There are multiple, sequential, vital steps to follow for an EVA—mess one up, and you won’t make it out of the spaceship. It would be many busy hours until Scott and I could float out of the airlock and NASA had choreographed them down to five-minute slices, even dictating when and what to eat for breakfast: PowerBars and rehydrated grapefruit juice. I shaved, washed up, used the toilet—I didn’t want to have to use my diaper if I could possibly help it. Then I pulled on the liquid cooling garment, which is like long underwear with a lot of personality; it’s full of clear plastic tubing that water flows through, and we can control the temperature. It feels stiff, like a cheap Halloween costume, but that doesn’t matter when you’re outside: when the sun is shining on you during a spacewalk, the fabric of the spacesuit gets extremely hot and personal air conditioning seems like a fine idea.
About four hours later, Scott and I were finally floating head to toe in our spacesuits, carefully and slowly depressurizing the airlock and checking and rechecking the LED displays on our suits to make sure they were functioning properly and could keep us alive in the vacuum of space. If we got out there and somehow there was a leak in the suit, our lungs would rupture, our eardrums would burst, our saliva, sweat and tears would boil and we’d get the bends. The only good news is that within 10 to 15 seconds, we’d lose consciousness. Lack of oxygen to the brain is what would finish us off.
Bobbing gently in the airlock, though, I am not pondering my demise. This is the restful part of the day, a little like the point in a cross-country flight when you look out the window and see Nebraska. We will be busy again at some future point, but now, we are in limbo, still hooked to the ship by our umbilicals, anacondalike hoses providing cooling, oxygen, comms and power.
When the airlock has finally depressurized, I grab the handle on the hatch and turn it—not easily, because nothing in a spacesuit is all that easy. I talk calmly to Houston as I turn, but when it clicks into place and I feel the hatch move, I think, “Phew, it’s opening.” On a previous mission the handle had jammed, just locked up completely, and the astronauts had had to give up and go back into the Shuttle. The hatch itself is almost like a manhole, and it has to be removed and stowed in a bike-rack-like contraption overhead. I still can’t see outside, because of the white fabric insulating cover over the opening, but suddenly the airlock is brighter, bathed in muffled sunshine. Once I stow the fabric cover I am looking at the payload bay of the Shuttle itself, with just a sliver of the universe in my field of view. Of course all I want to do is get out there, but detaching the umbilical is a production: you have to do it really carefully because the connectors are fragile, then shroud it and mount it securely to the wall so it’s ready in case you have to race back into the airlock to stay alive.
Time to go out. Oh. The square astronaut, round hole dilemma. My exit will not be graceful. But my number one concern at this point is to avoid floating off into space, so just as we’ve been taught, I’m tethered to Scott, who is attached to the structure, and I’m holding another tether to attach to the rail mounted on the side of the Shuttle. I lower the gold shield on my visor to protect my eyes from the sun and carefully, gingerly, wriggle my bulky, square, suited self out of the airlock. I’m still inside the belly of the beast, in the payload bay, but my suit has become my own personal spaceship, responsible for keeping me alive. Emerging from the bay, my existence narrows to a single point of focus: attaching my tether to the braided wire strung from one end of the vehicle to another. I lock onto that and tell everyone I’m securely tethered. Now Scott can detach inside and come join me. Waiting for him I check behind me, to be sure I haven’t accidentally activated my backup tank of oxygen, and that’s when I notice the universe. The scale is graphically shocking. The colors, too. The incongruity is stupefying: there I was, inside a small box, but now—how is this possible?
What’s coming out of my mouth is a single word: Wow. Only, elongated: Wwwooooowww. But my mind is racing, trying to understand and articulate what I’m seeing, to find analogies for an experience that is so unique. It’s like this, I think. It’s like being engrossed in cleaning a pane of glass, then you look over your shoulder and realize you’re hanging off the side of the Empire State Building, Manhattan sprawled vividly beneath and around you. Intellectually, I’d known I was venturing out into space yet still the sight of it shocked me, profoundly. In a spacesuit, you’re not aware of taste, smell, touch. The only sounds you hear are your own breathing and, through the headset, disembodied voices. You’re in a self-contained bubble, cut off, then you look up from your task and the universe rudely slaps you in the face. It’s overpowering, visually, and no other senses warn you that you’re about to be attacked by raw beauty.
