Here Comes Trouble
- Trouble on board
- Approach and docking (1)
- Meetings and greetings
- Approach and docking (2)
- The morning after
- It’s all yours
- Cuckolded
- Those goddamned Russians
- Ministrations
- Abandoned to their fate
- Appendix
Trouble on board
“We are a nation of badly brought-up children.” – Viktor Blagov, TsUP senior flight director
“You slept with his wife?” Joe exclaimed in disbelief, as he pedaled away on the reclining cycle ergometer for his exercise session.
“Da,” Yurii confirmed, grinning. “He say very bad things about us. So I take revenge.”
“He say that scum like us should be kicked out of space program,” Sergei elaborated.
“She was lonely, so I do not have to try hard,” Yurii added.
“Je-sus,” Joe muttered, shaking his head. He had not nicknamed his Russian crewmates “Double Trouble” for nothing. “Does the commander know?”
Yurii’s grin wilted a little. “I got e-mail last week from friend saying komandir find out. He may not be happy to see us.”
Sergei punched him in the shoulder, lightly. “You idiot, Yura. One day you will get yourself killed,” he told him in Russian.
“That explains why he didn’t want to talk with you two during the rendezvous tagup,” Joe realized, referring to the Shuttle crew’s conversation with the soon-to-be-relieved Expedition Crew yesterday over Atlantis’s space-to-space UHF link.
Sergei and Yurii floated in a conspiratorial huddle near Joe on the mid-deck of the Orbiter Atlantis. Today, Mission Day 3, Atlantis was to dock with the International Space Station, where they would replace the Expedition Crew currently in residence. Two American flight engineers had lived on the ISS for the last few months, along with their Russian commander – the latter the subject of the trio’s hushed discussion.
Atlantis had launched the previous evening from the Kennedy Space Center at 7:49:47 p.m. EST. They awakened on Flight Day 2 with the ISS 4240 kilometers ahead of them. There had been two more burns to raise the orbit yesterday: Nominal Corrections 2 and 3, plus a planar correction burn. They were still in a lower orbit and thus traveling faster than the Station, like runners around a racetrack.
The Shuttle and Expedition Crews had prepared yesterday for the upcoming ISS rendezvous. The pilot and Joe powered up the Remote Manipulating System’s robotic arm in the Orbiter’s payload bay and monitored its performance, using the television cameras on the arm to survey the bay and the 45-foot-long, 14.5-ton, $390 million Truss segment that was to be installed. Joe was trained on the Station’s SSRMS (as was Sergei) and was assigned to the first phase on flight day 4, involving the demanding task of maneuvering the “Big Arm” so that the Orbiter’s RMS could hand it the Truss for placement.
As always, the eight-day docking period would be jam-packed with activities. As well as Truss installation, there was the Expedition Crew rotation, cargo transfer, a reboost of the ISS by Atlantis, and three U.S. EMU EVAs – for the latter, the two Shuttle Mission Specialists spent yesterday checking out the two EMU spacesuits and SAFER nitrogen-propelled backpacks on board Atlantis. They would connect cables and install various components on the new Truss segment.
But Joe had his mind on other matters. I suppose I should not criticize, Joe thought, as he gasped for breath, his brown hair damp with sweat. His own marital history was hardly exemplary. At least the ex-wife from Hell can’t reach me up here. He had requested Mission Control to block any e-mails from her. But I’ll be stuck up here for the next six months with two crazy Russians ….
“He can’t wait to see you,” Sergei teased Yurii. “He really sounded pissed-off.” Yurii grimaced.
Joe looked askance at his two companions, black-haired Sergei and blond-haired Yurii as they continued chattering in Russian, too fast for him to follow with his limited grasp of the language. Despite the months he had spent training with them, he still got sharp reminders at times that they were from an essentially alien culture – their eyes, like those of many Russians’, had a vaguely Slavic-Asiatic cast, indicative that Russia was a merging of Eastern and Western cultures and races.
They, like many Russians in the space program, clearly resented the “partnership” with NASA that had seen the Russians, for all their long-duration flight experience, relegated to a junior position.
At least I am in command, not like the Americans on Mir. Some of the NASA astronauts who had stayed on Mir as “guests” suffered from isolation and depression, feeling alienated from their foreign crewmates on a Russian station. Joe had then, as a Shuttle pilot, no desire to participate in Shuttle-Mir himself, hearing rumors of the problems those involved had encountered.
Various crew compositions were being experimented with on the ISS – two Russians with an American commander, two Americans under a Russian commander, two Americans (one the commander) and a Russian, even two Russians (one the commander) and an American woman. The results were being recorded for the “Interactions” psychological experiment. “They have not put two women with one man,” Sergei had noted.
“Probably because there would be a lot of rude remarks about ‘threesomes’,” Joe retorted.
But if I try to dominate them, they just ignore me, Joe thought now in frustration. They know I have no real authority – I don’t have a dominant personality. I was only placed with them because no other astronauts wanted anything to do with them! And I can see why. They are not malicious, they are just … Joe struggled to think of an appropriate description. Space teenagers!
“We’ve Alpha in sight,” announced the commander over the intercom, using the Americans’ name for the Station. “Around five hours from docking. She’s just visible. Looks like a star.” Atlantis had been 563 kilometers behind the ISS at the time of the crew’s 13:20 GMT wake-up call this morning, closing in at a rate of 290 km per orbit. Someone down at Houston Mission Control with a warped sense of humor had chosen the Savage Garden song “Crash and Burn” to awaken them.
“Let’s go up and look,” said Sergei. Both he and Yurii rummaged for a camera each, Sergei absently rubbing at his lower back. All the crew had varying degrees of backache; as there was no gravity to compress their intervertebral discs these expanded, also stretching the muscles in their lower backs. It would take a few days to adjust. As a result, everyone was an inch or so taller: Sergei had been six feet tall on Earth; now he had grown a couple more inches.
The fluids in their bodies had also redistributed, tending to accumulate in their upper bodies; they had somewhat stuffy sinuses, affecting their sense of smell. Some of the crew were still feeling nauseous; Joe had spent much of yesterday throwing up, as had the commander and MS-1, despite several injections of Phernergan. Fortunately, most people’s bodies fully adjusted to microgravity after the first week.
It was also quite disorientating to see everyone floating around like misshapen helium-filled balloons; most wore silly grins on their faces for the first few days at the surreality of it all.
“I have to go use nuzhnik first,” said Yurii. Along with all the other symptoms, the fluids migrating to one’s head tricked nerves in the carotid arteries into believing there was a fluid overload; these nerves then sent signals to the kidneys to flush this supposedly excess fluid out. The Orbiter’s toilet thus saw heavy traffic during the first few days.
“Number ones or twos?” Sergei teased Yurii, who aimed a karate kick at him. Sergei grabbed Yurii’s foot and shoved his friend off in the direction of the commode. Yurii, flailing but unable to alter his trajectory, crashed into the aft bulkhead, adding to his collection of bruises.
“Knock it off!” snapped Joe, glancing behind him. They ignored him.
“What the hell is going on down there?” came the Shuttle commander’s irritated voice over the intercom speaker set in the mid-deck’s roof.
“Now you’ve gone and upset Dedushka.” Yurii slapped his right bicep with his left hand and thrust up a clenched right fist – the Russian version of the “up yours” gesture – then entered the commode or “Throne Room,” a small recess aft of the port entry hatch. He closed the door, and pulled forward and up two accordion-like privacy curtains attached to the inside of the door. The commode had the inevitable NASA acronym of Waste Management System. Yurii secured himself to the WMS’s contoured seat using foot and thigh restraints.
Both American and Russian space toilets used fans and vacuum suction to draw away waste products. To open the suction valves, a handle to the user’s right (dubbed the “throttle”) was pushed forward. Urination was comparatively simple; a funnel and hose were used, and the liquid waste was periodically dumped overboard. Defecation involved a device called the “slinger”; a rotating set of vanes which sucked through and shredded solid waste, then deposited it on the walls of the commode chamber which was lined with a collection bag. Exposure to the vacuum of space dried this out. Some hapless ground crewman had the delightful task of cleaning the commode out once the Orbiter returned to Earth.
I wish I could see out the window. Yurii faced forward; the hatch was a couple of meters in front of him but a partition blocked his view out the small window set in its center.
Yurii made use of the tissues and wet-wipes provided, placing these in a wet trash bag, then exited the WMS to rinse his hands at the handwashing station on the side of the galley facing the WCS.
He and Sergei had only been assigned menial chores during their flight to the ISS, such as helping set up the cycle ergometer which the Shuttle crew would use for exercise, preparing meals in the Galley and cleaning filters. They do not trust us on their spaceship. But if things were reversed, we would treat them the same.
They, and Joe, had also participated yesterday in one of the U.S. experiments with the cumbersome title of “Effects of Altered Gravity on Spinal Cord Excitability (H-Reflex)” which involved strapping electrode bands to one’s ankles and knees. Mild electric shocks were then administered to measure muscle response via signals sent along the spinal cord to receptors in the brain and back. The speed of these signals decreased in microgravity, meaning that exercise countermeasures became less effective, and the researchers hoped to find a way of reversing this effect. “This is just another way for the ochkariki to torture us,” Yurii complained, using the derisive term for scientists, as his leg muscles contracted painfully. Astronauts and cosmonauts had long served as “lab rats,” and researchers gleefully seized the opportunity to inflict all sorts of painful and undignified experiments upon their unwilling victims in the name of science.
The U.S. experiments got the lion’s share of attention, which irked the Russian scientists; this was yet another source of friction between the two “partners”. “We will help the Amerikantsy as little as possible,” Yurii had said determinedly. Joe was the designated “U.S. Science Officer” in any case, though none of the Expedition Crew was in the least scientifically-minded. Being two fighter pilots and an engineer, they regarded the ochkariki with disdain – and vice-versa.
Sergei floated over and handed Yurii a Hasselblad 500 EL/S camera loaded with a new roll of Kodak ISO-100 70 mm film. Sergei had a Kodak 460 Digital Still Camera, a 520 megabyte/80-shot card slotted in its receptacle. There were several of these cameras on the Orbiter and ISS, as well as F-5 35 mm Nikons. Both cosmonauts had been assigned to take photos of Atlantis’s ISS approach, fly-around and docking, which was one of the few tasks they were happy to do on this American flight. “If we had been flying on Buran, I would be in the commander’s seat,” said Sergei wistfully as he adjusted his camera’s lens.
“In a parallel universe, now.” Yurii put a consoling arm around him. “But we will get our revenge against the ‘Space Mafia’. First we will start by taking a photo.”
Sergei floated away a little as Yurii aimed the Hasselblad at him; they were both out of Joe’s line-of-sight. “Now, tovarishch, give the camera ‘the finger’.” Grinning, Sergei obliged, sticking not one but both middle fingers up in the provocative gesture – which they had learned from American movies – as Yurii pressed the shutter release button and the flash fired. “A ‘surprise’ for our ‘friends’.” The photo would almost certainly be discarded after that roll of film was processed in the NASA labs, but at least a few people would see it there before it was.
They both floated up to the flight deck, Sergei going first, his long skinny legs disappearing through the port interdeck opening (the starboard opening was kept closed), as Yurii followed him. They, and Joe, wore cobalt-blue trousers striped with Velcro, and their Shuttle mission polo-neck T-shirts, which were light blue with a navy-blue collar, and embroidered with the mission patch. A tradition had been established of the incoming crew taking up souvenir shirts as gifts for the outgoing crew, and three red shirts were duly packed in plastic bags. These were placed, along with other supplies, in soft tan storage bags scattered about the mid-deck and in the airlock; ready for transferal to the ISS soon after docking.
Approach and docking (1)
Emerging onto the flight deck, there seemed to be bodies floating about everywhere. These resolved themselves into MS-1 and MS-2, who moved aside as the pair found places to anchor themselves. The pilot and Shuttle commander – who were, like the others, in shirtsleeves – sat strapped in their starboard and port seats (the other two flight deck seats had been removed, folded up and secured in an aft corner of the deck).
Two windows behind them looked over the payload bay; two were set in the roof above them and six were arrayed above the instrument panels in front of the pilot and commander. Atlantis was currently on Earth’s daylight side; she had another two-and-a-half orbits to go before catching up with the ISS.
At 15:30 MET, Atlantis had used her RCS thrusters to maneuver to docking attitude: +XVV, +ZLV. The Orbiter’s nose faced in the velocity vector, the eastwards direction of travel, 51.6º to the Equator, with her belly – out of which the positive-Z axis pointed – pointed in the local vertical direction, facing towards the Earth. Previously, she had traveled in +YVV, -ZLV: her starboard wing, out of which the imaginary positive Y axis pointed, traveled in the velocity vector, while her minus Z axis, which extended up out the top of the Orbiter – from her payload bay doors – was in local vertical. In other words, Atlantis had been traveling upside down and sideways – in microgravity, it didn’t matter which direction she faced.
“There she is. See that point of light a little above us?” MS-2 – Chad – holding a laser rangefinder, drifted over to the Russians and indicated where to look over the pilot’s head through the starboard window. The ISS at this distance resembled a brilliant star, light reflecting from its solar panels, easily visible against the black void beyond it.
Below them was the bright Earth, clouds streaked white against the azure-blue oceans and muted tans and greens of land masses. The sight was unreal, breathtaking, as though they were seeing it in a dream. Indeed, the whole experience of being in orbit was dreamlike.
Yurii, crouching awkwardly behind the pilot’s seat – Kathy was the sole female on board – took a couple of shots of the distant Station, using a long-focus 250 mm lens, one of several interchangeable ones he had brought up in a case with the camera. The ISS was a tiny but recognizable image on the focusing screen, glinting silver and gold. He, Sergei and others used to look for Mir before that venerable Station’s much-lamented deorbiting in March 2001, using sighting times obtained from TsUP, as well as Heavens-Above off the Internet. When it passed to the south of Zvyozdyi Gorodok, it had appeared as a bright, swiftly-moving point of light. I really miss Mir, Yurii thought. The Station had, after all, been in orbit for half of his and Sergei’s lives, and its loss seemed akin to losing a relative.
They similarly now watched for ISS passovers. The American-dominated International Space Station had not, however, captured the Russian public’s affection like Mir had.
Yurii next positioned himself just astern of the commander’s seat and, out of the others’ view, made another obscene gesture behind Dedushka’s head – clenching his fist and poking his thumb out between his middle and index fingers in “the fig” – as Sergei took a flash photo.
Irritated by the flash, Dedushka looked around, compressed his lips in annoyance and turned back to his tasks. He, like everyone else who encountered Dvoinya, was learning that they were impervious to chastisement.
The Shuttle crew was using four Payload and General Support Computers. A PGSC was an IBM 760 XD Thinkpad laptop with various programs on it used to augment the Orbiter’s older systems, plugged into data ports on various Orbiter panels and linked by a maze of Ethernet cables. Windows 95 was the operating system; it contained standard programs such as e-mail, as well as some written especially for the PGSC by the JSC Space Operations Computing Team. These latter included applications for locating the Shuttle in orbit (World Map), timing deorbit engine burns (Deorbit Manager), Caution & Warning, tracking on-board items (Inventory Management System) and Waste Water Dump.
