Riding Rockets

Training in the WETF pool was the most physically demanding of all astronaut training. As it would be in space, the suit was pressurized to the consistency of iron. The simple task of opening and closing one’s hand rapidly fatigued those muscles. And while the suit was neutrally buoyant, the body inside wasn’t. When I was in an upright position, I was standing inside it. But when the spacewalk practice sessions required me to work upside down, which was frequently the case, I would “fall” an inch or two inside the suit until my entire body weight was borne by the top of my shoulders pressing into the EMU neck ring. That was torture. Moving against the stiffness of the suit also resulted in abrasions on the arms and wear marks on other parts of the body. But, in spite of the pain and occasional nibbles of claustrophobia, I loved the WETF sessions. Like the robot arm training, the work was more personally challenging and yielded a greater sense of accomplishment than learning how to throw a switch to release a satellite. I prayed that someday I would get to do a spacewalk…aplanned spacewalk. I never wanted to hear the wordcontingency on any of my missions.

Our final EVA training session afforded me a unique insight into the burden of feminism on the TFNG females. The lesson involved a soup-to-nuts spacewalk dress-out conducted in an exact replica of the shuttle cockpit/airlock. The shuttle mid-deck, though the largest volume in the two-deck cockpit, was small, measuring about 7 feet fore-to-aft, 10 feet wide, and 7 feet floor-to-ceiling. Astronauts liked to impress the public with the gee-whiz fact that the Texas prison system allocated more space for one inmate than the shuttle provided for crews of six people. The airlock was even smaller, a cylinder 7 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter. Most of this space was filled with the two wall-mounted EMUs.

Under the critical eye of our instructor, Judy entered the airlock, disassembled our suits, and passed the helmets and pants into the mid-deck. The torso portion of the suit that contained the electronics, oxygen bottles, water supply, and controls—and weighing nearly 200 pounds—would remain on the airlock wall. While she was busy with this task, Steve and I retrieved our condom UCDs, bio-data attachments, and Liquid Cooling Garments (LCG) from the EVA lockers. The LCGs were a netlike long underwear. Weaved into the material were small tubes that carried chilled water next to the skin to prevent spacewalkers from overheating.

The first task of donning a spacesuit is to get naked and put on the UCD. I had assumed Judy would step out of the cockpit during this intimacy, but I had failed to appreciate how feminism had complicated our situation. No male IVA crewmember would have left the mock-up while other males rolled on their condoms, so Judy knew she could not either. To do so would be a violation of the feminist cause, to send a message that women were different from men. As Judy made no attempt to leave, I shot Steve a nervousYou go first glance, only to see his eyes answer,Screw you. You go first. This was going to be interesting, I thought. At least if I was going to get naked around a nonwife woman, I had a ripped body and the ass of a Greek god to impress her. But, even for me, a guy with few inhibitions, the thought of rolling on a condom while JR was standing in front of me discussing the checklist was, well, inhibiting. Certainly she didn’t intend to make sure we didthat task correctly?

I need not have worried. As Steve and I started with our shirt buttons, Judy sat on the edge of the hatchway, put her head down, and faked reading the checklist. She gave us as much privacy as possible while still holding on to her feminist sensibilities.

As fast as I could, I sheathed myself in latex, Velcroed the nylon bladder around my waist, then slipped into the LCG. Hawley did the same. We were once again presentable.

Before zipping our LCGs fully closed, we attached biosensors to our chests. It was only on spacewalks that MCC monitored astronauts’ heart rates. The data was a measure of how much the spacewalker was exerting him- or herself. Astronauts also suspected flight surgeons wanted to be able to remotely pronounce a spacewalker dead in the event of a suit malfunction.