Another analogy: Imagine you’re in your living room, intently reading a book, and then you look up casually and you’re face to face with a tiger. No warning, no sound or smell, just suddenly, that feral presence. There was something similarly surreal and dreamlike about the sight in front of me now, which I couldn’t reconcile with my prosaic fumbling with the tether hook a moment before. Of course I’d peered out the Shuttle windows at the world, but I understood now that I hadn’t seen it, not really. Holding onto the side of a spaceship that’s moving around the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, I could truly see the astonishing beauty of our planet, the infinite textures and colors. On the other side of me, the black velvet bucket of space, brimming with stars. It’s vast and overwhelming, this visual immersion, and I could drink it in forever—only here’s Scott, out of the airlock, floating over toward me. We get to work.
After about five hours, the installation is going well, albeit a little slowly, when I suddenly become aware that droplets of water are floating around inside my helmet. An EVA is incredibly taxing, physically, and over the years we’ve tried putting some sort of food, a Fruit Roll-Up or something like that, inside the suit so that at least we have something to eat. But we’ve never figured out how to make food work, it’s been messy and more of a hindrance than a help, so typically we just have a water bag. You bite on the straw to open a little valve at one end, then suck out water—hypothetically, anyway. My water bag hadn’t worked right since we started the EVA and now it was apparently leaking. Great.
I’m trying to ignore these little globs of water floating around in front of my face when suddenly my left eye starts stinging. Wickedly. It feels like a large piece of grit has been smashed into my eye and instinctively, I reach up to rub it—and my hand smacks into the visor of my helmet. “You’re in a spacesuit, moron!” I remind myself under my breath. I try blinking repeatedly and whipping my head hard from side to side to try to dislodge whatever it is, but my eye keeps stinging and won’t stay open for more than a blurry second before snapping shut again.
We’ve trained for many eventualities during an EVA, but partial blindness was not one of them. So what to do? Well, take stock: I’m tightening the bolts on Canadarm2 using a big handheld drill. My feet are clicked into place in the foot restraints and my tether is firmly attached to the Station; I’m at no imminent risk. The rest of my senses are fine and I’ve still got one good eye. I decide to keep working and tell no one. So I move on to the next bolt and start torquing it into place. My left eye, however, is now not only smarting but actually filling with tears.
Tears need gravity. On Earth, a little duct above your eye generates tears that flush out whatever irritant is in your eye and then overflow down your cheek and drain down your tear duct, making your nose run. But in weightlessness, tears don’t flow downward. They just sit there and, as you keep on crying, a bigger and bigger ball of salty liquid accumulates to form a wobbly bubble on your eyeball.
Now for some key anatomy. My great-grandparents were all from northern England and southern Scotland, and while Yorkshiremen and Scots are noted for their toughness and stoicism, they are not remarkable for their noses. Instead of a proud, protruding hawk-like nose, they bequeathed me a more humble bridge, which the growing ball of tears in my left
eye easily oozes over, like a burst dam, promptly invading my right.
Which also snaps shut, because whatever’s contaminating the left eye hasn’t been diluted by my tears so now my right eye is tearing heavily, too. I try to force my eyes open, but there’s not much point—all I can see is a watery blur before my reflexes kick in and my eyelids close. In the space of just a few minutes, I’ve gone from 20/20 vision to blind. In space. Holding a drill.
“Houston, EV1. I have a problem.” As the words come out of my mouth I can easily picture the reaction on the ground, having CAPCOMED so many flights myself. First there will be concern for me personally, and then, seconds later, everyone at Mission Control will be galvanized: people will start tossing out theories about causes, wondering aloud what this means operationally and trying to figure out solutions.
To Scott and me, underreacting seems like the best option: I can’t see, but he’s just fine and still working away on the wiring on another part of the Station. Pointless for him to stop and make his way over, as there’s absolutely nothing he can do for me. Of course, if it turns out there’s no way to solve my problem, he’ll have to lead me back to the airlock and get me inside safely, but we both agree we’re not at that point yet. Nor do I want to get there. I need to get this job done, and my country is counting on me; the Canadian-designed and -built Canadarm2 is both a test and dazzling proof of our robotics capability. The EVA itself is also a big deal back home, because no Canadian has ever walked in space before. In other words, it’s really not a good time to be having eye trouble.