A printer and three more laptops resided in the mid-deck; only two were active at the moment. One, STS1, using Windows NT, acted as an Overall Configuration Analysis router – directing data traffic along cables to the various laptops above.
MS-1’s laptop, STS3, was currently running the Rendezvous and Proximity Operations Program, while MS-2’s STS6 laptop ran a backup RPOP. The pilot’s STS5 displayed the World Map, which showed the current locations of Atlantis and the ISS, constantly updated by both spacecrafts’ links to the U.S. Global Positioning System satellite network.
This is laptop heaven, Yurii thought. During his stay on the ISS he would have a couple dozen of the gadgets to play with. On his relatively low cosmonaut’s salary – the equivalent of 250 U.S. dollars or 7640 rubli per month (the rubl’ currency value fluctuated according to the exchange rate) – he could not afford the latest and fastest computer. But maybe I can upgrade after this mission. Cosmonauts got paid an extra $100 or 3056 rubli each day they were in orbit, and a $1000 or 30,560 rubli bonus for each spacewalk.
He and Sergei both had older-model laptops in their respective flats like those up here. The older computer programs were still used in space as they were fairly well-established systems, most of the “bugs” had been eradicated, and the slower processor speed meant the laptops would not overheat as quickly as the newer, faster models. Warm air did not rise in microgravity, so fan-cooled microprocessors had to work harder.
(Yurii and Sergei had Windows XP Professional installed on their laptops – the version without the pesky product activation, a copied disk of which Yurii had obtained via friends. They could not afford the expensive software, anyhow.)
He, Joe and Sergei had scanned their favorite photos and burnt them onto CD-ROMs, as well as copied their favorite programs and files. They would transfer these onto the laptops reserved for their personal use on the ISS.
I wonder if Houston figured out who did those little pranks. Yurii smiled to himself, recalling his and Sergei’s contributions to their partizanskaya voina campaign against the American “occupying force” at Zvyozdyi Gorodok and in Houston. During their training in Houston’s Johnson Space Center one time, he and Sergei, wearing their most innocent expressions, had wandered about Building 30S (in their blue NASA flight overalls they weren’t given a second glance) until they came upon an unoccupied office and sneaked inside.
As Sergei kept watch at the door, Yurii switched on the computer there and inserted a floppy disk on which was stored a password cracker program. Utilizing this, he was able to enter the Integrated Planning System – a UNIX-based, client-server distributed system that linked all ISS operations at JSC in a Local Area Network – and access the software program files. He inserted an irritating but otherwise harmless “worm” which was triggered when the computers were rebooted the next day. The screens froze at startup and the words UP YOURS NASA! scrolled endlessly down the monitors until the exasperated operators turned the computers off. It had taken several hours for NASA programmers to scan for and remove the worm.
He and Sergei had then done a similar prank at Houston’s Back-up Control Center in what used to be the Buran control room at TsUP. The pair created a small animated program which Yurii inserted into the TsUP LAN as he had done at Houston a few days before NASA personnel in both Centers undertook a periodic dry-run in test mode. During this, the Houston Support Group at TsUP sent a single pre-planned command packet to TsUP’s servers. TsUP was to play back American contingency telemetry recorded earlier, with the HSG confirming successful receipt. Instead of the expected telemetry, though, the frustrated operators had to sit through Yurii’s 10-second cartoon GIF animation which he had snuck into the system. A lander craft descended onto the surface of Mars and out popped a Russian cosmonaut. He produced a Russian flag, stuck it in the surface, then gave the viewers “the finger”. Sergei and Yurii, who had snuck into the room, had been in quiet hysterics.
Yurii mentally filed away these pranks for future use. I could’ve done a lot more damage if I’d been in a bad mood ….
Sergei yawned, staring at the back of Kathy’s blond head. Docking was by necessity a slow process, and not much would be happening for the next couple of hours or so except for various trajectory adjustment burns. The ISS also had to be prepared for the docking: it would be powered down, all solar arrays feathered (edges turned towards the Orbiter’s approach path so as to minimize debris impacts from thruster firings), then maneuvered to docking attitude and put into free drift just before docking.
At 17:26 came Nominal Corrective-4 burn, performed to hit a range relative to the target – the ISS – at a future time.
“We’re in UHF contact range.” Dedushka keyed the UHF air-to-air link so he could talk to the Station commander. “Alpha, this is Atlantis, Air-to-Ground one. Do you read? Over.”
“Atlantis, this is MKS, Space-to-Ground one,” replied a Russian-accented voice, routed over the flight deck intercom as well as Dedushka’s headset. “Is good to hear you, Steve.”
“You sound great, Yurii, and Alpha is a beautiful sight. We’re about, uh –” – the commander did a quick calculation – “seventy-five kilometers behind you with four hours until docking.” The Russian commander had the same first name as the other Yurii.
“Acknowledged, Steve. MKS out.” said the Russian commander shortly. He pointedly did not use the Americans’ ISS “Alpha” callsign. As far as the Russians were concerned, Mir had been the first, or alpha, international Station – which technically made the ISS “Beta”. None of the partners had yet decided on a proper name for the ISS.
“Okay, we’re forty nautical miles behind Alpha, so I’ll activate the Star Trackers,” said Dedushka to his crew. He reached up to Panel O6 and snapped on the power switches and door controls that enabled the doors to open. These units – designated minus-Y and -Z – were located just forward and to the left of the commander’s positive-X (forward-facing) window and were part of the Orbiter’s navigation system. They aligned Atlantis’s Inertial Measurement Units, tracked targets and provided line-of-sight vectors for rendezvous calculations, utilizing a database of up to fifty stars. For ISS docking, they provided angular data from the Orbiter to the target space Station.
Looking at his wristwatch – 17:40 hours – Yurii saw that he was due for his exercise session on the cycle ergometer, so he thumped Sergei on the shoulder and indicated he was going downstairs to the mid-deck. Joe was still pedaling away; there was some overlap between their exercise times to allow for changeovers. Yurii stripped off his trousers and polo-neck T-shirt, and pulled on a pair of shorts and sneakers from an accessories bag strapped to the top of the ergometer (he didn’t bother with a T-shirt). He and Sergei had set up the reclining cycle ergometer yesterday morning, reconfiguring the mounting frame to attach to seat floor studs where their now-removed seats had been during launch.
Ten minutes later, Joe finished off, shorts and T-shirt sweat-drenched. He unstrapped himself – “It’s all yours,” he said to Yurii – and changed out of his sweaty shorts and T-shirt (shoving these into a laundry bag), drying himself off with a towel. He retrieved his long pants and polo-neck T-shirt.
Yurii pulled a strap around his waist to secure himself to the seat, sliding it forward to adjust for his shorter legs, and slid his feet into the pedal restraints. The pedals were attached to a grey box that contained the ergometer’s flywheel. He then selected the electronically-controlled resistance from the control panel and began pedaling. Sergei’s exercise session was timelined for 18:40.
He grabbed his portable CD player secured nearby (he was sharing it with Sergei for this flight) and put the headphones over his ears. He pressed PLAY to start the CD he had left in it – one of his techno-dance CDs.
Six more months of this, Yurii thought, with little enthusiasm. On Earth, both he and Sergei both enjoyed athletic and outdoors activities – aerobatics flying, swimming, diving, tennis and running for Sergei, gymnastics for Yurii, as well as mountain biking, cross-country skiing, ice-skating and so on. But in orbit, they were restricted to three activities: running on a treadmill, using a cycle ergometer and resistance training with elastic cords. And, after several months of these, even the most avid exerciser began to dread the daily two-and-a-half hour grind – a tedious but necessary activity to combat muscle and bone deterioration, and maintain fitness.
| Time To Docking (h:m) | Range | Shuttle Activities | Station Activities |
|---|---|---|---|
| > -4:30 | MCC uplinks Orbiter and Station state vectors and NC burn PAD | Uplink CCDB (attitude/DAP data) | |
| -3:47 | 75 km/40.4 nautical miles |
|
|
| -3:40 – -3:25 | 75 – 65 km/40.4 – 35.07 nm | Star Tracker navigation | |
| -3:32 | 60 km/32.37 nm | NCC burn | Station power down (prior to feathering the arrays) |
| -3:20 | 40 km/21.58 nm | Start RADAR navigation | |
| -2:15 | 15 km/8.09 nm |
|
Start Station maneuver to tracking light attitude (RADAR fail) |
| -1:50 | 13 km/7.01 nm | MC1: Midcourse burn | |
| 12 km/6.47 nm | Closest range for Star Tracker Navigation (RADAR fail) | Station in tracking light attitude (RADAR fail) | |
| varies | varies | OOPN: Planar null | |
| -1:27 | 5 km/2.69 nm | MC2: Midcourse burn | |
| -1:10 | 1.5 km/0.80 nm | MC3: Midcourse burn | Start Station maneuver to docking attitude (nominal). Start feathering solar arrays |
| -1:00 | 600 m/1968.5 feet | MC4: R-bar intercept burn | |
| -0:58 | 600 m/1968.5 ft | Manual takeover | |
| -0:45 | 200 m/656.16 ft |
|
Station in Docking attitude with solar arrays feathered (nominal) |
| -0:43 | 150 m/492.12 ft | Start R-bar to V-bar transition | |
| -0:32 | 100 m/328.08 ft |
|
CMG desaturation and disable Russian thrusters |
| 0:00 | 0 | Docking |
|
| +0:15 | Hard dock | A/A to Station: Hard Docked | Resume solar array sun tracking |
| +0:30 | Activate ACS/perform maneuver | ||
| +0:45 | Perform Station power-up and transition to Standard mode |
| U.S. Eastern Time | DD | HH | MM | Shuttle & ISS activities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 07:50 p.m. | 00 | 00 | 00 | Launch |
| FLIGHT DAY 03 | ||||
| 08:20 a.m. | 01 | 12 | 30 | STS crew wakeup |
| 08:50 a.m. | 01 | 13 | 00 | ISS crew wakeup |
| 10:40 a.m. | 01 | 14 | 50 | ISS daily planning conference |
| 11:20 a.m. | 01 | 15 | 30 | Group B computer powerup |
| 11:35 a.m. | 01 | 15 | 45 | Rendezvous timeline begins |
| 12:13 p.m. | 01 | 16 | 23 | Rendezvous rocket firing |
| 02:05 p.m. | 01 | 18 | 15 | Sunrise |
| 02:06 p.m. | 01 | 18 | 16 | Terminal Rendezvous rocket firing (Ti burn) |
| 02:34 p.m. | 01 | 18 | 44 | Sunset |
| 03:08 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 18 | Sunrise |
| 03:20 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 30 | U.S. arrays feathered |
| 03:23 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 33 | MC-4 rendezvous burn |
| 03:26 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 36 | Range: 1500 feet |
| 03:27 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 37 | ISS in docking orientation |
| 03:31 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 41 | Range: 1000 feet |
| 03:32 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 42 | Ku-band radar to low power; range: 800 feet |
| 03:36 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 46 | Range: 600 feet (+R-bar arrival) |
| 03:37 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 47 | Noon |
| 03:38 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 48 | Russian arrays feathered |
| 03:38 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 48 | Range: 500 feet; start TORVA maneuver |
| 03:40 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 50 | Range: 400 feet |
| 03:48 p.m. | 01 | 19 | 58 | Range: 300 feet |
| 03:52 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 00 | Range: 310 feet (+V-bar arrival) |
| 03:52 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 02 | Range: 250 feet |
| 03:56 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 06 | Range: 200 feet |
| 03:59 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 09 | Range: 170 feet |
| 04:01 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 11 | Range: 150 feet |
| 04:05 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 15 | Range: 100 feet |
| 04:06 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 16 | Sunset |
| 04:07 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 17 | Range: 75 feet |
| 04:12 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 22 | Range: 50 feet |
| 04:15 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 25 | Range: 30 feet; start Station-keeping |
| 04:19 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 29 | Russian Ground Station acquisition of signal |
| 04:20 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 30 | End Station-keeping; push to dock |
| 04:24 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 34 | Range: 10 feet |
| 04:26 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 36 | Russian Ground Station loss of signal |
| 04:26 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 36 | DOCKING |
| 04:41 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 51 | Sunrise |
“Control, this is Atlantis. OMS engines are armed,” the commander announced, after selecting DAP – AUTO MODE on panel C3, then on panel 08, where the main OMS controls were, he selected L and R OMS HE PRESS/VAPOR ISOL A switches – GPC. On panel C3 he selected OMS ENG switches – ARM/PRESS. He then pushed the EXEC key on the C2 computer keyboard (he and the pilot had one keyboard each on the center panel between them).
“Control, this is Atlantis. Countdown to OMS burn ignition: five … four … three … two … one … ignition. Beginning MC-four burn at one day, nineteen hours, thirty-three minutes MET, over.”
“Roger that,” acknowledged the Capcom from Mission Control in Houston.
A dull rumble from the rear of the Orbiter vibrated through its frame as the two Orbital Maneuvering System pods at the rear fired their engines. Helium gas forced the toxic monomethyl hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer into a combustion chamber (one in each engine) where they atomized and ignited upon contact with each other, creating a hot gas that produced a thrust of 12 000 pounds.
The OMS could provide a total velocity change over a mission of 1000 feet per second, which had to be distributed among the various OMS burns so as not to exceed this figure.
Yurii and Sergei, back on the flight deck after completing their respective exercise sessions, let go of their handholds, grinning as they floated gently back and down a little as Atlantis’s velocity altered. The walls of the Orbiter moved up around them while they continued on their original vectors. They bumped into MS-1 and Joe. “Stop fooling around!” MS-1 said irritably.
“We demonstrate orbital mechanics, Jim,” replied Yurii. “Is educational.” MS-1 glared in exasperation. I’ll be glad to see these two off our ship. He, like some other NASA astronauts, held a certain disdain for Shuttle crew who weren’t NASA astronauts – namely, those from the European Space Agency, assorted payload specialists and Russian cosmonauts (the Soyuz space tourists were regarded with open contempt). There had been much dismay – and lingering post-Cold War suspicion – when Russian cosmonauts had begun flying on Shuttle missions from 1994 as mission specialists, but now they seemed to be stuck with the situation.
Yurii and Sergei were well aware of this contempt, and regarded the astronauts with equal disdain.
“MC burn completed,” announced the pilot after thirty seconds, her voice brisk and professional. She was the sole female in the crew. “Range now fifteen hundred feet from the Station.” Atlantis was below the ISS and thus traveling faster.
Just under half a kilometer, Yurii calculated. The Americans – especially older crewmen like the commander – still used the Imperial system for some operations, while the other partners used metric, so everyone on the ISS program had to be “bilingual”. Conversion charts were attached to their checklists, and pocket calculators were carried.
“ISS, Atlantis. Yurii, we are fifteen hundred feet and approximately one hour till rendezvous. ETA is twenty thirty-six MET.”
“Look forward to seeing you, Steve. Out.”
The two Russians, grabbing their cameras, floated to the Orbiter’s four upward-facing windows in the cabin’s roof. “Looks awesome!” remarked Yurii somewhat grudgingly, as he and Sergei gazed up at the ISS.
