Post by tracy on Feb 8, 2013 21:30:25 GMT -5
Preflight Interview: Duane Carey
The STS-109 Crew Interviews with Duane Carey, pilot.
Thank you for joining us today. I'd like to start off talking about some of your background. First of all: Why did you decide to become an astronaut?
Well, for me it really wasn't a case of deciding to be an astronaut. I had, before I went to college, I had taken a few years off after high school and really had, I guess in those days, I had no intentions of going to college. But, with that time off and traveling around the country on a motorcycle like I did, I had a lot of time, time to think. And, I decided what I wanted to do with my life. And, one thing I definitely enjoyed personally, from a selfish point of view, was exploration and going to places that I had never been to before and learning, you know, meeting the people and getting to know, new sights and sounds, etc. So, I decided that whatever I was, wanted to do with my life, it would have to do, it would have to have something to do with the exploration and doing new things. And, later on when I decided to join the military, the Air Force in particular, my philosophy was (and actually still is, and I try to pass this on to my kids) that: set yourself a high goal, a goal that seems impossible and most likely is impossible, but the whole point of setting high goals is, is you work your way toward that and you have a good time getting there; and if you don't quite reach it, you've had such a good time in the quest that it really in the end doesn't matter whether you reached your goal or not. I consider myself to be very fortunate in my career, my timing has worked out. I worked for some very good people who have helped me along the way and actually enabled me to have the opportunity to be selected to join the Astronaut Corps. And, so I set my goals on astronaut because, as a military aviator, it was, I considered that to be about the peak of a flying career. I could do exploration in this particular career field, and it was a goal that, even if I didn't reach it, it was so high it seemed almost impossible, but even if I didn't reach it, I would still have a good time and a very satisfying career.
How long did you spend traveling around the country?
I took, it was about 2½ years--
Okay.
-- from the time I graduated from high school to the time, I believe it was my father sat me down one day and said, "Well, you're having a pretty good time now, but what are you going to do with your life?" And, actually it was interesting because I had done a lot of traveling in the United States and Canada and Mexico on my motorcycle; and I was really, it was the first time I had really gotten out of the Minnesota area to speak of. And, I was really impressed with how beautiful our country was and how friendly the people were. I had a lot of help. A lot of times, I didn't have much money on the road, and people would help me out here and there, maybe with meals or a place to spend the night, etc. Sometimes, allowing me to take short jobs for a while so I could earn a little more money. And, I became really enamoured with the United States of America. And, I wanted to serve our country in some way. And, the best way I could do that, I felt, was to join the military. And then, my father had had brothers who had been in all branches of the military, and he suggested the Air Force because he felt like his brother who was in the Air Force had had the best time. And, he said, "Well, if you're going to do anything, join the Air Force; and, if you're going to be in the military, you may as well be an officer." And, I [said], "Dad, that means [I've] got to [go to] college!" Well, if that's what it means, then that's what it means. And so that's what started me. I decided it was time to put away the fun and maybe start working on some payback for just being in this wonderful country that we're in.
Was the thought of flying jets in your thought process before the military? Or, was that, I guess, a byproduct of joining the military?
It was a byproduct of joining the military. I've always been, since I was fairly young, I've been interested in motorcycles and have owned them and ridden them and raced them, things like that. And then, when I thought about joining the Air Force, flying seemed like a natural extension of the motorcycling experience. You're going faster, higher. You're operating a machine that's a lot more powerful than you are. And, it was attractive to me. And, I wouldn't consider myself to be a natural pilot; I've had to work at it. But, I've found it to be a very satisfying career. And, like I tell folks who've asked me, I say, "You know, piloting really isn't my hobby. And, it's probably not something I'd do in my spare time if I could do whatever I wanted to do. But, I'll tell you: if you've got to make a living, it's a great way to make a living!"
Okay. Can you talk about how you made the transition from the Air Force to NASA? What steps did you take along that road?
Okay. That transition actually started when I was in college. A friend of mine, I was in Air Force ROTC at the University of Minnesota, and a friend who I was fairly close with and actually still keep in touch with to this day, he and I decided that we wanted to, eventually in our Air Force career become test pilots because we knew that to be selected to be an astronaut as a pilot, they're looking for folks with a test piloting background. And, at that point we decided to get our Master's degrees while we were in college; and we had to take actually two years of courses and scrunch it up into one year in order to make it to undergraduate pilot training on time. So, we struggled through and got our Master's degrees to set ourselves up, you know, to possibly someday be a test pilot. And, that's when I started thinking about what I needed to do in my personal career to make myself eligible for the astronaut program someday. I had three operational tours in the Air Force flying A-10s and F-16s, had a wonderful time. My wife and I were offered the opportunity at the 7-year point to leave the Air Force and perhaps get a job with the airlines or something like that; and we both decided that, even though airline pilots make a heck of a lot more money, we were having such a wonderful time in the Air Force and, and meeting such interesting and good people that we wanted to stay. So, I stayed in the Air Force after the 7-year point; eventually started to apply for Test Pilot's School. I believe the first time I tried, I didn't have any luck. And then, the next time I applied to Test Pilot's School I was picked up; and that's when you begin the transition toward the astronaut life because astronaut life is pretty much like a civilian lifestyle. In the military a lot of times we were overseas living the strictly military lifestyle. And as a test pilot, it was kind of a halfway house for fighter pilots to turn back into civilians. Working with a lot of civilian folks, I noticed that around the squadron, I had to clean around the test squadron, I had to clean up my act and become more presentable to civilian people. You know, things, language can get pretty rough in a fighter squadron. And, then, so that was like a halfway house in working those types of things. Also, as a test pilot, you learn how to work with teams. You learn how to work with the engineering team and the control team on the ground. Whereas as a fighter pilot, anything I had flown in the past had all been single-seat fighters where we were up there pretty much relying on ourselves and our flight mates in the formation. But, the test piloting business taught me that this is a big endeavor; we had to work with teams. We had to work with engineers and the folks on the ground, and of course by the time we get to NASA and start working in the astronaut program, it's a huge team effort to get these missions into space. And, so it was kind of a, that's an interesting question. There was kind of a gradual transition from strict military life on over to the quasi-civilian existence that we have here at NASA.
Okay. Who was that friend that you mentioned? What was his name?
That friend of mine was Manny Espough. His nickname was Stan. He ended up flying F-4s for a while. And then, he got out of the Air Force and is, I believe, he's flying for Delta at this time. He's living in Georgia.
Okay.
He just called us the other night and offered his congratulations, on my being selected to be on a flight.
Okay. All right. Who were or still are some of the most influential people in your life?
