Whatever happens, it’s going to happen fast, and your survival will to a large extent depend on your competence. The interactions—between the vehicle’s own internal systems, its actual velocity and attitude, how far it is from Earth—are really complicated. It is rocket science. You have to understand what causes which effects, and you have no time to explain things to your crewmates or to yourself. You really need to know what it means if you’re 20 degrees off attitude, or what to do if one of your thrusters fails, as well as the dozens of follow-on consequences that will trigger yet more chain reactions. You don’t even have a few seconds to wrack your brain—you need that information right now, front of mind, in order to make a good decision.
In training, once we understand the theory and the basics of the interactions between systems, we start learning what it looks like when systems fail, one at a time. Initially we do this via “part task trainers,” or PTTs, which are one-on-one computer simulations run by an instructor who’s usually sitting beside us using a separate laptop. For instance, in a PTT on the thermal control system of the Soyuz, I stared at that system’s normal display on my computer screen, getting used to what it should look like, and then the instructor failed one of the pumps so I could see what would happen. Next he showed me how it would change if a sensor failed and it appeared as if we had a temperature regulation problem but really the issue was just that the thermometer had gone haywire. I spent a lot of time on PTTs looking at the symptoms of false alarms versus actual system failures: pressure regulation, atmospheric constituent controls, the rendezvous sensing system—the list is long.
Through this process I started to figure out what to pay attention to and what to disregard, which risks were the greatest and which would trigger the most negative consequences, and then I was ready for the actual Soyuz simulator, to see what the whole picture looked like. My instructors in the control room started with individual failures and over time worked up to integrated failures: the thermal regulation system malfunctions and on top of that, the digital control loop on the central computer fails—how does all that fit together? Do these problems compound each other or are they unrelated? Uh-oh, now an engine has failed and we’re on backup thrusters. What are our options?
These sims are all about prioritizing risks, understanding how they interrelate and deciding which ones must be dealt with immediately—all of which you need to figure out well before you get to space, where hesitation could be fatal. On Earth, there’s the luxury of time. The instructors can even freeze the simulator to make sure you really get it: “You just lost the digital computer—look at how the vehicle is recalculating acceleration and engine cut-off time, how it’s going to control attitude for atmospheric entry. Try to think about each step here.”
Eventually, I built up to dealing with cascading malfunctions, where the trainers throw in everything including the kitchen sink. It’s like writing a final exam in university where you’re scribbling down answers as fast as you possibly can, non-stop, for hours. When I got out of a tough integrated sim, I was whipped. I may have looked calm on the outside, but my brain had just had a brutal workout and was now able to handle no challenge greater than locating a bottle of beer and heading for my back porch.
When I graduated to doing a really challenging sim with my crew, we started preparing for the preparation, in order to get the most out of it. Before Roman, Tom Marshburn and I simulated deorbit burn together, for example, we talked about how we were going to handle certain problems—“If the digital computer fails at this point, we’re going to work it through this way”—and split up our roles and responsibilities. Each of us had his own thing to be hyper-aware of while the dynamic operations were going on, and we planned out our first three or four actions for a variety of different scenarios, so we were all on the same page. I got in the habit of asking during each sim we did together, “Okay, what’s the summary of our failures to this point?” Tom would list them and we’d quickly prioritize them and figure out which ones were still immediate threats.
A lot of people talk about expecting the best but preparing for the worst, but I think that’s a seductively misleading concept. There’s never just one “worst.” Almost always there’s a whole spectrum of bad possibilities. The only thing that would really qualify as the worst would be not having a plan for how to cope.
Now for the confusing part: take your simulation seriously and engage as fully as you would in real life—but be prepared that the sim itself may be wrong. This happens to us most often with simulators that are used to train not for disasters but for skill development.
In 1992, for instance, when I was a brand-new astronaut, the maiden voyage of Space Shuttle Endeavour was scheduled to rescue an Intelsat V1-F3 satellite that hadn’t made it to its required high orbit of 23,000 miles above Earth. Its engine wasn’t working properly, so this hugely expensive communications satellite had got stuck drifting along in a low orbit, about 300 miles overhead, where it was completely useless. The plan was that a crew would go to space, strap a new motor onto the thing, then release it to ascend to its intended geostationary orbit. But first, since the Canadarm wasn’t designed to latch onto an uncooperative satellite, an astronaut would have to do a spacewalk to install a custom-built grapple fixture while riding on the end of the arm. The grapple fixture could then be used to grab the satellite; it would be sort of like sticking a big handle on the side of it.