“Da, like a sailing ship,” Sergei agreed. Even in its truncated, unfinished form, the ISS resembled some otherworldly sailing ship floating in the void.
They had arrived into sunrise at MET 1:19:18 or 20:08 GMT, so the ISS was now clearly visible, lit from below and in front with the sun at a low angle. It had begun a 27-minute rotation maneuver to docking attitude.
The Orbiter had to maneuver upwards and in front of the ISS, point nose-upwards then slowly drift back towards the forward end of the Station so it could connect with the docking node at PMA-2. This Pressurized Mating Adapter protruded forwards from the Destiny Lab module. It and the Orbiter were fitted with the Androgynous Peripheral Docking System, essentially two rings which fitted together at mating with 12 hooks and latches – the ISS set passive, the Orbiter’s active.
The two Russians took photos of the ISS with their respective cameras, while the Shuttle crew busied themselves with the docking sequence. The modules were laid out like a string of sausages. At the forward end protruded PMA-2, the docking attachment for the Orbiter. Next came Destiny, the Lab, from which dangled the 17.6-meter, $600 million Space Station Remote Manipulator System, or Canadarm-2 – the multi-jointed robot arm mounted to the Power and Data Grapple fixture outside the Destiny module. The arm could also “inchworm” to the Mobile Base System on the Station’s Truss, enabling it to service various sites. Linked to Destiny was Unity, Node 1, with PMA-3 docked to its nadir node (it served as a backup Shuttle docking node). The Quest airlock was attached from Unity’s starboard node. (“They love those symbolic names, don’t they?” was Yurii’s dour observation.)
PMA-1 linked the U.S. segment to the Russian section: Zarya, the first module to be launched into orbit in 1998, then Zvezda, which served as the habitation module. Pirs, Docking Compartment-1, was attached to the nadir port of Zvezda’s Transfer Compartment (PKhO). A Soyuz spaceship, which served as an escape capsule or lifeboat for the three ISS crew, was docked to Zarya’s Pressurized Adapter (GA). A Progress supply ship was similarly docked to Zvezda’s aft end.
The dominating feature of the ISS was the two U.S. photovoltaic arrays, 4B and 2B, each spanning 36 meters. These, mounted on the upward-pointing temporary Z1 Truss or mast, would eventually be moved to the P5 Truss if the ISS were ever completed, along with three other sets of PAs, two on either end. The Truss by then would span 108.4 meters. The PAs were gold foil underneath, coated with black solar cells on the sunward-pointed side. The Russian segment’s solar arrays glittered iridescent blue like a dragonfly’s wings, as Mir’s panels had. To Sergei and Yurii, they were the most beautiful aspect of the Station.
“Range now six hundred feet, Steve,” said Joe ten minutes later; he had been assigned to operate the laser ranging device, which was similar to the sort police used to catch speeding cars. It was a white rectangular box whose laser was fired by squeezing a hand-trigger, the resulting digital readout displayed in red numbers on an LCD screen. He pointed the LRD at one of the upwards-facing windows, pinging it at the ISS and calling out ranges every minute. The data from this was used to verify the measurements that the primary Orbiter ranging devices – the rendezvous radar system, and Trajectory Control Sensor (the latter mounted in the payload bay) – were providing. It was hard for humans to judge distances and closing speeds between two objects in the blackness of space, so use of the three devices provided redundancy.
“Okay, arriving on the r-bar,” said Steve. This, the radius bar, was an imaginary line connecting the Station with the center of the Earth. “Yurii, Atlantis . Docking still holding at estimated time of twenty-one twenty-six GMT.” There was now 50 minutes to go until docking. “Slowing to minimal velocity.”
“Acknowledged, Atlantis. Russian arrays feathered, Steve,” came the Russian commander’s voice over UHF. Sergei and Yurii could see the four Russian solar panels – two each on Zvezda and Zarya – turn so they, like the twin U.S. photovoltaic arrays (feathered an hour before docking), faced edge-on along the Station’s X-axis. This orientation would minimize any damage from the Orbiter’s thruster residue on approach.
As the feathered arrays would not be positioned to follow the sun, the Station was powered down prior to this. The ISS itself had to be put into docking mode, with both U.S. and Russian segments configured to PROXIMITY OPS via the onboard computer laptop interfaces. The Station would be passing over Russian ground sites during docking to provide TsUP with direct communication and telemetry. This was preferred by the Russians, though not constrained if backup moding of the ISS Attitude Control System by the crew was available.
“Kathy, I’m taking over manual control,” the commander informed her. He, with Kathy’s assistance in controlling Atlantis’s approach, would perform the docking manually. Jim, MS-1, oversaw rendezvous navigation displays on his laptop, STS3; Chad, MS-2, had the backup RPOP. Chad would also operate the Orbiter’s docking system.
For the next 14 minutes the commander and pilot guided Atlantis in a slow quarter-circle of the ISS until they stopped at a point 310 feet in front of the ISS. “Houston, Atlantis is at v-bar arrival. Proceeding along docking corridor.” The v-bar, velocity vector, was the Station’s forward-traveling orbital path – positive, as it was in front. The sun was now directly overhead, at orbital noon.
The Orbiter’s velocity would now be slowed from three feet per second at manual takeover to an inch per second just before contact. With two heavy vessels closing in on each other – the ISS currently massing around 180 metric tons, and Atlantis 75 tons (the Truss in the payload bay was itself 13.6 tons) – the tolerance for misinterpretation was slight.
Atlantis’s RCS thrusters were gently fired to rotate the Orbiter so that she stood on her tail relative to the Earth below her. The docking airlock in the payload bay faced backwards, aimed at PMA-2. The commander used a view from a camera mounted in the center of Atlantis’s docking mechanism as a key alignment aid. He had to precisely center the Orbiter’s and PMA’s docking ports within a tolerance of three inches. It called for all his skill in manually steering the massive Orbiter.
Sergei looked out the Orbiter’s roof windows with Yurii; they had little to do other than taking photos. If history had been different, I would have been piloting Buran.
Personnel in both the White Shuttle and Blue ISS control rooms would all be monitoring the docking from Houston. A Russian Interface Officer posted there was the liaison between Houston and TsUP, but he had no part in actual docking procedures other than to keep Moscow informed of events in Houston MCC.
TsUP in Moscow had been in charge when the first Russian module, Zarya, was launched on a Proton rocket in November of 1998 – telemetry from the module could only be decoded by Russian ground stations. Since the December 1998 docking of the first American module, Unity, though, operations control had shifted to MCC-Houston. TsUP talked with cosmonauts onboard through Zvezda’s VHF comm systems, planned for Soyuz and Progress missions and monitored the science experiments, but it was NASA/Houston which got most of the media attention and had the final say in joint decisions. To add insult to injury, NASA had set up a backup MCC in the old control room that had formerly been used for the 1988 Buran flight.
I wish, thought Sergei somewhat uncharitably, that hurricane had flattened MCC-Houston and JSC, not passed it by. The backup Moscow control room had been used when Hurricane Lili approached the coast of Texas, but it stayed east of Houston and turned north. MCC-Houston was back in normal operations two days later.
“Atlantis arriving,” came the Russian commander’s voice over the UHF, followed by the ringing of the ship’s bell mounted near the forward hatch of Destiny. Three sets of two rings in naval tradition: two pairs for the arriving Shuttle and Expedition commanders, as well as one for the arriving vehicle.
A faint vibration resonated through Atlantis as the Orbiter’s docking collar engaged that of PMA-2’s at 21:26 GMT. “Houston, capture confirmed,” the commander radioed. Dedushka had guided the massive ship to a perfect docking. Hooks and latches drew the two craft firmly together. The hatches would not be opened for another hour and twenty minutes while the docking vibrations were dampened, pressures equalized and leak checks were performed. In the interim, the crew prepared items for logistics transfer, including Sergei, Yurii and Joe’s Sokol pressure suits and Soyuz Kazbek-U seat liners.
Meetings and greetings
| U.S. Eastern Time | DD | HH | MM | Shuttle & ISS activities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 04:26 p.m. | 01 | 20 | 36 | DOCKING |
| 04:55 p.m. | 01 | 21 | 05 | Hatch leak checks; audio configuration |
| 05:20 p.m. | 01 | 21 | 30 | Group B computer power-down |
| 05:25 p.m. | 01 | 21 | 35 | ODS prepped for ingress |
| 05:45 p.m. | 01 | 21 | 55 | Hatch opening |
| 05:45 p.m. | 01 | 21 | 55 | Post-rendezvous laptop reconfiguration |
| 06:15 p.m. | 01 | 22 | 25 | Welcome-aboard ceremony |
| 06:20 p.m. | 01 | 22 | 30 | Safety briefing |
| 06:45 p.m. | 01 | 22 | 55 | Logistics transfers begin |
| 06:45 p.m. | 01 | 22 | 55 | Space suit transfer reconfiguration |
| 06:45 p.m. | 01 | 22 | 55 | Shuttle oxygen configuration |
| 06:45 p.m. | 01 | 22 | 55 | Soyuz seat liner installation |
| 07:40 p.m. | 01 | 23 | 50 | Quest equipment lock preparation |
| 08:00 p.m. | 02 | 00 | 10 | Spacesuit to airlock |
| 08:25 p.m. | 02 | 00 | 35 | RMS power-up |
| 08:30 p.m. | 02 | 00 | 40 | EVA camera set-up |
| 08:45 p.m. | 02 | 00 | 55 | EVA-1: procedures review |
| 08:45 p.m. | 02 | 00 | 55 | Sokol suit leak checks |
| 09:45 p.m. | 02 | 01 | 55 | Expedition Crews’ Daily Planning Conference |
| 09:45 p.m. | 02 | 01 | 55 | EVA tools configured |
| 12:20 a.m. | 02 | 04 | 30 | STS/ISS crew sleep begins |
“Zdravstvuite! Welcome to MKS! We happy to see you!” exclaimed the Russian commander as the Shuttle crew drifted through the just-opened hatches. Dedushka and Yurii Ivanovich clasped and shook hands – not over the threshold of the two hatches, in deference to a Russian superstition – then embraced with more enthusiasm. The next few minutes were filled with hugs, backslaps and excited chatter as bodies floated everywhere, spilling into Destiny. A camera mounted at the aft end of the module provided a live-feed transmission via Ku-band to MCC-Houston, broadcast on NASA TV. A brief five-minute welcoming-ceremony was scheduled.
“Very nice docking, beautiful! Excellent flying, Steve,” said Yurii Ivanovich, once they were all positioned in front of the camera. “We want to welcome our seven new crew to MKS. You look beautiful on approach. This great place to be, you will love it here. We help you settle and tell you everything. Welcome aboard.” He gave the microphone – attached to the Audio Terminal Unit on the Lab’s aft port panel by a long cable – to the Shuttle commander.
“Yurii, when we saw the Station light up at sunrise it was like a bright star in the distance – we were maybe fifteen, twenty miles away – and the sunlight turned it golden-red. The color was just spectacular, your home is beautiful and it’s even better on the inside. We’re happy to be here and we’re looking forward to transferring stuff and taking you guys home safely.”
Joe added, “My crew and I are looking forward to our stay and we’re ready to get to work.” With that, they signed off from Houston. A 25-minute safety briefing was scheduled next, to familiarize the Shuttle astronauts and incoming Expedition Crew with the Station’s myriad systems. Logistics transfers followed, including the changing of the outgoing and incoming Crews’ Soyuz Kazbek-U seat liners and Sokol pressure suits; at that point the official handover would take place.
Yurii hung back behind Sergei – he had carefully stayed out of the Russian commander’s reach after catching a glimpse of murderous rage, quickly suppressed, when Yurii Ivanovich’s eyes met his. “I will stay behind you, tovarisch,” Yurii muttered. “He is not happy to see me.”
“He’s barely hanging in there,” Sergei whispered back, surreptitiously observing the commander. After five months in orbit, all three of the outgoing crew appeared ghost-pale and tired. Yurii Ivanovich, however, seemed especially ragged around the edges. There was a little too much white showing around his blue eyes, a nervous tic in his cheek and his light brown hair was unkempt and overgrown – he evidently had not entrusted his locks to his crewmates’ ham-fisted attempts at amateur hairdressing. His expression was strained and he looked as though he had lost weight – compared to his appearance in his Expedition Crew portrait photo – though he was still much heftier in comparison to Yurii and Sergei.
Yurii gently pushed his grey molded Soyuz Kazbek-U seat liner so it traveled on a trajectory in front of him as he emerged into Destiny from PMA-2, following Sergei some distance in front of him. Newton’s three laws of motion became very evident up here. Pushing off from the hatchway, he traveled in a straight line that couldn’t be altered unless he pushed off another object or grabbed a handhold. A gentle shove was enough to travel from one end of a module to another; fast flying only meant one crashed into walls or bulkheads. He also had to ensure that he directed the force of his thrust through his center of gravity – around his waist area – else he would go into a spin.
Destiny, lit by two parallel strip rows of fluorescent lights on either side of its roof, had white walls with blue handholds and bulkheads. To Yurii’s left as he moved aftwards – the starboard side of the module – was the Temporary Sleep Station, or Izolyator as the Russians dubbed it. To his right was the much-lauded Microgravity Sciences Glovebox – nicknamed “Peggy’s Box,” after the first Science Officer whose pride and joy it had been during her stay. Neither Russian was trained in using it (nor was interested in learning) – Peggy’s Box was Joe’s domain. Forward of this were the video screens and hand controllers for operating the SSRMS.
Through into Unity, this module also painted white but with peach-colored bulkheads. On the roof was the Resistance Exercise Device. The Quest joint airlock was docked to Unity’s starboard docking port; three American EMU spacesuits were stored there. These would not be utilized during Joe, Yurii and Sergei’s stay; the Russians had not been trained in their use, anyhow. NASA would not let us near them! But our spacesuits are better, anyway.
Yurii grabbed the seat liner to alter its trajectory. PMA-1 sloped upwards, and Yurii passed through its interior, lined with white storage bags, into the Russian segment and Zarya’s spherical GA, Pressurized Adapter, its surfaces covered with green Velcro. Yurii felt some relief as he emerged into Russian territory; the modules were essentially upgraded versions of those on the Mir Space Station. Zarya, the Functional Cargo Block, was the equivalent of Mir’s Kvant module; Zvezda, the Service Module, was analogous to Mir’s Base Block.
Below Yurii, a hatch led to the docked Soyuz, so he grabbed the seat liner again to halt its progress. Sergei was down there changing his seat liner, so Yurii left the liner floating and pushed himself through Zarya for a quick look around, and to retrieve the Russian Canon XL-1 camcorder so he could record the Soyuz handover. Zarya, lined with 88 cream-Velcroed panels, the spaces behind which were used for storage, was narrow and cramped. The module was docked onto Zvezda’s PkhO, Transfer Compartment. The GA had four hatches – one forward, one aft, one upward-facing and downward-facing. The PkhO had six – one port and one starboard as well as the others – to which other modules could be docked. Pirs, Docking Compartment-1, was attached to the nadir node of the PkhO. Three Orlan-M spacesuits were stored here; Yurii and Sergei would utilize the Orlan spacesuits for their spacewalks.