Okay. I have to tell you, and I know this is a stock answer. But, I have to tell you: my parents, number one. My mother, bless her heart, was, found herself in a pretty tough situation when we were growing up. She was 21 years old, on her own, had three kids. And, when I, you know, if you think about day-to-day problems in your life and everything, and it seems like nothing compared to what this young woman was faced with. She had to leave high school actually because she had me. And, she never got a high school education. But, she took it upon herself to learn a trade; she learned the beautician trade (how to do hair). And, she more or less supported us three kids on her own for many, many years before she met my stepfather. And, when you think about determination and hard work and sticking to your goals, I think about my mom because she never gave up. And, she put, and no matter how exhausted she was, she put a lot of effort into us kids. She read with us. We learned how to read probably before a lot of kids did. She instilled on us how important education is. She always wishes that she would've had the opportunity to go further in her education; and she's always impressed upon us how important that is. And, my stepfather, now here's a guy who was 26 years old and he had the world by the tail. He had a good job. He was…used to drag race cars. He had motorcycles, snowmobiles, boats. He had all the toys, and he decided to marry a woman who had three children. And, these weren't little kids; these were kids that were old enough to be problems. And, we were pretty much of a wild bunch back in those days. And, I learned from my dad how…a big sense of responsibility. Here was a guy that went from a 26, I think it was 26- or 27-year-old bachelor to, boom! Overnight, he's got three kids, there's all these responsibilities. He's got a mortgage all of a sudden. (He'd never had a house before that.) And, he just took it upon himself to take all these responsibilities; and he was, he was, well, he's my dad. I don't even refer to him as my stepfather. And, one thing my dad has in, he has a lot of is common sense. And, I still go to him for advice. I go to him for advice on parenting with my own children. I say, "Wow! You know, I really realize what problems I put you through now. And, now my kids are doing the same thing. Tell me how to handle this." My parents have been very influential. And, they're also very young, so they're going to be around a long time. And I look forward to gleaning a lot more knowledge from them as they've been through life. And then obviously, you know, anybody who achieves doesn't do it on their own. You work for people. You have supervisors. You have teachers. You have advisors. Folks that help you and give you a chance and let you have the opportunity to get out there in the arena and to fail and to come back. And, they give you another chance to learn from those things. I worked for some wonderful commanders in the Air Force. I had some wonderful professors in college. My advisor, Dr. Bill Gerard, was a big help to me in the University of Minnesota. I just ran into a lot of fascinating, interesting people in the military. And, I try to take the best traits that I see in people, the ones I really admire, and then I try to emulate some of those. And, I don't know how good a job I do at that. But, certainly what I try to take from people that I really admire.
Sure. It sounds like your parents are great role models.
Oh [yes]. They're strong people…Minnesotans.
When all is said and done and the STS-109 crew is done servicing Hubble on this mission, what impact professionally and personally do you think having played such a part in that will have on you?
Well, I can't really answer a lot of the deep scientific questions about Hubble, how it's put together and things like that. But, I can tell you that ever since I've been in high school and perhaps a little earlier than that, I've been very interested in the space program. And, interested in all facets of it, including the unmanned portions of the space program. And, Hubble to me has always been of particular interest just because it is so powerful and we have learned so much from it. I can remember when NASA first launched Hubble and brought it up there and in a period of a couple of weeks it became evident in the popular press that the telescope wasn't working quite like we wanted it to. And, I remember being so depressed and so sad thinking, "We were looking so forward, we had all this hype and all this build-up, telling us what Hubble was going to do for us and the things we were, we're going to be able to see, you know, maybe figure once and for all what the Hubble constant was and figure out what the fate of the universe is." That's what Hubble can do for us. It can tell us whether the universe is expanding forever or if one day it's going to come back together. And, I can remember being depressed along with a lot of America (I think). And then, when NASA had the rescue mission to go up there and fix the optics on the telescope and when it finally worked, you know, just really proud of what America could do. And, I remember a couple of years ago when I was just working ground jobs in the Astronaut Office and I saw this mission coming up, I remember thinking, "You know, I'm not going to go out there and campaign for this one. But, I would be so proud someday to fly up and actually be close to this, this awesome piece of technology, this, this telescope that is, has looked back into time and taught us about our origins and gotten us closer to the real answers that we're after out there as we seek. And, when we go up there and enhance and give this telescope a tune-up (and I know we're going to have a great mission), and when we come back, I've just played a very small part in it. But, I could say, "Wow, I used my abilities and the skills that I've acquired through the years; I used those to help make the world a better place really for all people." And, that's what I truly believe that we're doing when we're advancing scientific knowledge is we're someday making the world better. Not only for our children, but for all people after that.
Okay. As the days keep coming, you get closer and closer to your first space flight. What are your thoughts, your anticipations, just your feelings about what you're expecting?
Well, they're mixed feelings. I'm really looking forward to the experience. Obviously, as a jet fighter pilot, everybody looks forward to the ascent; all that power, you know, that seven million pounds of thrust going uphill. I'm looking forward to coming back, back to Earth, the landing, the views. Being in space, I'm really looking forward to working with this team of folks that I'm with. I'm looking forward to having the satisfaction each day of…I guess you don't climb into bed. I guess you float into bed in space. I've never been there. The satisfaction each evening of knowing that we did as, we did the best we could today and we're going to do it again tomorrow. I think a lot of people, myself included, like to be…like to do expeditions and trips. To me, this feels a little bit like a motorcycle trip. We're planning where we're going to go. You can't take a lot of things. On a motorcycle, you're just very limited to what you can take. So, you search the thought. You bring the stuff that you think you're really going to need and stuff that has multiple purposes. You start the trip and you execute it. You plan it, you execute it, and then you come back. And, I'm really looking forward to doing the job, getting the job done, coming back. Well, let me tell you: when I'm in space, I'm looking forward to looking back and seeing the Earth. I just can't imagine what it looks like. People say that the pictures that they bring back have no…they just don't do it justice to how beautiful it is. Because, you know, your eyes can see in three dimensions and all that. And, obviously as a, as one who likes to travel around myself a lot, I think the Earth is a beautiful place. And, I'm looking forward to some new perspectives.
Okay. What does it mean to you to be flying your first mission in Columbia, the first shuttle to ever go up in space?
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I was in college (I believe) working for my Master's degree whenever Columbia first launched. And, you know, I really don't, I can't remember much about the launch; but I distinctly remember the landing because, at that point, I was in graduate school and I was working a job at Honeywell, Honeywell Incorporated in Minneapolis, the Science and Research Division. And, I remember we had monitors…I think we had a monitor in the room where I was, where my desk was. And, I remember watching the landing. And to me, the landing was the scariest part of the whole mission because, you know, launching a rocket into space is something that we have done frequently in the past. And granted, the shuttle was a whole new rocket system with the solids and everything. But, it was something I thought we had experience with. But, landing. In the past, we'd always come back with capsules and more or less considered the whole system to be disposable. But, actually landing a vehicle that had been in space and had to come back and had to fight its way through all the heat issues and thermal issues, aerodynamic issues, I believe back in those days there were some things that were considered unknowns as it was coming back. And, I remember as an engineering student being extremely nervous about the entry and the landing, and being so relieved when they were able to land this thing safely. And then, watching on TV as John Young and Bob Crippen got out. And, as a student, I remember looking up at the TV and thinking, "Those guys look relieved." And, that was Columbia, of course. And, I never dreamed that I would get a chance to actually fly that vehicle. And, you know, this is all just too good to be true.