The plan was table-topped, and then a simulator was built. Of course, without weightlessness the simulator wouldn’t be of much use, so they used a NASA facility that is something like a gigantic air hockey table. The astronaut who was going to grab the satellite practiced over and over on this thing with the Canadarm simulator until he’d developed a good technique for attaching the handle to the satellite. However, even on an air hockey table there’s a tiny bit of friction, the implications of which were not fully understood until the astronaut was actually in space. In true weightlessness, he just couldn’t get enough force to make the grapple bar latch on before the satellite wobbled away again.
This happened repeatedly until everyone in space and on the ground was cursing the sim. The satellite was a large cylinder that looked a bit like a silver grain silo, so big that an astronaut wouldn’t be able to stop it with his hands and might actually be ripped right off the end of the Canadarm if he tried. Two astronauts would have the same problem.
What about three astronauts? That might work. Only, three’s a crowd in the Shuttle airlock, which was built to hold two astronauts, max. Also, all three would have to be in position to grab simultaneously—was that even physically possible? And even if it were, how could the commander ever maneuver the Shuttle close enough to the satellite for the attempt to happen? The crew in space got a day off while on Earth, astronauts and trainers began working these separate problems in round-the-clock simultaneous sims, both in the full-scale Shuttle simulator, in order to see how close it could get to a satellite, and in the buoyancy lab to solve the three-astronauts-in-the-airlock riddle and also figure out what the trio would do if they actually did manage to grab the satellite. It was a day of feverish invention, culminating in a fully integrated sim that was run a few times until the powers-that-be agreed: “It’s worth a shot.”
There was a happy ending: the three astronauts did manage to stop the satellite, install the new motor and send it on its way. Mission accomplished. But although the problem was solved via sims, it was also created by a sim. The moral of the story: part of preparing for the worst is keeping in mind that your sim itself may be based on the wrong assumptions, in which case you’ll draw the wrong, perfectly polished conclusions.
It’s puzzling to me that so many self-help gurus urge people to visualize victory, and stop there. Some even insist that if you wish for good things long enough and hard enough, you’ll get them—and, conversely, that if you focus on the negative, you actually invite bad things to happen. Why make yourself miserable worrying? Why waste time getting ready
for disasters that may never happen?
Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it’s productive. Likewise, coming up with a plan of action isn’t a waste of time if it gives you peace of mind. While it’s true that you may wind up being ready for something that never happens, if the stakes are at all high, it’s worth it. Think about driving down the highway listening to the radio and enjoying the sunshine, versus scanning the road, noticing the oil truck up ahead and considering what will happen if, just as you pull out to pass, you’re cut off by the van that you’ve noticed has been driving a little erratically in the left lane for the past 10 minutes. Anticipating that problem would be the best way to avoid it.
You don’t have to walk around perpetually braced for disaster, convinced the sky is about to fall. But it sure is a good idea to have some kind of plan for dealing with unpleasant possibilities. For me, that’s become a reflexive form of mental discipline not just at work but throughout my life. When I get into a really crowded elevator, for instance, I think, “Okay, what are we going to do if we get stuck?” And I start working through what my own role could be, how I could help solve the problem. On a plane, same thing. As I’m buckling my seat belt, I automatically think about what I’ll do if there’s a crisis.
But I’m not a nervous or pessimistic person. Really. If anything, I’m annoyingly upbeat, at least according to the experts (my family, of course). I tend to expect things will turn out well and they usually do. My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I’m luckier than other mortals, and they sure don’t come from visualizing victory. They’re the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it.
Like most astronauts, I’m pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I’ve thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That’s the power of negative thinking.
4
SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF
I GRADUATED FROM MILITARY COLLEGE in 1982 with a degree in mechanical engineering and a clear plan: I was going to be a military pilot. Like most of my classmates with similar ambitions I’d been flying small planes for years, and during the summer of 1980 I’d completed the basic flight training course in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. But to get my wings I had to go to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, to learn to fly jets. The Canadian Forces basic jet training course was demanding: 200 hours in a CT-114 Tutor (a two-seater that’s now primarily used by the Royal Canadian Air Force aerobatics team, the Snowbirds), accompanied by an instructor who evaluated every flight. If you flew poorly even one time, you were sent for extra training and then had to repeat the flight. Usually, though, that was the beginning of a downward spiral: a “re-ride” was a big black mark on a pilot’s record. If you got too many, you were kicked out of the program. It didn’t help that each re-ride was posted on a huge board in plain view. If your name appeared there, other pilots started to treat you as if you were already halfway out the door. It was very difficult to recover your confidence, and a lot of trainees simply couldn’t do it.
Every flight, then, was make or break. For me, the stakes felt particularly high: it was 1983, the year Canada selected its first astronauts and my impossible dream was becoming ever so slightly less impossible—but only if I flew fighter jets, the traditional first step on the path to becoming an astronaut. There was just one way to be certain I’d get to fly fighters, and that was to ace the jet training course. Only the top graduate got to pick whether to go fighters or transport (flying large planes to move troops and cargo), or be an instructor; no one else in the class had any say in the matter. So I was determined to finish first. The odds of becoming an astronaut were very low, to say the least, but if I didn’t become a fighter pilot, they’d be zero.