The PkhO led into the Rabochii Otsek, Working Compartment, which held communications equipment. Six viewing windows of various sizes were set into the RO’s floor, and further on was a larger 40 centimeter-diameter Earth Observation window. Another bulkhead separated the RO from the living quarters, where the life support equipment, food galley and sleeping kayuty, cabins, for two crew made this section the center of activity for those on board. Like the other modules, the living quarters were cluttered with equipment, cables, tools, personal effects and assorted odds and ends.
Home for the next six months, thought Yurii. Six months in noisy, cramped confinement would not fill many people with enthusiasm. But I wouldn’t swap this for all the money in the world. I love it up here! I just wish we were on Mir-2 ….
Sergei carefully signed his name in Cyrillic script – С. Константинов – beside the Russian commander’s on the Soyuz certificate which verified the condition of the spacecraft at turnover, completion of replacement of personal gear, and completion of transfer of all delivered cargo. The certificate was temporarily secured to a clipboard.
They had spent the last three hours transferring the Kazbek-U seat liners between the Orbiter and Soyuz – the grey liners were individually molded to fit each cosmonaut, hence the need for seat transfer. They then tried on their blue-and-white Sokol pressure suits worn in the Soyuz, ensuring each suit – tailored to each wearer’s dimensions – fit properly and that there were no leaks.
“The Soyuz is now under your command, Sergei Aleksandrovich. Fly it well,” said Yurii Ivanovich in Russian as he shook hands with Sergei, signifying the formal change-of-command. The Russian commander would take the certificate back to Earth with him, to be presented to Energiya.
They were in Zarya’s GA, spherical Pressurized Adapter, beneath which the Soyuz TMA was docked, pointing down towards Earth. Joe and Yurii hovered nearby, Yurii filming the brief ceremony with the Russian Canon XL-1 camcorder.
Sergei had trained on a simulator to fly the TMA version, with Yurii as flight engineer; both were assigned a taxi flight in a year or so. The TMA had been introduced in 2002, replacing the TM that had flown since 1986. The TMA’s development had been partially paid for by NASA because of Energiya’s funding woes – yet another cause of dismay for Sergei and Yurii. “Now they are taking over our spaceships, too.”
The TMA had updated computers and avionics displays, including a color “glass cockpit”. The A stood for “Anthropometric” – the TMA could accommodate a greater height and weight range for crew than the previous version: from 4 feet 11 inches to 6 feet 3 inches, and 50 kilos to 95 kilos. The TM’s range had been between 5 feet 4 inches to 6 feet, and 56 kilograms to 85 kilograms. Sergei had been somewhat uncomfortable in the TM, his long legs folded up to his chin – the TMA was definitely an improvement there.
The outward appearance of the Soyuz variants had not changed greatly since 1967, leading some ignoramuses in the Western media to sneer at it as “primitive” compared to the Shuttle. The Soyuz’s three components – Propulsion, Work and Orbital Modules – separated upon re-entry, with only the Work Module making it back to Earth via parachute, the others burning up in the atmosphere. To date, there had been two fatal Soyuz accidents in the early years, and a couple of near-misses – but no spaceship could be made one hundred percent safe. The Soyuz, though limited in cargo-carrying capacity, served its purpose well as a low-Earth orbit crew transfer vessel.
“Uh, Houston, this is Alpha,” began Joe over the S-band link. “I’m just reporting that our custom seat liners are in place aboard the Soyuz, and the Sokol pressure suits have been successfully tested. Sergei and Yurii, the two Soyuz commanders, signed the certificate of transfer at 20:35 GMT.”
“And with those words, we officially welcome you and Sergei and the other Yurii to your brand new home,” replied the Capcom.
“Thanks a lot, it’s great to be here,” said Joe.
“Yurii – what the hell are you doing here? You’re assigned to the TSS!” exclaimed Joe as he entered Zvezda’s living quarters that evening to see Sergei and Yurii happily ensconced in the starboard and port kayuty. The outgoing Expeditioners had earlier moved their own possessions to Atlantis . Joe pushed his own Personal Preference Kit and sleeping bag ahead of him to place in the kayuta assigned to him.
Sergei and Yurii had learned long ago in childhood, during summer Pioneerskaya Organizatsiya camps near the Black Sea, that the most important task upon arriving was to establish one’s territory on the most desirably-placed bunk beds before the other children could get there first. They thus had raced to grab the kayuty while Joe was occupied with other logistics transfers.
“I sleep in Ruskii kayuta. You sleep in Amerikanskii kayuta. Works better,” stated Yurii, with a look of defiance.
Sergei was, in fact, occupying the kayuta assigned to the Station commander, but Joe decided not to press this issue. He knew, though, if he didn’t assert his authority over Yurii now, the two Russians would become impossible to control at all. “Yurii, you are sleeping in the TSS. As commander, I am entitled to sleep in Zvezda. It is not an option. Kindly evacuate my quarters.” Joe folded his arms and waited. Yurii scowled, grumbled a curse or two in Russian under his breath, then sulkily gathered up his sleeping bag and PPK and floated out. He didn’t head forward, though, but across to just outside Sergei’s kayuta.
“I not go to Izolyator yet.” He used the Russian nickname for the Temporary Sleep Station, as the white-padded-walled TSS all the way down in Destiny seemed like a solitary confinement cell (or padded cell). “Too close to Yurii Ivanovich. He might want to hurt me.”
“I wonder why,” replied Joe sarcastically. “Fine, stay in Zvezda for now, but once Atlantis undocks, you’re going to the TSS.”
“I will sleep here somewhere,” said Yurii, in Russian, to Sergei. “Maybe on floor … but Vozdukh is very noisy. Maybe I will go to Rabochii Otsek.” The noisy Vozkukh carbon dioxide scrubber, along with the Elektron oxygen generator, was thoughtfully placed in the forward starboard corner of the living compartment. The Vozdukh let out a short screech every so often, generated by its scrubbing system valve’s state changes – a source of irritation for the resident crew. It screeched every thirty, twenty or ten minutes according to the setting chosen. In Mir, it had been located in a different module, Kvant.
“Da, there is no space here.” Every square meter of the living quarters was occupied with equipment. “You will need your earphones.” Crews were advised to wear earplugs or noise-reducing headsets if they didn’t want to experience hearing loss after months in the noisy modules.
Flight Day 5
“Seryozha! Come with me – I want to look for something!” Yurii hissed, prodding Sergei awake. During Atlantis’s eight-day stay, Yurii had hitched his sleeping bag to various sites around Zvezda. Yurii did not want to take up residence in Destiny’s Temporary Sleep Station until the Shuttle and outgoing Expedition crews departed – he wished to keep as far away from the irate Russian commander as possible.
“This had better be good,” Sergei grumbled, unzipping his cream sleeping bag and floating out. He looked at his watch: 07:10 GMT. They had gone to bed at 05:20, with wake-up at 13:20 on this fourth night of their ISS stay. They were sleep-shifting because of the Orbiter docking; they would resume the normal 21:30-06:00 sleep cycle after Atlantis undocked.
The Zvezda module’s ventilation fans and other life support machinery rumbled and whirred in a never-ending din. Most of the overhead fluorescent lights had been switched off for the night; only a couple provided some eerie illumination.
Sergei, shivering, grabbed his T-shirt and pulled it on so, like Yurii, he wore it with his thin Russian-made cotton shorts. The pair glanced at the closed door of Joe’s port kayuta – he was evidently sound asleep – then pushed off, heading forward to the Station’s American segment: through Zvezda, Zarya, PMA-1, Unity and finally to Destiny, also darkened for the night. At Destiny’s forward end, a hatchway led to PMA-2 and the docked Orbiter, Atlantis, where the Shuttle and departing Expedition crews slept.
Yurii switched on an overhead General Luminaire Assembly, the fluorescent light flickering to life, and instructed Sergei, “Get the AMP medical bag.” This medical kit was stored in a locker marked with a red cross located on Destiny’s floor, aftwards of the Observation Window. Other kits were kept in the CHeCS rack.
“Here it is.” Sergei hauled up the soft blue bag which bore a label reading AMBULATORY MEDICAL PACK. Yurii grabbed it off him and pulled down the two Velcro strips (helpfully marked PULL) securing it closed, muttering, “They’re supposed to be with the Pregnancy Test Kit.”
“Oh, you mean the kondomy?” Sergei exclaimed as realization dawned. “You really think they have them here?”
“Soon find out,” Yurii replied, as he continued to search. There were rumors circulating about a box or two of condoms being included in one of the American ISS medical kits – or so Yurii and Sergei had heard from a couple of young Ascans during their training. Yurii declared he would verify the rumor for himself as soon as they arrived up here for their six-month stay.
The PTK was secured in a small molded compartment in the AMP. Its inclusion was not advertised, though PDF instructions for its use, along with other medical procedures such as dealing with suicidal or psychotic crewmembers, were publicly available on the Internet. Ever curious, Yurii and Sergei had asked the NASA Medical Procedures trainer why the test kit was needed.
Looking embarrassed, he had explained, “If a female Expedition crewmember thinks she might have, uh, conceived on Earth before she arrived on the ISS, she can use the kit to confirm this. If she is pregnant, she would need to be evacuated as soon as possible – the radiation up there would harm the developing foetus.”
“But could she conceive during stay?” pressed Sergei, wanting to watch the instructor squirm.
The physician glared at him, choosing not to answer that directly. “Astronauts are professionals. They are up there to do serious work. I hope you two intend to do the same.”
“Here they are!” Yurii announced triumphantly, pulling out a blue cardboard box from under the Pregnancy Test Kit: a package of Ansell Lifestyles regular condoms, 24-pack.
“It really is true!” Sergei exclaimed, grinning. “Open the box and see if any have been used.”
Yurii opened the flap cover and pulled out the blister-packed objects, counting, “… eighteen, nineteen … five missing! Someone’s been busy!” They spent the next couple of minutes in uncontrollable giggles.
“Wonder who it was? He had to have ‘docked’ with one of the women on the visiting Shuttle crews,” Sergei speculated, when they had recovered enough to speak. “They are all married … not that that doesn’t stop some people.”
“Maybe one of the earlier ‘mixed’ crews,” Yurii suggested slyly. There had only been a couple of women – both Americans – in the ISS Expedition Crews to date.
“Nyet, they were middle-aged – a bit ‘over the hill’. And they were professionals,” Sergei added with a sneer.
“Oh, that’s just their public image. You don’t know what they got up to with no one else watching.”
“Joined the ‘Hundred-Mile-High Club’,” said Sergei, stating the phrase in English. He had once asked Joe what the phrase meant. Joe, blushing, explained that it was derived from the Mile-High Club, whose members were couples who had supposedly indulged in naughty nocturnal activities during airline flights.
“I will join it during this mission,” Yurii said. He broke off one of the kondomy and put it in his shorts’ pocket.
“With the Ledyanaya Koroleva?” Sergei snorted. “Good luck.”
“I haven’t given up yet,” Yurii said determinedly. The ultra-professional female Shuttle pilot had rebuffed their advances some months ago. “I think she secretly likes me.”
“In your dreams …! We’ll have a long wait after they leave,” Sergei continued. “There’s no Shuttle visits until our mission ends.” A woman astronaut – a mission specialist – was assigned to the crew of the next Shuttle/Expedition Crew exchange mission.
Yurii looked unhappy. “Don’t remind me. After Katyusha, we won’t see a woman for six months …. Well, you can have the next one.”
“Wish there were a kosmonavtka on board,” said Sergei rather wistfully. “Be more patriotic to ‘dock’ with her.”
Yurii frowned at that. “The only one on the squad has yet to fly. Amerikantsy have beaten us there, too.” Only three Russian women had flown in space up to that point – in contrast to thirty or so American women on Shuttle missions. The last Russian woman to launch was rumored to have had a rather close personal encounter with one of the long-duration-stay cosmonauts in residence on Mir, though both, being married to others, strenuously denied this.
The topic of sex in space was one about which there was much salacious speculation in certain segments of the media, but one which NASA and the RKA refused to admit to or discuss. Rumors had abounded for years that certain people in mixed crews on orbit had joined the Club. It was one of those subjects about which everyone was curious – a favorite gossip topic in both the NASA and Zvyozdyi Gorodok space centers – but which no-one would admit to.
Americans in particular had a Puritanical attitude towards such basic urges. Frank discussion of these would offend the more conservative religious senators in Congress – and thus threaten NASA’s funding. NASA did not want to do anything to mar its family-friendly image.
Someone on the NASA medical team, though, was obviously more pragmatic about the possibility, and had prudently included the condoms with the PTK to cover all “eventualities”.
Stuffing the blister packs back into the box, Yurii looked at its rear panel. Some wit had stuck a plain white adhesive label there and printed:
For orbit insertion –
Practice safe space sex!
Approach and docking (2)
Flight Days 6-7
Kathy fidgeted restlessly in her sleeping bag, unable to settle down. Around her were the slumbering men of the Shuttle crew, their sleeping bags attached to various points on the mid-deck’s starboard wall and lockers. She was the sole female amongst nine males on this mission which, depending upon one’s attitude, could be cause for alarm or delight.
The two Mission Specialists, Jim and Chad, were with her on the mid-deck; the Shuttle commander, Steve, had elected to sleep on the flight deck, wearing a communications headset in case Mission Control needed to contact the crew during their sleep period.
The three outgoing Expedition Crew men were also secured on the mid-deck, their snugly-bagged shapes barely visible in the gloom, black sleep masks covering their eyes. The eight mid-deck floodlights had been turned off for the night, controlled from panel M013Q on the port side wall just under the access hatch, the two small fluorescent lamps surrounding the recessed panel providing an eerie nightlight. The humming of ventilation fans and pumps surrounded the crew with a comforting susurrus, though some of the crew found it too disturbing and wore ear plugs.
Each sleeping bag was attached to a support pad which in turn was secured to the walls by six pin pips. Alternately, for 24-hour missions, a four-tier rigid sleep station was flown where the crew could sleep in shifts, but that arrangement was not necessary for this mission.
This is the only time we get some peace, thought Kathy, weary from the day’s busy activities – not a minute was wasted in their tight schedule. But she was in no mood to sleep.
Squirming awkwardly, she undid her top elastic body restraint, unzipped the front of the bag, reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out the scrap of paper Yurii had, with a sly grin, surreptitiously slipped into her hand earlier in the day. She squinted at his awkwardly-scrawled English handwriting: “Rendezvous Pirs, 06:30. Юрий ☺”
She glanced at the luminous numbers of her watch: 06:04. Nearly time. But I can’t believe I am even considering this.
Kathy had married her husband, Scott, in 1985; their daughter Jennifer was born in 1988. The marriage had been fairly stable if unremarkable, but the romantic element had long since faded. Scott worked in the private aerospace industry at Boeing and was often away on long trips. Kathy had joined the U.S. Air Force after college and flown KC-10 tankers on combat refueling missions during the Gulf War. After leaving, she spent most of the 1990s training as an astronaut at NASA; this was her first mission. The training had consumed much of her life. Somewhere along the way, the sweet daughter she had known had mutated into the Teenager From Hell. I guess Jenny resents us being away, involved in our careers, and who can blame her? Other mothers had assured Kathy that it was “a phase she was going through,” and that “she would grow out of it”. I’ll believe that when I see it!