Okay. All right. Can you talk a little bit about some of the updates that Columbia has gone through? It's got some upgrades…that are going to make it, a little bit easier for you and Scott to--
Yup.
--to handle.
There are quite a few upgrades now. There's been a tremendous amount of work that's been done that you can't see in Columbia. The folks out in Palmdale - when she was over there for her major depot turnaround - did a tremendous amount of rewiring and a lot of safety enhancements to the vehicle. But, the big one for Scott and I is in the cockpit. And, that's the MEDS upgrade to all the flight instruments. And, what it really means is that we now have an up-to-date flight instrument display suite in the orbiter. Columbia's the second orbiter to get this particular upgrade, and folks in the aviation community refer to this type of upgrade as a "glass cockpit"; and that's what we have now in the orbiter. And, the nice thing about the glass cockpit is that, as we get smarter about what types of displays we want to see, to help us have situational awareness in the orbiter, we can actually quite easily upgrade our displays. Right now, the displays are just, they just kind of emulate whatever our old displays had in the orbiter, except we have them all in glass in CRTs. But, in the future (and we're working on this right now), we have a lot of flexibility in what we can do with those displays. So, it's an exciting upgrade, you know, to folks like myself who are sitting up on the flight deck.
Okay. What kind of insight, if any, have you and…Scott kind of bestowed upon you, him having flown a shuttle before?
Scooter, of course, has two missions as pilot flying the position that I'll be flying in this one. This is his first flight as the Commander. And believe me: he's got a full plate! He's got a lot of things over there in the left seat to worry about that he never had to think about when he was sitting where I'm sitting. However, he's taken it upon himself to take the extra time - whether it be during a simulator run or whether it be in the office - to try to pass on his knowledge of my position, of things that have to be done on the pilot's side of the cockpit, passing on how he did it, the things he looked for. And, I've learned a heck of a lot from Scooter. Do you mind if I call him Scooter here.
Scooter's fine, yeah.
He's very knowledgeable, very competent, very conscientious. He's a perfectionist. And, what I like about him is that if he sees something that I could be doing better, he doesn't sit there and stew about it. He tells me, and then I take that and I run with it. Also, Scooter's been very valuable for myself and Mike Massimino, who's the other rookie on this flight, to just tell us about normal living in space. You know, "Scooter, what about food? How much food should we take? Where are we going to sleep?" You know, "Do we have to worry about using sleeping pills in space? You know, is it that hard to get to sleep?" And, this and that. And, he's been there. He has the answers as do the other folks on our crew. They are very…everybody in our crew is very understanding of the questions that Mike and I have about the mission. I've learned a lot from everybody, but particularly about the piloting tasks, I've learned a lot from Scooter about how to do things smarter and faster in the orbiter.
Okay. In order to service Hubble, you have to get there first. Can you talk about what you'll be doing on the way up, for rendezvous and for grapple?
Okay. Rendezvous day is the third day of our mission, and that's a big day for us. That's a very busy day. We're going to start out with Scooter and I, working together, along with Nancy, to do the orbital burns and the small little trim burns we need to keep us heading toward Hubble. And, there comes a point when Scooter, when we get close enough to actually see the telescope, as we get closer to it, there comes a point when Scooter's going to go to the aft flight deck so he can look out the overhead window and fly us up toward Hubble. At that point, I'm going to jump in his chair and I have a few more small burns to do to get, to make little small corrections and get us going up toward the telescope. And then, after that, I'm kind of like, I'm kind of what Scooter refers to as "the quarterback of the whole operation." I've got the checklist; I'm making sure that we're doing everything on time; I'm making the calls to the ground. Kind of keeping an eye on how things are going all around. Now Scooter's actually going to be doing the hands-on flying at this point. And, in, flying us into the Hubble. We make jokes with the…we make jokes with the space station guys because we have…we don't have quite all the tools to help us on the rendezvous that the space station guys do. They have a laser system that helps them with their rendezvous that Hubble is not able to…Hubble is not able to work with because we don't have the proper reflectors. So, we like to think that we're doing a rendezvous a little bit the old-fashioned way, without all the bells and whistles. We're going to use a handheld laser like a policeman uses when he sees if you're speeding or not. We've got the radar, which may or may not be a big help. But, primarily Scooter's going to be using some old-fashioned rendezvous aids. He's going to be using cameras; he's going to be using the view out the overhead; he's going to be using a lot of piloting sense to get us up there. And so, he's going to have his hands full. So, it's up to me to handle a lot of the other, the background things: making sure people are doing the procedures, doing them on time, letting Scooter know how fast or how slow he has to be going at all the different points as he gets us closer and closer to grapple.
Okay. A little bit about the EVA days. You and Scooter will obviously remain inside. Can you talk about what your duties will be during those days? And, how much, if at all, they'll vary from EVA to EVA?
Well, my duties pretty much, my duties for the EVAs will be primarily keeping up with the photo and TV requirements that we have during the EVA tasks. It's very important, especially during a Hubble mission, that we have a lot of photographic evidence of the condition of the telescope. We'll have some wonderful opportunities during the EVAs as we rotate the telescope on the FSS. We'll have some wonderful opportunities to get close-up photographs of all the solar arrays and all the thermal insulation blankets and all the panels and everything, and just see, you know, it's been, that satellite's been up there many years. And it's a tough environment up there. So, we're going to need a lot of pictures. The ground is also going to need good video pictures of what's going on, on the EVAs. We have…each of our EVA crewmembers will have cameras mounted on top of their helmets. We have to record all those inputs. We have to make sure that everything is recorded; because after all, this is primarily the data we are bringing back from this Hubble mission is photographic evidence of what went on and what we did and the condition of the telescope. So, my main job is going to be orchestrating the photo and TV requirements of all those five EVA days. Now, something Scooter and I have kind of talked about other things I could be doing…Nancy's going to be spending an enormous amount of time at the arm during these missions. And, we talked about it. There's no doubt that she's going to be getting fatigued. And, other folks, the folks who were just on the previous day's EVA and are going to be going out the next day, on most of our EVAs, are going to be actually working IVA (interior duties), orchestrating the EVA. So, they're going to be busy. As the mission goes on, we're going to be getting more and more…we're going to be getting tired. I see it as one of my jobs to make sure that, it sounds ridiculous, but to make sure the folks are eating, make sure folks are getting enough fluids, make sure folks are, you know, comfortable in the orbiter. I'm taking it upon myself to do a lot of the housekeeping chores in the orbiter, and just making it a pleasant place for the others to work. Because when we're in space, my job is primarily getting us there and getting us back. And, when we're in space, I'll be working the photo, TV, and the housekeeping. But, I'll also be trying to take care of folks, the same as you would as if you were on a long mountaineering expedition or a long hiking trip; a 10- or 15-day hiking trip. You know, folks [have] got to eat; they [have] got to keep their fluids going. After all, we're human beings. And, that's going to be one of the things that I'm going to be watching.