Then I made a hash out of one of my instrument exam flights. The instructor was someone I’d never flown with before, so he had no idea whether I was any good or not, and I gave him plenty of reasons to think I wasn’t. I flew clumsily and didn’t prepare properly to transition from one phase of instrument flight to the next; the whole time, I was “behind the airplane,” hanging on and reacting rather than anticipating and controlling the vehicle accordingly. The instructor noticed every dumb mistake and criticized me roundly, then grimly started flipping through my record. It was clear he was on the verge of scheduling a re-ride.
Academic failure was new to me—between hard work and natural ability I’d always been successful. It didn’t occur to me to try to defend myself, because the guy was right. I’d messed up. I just sat there mute with shame, staring straight ahead and listening to the sound of pages being turned.
After a very long minute, the instructor finally looked up from my file and said, “I see this is the first flight where you’ve had problems like this, so I’m going to chalk it up to a bad day. No re-ride.”
It was not just a reprieve but a life-changing moment. If he hadn’t given me the benefit of the doubt, I might well not be an astronaut today. It still haunts me, how close I came to blowing my own chances. Even at the time, the moral of the story was unmistakable: I couldn’t afford to be unprepared in any situation where I was going to be evaluated, formally or not. I had to be ready, always.
I decided to change the way I prepared, effective immediately. At night, instead of studying in my room, I studied in the airplane I’d be flying the next day. I got out all the checklists and navigation procedures, and acted out the whole flight, pretending to use the instrument controls. Once I was done and had “landed” safely, I started all over again. No one told me to go sit in a cold hangar for a couple of hours and run through the flight repeatedly until I could picture the whole thing. No one had to. That near re-ride had redoubled my resolve to finish first so I could fly fighters. And it just seemed like common sense that I’d fly the Tutor much better if, when I got in the plane with an instructor the next day, it was (at least mentally) the fourth time I’d made that particular flight.
I also started trying to visualize the route in detail beforehand. “All right, I’m going to go up to Speedy Creek, cut across to Regina—what does that look like, in reality?” When you’re 200 feet above the ground, going 240 knots, you want to know where you are at all times, but it’s easy to get lost on the prairie. From the air, a lot of southern Saskatchewan looks a lot like the rest of southern Saskatchewan: vast, flat, green and brown treeless fields, bordered by the grid lines of roads and occasionally punctuated by a dry lake bed or the jagged scar of a valley. On my days off, I got in the habit of driving out to where I’d be flying that week and getting out of the car to take a good look around. It paid off. Many times I’d be flying along and suddenly recognize something: “Hey, that’s where I parked, I remember that road—I know exactly where I am.”
This wasn’t just a beginner’s tactic, by the way. Even after accumulating thousands of flying hours in high-performance aircraft, I still did something similar. For a complicated flight in an F-18, for instance, I’d get a map of the region and draw my route on it, though I knew I’d never actually see the ground once I was airborne; I figured out which navigational aids I’d be able to use and what that meant for switch throws in the cockpit; I reviewed my checklists, just as I had the very first time I flew a fighter. The point of all this was so that when I was up in the air and actually flying, it already felt familiar. (Plus, I just like to understand exactly where I am—especially on the International Space Station, where I appreciate the view of a sprawling city nestled on a river between quiet volcanoes even more when I know I am looking at Taipei, Taiwan.)
When you think about it, this sort of intensive preparation and play-acting is a permissible form of cheating. It’s a bit like telling your opponent in the middle of a game of chess, “Hey, I want to take a break with the board just like this, I’ll be back in a few hours,” then running off and using that time to try dozens of gambits and figure out the three best moves you can make. That extra effort would give you a significa
nt competitive advantage, particularly if the other guy decided to use the time to take a nap.
I viewed jet training as an ongoing test, and my goal was to create every possible advantage for myself and give the best possible answer to every single question. So when I blew that flight and nearly got a re-ride, I was forced to look inside myself to try to figure out why I hadn’t been ready. Was I tired? Hungover? Not assertive enough at the controls? Too focused on the wrong things?
No. The problem was simple: I’d decided I was already a pretty good pilot, good enough that I didn’t need to fret over every last detail. And it’s true, you don’t need to obsess over details if you’re willing to roll the dice and accept whatever happens. But if you’re striving for excellence—whether it’s in playing the guitar or flying a jet—there’s no such thing as over-preparation. It’s your best chance of improving your odds.
In my next line of work, it wasn’t even optional. An astronaut who doesn’t sweat the small stuff is a dead astronaut.
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth Page 7