By all appearances, they were a successful, high-achieving American family. Kathy suspected, though, that Scott had not been entirely faithful – and those trips away were the perfect cover for dalliances elsewhere. She had once discovered a lipstick which wasn’t hers in his luggage, and another time detected the scent of an unfamiliar perfume on a shirt which he had neglected to wash before he came home. Kathy had not confronted him as she really didn’t want to know – and thus keep the marriage intact, for Jennifer’s sake. At least, till her daughter grew up.
All this, however, had led her to consider the Russian’s sly suggestion. He knows a soft target when he sees one, she thought, with some irritation. Am I that obvious? During the months of training with the three – Joe and the two Russians – she had remained carefully aloof, assuming her most professional attitude. She politely but firmly rebuffed the pair when they individually tried to flirt with her; they had gained a notorious reputation around Houston as “Double Trouble”.
She had long ago learned how to deal with such approaches from men in both still-male-dominated professions of the USAF and NASA. She had not, however, felt offended in the way that she had with similar overtures from her American colleagues. I guess it’s true what they say about Russian men – at least the ones who aren’t drunk – they really know how to charm ladies. And they really are cute! Secretly, Kathy was flattered by their attentions – they certainly were good-looking, and it was some reassurance to her that she was still found to be attractive. She had been born in 1964, and was alarmingly close to forty.
I’m not getting any younger … those wrinkles that won’t go away … sagging where there never used to be … middle age not far off …. Kathy’s looks were wholesome all-American; she had shoulder-length honey-blond hair (which she worriedly inspected every morning for the first strands of grey) and soft brown eyes. But looks and youth did not last forever, and, like many women, she feared, deep down, the onset of middle- and old age, and becoming essentially invisible to men as younger generations of women took her place. Damn it, I’m a successful career woman and I shouldn’t be thinking like this.
She shook her head in frustration, and looked again at the scrap of paper. I shouldn’t be contemplating this. I’m married … but I wouldn’t be the first one. Despite NASA’s public image of wholesome family-friendliness, affairs and divorces certainly weren’t uncommon amongst its astronauts and other personnel. Just look what happened to poor Joe. The Expedition commander had endured an acrimonious divorce during his intensive ISS training, and was miserable and depressed.
The astronauts in particular still had the ghosts of the rambunctious Mercury Seven hanging over them – the “Right Stuff,” to use the well-worn phase – and many (the pilots in particular) did their best to live up to the image. (Though they had to be careful not to offend those higher up – they had careers to worry about.) These above-average intelligent, successful, ambitious men and women worked in a high-pressure, dangerous occupation and they had to release steam somehow.
Who was having an affair with whom was a favorite hot gossip topic around JSC, and there was even more salacious speculation about who had supposedly joined the “Hundred-Mile-High Club”. No one would directly admit to the human version of “orbit insertion” – But after twenty years of space trips with both men and women on board, I would be surprised if no one had tried it!
She considered the two Russians. The taller, leaner, black-haired one, Sergei, was rather shy, in contrast to his blond-haired friend (real blond, not artificially bleached, she couldn’t help noting; even his eyelashes were pale). She found them both likable in different ways, but beneath their bad behavior she sensed a darker despair. She had been aware of the misfortunes of the Russian space program through the 1990s – its near-collapse after the Soviet Union’s demise, the partnership with NASA which politicians had forced the Russian space program into, the humiliating reliance on NASA for funding, the derisive stories in the American media. You couldn’t walk around JSC now without tripping over Russians, it seemed. Kathy didn’t mind much; she found them very different to the dour, humorless villains depicted in countless American Cold War-era books and movies. Some of the military officer astronauts, however, found it difficult to adjust to the new reality – having been long-conditioned to see Russia as the “Evil Empire” – and grumbled under their breath.
She recalled Yurii showing off before one training session in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, walking on his hands then doing a backflip while dressed in his orange ACES, to the disgruntled stares of the American men. He was quite the champion gymnast, apparently – Kathy had looked him up on the Internet and found he had won some medals in the Olympics before his Energiya career (he had even brought one up to the ISS with him). A couple of websites by besotted female fans (“Yurii’s Shrine” being one) were dedicated to him (she had found these after Googling Yurii’s name). He still trained and occasionally competed in gymnastics meets – and had the physique to show for it. In comparison to Scott, she thought – oh, he wasn’t a total slob; he did a bit of jogging, but he was showing a small paunch as he approached middle age.
Yurii had spent rather a lot of time on this flight wearing his shorts and no shirt – I wonder why? Kathy thought dryly. She couldn’t help glancing at him admiringly, though she was careful not to be obvious.
Yurii had told her one time, with a mournful expression, that he was an orphan, raised by the State. (Sergei, who had been nearby, rolled his eyes, his expression saying he’d heard this line many times before.) Although this was evidently a ploy to evoke her sympathy, she couldn’t help but feel some pity. It must be lonely to have no family.
Kathy looked at her watch again – 06:15 – and made her choice. The hell with it. You only live once. She unzipped her sleeping bag further, and wriggled out of it, after a quick look around to check any of the others hadn’t awakened. She was dressed in standard-issue cobalt-blue shorts and T-shirt. She glided aftwards to the inner hatch leading to the external airlock. For safety reasons it was kept closed during sleep hours. After checking the pressure gauge, she pressed the equalization valve handle and rotated it; there was a slight hiss as the air volume on both sides was equalized. She then grasped the hatch handle, pulled it forward six inches and the hatch pivoted up and to the right. Entering the airlock, she was faced with the two stowed EMU spacesuits normally carried on every Shuttle mission. Kathy turned ninety degrees upward and glided to the exterior airlock door, also kept closed – she went through the same procedure to open it. She now emerged into Pressurized Mating Adapter-2, which connected the Orbiter with the ISS; it led to the Destiny module.
Kathy glanced behind her, biting her lip and stifling a nervous giggle. She felt like a teenager sneaking out of her parents’ house after curfew to meet a boyfriend. I haven’t done anything like this in years! Using her hands, she propelled herself along the length of Destiny – only a couple of overhead fluorescent lights left on – to Unity and thence the Russian segment. There was little privacy to be had on the Orbiter or ISS. Unlike Mir, the ISS’s modules were laid out in a row. Only the Soyuz’s Orbital Module, or the Pirs Docking Compartment-1 offered some seclusion: the Russian spaceship and DC lay at right-angles to the other modules.
PMA-1 was linked to Zarya’s spherical GA, Pressurized Adapter, which itself led to Zarya’s main module and through that to Zvezda. Zarya seemed alarmingly cramped, like a narrow tunnel. Supplies transferred from Atlantis were stored in soft white bags and secured by bungee cords to the floor; their barcoded contents were in the process of being logged into the computer Inventory Management System and transferred to the storage lockers. Kathy used handholds fastened at intervals along all four walls to pull herself along. As in the other modules, pumps and ventilators provided a constant din. How can astronauts spend months on end in this? I would go mad – I don’t envy them. I’ll stick to short flights! Kathy had no desire to be assigned to an ISS Expedition Crew. Lengthy stays in orbit were both psychologically and physically demanding – and the long-term consequences of such side-effects as bone demineralization and radiation exposure were still being studied.
Through another round hatch into Zarya’s PkhO, Transfer Compartment, spherical and green-Velcroed like Zarya’s GA. Cables and pipes snaked everywhere over the spherical walls, though the white flexible cloth ventilation tubes that had cluttered Mir had mostly been replaced by rigid ducts in the body of the modules. One such flexible duct snaked down into Pirs. Kathy hesitated a moment, then followed the tube through the docked hatches – both the PkhO and Pirs, like the other modules of the Russian segment, had plug-like hatch covers which hinged inwards.
Pirs’s fluorescent light was switched off; the only illumination came from one of the two hatch windows, the cover slid partly open. Eerie blue Earthlight bathed the Docking Compartment. To one side were the three bulky, bundled Orlan-M Russian spacesuits.
“Yurii?” Kathy whispered – then yelped, nearly jumping out of her skin as a pair of strong arms closed around her waist from behind and a Russian-accented voice murmured next to her right ear, “Katushya! I knew you come.” He used the Russian version of her name.
Kathy wrenched away from him, bumping into the curved wall of the module and bouncing off a little before she grabbed a handhold, turning to face him. She was torn between wanting to slap Yurii’s smugly-grinning face, or –
“What made you so sure I would turn up?” she said, trying to feign indignation, though the sight of Yurii, who was wearing only shorts, was having quite a different effect upon her. He floated in front of the partly-uncovered window, silhouetted by Earthlight, bare skin tinged blue and his hair seemed almost colorless, like a blond halo.
“Women not resist me.”
“I can imagine,” Kathy muttered sardonically. “I suppose it’s occurred to you that this isn’t professional behavior?”
“I not care,” Yurii shrugged, and held out a hand for her. Kathy felt the last of her resistance melting and moved towards him.
“Chto? What?” mumbled Sergei irritably, rudely jolted out of a dream of flying his Su-27 fighter jet as someone thumped him on the shoulder – he didn’t need to guess who.
“Seryozha! Wake up!” hissed Yurii. “Docking successful! Pay up!”
Sergei came fully awake at that. He opened his eyes to see Yurii floating before him in the semi-darkness, just outside his kayuta, having pulled its door open. His face wore the smug expression of a contented cat’s.
“Katyusha really came to you?” Sergei said in disbelief, having trouble reconciling this news with his image of the aloof, ultra-professional astronaut he had known for the last few months. “The Ledyanaya Koroleva melted then?” He used their nickname for the Shuttle pilot.
“Da,” Yurii grinned. “We are now members of the Hundred-Mile-High-Club! We should get a certificate. I have furthered international relations. And you owe me a pack of M&Ms.” Sergei had earlier wagered Yurii a pack if Yurii were successful in his liaison with Kathy.
Sergei grumbled, then reached over and grabbed a Zip-lock bag in which three 420-gram packets of the American sweet were kept. He and Yurii had become M&M addicts during their training in Houston, and had brought three packs each up with them. These had to last until the next Progress supply flight, so the sweets – like the small secret liquor stash on board – were jealously hoarded. “Crispy, Peanut or Chocolate?”
“Peanut.” Sergei reluctantly handed his friend a pack, which was eagerly grabbed. “I will share them,” Yurii reassured him, stuffing them into a pocket, then headed off to his own cabin.
The morning after
Flight Day 7
Kathy has been up to something, thought Jim, scowling suspiciously as he noticed her rather dreamy, preoccupied expression.
He was at the mid-deck Galley preparing breakfast for the four Shuttle crew and outgoing Expedition Crew; he was designated for this task today. Day 7’s schedule was mostly filled with cargo transfer activities for the crew. After awakening at 13:45 GMT, they had around three hours scheduled for Post-Sleep Activities before the workday began. The outgoing Expedition Crew was scheduled for a 15-minute Daily Planning Conference at 16:15.
The Galley provided facilities for one person to handle all food preparation activities for a meal. There was a convection oven for heating designated food items (which were slotted in on trays) and a rehydration station for reconstituting food packages by connecting the package to a needle and injecting hot water. It also provided cold drinking water and a wet wipes dispenser. Food items and utensils were secured by magnets or Velcro to a flat aluminum tray, which was either Velcroed to a wall or secured with a strap to a crewperson’s leg.
It took Jim only about twenty minutes to prepare breakfast for seven. Each astronaut’s (and cosmonaut’s) meal was stored in a plastic Zip-lock bag, identified with a colored dot (the commander was red, pilot yellow, MS-2 green, MS-1 blue, MS-3 orange, MS-4 brown and MS-5 was purple).
His three Shuttle crewmates and the outgoing Expedition Crew hovered around with hungry expressions. In contrast to the early days of spaceflight, there was now an enormous and delicious variety of food available for Shuttle and Station flights. Jim’s breakfast this morning, for example, consisted of Raspberry Yogurt (Thermostabilized), Sausage Pattie (Rehydrated), Picante Sauce (Fresh), two tortillas (Fresh), Oatmeal w/Raisins (Rehydrated), a Granola Bar (Natural Form) and a sachet of Orange-Pineapple Drink.
“Hurry up, Jim, before we starve to death!” said Steve, half-jokingly.
“Jim’s a long way from starving,” added Chad.
The somewhat pudgy mission specialist glowered at them and brusquely handed them their trays. “Guess who got out on the wrong side of bed this morning,” muttered FE-1 to FE-2.
“I’m going upstairs,” said Kathy after she received her tray. “Just in case Our Master’s Voice calls.” The crew could speak to Houston Mission Control through the Audio Terminal Unit on the mid-deck at panel M042F, but Kathy just wanted a little time alone, still feeling dazed by last night’s adventure. She headed up the port interdeck opening, holding her food tray before her, then floated over to the two windows in the Orbiter’s roof. Docked to PMA-2 at the forward end of the ISS, Atlantis faced nose-upward with the Earth below her. From outside, the Orbiter resembled a giant white moth pinned to a board.
The windows faced the eastwards direction of travel, and Kathy was quickly spellbound by the luminous planet rolling by beneath her. They were on the sunlit side, around twenty minutes away from night. She barely noticed what she was eating, staring as though hypnotized at the incredible view. They didn’t get that much time to look out the windows in their busy schedule, so crews grabbed the opportunity whenever they could.
She smiled again, recalling last night. I though there was nothing to top going into orbit, but now … I haven’t felt this good in years. Maybe not ever!
She had little desire for an affair – this was strictly a “one-night stand” (or float) – though it could be justified, considering her husband’s suspected dalliances. She doubted she would see Yurii again, in any case – he and Sergei would return to Russia once their tour was over. Given their antics over the previous months, I don’t think they’ll be welcome back at Houston anytime soon! But she felt a tinge of regret at the thought, nonetheless. Scott seemed like a dead stick of wood in comparison. At least, though, I’ve had last night … pure magic.
Kathy’s reverie was interrupted by another crewman emerging from the hatch: Jim. She suppressed a surge of irritation. The Mission Specialist could be rather dour and prickly, and had made it clear over their months of training how much he disliked the “Expedition Clueless” cosmonauts, and Russians in general. She nodded a greeting and turned back to the window.
“You’re looking happy this morning,” Jim remarked.
“I like being in space,” said Kathy noncommittally.
“You were gone for a long time last night,” he continued.
“So?” she retorted, spooning yogurt into her mouth. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a wander.” I thought they were all asleep!
“You meet anyone during your travels?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“You didn’t have that rash on your cheek yesterday.”
Shit! Yurii hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and he’d been a little scratchy. Kathy had not inspected her face closely in her small PPK mirror that morning. “It’s just a skin irritation.”
“That little Russian shit has been ogling you all through our training,” observed Jim.
“I can handle men,” Kathy retorted. In more ways than one! “Don’t worry about me. And Yurii’s not a ‘little shit’.” At five feet five inches tall on Earth, Yurii was shorter even than Kathy, but was an ideal size for a gymnast.
“He has a reputation. You might want to watch yourself.”
“If I need you to guard my honor, Jim, I’ll ask. Otherwise, just mind your own business! And I’d like to finish my breakfast in peace, thank-you.”