Okay. Can you take us through the ungrapple and deploy day. Take us through that scenario and explain to us what you'll be doing on that day.
Okay. Ungrapple and deploy is a very interesting day for us because we have just come off five days of long and hard EVAs. Very, very involved EVAs. And, we've got to regroup and get together and get this satellite safely on its way. Because it's got a heck of a lot more good science in it! We've got to get it safely on its way. So, Nancy is going to grab it with the arm. Actually, you guys may not be able to use this because I don't know if it's Nancy or Mike that's going to be --
I think it's Mike. He's going to grapple it--
Okay. Yeah.
--raise it, and she's going to...
Okay. Mike's going to grab it and raise it. And, we're going to get it in position to actually deploy. We're just going to let it go essentially and fly the orbiter away from it. Once again, my main job during this whole time will be, as Scooter would say, "kind of the quarterback." Running the checklist, making sure that everybody's coordinated. This is kind of a complicated time because we have folks doing different things. We've got a lot of arm ops going on. We have a lot of Hubble-type things going on. And, we have several things that have to go on with the Orbiter. You know, Scooter's going to do the first separation burn; I'm going to do the second separation burn. And, all these things need to be coordinated; so we all need to work together, have timers going and everything so we're all coordinated and get this piece of orchestration done. And, once again, I'll be running the checklist and making sure that we're all marching down this thing together to get this job done.
All right. At some point, before descent, I guess, you'll have to go from heads-down to heads-up. Can you take us through the logistics of what you have to do? And, any difficulties, with that and with landing? What's that going to be like?
Well, the…actually, you know, maneuvering the orbiter from heads-down to a heads-up, at this point the orbiter's just really a spaceship. And, it doesn't take much in the way of reaction jets firing to just get this big vehicle moving real nice and slow. And then, when it gets in the position you want it to be, the jets will fire. It's all done by computer. The jets will fire and it'll just be in the attitude that we need to have it in to come back to Earth. A fairly benign maneuver. Once again, we're in space. We can do things nice and slow. Now, the landing is another thing altogether. Now, I've never flown in space; but the folks who have say that on landing day, you know, you've just spent maybe a week and a half, sometimes two weeks in orbit and you're used to the things happening slowly in space.
Right.
Now you're coming back to Earth, and things are getting more and more dynamic. And, folks say, "Boy, by the time you get down to Mach 10, things start to happen real, real fast!" So, probably what's going to happen before that day is: Scooter and I are going to sit down with a computer, and we're going to practice the orchestration that he and I go through together to land the orbiter. Scooter will be landing the orbiter, and I'll be providing calls and such to give him altitudes and airspeeds so that he can land this thing and have a great landing. So we're going to practice that and get ourselves back into the landing mode. You know, we're no longer spacemen now; now we're going to turn back into pilots and get this thing down. One of the jokes on our flight is that, if we have a normal entry day going, the plan is for me…to actually take the orbiter first and fly it for maybe 10 or 15 seconds and then hand it on over to Scooter. Well, we never had that, in the past, in the last few years, the pilots have never had the opportunity to do that because the regulations were a little bit different. They've since then become a little more liberal. So, whenever Scooter was the Pilot, he never had a chance to fly the orbiter. So, the joke is: I'm going to have a chance to fly it first and hand it over to him. So, I can give him advice on how it flies! And then, he'll take it; and then he'll do all the hard stuff actually. He'll take us around the HAC and you know, lined up on final; and he'll land it.
Okay.
But I get to fly it first!
Yeah. You've got to feel good about that.
Yeah. And, I can tell him how it flies. It'll be, "Be careful, Scooter, it's kind of sensitive."
Okay. Have you gotten a good sense of what things are going to be like from the training? Has it…how helpful has the training in the sims and in the dome (I guess for rendezvous and whatnot), how helpful has that been?
It's been real helpful to…especially for me, to teach me the procedures, the procedure flow. I think it's doing a pretty good job letting me know how things are going to look. But, I'll have to tell you after the mission --
Sure.
-- whether it was really good or not. But, I have to tell you that, astronauts, rookie astronauts after they land, they say that they found the training to be more than adequate. That it was very good training, and the simulations were actually pretty close to what they were going to see in space.
Okay. If you can envision the mission unfolding before you, which activities do you see as being the biggest challenges for the crew? And that can go either from launch to landing or just while you're up there. Whatever you feel.
When I think about our mission, I try to compare it to things that I've had some experience with, either long motorcycle trips or long backpacking trips and things like that. And, what I think is going to be the big challenge on our mission is, as the days wear on, we've got five back-to-back EVAs. These are five long days. Those folks out in the space suits are going to be getting beat up. They're going to be getting tired. The tasks they're doing are incredibly, mentally hard things to do. And, I just think that one of the main challenges on the mission is, for me in particular (and I'm not sure for the crew), but for me in particular is to keep that mental focus. To wake up each morning and say, "Okay, this is the big day! Got to be on today. Got to get this done today. Got to get through the day and do everything perfect." And then, waking up the next morning and having that same attitude. Not just saying…by EVA day 5 saying, "Well, this is easy. I've done this four times. We've done this four times as a crew. We can get through this one by just coasting." It's not going to be like that. Every EVA is going to be different. It's going to have different challenges. So, we have to get up and get pumped up for each day. And then, after the mission's over, not over but after the EVAs are over, we have to avoid the letdown of saying, "Whew! The hard part's over. All we have to do is get back to Earth." Well, that's a pretty big job. So, we have to get up for landing day. Later on, when we're getting tired, we need to get it together as a crew and get up for these hard tasks that we've got. As Nancy says, she says, "Digger, the only time to relax is after you're out of the orbiter." She said, "You can't even relax at wheels stop on the runway. You've still got switches to throw. You can't make mistakes." She said, "The only time I feel like I can relax is when I'm outside the orbiter and I'm in that astronaut bus to go back to crew quarters." She says, "Then you can relax."
Okay. All right. Good deal. I think we've covered about everything. Is there anything else about the mission you wanted to address at all?
