Weightlessness improved the irritating pressure.

On night six I donned a Holter heart monitor that I wore for twenty-four hours to provide a constant electrocardiogram. Anomalies in heart function in some of the other astronauts during space flight made NASA doctors decide to look at the action in a seventy-seven-year-old’s heart.

All the while, I kept track of other experiments back in SpaceHab and on the mid-deck. The one that fascinated me most was Aerogel, a superthin, light, translucent substance with marvelous insulating qualities – a microscopic layer insulates as well as thirty thermal windows. It was my job to activate it simply by turning several switches. It’s thought that manufacturing Aerogel in microgravity might solve the problem that keeps it from being in common use on Earth. So far, it’s been impossible to make it as clear as glass.

On nights seven and eight Chiaki and I put the sleep nets and vests on again for two more sets of readings.

The Spartan satellite we were to deploy was our biggest payload, and the reason for our high orbit. It weighed a ton and a half, and was designed to photograph the sun’s corona and the effects of solar winds from outside Earth’s atmosphere. Solar winds produce interference that affects communications, electrical grids, and electronics on Earth, an effect that is heightened during times of high solar activity.

On the third day of the flight, Steve Robinson took the controls of the fifty-foot robot arm and maneuvered to connect with the Spartan, lifting it out of the payload bay and away from the orbiter. This was a delicate operation, requiring great care.

Once the Spartan was on its own, Curt used the orbital maneuvering system to move away from the satellite. The satellite would orbit independently for two days, taking pictures, until Steve retrieved it again on day six. To accomplish this retrieval, Curt maneuvered the orbiter to within a few feet of the Spartan, a flawless rendezvous that put Steve in a perfect position to bring the Spartan back on board. I was in the SpaceHab with the best view in the house as he nestled Spartan gently back into its cradle.

On November 3 I briefly donned my political hat. It was the first time in years I didn’t go to the polls on Election Day. I and the rest of the American crew had filed absentee ballots – but I broadcast my normal Election Day get-out-vote message to the voters back home.

The next night, Curt, Steve Lindsey, and I did a live shot with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show . Curt was a big Jay Leno fan – we all were, but he really shone. He spoofed me and California drivers, and even brought the comedian up short after Leno asked him what we could see from orbit. “Well, Jay,” Curt said, “sometimes, if the lighting is good we can see the Great Wall of China, but we just flew over the Hawaiian Islands and we saw that. And Baja California. You can see the pyramids from space, and sometimes rivers and big airports. And actually, Jay, every time we fly by California we can see your chin.”

Mission Control radioed that we had futures as comics if we got tired of space.

We communicated with Earth by radio, television, and E-mail. We did a televised news conference and a hookup with schoolkids from all over the country who asked better questions than the reporters. John Glenn High School in New Concord was one of the schools. Another was the Center of Science and Industry, a learning center in Columbus headed by Kathy Sullivan, a former astronaut and deep-sea explorer.

I found E-mail, which was still new to me, a fast and effective means of communicating. I E-mailed Annie and the family, who were staying in Houston during the flight, and then I decided to try for a different first. Steve Robinson was my tutor, and once while I was slowly pecking out a message he asked if I was sending another E-mail to Annie.

“Nope. To the president,” I said.

“What?”

“An E-mail’s probably never been sent to the president of the United States from space,” I said. “And he’d appreciate it, too.”

He did. He replied the next day, and described an eighty-three-year-old woman who had told him space was okay for a young fellow like me.

The importance of the cameras that waited at the ready on Velcro patches beside most of the shuttle’s windows came to the fore with Hurricane Mitch. It had made landfall in Honduras on the day before our launch, and hung over Honduras and Nicaragua for several days, dumping twenty-five inches of rain, causing mudslides that swept away entire villages, and killing over seven thousand people. A few days into our flight, mission control called for photographs of the devastated area.

One of the laptops on the flight deck was set up to track Discovery on its orbits around the world. By following the track on the screen, you could anticipate when you were approaching an area that needed to be photographed. You couldn’t wait until you recognized Honduras, for instance, because at 17,500 miles an hour – five miles per second – the photo angles you wanted would have slid by already. We got the shots we wanted.

In some cases, the higher orbit of Discovery meant more spectacular views than I had seen from Friendship 7. Coming over the Florida Keys at one point in the mission for example, I looked out toward the north and was startled that I could see Lake Erie. In fact, I could look beyond it right into Canada. The entire East Coast was visible – the hook of Cape Cod, Long Island, Cape Hatteras, down to the clear coral sands of the Bahamas and the Caribbean, south to Cuba, and beyond.