Jim snorted, scowled, then disappeared back down the hatch.
It’s all yours
At 20:20 GMT a formal televised change-of-command ceremony was scheduled for ten minutes in the Destiny Lab. The real handover had occurred on the day of docking, after the outgoing and incoming crews had exchanged Soyuz seat liners and the two Soyuz commanders – Yurii Ivanovich and Sergei – had signed the official certificate of transfer. The formal American ceremony, however, was first initiated by Expedition One commander Bill Shepherd, a former U.S. Navy SEAL. He had also brought up a small ship’s bell, mounted near the forward end of Destiny, to be rung on arrival and departure of the Orbiter.
“They are letting us know who is boss,” Yurii muttered to Sergei, who scowled in agreement. On Mir, visiting crews had been greeted with the traditional bread-and-salt, and the resident crew had a hot meal waiting for them, but such traditions seemed to have been done away with on the ISS, the Americans instead imposing their own. As a sign of mute rebellion, Yurii and Sergei had dressed in their Russian-made one-piece blue jumpsuits rather than the NASA-made long pants and polo-neck T-shirts worn by the rest of the crews. The first Expedition Crew had worn such jumpsuits, which looked quite smart and flattered almost any figure. The outfits were colored cobalt-blue with grey shoulder panels and a Russian flag on the left arm. Soft blue plastic boots completed the ensemble.
Joe looked at them disapprovingly and whispered to them, “Why aren’t you wearing your Expedition clothes?”
Sergei folded his arms and said defiantly, “We are Ruskii. These are Ruskii clothes.” Joe sighed in exasperation and decided not to press the issue.
A TV camera was mounted at the aft end of Destiny, from which the TV image would be downlinked to MCC-Houston via the high-gain Ku-band and relayed on NASA TV. All ten of the Shuttle and ISS crews now gathered in the Lab, which seemed rather crowded, and arranged themselves in front of the lens. The outgoing Expedition Crew gathered to the starboard side; they wore the red polo-neck T-shirts with the Shuttle flight logo which had been presented to them after arrival by the incoming Expeditioners. The Shuttle crew formed a clump in the middle; Kathy carefully avoided going anywhere near Yurii; she could not look at him without blushing. The three commanders – Joe, Yurii Ivanovich and the Shuttle commander – floated nearest the camera, at the front. Yurii and Sergei hovered off to the left, Yurii behind Sergei and thus keeping his friend between him and the Russian commander.
Voice was downlinked to Houston via the lower-rate S-band, accessed through the wall-mounted Audio Terminal Unit on the aft port side of the hatchway leading to Unity. Joe, as commander of the ISS, took the microphone, attached to the ATU by a long cable. He consulted the American On-Board Short-Term plan schedule for this orbit’s S- and Ku-band passes, marked respectively with horizontal green and yellow stripes. He set up the call to Ground Channel 2 via the S-band link from a nearby IBM Thinkpad 760XD laptop. The S-band antenna gimbaled and locked on to one of NASA’s two Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (a third was parked in orbit as a back-up). He pressed the Push-to-Talk button on the ATU, bringing it to full power and activating it. The device had a speaker, microphone outlet, headphone jack and various function buttons that could link speakers in separate modules, to the Shuttle or astronauts doing EVAs, as well as the ground.
“Houston, this is Alpha calling on Space-to-Ground one; please respond,” said Joe, stating the S-band channel he was using.
“Alpha, this is Houston, we read you loud and clear,” said Jerry, the Capcom, from the Blue Flight Control Room. “Ku-band signal is configured, and we’re ready to receive your broadcast.” A small red LED showed on the video camera connected to the Ku-band system, indicating it was live. Flight controllers in MCC-Houston operated the Ku-band. Everyone made an effort to look cheerful.
“In the tradition of previous crews, we continue the change-of-command ceremony,” Steve began. “It is an ancient naval tradition, first initiated on Space Station Alpha by Expedition One commander Bill Shepherd, where responsibility for the mission, crew and vessel is passed from one commander to another. Okay, over to you, Yurii.” He handed the microphone to the Russian commander.
“My crew will first say some words,” said Yurii, handing the microphone in turn to FE-1, who took it and said, “To the incoming crew, I am happy to report that the equipment and working conditions of the Lab and other modules are in excellent condition. Good luck to your flight, and I hope your stay onboard is as rewarding for you as it was for me.”
FE-2 then added, “The airlock systems and Soyuz are all operating well and in good order. We wish you all the best on your voyage in the next few months.” He handed the microphone back to the Russian commander.
“Joe, I wish you good luck – schastlivogo puti! Now, I am ready to be relieved.” He gave the microphone to Joe.
“Yurii, I relieve you of command.” The microphone went back to the Russian commander.
“I stand relieved.” FE-1 then rang the ship’s bell, also in accordance with naval tradition. Its clear melodious tone was a pleasant contrast to the ever-present din of the module’s ventilation and other machinery. Somewhat stiff hugs and handshakes followed – fortunately, the Russian commander only had to do this with his counterpart, Joe.
“We will miss being here, in our space house,” the commander continued. “We were happy to live, work here. But we are glad to go home to Earth.”
“This is an important day in Alpha’s life,” Joe remarked, after taking the microphone again. “We are changing the Station’s command and the crews aboard her.” I’m really getting the hang of this nautical-speak. “You guys have set a high standard and have shown the peoples of Earth how positive international co-operation can be.” Damn, I’m good! Nominate me for the Nobel Peace Prize, next. “I can only hope my crew will be able to work as well over the next few months we’re here on board.” That’s if I don’t have a nervous breakdown in the meantime.
Steve finished up the session by saying, “We have been honored to serve with you guys, to have helped one Expedition end and another begin as we continue construction of this ship on the high seas. Alpha is a waystation to the stars and, in the not-too-distant future, will be a safe haven for explorers returning home from voyages to other worlds. There has been, and always will be, great danger to be faced and sacrifices to be made, but if humanity is to expand into the Universe we must face this with courage.
“Now, Joe, Sergei and Yurii, it’s your turn to sail for a time over the horizon to discover new lands and then return, helping to make the world a better place.” Everyone applauded, even Yurii and Sergei, forgetting for a moment, their differences.
The ten minutes allotted to the ceremony were almost passed, and the Capcom down at MCC-Houston broke in. “Alpha, Houston. Great speech, Steve, you’ve got a bunch of proud guys down here.” Both parties signed off.
Cuckolded
Flight Day 8
“You did what?” Sergei stared at his friend in disbelief.
“Spiked Jim’s drink bag,” Yurii grinned as he floated to the galley table in Zvezda’s living compartment and positioned himself at its end – Sergei faced towards the front of the module. “I smuggled up a bottle of Stolichnaya, and put a little bit in last night. A waste of good vodka, but he has been so unpleasant to us ….”
“He’ll have the world’s worst hangover after his EVA,” remarked Sergei. An In-suit Drink Bag provided 0.5 gallons of water for a U.S. astronaut during his EVA. “Now I know why he was complaining his water ‘tasted funny’. I hope you hid the vodka.”
“Yes – it’s in a safe place in Zvezda,” Yurii reassured him. NASA had a strict no-alcohol policy while in orbit, which the Russians, of course, were determined to ignore. A small supply of “spetsial’naya meditsina” had previously been stocked on Mir – one needed some comforts in life. One diversionary activity for cosmonauts on Mir had been “treasure hunts,” where, after removing interior panels, they might come across a bottle of cognac hidden by a previous crew. Yurii and Sergei fully intended to continue the tradition on the ISS, and had secretly arranged for a bottle to be sent up on a Progress supply flight later in their mission. They would then hide it somewhere in one of the Russian modules for a future crew to find. Needless to say, NASA was unaware of this.
Jim – MS-1 – and MS-2 were undertaking the third and final EVA of this Shuttle visit, continuing the outfitting of the Truss that had been installed five days earlier. They were currently about two hours into the designated 6-hour 40-minute EVA.
Yurii and Sergei had retreated rather sullenly to the Russian Segment to grab a meal. The rest of the various crews – Shuttle, departing Expedition Crew and Joe, the Russians’ commander – were up in the American segment, going about their assigned duties. The Shuttle pilot and commander were monitoring the EVA and the two American Flight Engineers operated the Canadarm-2 or, to give it its acronym, SSRMS. Joe and the Russian commander of the departing crew were conducting a crew handover, the Russian imparting advice and information about various issues concerning ISS operation during his duration as commander.
Yurii, Sergei and the Russian commander were assigned to a Russian Segment handover after lunch, and, given the frosty relations between the commander and “Double Trouble,” this was something they weren’t looking forward to. “Yurii Ivanovich keeps looking at me like he wants to murder me,” Yurii grumbled, using the commander’s name and patronymic in the formal manner – there was no love lost between them. The Russian commander’s first name was also Yurii; a popular name in Russia ever since Yurii Gagarin’s space flight.
“Probably will, if he gets you on your own,” Sergei remarked offhandedly. “A husband can get a bit stroppy when you sleep with his wife.” Yurii scowled and threw a sachet of blackcurrant juice at him, which Sergei deftly caught.
They lapsed into silence as they worked through their lunch. Both American and Russian food supplies were used. Russian food was eaten for the first two meals; American food for the other two. This was reversed the next day. For lunch today was Jellied Pike Perch from tin cans, shrink-wrapped Kuraga (dried apricots), Pork w/Lecho Sauce, Kharcho Mutton Soup and Moscow Rye Bread. As well as Apple-Blackcurrant Juice/Pulp, they had Tea w/Sugar for drinks (rehydrated from the water dispenser above the galley table). They also took an Aerovit multivitamin tablet each for breakfast and lunch.
They had heated some of the food in the Russian food warmer set in the galley table, placing the cans of perch into the heating cells. Food for Joe had also been readied; he would be coming in a little while. The departing Expedition Crew now ate Shuttle rations, though they and the Shuttle crew sometimes came down to Zvezda to eat.
Neither Russian was interested in watching or helping with the American EVA – not that they had been assigned to. “The Amerikantsy get all the attention now,” Sergei lamented, beginning another gripe. “We have not had a module launched since Pirs.” The Russian docking compartment had been launched in September of 2001. “And our segment has already been reduced.” Because of its continual funding difficulties, Energiya had been forced to reduce the number of modules in the Russian ISS segment. At the moment, only two more modules were projected to be added: a second Functional Cargo Block with improved life support, and a commercially-funded module called Enterprize. The Science and Power Platform would have only four solar panels rather than eight, reducing available power.
As if that weren’t enough, Energiya had stated that it faced difficulties funding the next few Soyuz and Progress construction and flights. Contractors had stopped delivering components as these hadn’t been paid for.
NASA, in the meantime, was steaming ahead with its Truss construction and Shuttle launches – and getting all the media attention. “And once the world thought us to be ahead of them ….” Yurii muttered darkly, scowling now for a different reason. The Russians felt both anger and despair at how low their once-triumphant space program had fallen, no thanks to the mismanagement of various politicians.
Yurii referred obliquely to an article in the October 1986 edition of National Geographic entitled: “Soviets in Space – are they ahead?” When he and Sergei helped Joe shift his possessions to a new apartment after being evicted from his house by his now-ex wife, Yurii had espied that particular edition of the magazine in a cardboard box full of them. Joe had given the magazine to him, and the two Russians had poured over the article, which was full of details about the triumphs of the Soviet space program as it was then, and the ambitious future plans for space stations, the Russian shuttle, missions to the Moon and Mars, and so forth. The pair had particularly liked the remark about how “living cosmonauts enjoy adulation approaching reverence”. A contrast to the sorry situation now!
“Oh, shit.” Sergei, looking past Yurii, spotted the Russian commander as he glided in from the Work Compartment on his way to the Station’s toilet. Yurii looked around – his and the commander’s gazes met. The commander’s expression contorted into barely-controlled fury. Yurii, sensing imminent danger, quickly darted behind Sergei.
“You little bastard,” the commander hissed. “You dare to go near my wife … I’ll rip your balls off and feed them to you.”
“I gave her more than you ever did,” retorted Yurii, peering out from behind Sergei’s left shoulder.
The commander was stressed from his months confined in orbit and knew he was probably the laughing-stock of Zvyozdyi Gorodok. He’d had to endure the presence of the one who had cuckolded him for the last few days and was now being taunted by him. He finally snapped. With a guttural snarl, he abruptly launched himself at his tormentor and grabbed a startled Yurii by the throat, violently shoving Sergei aside to the left. His momentum carried them backwards, crashing into the wall panel placed at a right angle to Sergei’s kayuta. Food and drink sachets scattered everywhere, floating off on their own trajectories.
The commander braced himself against the galley table. He pressed Yurii against the rear panel, his hands wrapped around Yurii’s throat, his thumbs squeezing the hollow at its base, crushing the trachea and cutting off Yurii’s breathing. His encircling hands also blocked the carotid arteries and thus the blood supply to Yurii’s brain. Yurii began to turn an unhealthy shade of red. He grasped the commander’s wrists, trying to break his hold. Yurii was strong from years of gymnastics, but the taller commander was possessed by a berserker rage and Yurii, squirming, couldn’t break his grip. Spots danced in front of his eyes; blackness around the edges of his vision closed in and he could feel himself losing consciousness. The commander’s enraged face was only centimeters away from his – Yurii Ivanovich’s blue eyes were glazed, teeth bared, and he was almost foaming at the mouth.
Sergei had bounced against the water dispenser set in the wall above the galley table, then began floating off over it, and it took him a few moments to re-orient himself. He turned to see Yurii in the process of being strangled. Sergei pushed off back towards them. The two Yuriis filled the narrow space between the wall panel and galley table. Sergei came in from the right and grabbed the commander’s right arm, trying to pull it free of Yurii’s throat, yelling at the enraged man. But the commander, seemingly possessed of superhuman strength, was oblivious.
“Did something collide with the hull? We felt a vibration all the way down in Destiny – What the hell –?” Joe’s startled voice broke in from behind them. He had come down to Zvezda for lunch, following a few minutes behind the Russian commander.
“Joe! Get help! Commander’s gone nuts!” said Sergei urgently, as he looked around to see a stunned Joe staring at the tableau before him. Joe went to one of the Service Module PA panels – part of Zvezda’s STTS, internal communications – and pressed the TNG button. The analog Russian internal comm was linked to the digital U.S. segment Audio Terminal Units via the Russian Audio Interface Unit in Zarya. Only the Russian-to-American command path currently worked, though, and the noisy modules usually made it almost inaudible.
“Steve! We need assistance – Yurii’s gone nuts!” He then darted over to assist.
The Shuttle commander, looking irritated, came in a minute later, exclaiming, “Which Yurii –? What the hell is going on?”
“Get the AMP!” Joe snapped urgently as he struggled along with Sergei to subdue the enraged Russian commander. “We need a sedative!”
The Shuttle commander quickly turned and headed back to Destiny to grab medical bags from the CheCS and summon the others as Joe and Sergei finally succeeded in breaking the Russian’s grip and wrenching him away from Yurii. Yurii coughed and gasped, straining to take a breath through his bruised and half-crushed windpipe as the Russian commander continued to struggle, screaming obscenities in Russian. “I’ll kill you, you little shit!”