Can't think of anything.
Okay.
I think you've about covered it.
The STS-109 Crew Interviews with Duane Carey, pilot.
Thank you for joining us today. I'd like to start off talking about some of your background. First of all: Why did you decide to become an astronaut?
Well, for me it really wasn't a case of deciding to be an astronaut. I had, before I went to college, I had taken a few years off after high school and really had, I guess in those days, I had no intentions of going to college. But, with that time off and traveling around the country on a motorcycle like I did, I had a lot of time, time to think. And, I decided what I wanted to do with my life. And, one thing I definitely enjoyed personally, from a selfish point of view, was exploration and going to places that I had never been to before and learning, you know, meeting the people and getting to know, new sights and sounds, etc. So, I decided that whatever I was, wanted to do with my life, it would have to do, it would have to have something to do with the exploration and doing new things. And, later on when I decided to join the military, the Air Force in particular, my philosophy was (and actually still is, and I try to pass this on to my kids) that: set yourself a high goal, a goal that seems impossible and most likely is impossible, but the whole point of setting high goals is, is you work your way toward that and you have a good time getting there; and if you don't quite reach it, you've had such a good time in the quest that it really in the end doesn't matter whether you reached your goal or not. I consider myself to be very fortunate in my career, my timing has worked out. I worked for some very good people who have helped me along the way and actually enabled me to have the opportunity to be selected to join the Astronaut Corps. And, so I set my goals on astronaut because, as a military aviator, it was, I considered that to be about the peak of a flying career. I could do exploration in this particular career field, and it was a goal that, even if I didn't reach it, it was so high it seemed almost impossible, but even if I didn't reach it, I would still have a good time and a very satisfying career.
How long did you spend traveling around the country?
I took, it was about 2½ years--
Okay.
-- from the time I graduated from high school to the time, I believe it was my father sat me down one day and said, "Well, you're having a pretty good time now, but what are you going to do with your life?" And, actually it was interesting because I had done a lot of traveling in the United States and Canada and Mexico on my motorcycle; and I was really, it was the first time I had really gotten out of the Minnesota area to speak of. And, I was really impressed with how beautiful our country was and how friendly the people were. I had a lot of help. A lot of times, I didn't have much money on the road, and people would help me out here and there, maybe with meals or a place to spend the night, etc. Sometimes, allowing me to take short jobs for a while so I could earn a little more money. And, I became really enamoured with the United States of America. And, I wanted to serve our country in some way. And, the best way I could do that, I felt, was to join the military. And then, my father had had brothers who had been in all branches of the military, and he suggested the Air Force because he felt like his brother who was in the Air Force had had the best time. And, he said, "Well, if you're going to do anything, join the Air Force; and, if you're going to be in the military, you may as well be an officer." And, I [said], "Dad, that means [I've] got to [go to] college!" Well, if that's what it means, then that's what it means. And so that's what started me. I decided it was time to put away the fun and maybe start working on some payback for just being in this wonderful country that we're in.
Was the thought of flying jets in your thought process before the military? Or, was that, I guess, a byproduct of joining the military?
It was a byproduct of joining the military. I've always been, since I was fairly young, I've been interested in motorcycles and have owned them and ridden them and raced them, things like that. And then, when I thought about joining the Air Force, flying seemed like a natural extension of the motorcycling experience. You're going faster, higher. You're operating a machine that's a lot more powerful than you are. And, it was attractive to me. And, I wouldn't consider myself to be a natural pilot; I've had to work at it. But, I've found it to be a very satisfying career. And, like I tell folks who've asked me, I say, "You know, piloting really isn't my hobby. And, it's probably not something I'd do in my spare time if I could do whatever I wanted to do. But, I'll tell you: if you've got to make a living, it's a great way to make a living!"
Okay. Can you talk about how you made the transition from the Air Force to NASA? What steps did you take along that road?
Okay. That transition actually started when I was in college. A friend of mine, I was in Air Force ROTC at the University of Minnesota, and a friend who I was fairly close with and actually still keep in touch with to this day, he and I decided that we wanted to, eventually in our Air Force career become test pilots because we knew that to be selected to be an astronaut as a pilot, they're looking for folks with a test piloting background. And, at that point we decided to get our Master's degrees while we were in college; and we had to take actually two years of courses and scrunch it up into one year in order to make it to undergraduate pilot training on time. So, we struggled through and got our Master's degrees to set ourselves up, you know, to possibly someday be a test pilot. And, that's when I started thinking about what I needed to do in my personal career to make myself eligible for the astronaut program someday. I had three operational tours in the Air Force flying A-10s and F-16s, had a wonderful time. My wife and I were offered the opportunity at the 7-year point to leave the Air Force and perhaps get a job with the airlines or something like that; and we both decided that, even though airline pilots make a heck of a lot more money, we were having such a wonderful time in the Air Force and, and meeting such interesting and good people that we wanted to stay. So, I stayed in the Air Force after the 7-year point; eventually started to apply for Test Pilot's School. I believe the first time I tried, I didn't have any luck. And then, the next time I applied to Test Pilot's School I was picked up; and that's when you begin the transition toward the astronaut life because astronaut life is pretty much like a civilian lifestyle. In the military a lot of times we were overseas living the strictly military lifestyle. And as a test pilot, it was kind of a halfway house for fighter pilots to turn back into civilians. Working with a lot of civilian folks, I noticed that around the squadron, I had to clean around the test squadron, I had to clean up my act and become more presentable to civilian people. You know, things, language can get pretty rough in a fighter squadron. And, then, so that was like a halfway house in working those types of things. Also, as a test pilot, you learn how to work with teams. You learn how to work with the engineering team and the control team on the ground. Whereas as a fighter pilot, anything I had flown in the past had all been single-seat fighters where we were up there pretty much relying on ourselves and our flight mates in the formation. But, the test piloting business taught me that this is a big endeavor; we had to work with teams. We had to work with engineers and the folks on the ground, and of course by the time we get to NASA and start working in the astronaut program, it's a huge team effort to get these missions into space. And, so it was kind of a, that's an interesting question. There was kind of a gradual transition from strict military life on over to the quasi-civilian existence that we have here at NASA.
Okay. Who was that friend that you mentioned? What was his name?
That friend of mine was Manny Espough. His nickname was Stan. He ended up flying F-4s for a while. And then, he got out of the Air Force and is, I believe, he's flying for Delta at this time. He's living in Georgia.
Okay.
He just called us the other night and offered his congratulations, on my being selected to be on a flight.
Okay. All right. Who were or still are some of the most influential people in your life?
Okay. I have to tell you, and I know this is a stock answer. But, I have to tell you: my parents, number one. My mother, bless her heart, was, found herself in a pretty tough situation when we were growing up. She was 21 years old, on her own, had three kids. And, when I, you know, if you think about day-to-day problems in your life and everything, and it seems like nothing compared to what this young woman was faced with. She had to leave high school actually because she had me. And, she never got a high school education. But, she took it upon herself to learn a trade; she learned the beautician trade (how to do hair). And, she more or less supported us three kids on her own for many, many years before she met my stepfather. And, when you think about determination and hard work and sticking to your goals, I think about my mom because she never gave up. And, she put, and no matter how exhausted she was, she put a lot of effort into us kids. She read with us. We learned how to read probably before a lot of kids did. She instilled on us how important education is. She always wishes that she would've had the opportunity to go further in her education; and she's always impressed upon us how important that is. And, my stepfather, now here's a guy who was 26 years old and he had the world by the tail. He had a good job. He was…used to drag race cars. He had motorcycles, snowmobiles, boats. He had all the toys, and he decided to marry a woman who had three children. And, these weren't little kids; these were kids that were old enough to be problems. And, we were pretty much of a wild bunch back in those days. And, I learned from my dad how…a big sense of responsibility. Here was a guy that went from a 26, I think it was 26- or 27-year-old bachelor to, boom! Overnight, he's got three kids, there's all these responsibilities. He's got a mortgage all of a sudden. (He'd never had a house before that.) And, he just took it upon himself to take all these responsibilities; and he was, he was, well, he's my dad. I don't even refer to him as my stepfather. And, one thing my dad has in, he has a lot of is common sense. And, I still go to him for advice. I go to him for advice on parenting with my own children. I say, "Wow! You know, I really realize what problems I put you through now. And, now my kids are doing the same thing. Tell me how to handle this." My parents have been very influential. And, they're also very young, so they're going to be around a long time. And I look forward to gleaning a lot more knowledge from them as they've been through life. And then obviously, you know, anybody who achieves doesn't do it on their own. You work for people. You have supervisors. You have teachers. You have advisors. Folks that help you and give you a chance and let you have the opportunity to get out there in the arena and to fail and to come back. And, they give you another chance to learn from those things. I worked for some wonderful commanders in the Air Force. I had some wonderful professors in college. My advisor, Dr. Bill Gerard, was a big help to me in the University of Minnesota. I just ran into a lot of fascinating, interesting people in the military. And, I try to take the best traits that I see in people, the ones I really admire, and then I try to emulate some of those. And, I don't know how good a job I do at that. But, certainly what I try to take from people that I really admire.
Sure. It sounds like your parents are great role models.
Oh [yes]. They're strong people…Minnesotans.
When all is said and done and the STS-109 crew is done servicing Hubble on this mission, what impact professionally and personally do you think having played such a part in that will have on you?
Well, I can't really answer a lot of the deep scientific questions about Hubble, how it's put together and things like that. But, I can tell you that ever since I've been in high school and perhaps a little earlier than that, I've been very interested in the space program. And, interested in all facets of it, including the unmanned portions of the space program. And, Hubble to me has always been of particular interest just because it is so powerful and we have learned so much from it. I can remember when NASA first launched Hubble and brought it up there and in a period of a couple of weeks it became evident in the popular press that the telescope wasn't working quite like we wanted it to. And, I remember being so depressed and so sad thinking, "We were looking so forward, we had all this hype and all this build-up, telling us what Hubble was going to do for us and the things we were, we're going to be able to see, you know, maybe figure once and for all what the Hubble constant was and figure out what the fate of the universe is." That's what Hubble can do for us. It can tell us whether the universe is expanding forever or if one day it's going to come back together. And, I can remember being depressed along with a lot of America (I think). And then, when NASA had the rescue mission to go up there and fix the optics on the telescope and when it finally worked, you know, just really proud of what America could do. And, I remember a couple of years ago when I was just working ground jobs in the Astronaut Office and I saw this mission coming up, I remember thinking, "You know, I'm not going to go out there and campaign for this one. But, I would be so proud someday to fly up and actually be close to this, this awesome piece of technology, this, this telescope that is, has looked back into time and taught us about our origins and gotten us closer to the real answers that we're after out there as we seek. And, when we go up there and enhance and give this telescope a tune-up (and I know we're going to have a great mission), and when we come back, I've just played a very small part in it. But, I could say, "Wow, I used my abilities and the skills that I've acquired through the years; I used those to help make the world a better place really for all people." And, that's what I truly believe that we're doing when we're advancing scientific knowledge is we're someday making the world better. Not only for our children, but for all people after that.
Okay. As the days keep coming, you get closer and closer to your first space flight. What are your thoughts, your anticipations, just your feelings about what you're expecting?
Well, they're mixed feelings. I'm really looking forward to the experience. Obviously, as a jet fighter pilot, everybody looks forward to the ascent; all that power, you know, that seven million pounds of thrust going uphill. I'm looking forward to coming back, back to Earth, the landing, the views. Being in space, I'm really looking forward to working with this team of folks that I'm with. I'm looking forward to having the satisfaction each day of…I guess you don't climb into bed. I guess you float into bed in space. I've never been there. The satisfaction each evening of knowing that we did as, we did the best we could today and we're going to do it again tomorrow. I think a lot of people, myself included, like to be…like to do expeditions and trips. To me, this feels a little bit like a motorcycle trip. We're planning where we're going to go. You can't take a lot of things. On a motorcycle, you're just very limited to what you can take. So, you search the thought. You bring the stuff that you think you're really going to need and stuff that has multiple purposes. You start the trip and you execute it. You plan it, you execute it, and then you come back. And, I'm really looking forward to doing the job, getting the job done, coming back. Well, let me tell you: when I'm in space, I'm looking forward to looking back and seeing the Earth. I just can't imagine what it looks like. People say that the pictures that they bring back have no…they just don't do it justice to how beautiful it is. Because, you know, your eyes can see in three dimensions and all that. And, obviously as a, as one who likes to travel around myself a lot, I think the Earth is a beautiful place. And, I'm looking forward to some new perspectives.
Okay. What does it mean to you to be flying your first mission in Columbia, the first shuttle to ever go up in space?
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I was in college (I believe) working for my Master's degree whenever Columbia first launched. And, you know, I really don't, I can't remember much about the launch; but I distinctly remember the landing because, at that point, I was in graduate school and I was working a job at Honeywell, Honeywell Incorporated in Minneapolis, the Science and Research Division. And, I remember we had monitors…I think we had a monitor in the room where I was, where my desk was. And, I remember watching the landing. And to me, the landing was the scariest part of the whole mission because, you know, launching a rocket into space is something that we have done frequently in the past. And granted, the shuttle was a whole new rocket system with the solids and everything. But, it was something I thought we had experience with. But, landing. In the past, we'd always come back with capsules and more or less considered the whole system to be disposable. But, actually landing a vehicle that had been in space and had to come back and had to fight its way through all the heat issues and thermal issues, aerodynamic issues, I believe back in those days there were some things that were considered unknowns as it was coming back. And, I remember as an engineering student being extremely nervous about the entry and the landing, and being so relieved when they were able to land this thing safely. And then, watching on TV as John Young and Bob Crippen got out. And, as a student, I remember looking up at the TV and thinking, "Those guys look relieved." And, that was Columbia, of course. And, I never dreamed that I would get a chance to actually fly that vehicle. And, you know, this is all just too good to be true.