Sergei maneuvered so that he held Yurii Ivanovich in a headlock from behind, wrapping his long legs around Yurii’s torso while Joe grabbed the commander’s legs. Yurii clawed at Sergei’s arms, trying to dislodge him as he convulsed violently. They could barely restrain him.
The other Americans – the Shuttle commander, pilot and FE-1 (FE-2 remained behind at the Canadarm controls to monitor the EVA in progress) – came rushing in with the blue Ambulatory Medical Pack and red Advanced Life Support Pac medical kit bags. Zvezda’s narrow living compartment suddenly seemed very crowded.
All ISS and Shuttle crews had some training in basic medical procedures. Two designated Crew Medical Officers in each Expedition Crew underwent more thorough training to enable them to utilize the extensive American and Russian medical equipment onboard. Yurii (presently incapacitated) and Joe were CMOs; Yurii Ivanovich (presently barely under restraint) and FE-1 were the CMOs of their Expedition.
FE-1 had brought the Medical Procedures handbook – a thick wad of computer printouts kept in a ring-binder folder. Almost every procedure and emergency was covered, including the present:
Behavioral – acute psychosis – emergency
(ISS MED/3A – ALL/FIN)
Note: Contact Surgeon before giving any medication marked with an asterisk. In an emergency or during Loss of Signal, begin appropriate treatment; then call Surgeon as soon as possible.
- Prepare injection site with Alcohol Pad.
- Stabilize hand on arm and enter skin gently but rapidly perpendicular to surface, about 2-3 cm deep.
- Withdraw the plunger slightly to look for blood return to ensure that the needle is not in a vessel. If so, withdraw and try again at a diferent site.
- Inject Medication Cartridge.
ALSP (red)
- Unstow:
- Drug Subpack
- Gray Tape
- Bungees
- Towels
- Talk with the patient while you are restraining him. Explain what you are doing, and that you are using a restraint to ensure that he is safe. Restrain patient using Gray Tape around wrists, ankles, and use a bungee around the torso. If necessary to restrain the head, place a rolled towel under the neck and restrain with Gray Tape.
AMP (blue)
- Administer 10 mg *Haldol (Haloperidol) Oral (P4-B6) – Potent tranquilizer
If patient is unco-operative with taking oral dose of *Haldol (Haloperidol), give *Haldol (Haloperidol) IM as noted in Step 4.
Possible side effects: Low blood pressure, rapid heart rate, headache, involuntary movements, increased body temperature.
Note: Backup CMO should remain with restrained crewmember at all times. Confirm presence of radial and pedal pulses. If pulses are weak or faint, loosen restraints.
ALSP (red)
- Administer 5 mg/ml of *Haldol (Haloperidol) Injectables IM (Drug-27, 28). Refer to {INJECTIONS – INTRAMUSCULAR} (SODF: ISS MED: INJECTIONS/IV).
AMP (blue)
- Administer 5 mg *Valium (Diazepam) Oral (P1-A12) – sedative, anticonvulsant, antiseizure drug.
If patient is unco-operative with taking oral dose of *Valium (Diazepam), give IM *Valium (Diazepam) as noted in Step 6.
Possible side effects: drowsiness, fatigue, nausea, slow heart rate, blurred vision. Romazicon is antidote for overdose.
- Administer 5 mg *Valium (Diazepam) Oral (P1-A12) – sedative, anticonvulsant, antiseizure drug.
Note: Crewmember will be sufficiently sedated. Severe muscle spasms may occur. If present, give 50 mg *Bendryl (Diphenhydramine) IM and maintain adequate fluid hydration. Possible side effects of Benadryl: drowsiness, inability to concentrate, dry mouth, blurred vision, rash, sensitivity to light, headache, rapid heart rate, dizziness, fatigue.
- Monitor and record vital signs while the patient is restrained:
If blood pressure, pulse, or breathing is abnormal or unstable, check vital signs approximately every 5 minutes and record values with time.
If and when blood pressure, pulse and breathing are stable for two or three readings, decrease frequency to every 15 minutes until advised by Ground.
- Contact Surgeon to discuss crewmember status and restraint removal.
– Source: “Behavioral: Acute Psychosis Emergency” document Routine and Emergency Medical Operations page at Spaceref.com
The Russian commander was obviously in no mood to meekly take an oral sedative, so they would have to administer an intramuscular injection. FE-1, after hurriedly consulting the relevant printout in the handbook, dug in the ALSP for the hypodermic syringe of Haldol tranquilizer, ripping it out of its sterile plastic wrapping, as well as a plastic-wrapped alcohol gauze pad. “Hold his arm, Kathy,” FE-1 snapped at the Shuttle pilot, who grabbed the struggling Russian’s right arm. Sergei and Joe still held Yurii Ivanovich as before. Dedushka was in the process of winding adhesive grey tape around Yurii’s bare ankles with one hand, holding the commander’s lower legs together between his other arm and side.
“Yurii! Keep still! We’re trying to help you – this is for your own good!” Kathy said, but Yurii Ivanovich seemed oblivious.
After pushing up the sleeve of Yurii’s T-shirt and hastily swabbing a patch of skin, the Flight Engineer jabbed the needle in the Russian’s upper arm. He withdrew the needle a little so as to check he hadn’t hit a blood vessel, then pressed the plunger and injected the medication cartridge into the deltoid muscle. The powerful sedative quickly took effect, and the Russian’s frenzied struggles slackened. The Shuttle commander grasped Yurii Ivanovich’s wrists and bound them in front of him with more grey tape, then wrapped a bungee cord around his torso, securing his arms to his waist.
Joe held the Russian by one arm as the others backed off a little, gasping for breath. Sergei went over to his friend who was doubled over, still wheezing painfully.
“Jesus,” said Dedushka finally, his short grey hair damp with perspiration. “What the hell was all that about? I have never seen anything like that in my career.”
“It was an, uh, personal disagreement,” Joe replied uncomfortably, not particularly wanting to elaborate.
“What sort of disagreement?” the exasperated Shuttle commander pressed Joe.
“Yurii, uh, slept with the commander’s wife after he insulted Yurii. Yurii’s way of getting revenge. Someone must’ve told the commander.” The three Shuttle crew and two Expedition engineers, open-mouthed, involuntarily glanced around at Yurii.
Dedushka muttered an oath, running a hand through his hair. “Now I’ve heard it all.”
“I’ll just inject this Valium,” said FE-1, unwrapping another syringe. It acted as a sedative and anticonvulsant.
“What are we going to tell the Flight Surgeon?” wondered FE-2.
The commander sighed, feeling weary beyond his years. “I’ll think of something. We’d better take Yurii to the Orbiter – keep them as far apart as possible.” He drifted over to Sergei and Yurii. “How’s the Russian Romeo?” he asked dryly.
Sergei had installed Yurii in the latter’s sleeping bag and was having him sip some cold fruit juice. “He very bruised. Cannot speak. But he will live.”
Worse luck, the commander barely refrained from replying as he studied Yurii. Livid purple-red bruises already marked Yurii’s throat, and his eyes were bloodshot. “Just keep him down here until we remove the other Yurii.”
“I put him in my kayuta,” Sergei decided. Yurii would be out of the direct line of fire there.
Dedushka went back to the others. “He’s still convulsing a little,” Joe said, looking at Yurii Ivanovich. FE-1 pulled out yet another syringe, this containing 50 milligrams of Bendryl to ease the muscle spasms, and injected it into the Russian’s left upper arm. Yurii’s fit of rage had passed and he was starting to weep, chest heaving with racking sobs. The other men looked away, embarrassed for him. Kathy patted him awkwardly on the shoulder.
“Kathy, you stay with him,” ordered the commander, figuring the distressed commander might respond better to a female presence. “Float him up to Destiny and we’ll monitor him there. I’ll get in touch with the Ground.” One of the advantages of microgravity was that immobilized people could easily be moved around with the mere push of a finger. FE-1 gathered up the medical equipment and bags as the Shuttle pilot maneuvered Yurii – now quiet and passive, his face slack, tears beading his eyelashes – forwards to the American segment.
Those goddamned Russians
“That little shit –! Vodka! Of all the stupid pranks …!” Jim – MS-1 – raged. “It’s a pity Yurii didn’t finish strangling him!” Jim had eventually figured out why his EVA water supply “tasted funny”.
He and MS-2 had successfully completed their long EVA and were weary after the day’s work. They had emerged from Quest’s Crew Lock into the roomier Equipment Lock after waiting forty minutes for it to repressurize with oxygen and nitrogen from its four outside ORU tanks. The pair were now divesting themselves of their EMUs. FE-2 was in with them, assisting them – he had updated them of the day’s dramas. FE-1 remained with the sedated Russian commander in the Shuttle’s mid-deck, and the Shuttle commander and pilot were talking with Mission Control Houston via the S-band link.
“How’d they get vodka up here, anyway?” said MS-2. He privately thought the prank hilarious, though he was careful to hide his amusement from Jim.
“Bribed one of the ASPs, most likely,” Jim surmised sourly, then went on: “I’ve had a gutful of goddamned Russians ….”
“Shhh!” hissed FE-2, glancing behind him to check that none of the “goddamned Russians” were in the vicinity. “Just keep that to yourself.”
“Oh, we can’t upset our partners, can we?” Jim muttered sarcastically, but said nothing more as, clad in his white Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment, he extracted himself from the Lower Torso Assembly – leg segment – of his EMU, putting his hands on the metal rim to push himself up and out. FE-2 had helped him detach and lift off his helmet, then the Hard Upper Torso. In only the LTA, Jim looked as though he were wearing oversized clown pants.
Despite the water flowing through tubes in the LCVGs, the pair were drenched with sweat – they had lost a couple of kilos of body fluids through their exertions. They were tired, aching and irritable. Jim also had a hangover and was dehydrated, thanks to Yurii (alcohol acted as a diuretic).
“Just a sec’, Chad, I’ll help you with that.” FE-2 lifted MS-2’s HUT as he awkwardly squirmed from beneath it. Chad’s dark skin was a striking contrast to the white suit.
The Shuttle commander and pilot came floating into the Equipment Lock. They had called an emergency Private Medical Conference with the Flight Surgeon, describing the Russian commander’s condition, medications given and vital signs. “What’d they say, Steve?” asked FE-2.
“I didn’t want to go into details … I just told Bill that the Russian commander and Yurii’d had an ‘altercation,’ and that the commander was under sedation.” S-band data and conversations to and from the Ground were encrypted, but Steve thought it best to be circumspect.
Chad grinned, “Some altercation! More like the first attempted space murder! Jeez, I’d like to see them try to explain that away to the media!”
Dedushka glanced irritably at him, then continued. “Bill doesn’t think it necessary that we come home a day early, but he’s consulted with the Russian doctors and they agree we’re to keep Yurii Ivanovich under observation and oral sedation. It will also save us answering some awkward questions from the media.”
Kathy added, “We’re also to keep the two Yuriis as far apart as possible – opposite ends of the Station.”
“That goes without saying,” FE-2 remarked, then added, “Wonder how Joe’s going to cope up here, stuck with those two for months on end?”
Jim muttered, “He’ll be lucky to keep his sanity.”
Ministrations
“Hurts,” croaked Yurii miserably. Sergei had wet a towel with cold water and placed it around Yurii’s throat. Yurii had taken up temporary residence in Sergei’s kayuta, and Sergei had placed his own sleeping bag outside.
“Here’s some aspirin, tovarishch,” said Sergei. He was holding a small aluminum foil package with a protruding straw, which he had taken from the Russian ASPRO medical kit in Zvezda. Sergei had added 75 milliliters of water to the soluble aspirin contents and shaken it to dissolve the solution. Yurii, trussed up in his sleeping bag, painfully swallowed from the package Sergei held up to him. “You’ll live.”
Sergei knew from past experience that Yurii would soon bounce back and continue his rambunctious ways – until his next near-death encounter. “I wish I’d videotaped it,” Sergei smiled. “Entertain the public better than all those tedious press conferences.” Yurii gave him a bloodshot-eyed glare.
As the Russian commander was obviously in no mood or condition to conduct the Russian segment handover, the task had fallen to the two American flight engineers, who had done the best they could. Yurii and Sergei were well-trained in operating the Russian systems, anyhow.
Their day’s work done, Sergei and Joe had exercised, talked with the Ground at 02:35-02:50 GMT for the Daily Planning Conference to review the next day’s activities, eaten dinner at 03:20-03:50 and prepared the list of the next day’s meals. They were now in the pre-sleep period before bedtime at 05:20. The Shuttle and outgoing Expedition crews were way down the other end in Atlantis. Joe had retreated into his port kayuta; he was industriously typing two-fingered on his laptop’s keyboard and ignored them. He had partly pulled shut his forward-opening door, which was padded with cream Velcro and had a slit in the bottom for ventilation.
Yurii had spent the afternoon huddled in his sleeping bag, feeling sorry for himself. “Misha,” he said now. Sergei grabbed a bag containing Yurii’s personal effects and retrieved a crudely-made, black-and-white soft toy dog which had two sewn-on buttons for eyes. The battered-looking toy had been with Yurii since his days in the orphanage, and he refused to part with it. Sergei tucked Misha in the opening of Yurii’s sleeping bag.
“Do you want a good-night kiss, too?” said an amused female voice in English from behind them. Sergei turned to see Kathy floating behind them, having come down all the way from the Orbiter. In microgravity, a person could sneak up on another in perfect silence. Yurii quickly assumed his most pathetic expression, which he didn’t need to fake.
“Bought you some ice-cream, Yurii,” she added, indicating the wrapped bar she was holding. Atlantis did not have a food freezer, so a few bars of real frozen Dove ice-cream (as opposed to the dehydrated version) had been crammed into an onboard biological sample freezer. This would be used to store the returning Expedition Crew’s frozen blood samples. The ISS had no food freezer, either, aside from those reserved for biosamples, so the crew would have to wait until their return to Earth some months hence for more of the coveted treat. “It’s the last bar.”
Sergei gave her a grin and a knowing look, then drifted away down to the Vozdukh in the forward starboard corner of the Living Quarters and pretended to busy himself with some maintenance.
Kathy could barely stop herself blushing. Does everyone on this ship know? “Here,” she said to Yurii, giving him the ice-cream when he poked his right arm from a slit in the side of his sleeping bag. “Help soothe your throat a little.” Yurii fumbled with the wrapping, so she took it from him, pulled some of the wrapping off the top, and held it up to him. The ice-cream was cold and sweet, and he quickly devoured the rest of the bar.
Kathy observed the interior of Zvezda as Yurii ate. Give it a few more years and this place will be as cluttered as Mir was, she thought. Looks like the inside of Scott’s garage – a real rat’s nest. What is it about men and clutter? Maybe it’s some sort of male hoarding instinct? Assorted tools, utensils, papers, magazines and other odds and ends were secured by bungee cords to every available surface. Cables and wires stretched along the module walls. There were added personal touches which made the module seem more homey: small framed paintings of Moscow scenes secured to the panel just above the aft hatch leading to the Progress, portraits of Yurii Gagarin, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Sergei Korolyov, and even an ikon brought up by an earlier crew.