Okay. All right. Can you talk a little bit about some of the updates that Columbia has gone through? It's got some upgrades…that are going to make it, a little bit easier for you and Scott to--
Yup.
--to handle.
There are quite a few upgrades now. There's been a tremendous amount of work that's been done that you can't see in Columbia. The folks out in Palmdale - when she was over there for her major depot turnaround - did a tremendous amount of rewiring and a lot of safety enhancements to the vehicle. But, the big one for Scott and I is in the cockpit. And, that's the MEDS upgrade to all the flight instruments. And, what it really means is that we now have an up-to-date flight instrument display suite in the orbiter. Columbia's the second orbiter to get this particular upgrade, and folks in the aviation community refer to this type of upgrade as a "glass cockpit"; and that's what we have now in the orbiter. And, the nice thing about the glass cockpit is that, as we get smarter about what types of displays we want to see, to help us have situational awareness in the orbiter, we can actually quite easily upgrade our displays. Right now, the displays are just, they just kind of emulate whatever our old displays had in the orbiter, except we have them all in glass in CRTs. But, in the future (and we're working on this right now), we have a lot of flexibility in what we can do with those displays. So, it's an exciting upgrade, you know, to folks like myself who are sitting up on the flight deck.
Okay. What kind of insight, if any, have you and…Scott kind of bestowed upon you, him having flown a shuttle before?
Scooter, of course, has two missions as pilot flying the position that I'll be flying in this one. This is his first flight as the Commander. And believe me: he's got a full plate! He's got a lot of things over there in the left seat to worry about that he never had to think about when he was sitting where I'm sitting. However, he's taken it upon himself to take the extra time - whether it be during a simulator run or whether it be in the office - to try to pass on his knowledge of my position, of things that have to be done on the pilot's side of the cockpit, passing on how he did it, the things he looked for. And, I've learned a heck of a lot from Scooter. Do you mind if I call him Scooter here.
Scooter's fine, yeah.
He's very knowledgeable, very competent, very conscientious. He's a perfectionist. And, what I like about him is that if he sees something that I could be doing better, he doesn't sit there and stew about it. He tells me, and then I take that and I run with it. Also, Scooter's been very valuable for myself and Mike Massimino, who's the other rookie on this flight, to just tell us about normal living in space. You know, "Scooter, what about food? How much food should we take? Where are we going to sleep?" You know, "Do we have to worry about using sleeping pills in space? You know, is it that hard to get to sleep?" And, this and that. And, he's been there. He has the answers as do the other folks on our crew. They are very…everybody in our crew is very understanding of the questions that Mike and I have about the mission. I've learned a lot from everybody, but particularly about the piloting tasks, I've learned a lot from Scooter about how to do things smarter and faster in the orbiter.
Okay. In order to service Hubble, you have to get there first. Can you talk about what you'll be doing on the way up, for rendezvous and for grapple?
Okay. Rendezvous day is the third day of our mission, and that's a big day for us. That's a very busy day. We're going to start out with Scooter and I, working together, along with Nancy, to do the orbital burns and the small little trim burns we need to keep us heading toward Hubble. And, there comes a point when Scooter, when we get close enough to actually see the telescope, as we get closer to it, there comes a point when Scooter's going to go to the aft flight deck so he can look out the overhead window and fly us up toward Hubble. At that point, I'm going to jump in his chair and I have a few more small burns to do to get, to make little small corrections and get us going up toward the telescope. And then, after that, I'm kind of like, I'm kind of what Scooter refers to as "the quarterback of the whole operation." I've got the checklist; I'm making sure that we're doing everything on time; I'm making the calls to the ground. Kind of keeping an eye on how things are going all around. Now Scooter's actually going to be doing the hands-on flying at this point. And, in, flying us into the Hubble. We make jokes with the…we make jokes with the space station guys because we have…we don't have quite all the tools to help us on the rendezvous that the space station guys do. They have a laser system that helps them with their rendezvous that Hubble is not able to…Hubble is not able to work with because we don't have the proper reflectors. So, we like to think that we're doing a rendezvous a little bit the old-fashioned way, without all the bells and whistles. We're going to use a handheld laser like a policeman uses when he sees if you're speeding or not. We've got the radar, which may or may not be a big help. But, primarily Scooter's going to be using some old-fashioned rendezvous aids. He's going to be using cameras; he's going to be using the view out the overhead; he's going to be using a lot of piloting sense to get us up there. And so, he's going to have his hands full. So, it's up to me to handle a lot of the other, the background things: making sure people are doing the procedures, doing them on time, letting Scooter know how fast or how slow he has to be going at all the different points as he gets us closer and closer to grapple.
Okay. A little bit about the EVA days. You and Scooter will obviously remain inside. Can you talk about what your duties will be during those days? And, how much, if at all, they'll vary from EVA to EVA?
Well, my duties pretty much, my duties for the EVAs will be primarily keeping up with the photo and TV requirements that we have during the EVA tasks. It's very important, especially during a Hubble mission, that we have a lot of photographic evidence of the condition of the telescope. We'll have some wonderful opportunities during the EVAs as we rotate the telescope on the FSS. We'll have some wonderful opportunities to get close-up photographs of all the solar arrays and all the thermal insulation blankets and all the panels and everything, and just see, you know, it's been, that satellite's been up there many years. And it's a tough environment up there. So, we're going to need a lot of pictures. The ground is also going to need good video pictures of what's going on, on the EVAs. We have…each of our EVA crewmembers will have cameras mounted on top of their helmets. We have to record all those inputs. We have to make sure that everything is recorded; because after all, this is primarily the data we are bringing back from this Hubble mission is photographic evidence of what went on and what we did and the condition of the telescope. So, my main job is going to be orchestrating the photo and TV requirements of all those five EVA days. Now, something Scooter and I have kind of talked about other things I could be doing…Nancy's going to be spending an enormous amount of time at the arm during these missions. And, we talked about it. There's no doubt that she's going to be getting fatigued. And, other folks, the folks who were just on the previous day's EVA and are going to be going out the next day, on most of our EVAs, are going to be actually working IVA (interior duties), orchestrating the EVA. So, they're going to be busy. As the mission goes on, we're going to be getting more and more…we're going to be getting tired. I see it as one of my jobs to make sure that, it sounds ridiculous, but to make sure the folks are eating, make sure folks are getting enough fluids, make sure folks are, you know, comfortable in the orbiter. I'm taking it upon myself to do a lot of the housekeeping chores in the orbiter, and just making it a pleasant place for the others to work. Because when we're in space, my job is primarily getting us there and getting us back. And, when we're in space, I'll be working the photo, TV, and the housekeeping. But, I'll also be trying to take care of folks, the same as you would as if you were on a long mountaineering expedition or a long hiking trip; a 10- or 15-day hiking trip. You know, folks [have] got to eat; they [have] got to keep their fluids going. After all, we're human beings. And, that's going to be one of the things that I'm going to be watching.