She noted that Joe had stuck his American flag patch from his ACES to the Velcroed surface above his kayuta door, as well as F-15 squadron and NASA SR-71 Blackbird patches.
The American segment modules were becoming just as cluttered, in contrast to all those nice computer-generated images depicting the modules as impeccably clean and sterile.
“Is khorosho, good. Spasiba.” Yurii managed a wan smile as he finished up. Kathy took the empty wrapping back from Yurii; she would put it in the Orbiter’s trash compartment. His woebegone expression was a contrast to his demeanor of two nights ago.
There was a smudge of ice-cream on Yurii’s cheek. Kathy had brought a paper napkin with her so, in an almost unconscious gesture, she reached to wipe it off, not unlike how she had done with her daughter when the latter was young.
Joe peeked out from behind his door as Kathy fussed over Yurii. He’s milking this for all it’s worth, he thought dourly, but felt a twinge of envy.
“I’d better go,” she said. “Just call if you need anything, okay?” Yurii nodded listlessly. She wanted to give him a farewell kiss, but not with the others watching, so she turned and propelled herself back the way she had come.
Abandoned to their fate
Flight Day 10
| U.S. Eastern Time | DD | HH | MM | Shuttle & ISS activities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 07:50 p.m. | 00 | 00 | 00 | Shuttle launch |
| FLIGHT DAY 10 | ||||
| 09:20 a.m. | 08 | 13 | 30 | ISS Daily Planning Conference |
| 10:05 a.m. | 08 | 14 | 15 | Expedition Crews handover activity |
| 10:50 a.m. | 08 | 15 | 00 | Final transfers |
| 12:15 p.m. | 08 | 16 | 25 | Farewell ceremony |
| 12:35 p.m. | 08 | 16 | 45 | Shuttle crew leaves Station |
| 01:05 p.m. | 08 | 17 | 15 | Hatch leak checks |
| 01:45 p.m. | 08 | 17 | 55 | Group B computer power-up |
| 02:00 p.m. | 08 | 18 | 10 | STS/ISS audio blackout |
| 02:20 p.m. | 08 | 18 | 30 | Undocking timeline begins |
| 02:35 p.m. | 08 | 18 | 45 | ISS: PMA-2 configured for undocking |
| 02:35 p.m. | 08 | 18 | 45 | STS/ISS maneuver to undocking attitude |
| 02:53 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 03 | TDRS-West acquisition of signal |
| 03:04 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 14 | Sunrise |
| 03:05 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 15 | UNDOCKING |
| 03:05 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 15 | Initial Orbiter separation (+10 seconds) |
| 03:07 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 17 | ISS holds current attitude |
| 03:09 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 19 | Range: 50 feet; re-select –X jets |
| 03:10 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 20 | Range: 75 feet; low –Z jets |
| 03:16 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 26 | Range: 150 feet |
| 03:23 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 33 | TDRS-West loss of signal |
| 03:24 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 34 | TDRS-South acquisition of signal |
| 03:32 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 42 | Orbital noon |
| 03:49 p.m. | 08 | 19 | 59 | Range: 450 feet; begin flyaround |
| 03:50 p.m. | 08 | 20 | 00 | ISS: PMA-2 depressurization |
| 04:00 p.m. | 08 | 20 | 10 | Sunset |
| 04:01 p.m. | 08 | 20 | 11 | Negative R-bar crossing; separation burn |
| 04:12 p.m. | 08 | 20 | 22 | Russian Ground Station AOS |
| 04:13 p.m. | 08 | 20 | 23 | Russian Ground Station LOS |
| 04:25 p.m. | 08 | 20 | 35 | Post-undocking computer reconfiguration |
| 04:35 p.m. | 08 | 20 | 45 | Group B computer powerdown |
| 04:36 p.m. | 08 | 20 | 46 | Sunrise |
“Try to keep your sense of humor, Joe,” the Shuttle commander, holding the microphone, told him after they shook hands and embraced.
“Oh, I will,” said Joe, trying to look as if he meant it. But he felt an increasing sense of apprehension as the crews bid each other farewell before closing the hatch. This ceremony, like the others in the last few days, was being televised and downlinked to Houston, broadcast on NASA TV.
Joe turned to the outgoing Russian commander who floated near Destiny’s forward hatch. “Thanks for the good handover, Yurii. We promise to take good care of the Space Station.”
Yurii Ivanovich, doped to the eyeballs with Valium, barely knew what day it was or where he was. His expression was rather dazed. Nonetheless, he managed, “Uh, do svidaniya, Joe. I hope new Expedition will work here very successfully. Have good time, guys.”
The other Yurii was nowhere in sight; he remained secreted down in Zvezda. No one had wanted to risk another confrontation. Destiny was so crowded with bodies at the moment that it was unlikely anyone watching on NASA TV would notice his absence.
The Russian commander exchanged a quick handshake with Sergei – relations between the two remained strained – and tersely (and rather insincerely) wished him good luck: “Schastlivo, Sergei Aleksandrovich.” Yurii was not mentioned.
Kathy, watching Joe, thought, He looks like one of those passengers marooned on the Titanic as it sank. She had seen the James Cameron movie a few times. Abandoned to their fate. I don’t envy him. She moved to embrace him; he gave her an almost desperate hug. “Don’t worry, Joe, you’ve got plenty of people watching out for you on the ground.” Joe managed a tight smile.
Kathy was the only one who had gone down to farewell Yurii earlier, giving him his farewell kiss (a peck on the cheek).
The departing crew finally headed through PMA-2 into the Shuttle airlock. After a final handclasp, Joe and the Shuttle commander closed the respective hatches. Joe retreated back into Destiny to close the Lab’s forward hatch, a square-shaped, round-edged hatch which, like the other hatches in the American segment, floated freely next to the roof when not secured. With Sergei’s help, he pulled it down and fitted it into the door seal, following the instructions printed on an adhesive label to latch it closed.
- Stowage latch button – push
- Stowage latch handle – pull down
- Hatch – push closed
- Arrows – aligned
- Pressure equalization valve – closed – “off”
- Ratchet – latch position
- Crank handle – ENGAGED position
- Crank handle – turn in LATCH direction full travel
- Indicator – LATCHED
- Crank Handle – STOWED position
“Alpha, Atlantis, we have physical separation. We’re executing the sep burn,” called Steve as the Orbiter slowly pulled away at 20:05 GMT, initially moving at an inch per second. Powerful springs had pushed the Orbiter free of the Station’s docking collar at sunrise after it maneuvered the stack to undocking attitude in a four-minute turn then set the ISS in free drift. The Control Movement Gyroscopes in the Mast (three out of four as one was not working) would then take over momentum management control mode after LVLH attitude was attained.
“Expedition Crew departing, Atlantis departing,” announced Joe, holding the microphone up to the ship’s bell as he did two sets of two rings.
“Thank you, Joe,” replied FE-1 from Atlantis . “Smooth sailing to you and your crew.”
The Shuttle commander and pilot would guide the Orbiter to a distance of around 122 meters in front of the Station before looping up to a point directly above the Lab, enabling the Shuttle crew to take some photos and video of the ISS in its current configuration. The Orbiter had boosted the ISS’s altitude by 10.5 kilometers during its stay to a mean of 397 kilometers. Atlantis ’s maneuvering jets would then be fired to initiate final departure.
As there were no upward-facing windows, the resident Expeditioners could view none of this, so Joe stayed near the ATU in Destiny. Sergei darted down to Zvezda to fetch Yurii – “It’s safe to come up now, tovarisch” – and the pair came back a few minutes later. The Station now felt almost deserted.
The three waited quietly, listening to the chatter between Houston and Atlantis over the ATU. Joe depressurized PMA-2 at 20:50 GMT.
“Alpha, we wish you a wonderful flight,” radioed Steve at 21:01 GMT. “We’ve completed our separation burn and are heading home.” The Shuttle crew would deorbit in two days. “Enjoy yourselves while you’re here.”
“Okay, thanks for the ride. Have a safe flight home.”
Looking out from Pirs’s forward-facing VL-2 porthole a few minutes later, the three Expeditioners could watch Atlantis as she dropped below them. Still in darkness – sunrise was 25 minutes away – the Orbiter’s cargo bay was illuminated with strip lights, giving the eerie impression that she was a submersible gliding silently through the deep ocean.
Appendix
NASA acronyms
Some NASA (and other) acronyms used in this story, listed in alphabetical order:
- A/A
- Air-to-Air
- ALSP
- Advanced Life Support Pack
- AMP
- Ambulatory Medical Pack
- APDS
- Androgynous Peripheral Docking System
- Ascan
- Astronaut Candidate
- ASP
- Astronaut Support Person/s
- CCDB
- Configuration Controller Database
- CHeCS
- Crew Health Care Center System
- CMG
- Control Movement Gyroscope
- CMO
- Crew Medical Officer
- CST
- Central Standard Time, GMT/UTC −06 hours (used at Houston Mission Control Center)
- DAP
- Digital Auto-Pilot
- EMU
- Extravehicular Mobility Unit (NASA spacesuit)
- EST
- Eastern Standard Time, GMT/UTC −05 hours (used at Kennedy Space Center)
- ETA
- Estimated Time of Arrival
- EVA
- Extra-Vehicular Activity (spacewalk)
- GLA
- General Luminaire Assembly
- GMT
- Greenwich Mean Time
- He
- Helium
- HUT
- Lower Torso Assembly
- IDB
- In-suit Drink Bag
- IMS
- Inventory Management System
- IMU
- Inertial Measurement Unit
- ISS
- International Space Station
- JSC
- Johnson Space Center
- LCVG
- Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment
- LED
- Light-Emitting Diode
- LRD
- Laser Ranging Device
- LTA
- Lower Torso Assembly
- LVLH
- Local Vertical Local Horizontal
- MC
- Midcourse burn
- MCC
- Mission Control Center
- MET
- Mission Elapsed Time (begins from 12 midnight at moment of launch)
- MS
- Mission Specialist
- MSG
- Microgravity Sciences Glovebox
- NC
- Nominal Correction burn
- NCC
- Nominal Corrective Combination/Maneuver
- OMS
- Orbiter Maneuvering System
- OOPN
- Out Of Plane/Position Null
- ORU
- Orbital Replacement Unit
- PDA
- Portable Data Format
- PGSC
- Payload and General Support Computer (IBM – International Business Machines – ThinkPad laptop)
- PMA
- Pressurized Mating Adapter
- PPK
- Personal Preference Kit
- PTK
- Pregnancy Test Kit
- R-bar
- Radius Vector Axis
- RADAR
- Radio Detecting And Ranging
- RASA
- Russian Aviation & Space Agency
- RED
- Resistance Exercise Device
- RMS
- Remote Manipulating System (Orbiter’s robot arm)
- RPOP
- Rendezvous and Proximity Operations Program (used for ISS docking)
- SAFER
- Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue
- SSRMS
- Space Station Remote Manipulator System (robot arm)
- Ti
- Terminal Initiation
- UHF
- Ultra-High Frequency
- V-bar
- Orbit Velocity Vector – Velocity Vector Axis
- WCS
- Waste Collection System
- WMS
- Waste Management System (toilet)
Completed 2002-August 2003
Russian glossary
Russian transliterations:
- Amerikanskii
- Американский
- American (adjective)
- Amerikantsy
- Американцы
- Americans
- ASPRO
- АСПРО
- Asprin
- Chto? (pronounced “Shto”)
- Что?
- What?
- Da
- Да
- Yes
- Dedushka
- Дедушка
- Grandfather
- Do svidaniya
- До свидания
- Goodbye
- Dvoinya
- Двойня
- The Twins
- Elektron
- Электрон
- Electron
- GA: Germetichnyi Adapter
- ГА: Герметичный Адаптер
- Pressurized Adapter (Zarya)
- Izolyator
- Изолятор
- Isolation/punishment cell; solitary confinement cell
- Kayuta/kayuty
- Каюта/каюты
- Cabin (singular/plural)
- Kazbek-U
- «Казбек-У»
- Khorosho
- Хорошо
- Good
- Komandir
- Командир
- Commander
- Kondomy
- Кондомы
- Condoms (slang term, plural; also prezervativy, презервативы)
- Kosmonavtka
- Космонавтка
- Woman cosmonaut
- Ledyanaya Koroleva
- Ледяная Королева
- Ice Queen
- MKS: Mezhdunarodnaya Kosmicheskaya Stantsiya
- МКС: Международная Космическая Станция
- International Space Station (Cyrillic acronym)
- Mrazi
- Мрази
- Scum, dregs, bottom of the bucket (colloquial insult – plural)
- Nuzhnik
- Нужник
- Latrine, the can, toilet (slang)
- Nyet
- Нет
- No
- Ochkariki
- Очкарики
- Bespectacled eggheads (scientists – derisive slang, plural)
- Orlan-M, Orlany
- «Орлан-M», plural «Орланы»
- Sea Eagle (Russian spacesuit)
- PA: Pul’t Abonenta
- ПА: Пульт Абонента
- Public Address system/comm panel
- Pioneerskaya Organizatsiya
- Пионерская Организация
- Pioneer Organization
- Pirs
- «Пирс»
- Pier
- PkhO: Perekhodnoi Otsek
- ПХО: Переходной Отсек
- Transfer Compartment
- Progress
- «Прогресс»
- Russian cargo/supply spaceship
- Rabochii Otsek
- РО: Рабочий Отсек
- RO: Working compartment
- Rubli/rubl’
- Рубли/рубль
- Rubles (singular/plural)
- Ruskii
- Рускии, руский
- Russians, Russian
- Schastlivo
- Счастливо
- Good-bye and good luck
- Schastlivogo puti!
- Счастливого пути!
- Have a good journey!
- Sokol
- «Сокол»
- Falcon (Russian pressure suit)
- Soyuz Transportnyi Modernizrovannyi Antropometricheskii
- «Союз Транспортный Модернизрованный Антропометрический»
- Transport Modernized Anthropometric (replacing TM version)
- Spasiba
- Спасиба
- Thank-you
- Spetsial’naya meditsina
- Специнальная медицина
- Special medicine (alcohol)
- STTS: Sistema Telefonno-Telegrafnoi Svyazi
- СТТС: Система Телефонно-Телеграфной Связи
- Telephone-Telegraph Signal System
- TNG: Tangenta
- ТНГ: Тангента
- Push-to-talk (button)
- Tovarishch
- Товарищ
- Comrade
- TsUP: Tsentr Upravleniya Polyotom v Moskve
- ЦУП: Центр Управления Полëтом (в Москве)
- Flight Control Center (in Moscow) – pronounced tsoop
- Vozdukh
- «Воздух»
- Air
- Zarya
- «Заря» (фунционально Грузовой Блок)
- Sunrise (Russian Functional Cargo Block module)
- Zdravstvuite!
- Здравствуйте!
- Hello, greetings
- Zvezda
- «Звезда» (служебный модуль)
- Star (Russian Service Module)
- Zvyozdyi Gorodok
- Звёздый Городок
- Star City (Star Town) (the Yurii Gagarin Cosmonauts’ Training Center)
© Suzanne B. McHale, 2002-August 2003; revised June 2007