Okay. Can you take us through the ungrapple and deploy day. Take us through that scenario and explain to us what you'll be doing on that day.
Okay. Ungrapple and deploy is a very interesting day for us because we have just come off five days of long and hard EVAs. Very, very involved EVAs. And, we've got to regroup and get together and get this satellite safely on its way. Because it's got a heck of a lot more good science in it! We've got to get it safely on its way. So, Nancy is going to grab it with the arm. Actually, you guys may not be able to use this because I don't know if it's Nancy or Mike that's going to be --
I think it's Mike. He's going to grapple it--
Okay. Yeah.
--raise it, and she's going to...
Okay. Mike's going to grab it and raise it. And, we're going to get it in position to actually deploy. We're just going to let it go essentially and fly the orbiter away from it. Once again, my main job during this whole time will be, as Scooter would say, "kind of the quarterback." Running the checklist, making sure that everybody's coordinated. This is kind of a complicated time because we have folks doing different things. We've got a lot of arm ops going on. We have a lot of Hubble-type things going on. And, we have several things that have to go on with the Orbiter. You know, Scooter's going to do the first separation burn; I'm going to do the second separation burn. And, all these things need to be coordinated; so we all need to work together, have timers going and everything so we're all coordinated and get this piece of orchestration done. And, once again, I'll be running the checklist and making sure that we're all marching down this thing together to get this job done.
All right. At some point, before descent, I guess, you'll have to go from heads-down to heads-up. Can you take us through the logistics of what you have to do? And, any difficulties, with that and with landing? What's that going to be like?
Well, the…actually, you know, maneuvering the orbiter from heads-down to a heads-up, at this point the orbiter's just really a spaceship. And, it doesn't take much in the way of reaction jets firing to just get this big vehicle moving real nice and slow. And then, when it gets in the position you want it to be, the jets will fire. It's all done by computer. The jets will fire and it'll just be in the attitude that we need to have it in to come back to Earth. A fairly benign maneuver. Once again, we're in space. We can do things nice and slow. Now, the landing is another thing altogether. Now, I've never flown in space; but the folks who have say that on landing day, you know, you've just spent maybe a week and a half, sometimes two weeks in orbit and you're used to the things happening slowly in space.
Right.
Now you're coming back to Earth, and things are getting more and more dynamic. And, folks say, "Boy, by the time you get down to Mach 10, things start to happen real, real fast!" So, probably what's going to happen before that day is: Scooter and I are going to sit down with a computer, and we're going to practice the orchestration that he and I go through together to land the orbiter. Scooter will be landing the orbiter, and I'll be providing calls and such to give him altitudes and airspeeds so that he can land this thing and have a great landing. So we're going to practice that and get ourselves back into the landing mode. You know, we're no longer spacemen now; now we're going to turn back into pilots and get this thing down. One of the jokes on our flight is that, if we have a normal entry day going, the plan is for me…to actually take the orbiter first and fly it for maybe 10 or 15 seconds and then hand it on over to Scooter. Well, we never had that, in the past, in the last few years, the pilots have never had the opportunity to do that because the regulations were a little bit different. They've since then become a little more liberal. So, whenever Scooter was the Pilot, he never had a chance to fly the orbiter. So, the joke is: I'm going to have a chance to fly it first and hand it over to him. So, I can give him advice on how it flies! And then, he'll take it; and then he'll do all the hard stuff actually. He'll take us around the HAC and you know, lined up on final; and he'll land it.
Okay.
But I get to fly it first!
Yeah. You've got to feel good about that.
Yeah. And, I can tell him how it flies. It'll be, "Be careful, Scooter, it's kind of sensitive."
Okay. Have you gotten a good sense of what things are going to be like from the training? Has it…how helpful has the training in the sims and in the dome (I guess for rendezvous and whatnot), how helpful has that been?
It's been real helpful to…especially for me, to teach me the procedures, the procedure flow. I think it's doing a pretty good job letting me know how things are going to look. But, I'll have to tell you after the mission --
Sure.
-- whether it was really good or not. But, I have to tell you that, astronauts, rookie astronauts after they land, they say that they found the training to be more than adequate. That it was very good training, and the simulations were actually pretty close to what they were going to see in space.
Okay. If you can envision the mission unfolding before you, which activities do you see as being the biggest challenges for the crew? And that can go either from launch to landing or just while you're up there. Whatever you feel.
When I think about our mission, I try to compare it to things that I've had some experience with, either long motorcycle trips or long backpacking trips and things like that. And, what I think is going to be the big challenge on our mission is, as the days wear on, we've got five back-to-back EVAs. These are five long days. Those folks out in the space suits are going to be getting beat up. They're going to be getting tired. The tasks they're doing are incredibly, mentally hard things to do. And, I just think that one of the main challenges on the mission is, for me in particular (and I'm not sure for the crew), but for me in particular is to keep that mental focus. To wake up each morning and say, "Okay, this is the big day! Got to be on today. Got to get this done today. Got to get through the day and do everything perfect." And then, waking up the next morning and having that same attitude. Not just saying…by EVA day 5 saying, "Well, this is easy. I've done this four times. We've done this four times as a crew. We can get through this one by just coasting." It's not going to be like that. Every EVA is going to be different. It's going to have different challenges. So, we have to get up and get pumped up for each day. And then, after the mission's over, not over but after the EVAs are over, we have to avoid the letdown of saying, "Whew! The hard part's over. All we have to do is get back to Earth." Well, that's a pretty big job. So, we have to get up for landing day. Later on, when we're getting tired, we need to get it together as a crew and get up for these hard tasks that we've got. As Nancy says, she says, "Digger, the only time to relax is after you're out of the orbiter." She said, "You can't even relax at wheels stop on the runway. You've still got switches to throw. You can't make mistakes." She said, "The only time I feel like I can relax is when I'm outside the orbiter and I'm in that astronaut bus to go back to crew quarters." She says, "Then you can relax."
Okay. All right. Good deal. I think we've covered about everything. Is there anything else about the mission you wanted to address at all?
Can't think of anything.
Okay.
I think you've about covered it.