Fortunately, the flight director is Phil Engelauf, who knows me well. I’ve worked alongside him many times as CAPCOM for Shuttle flights, and he’s willing to cut me a lot of slack instead of ordering me back inside, pronto. He lets me sit tight for a bit while people scramble to figure out just how much danger I’m in. I know the ground is abuzz because every time the CAPCOM speaks to me, I can hear the hubbub in the background: How did this happen? Is it going to get worse? What can we do? It’s not insignificant that the arm is only partially attached—yes, crew safety is the number one priority, but we can’t just leave this vital piece of equipment flapping off the side of the Station.
After a few minutes, the focus on the ground is figuring out what’s causing the contamination. This being the space business, they go straight to the worst-case scenario: maybe the problem is related to the air purification system in the spacewalking suit, which relies on lithium hydroxide to remove carbon dioxide. Lithium hydroxide is really caustic and can severely damage your lungs; eye irritation is one of the first signs that there’s been a leak. So maybe I’m experiencing early symptoms of lithium hydroxide exposure and I’ve only got a couple more minutes to live. The CAPCOM, Ellen Ochoa (now the director of the Johnson Space Center), calmly tells me to open my purge valve—essentially, to open a hole in my suit and start flushing out the potentially contaminated air I’ve been breathing until it’s all gone or at least highly diluted by the fresh oxygen being pumped into my suit.
This goes against my survival instincts, but, okay. I open my purge valve—luckily, I’ve practiced so many times that I can reach up beside my left ear and open it with no problem and no eyesight—and start dumping my air into space. So now I’m blind, listening to a hissing noise as my oxygen merrily burbles out into the universe. It’s a curiously peaceful moment. Spacewalking is largely a visual experience; your other senses are barely stimulated. The brilliant colors of the Earth, the shining reflections off the spaceship and the profound blackness of space are what confirm to you where you are. Without sight, my body is telling me that nothing at all out of the ordinary is going on. I feel more like I’m under the covers at home in bed, dreaming about the Space Station, than hanging onto the side of it, in mortal danger.
My CAPCOM is listening to the medical doctors, the biomedical engineers, everyone who’s working away at Mission Control, but she says, as though we’re just having a pleasant conversation, “So Chris, we’re looking at all the data, where your oxygen pressure is at right now. How are you feeling?” Weirdly enough, I’m feeling unconcerned, because Scott is out here with me. He’s a physician and a commercial pilot and a mountain climber, and I’ve never met anyone who can outwork him: the guy’s mind and body just never stop. Plus, I’m still breathing, a lot of good people are working the problem and I’m certain I’m not going to die in the next 60 seconds. The fact that I’m not coughing makes me reasonably confident there hasn’t been a lithium hydroxide leak. I have to let the people on the ground do their job, and purge my oxygen as a precaution, but I’ve already decided I’m not going to let this go on too long. The suit has a significant amount of oxygen, enough for eight or even ten hours, and I also have a secondary O2 tank, so I can bleed out oxygen and stay alive for a long, long time. But I need to get back to work, and who knows how much longer we’ll have to be outside to finish attaching the robot arm.
Actually, I’m getting antsy: we’re wasting time here. I’m contributing absolutely nothing to the project I’ve come to space to do. So I start trying everything I can think of to un-blind myself: shaking my head around to try to brush my eyes against something in the helmet, blinking for all I’m worth. I know the doctors are undoubtedly telling Phil, “We’ve got to bring him inside right this minute and figure out what’s going on.” So I say, “Know what? I feel no lung irritation at all and I think my eyes are starting to clear a little bit.” It’s even sort of true. My eyes are still killing but I feel marginally less sightless.
I ask if I can stop purging oxygen and Phil agrees. Meanwhile, I keep blinking and blinking and blinking, and thankfully, 20 minutes on, I can now see a little bit. Sure my eyes still sting and everything looks a bit cloudy, but a couple more minutes pass and I think I can see well enough to continue installing the arm. I tell the ground I’m ready to get back to work. Happily, the response is, “All right, you’re the one there and you know best what the situation is.” In the meantime, Mission Control instructs the crew inside the Shuttle to get the medical gear ready so that when I come back in they can sample my tears and the crusting around my eyes to try to figure out what the problem is.
In the end, Mission Control wound up letting us go long on our spacewalk, which was scheduled to last six and a half hours. The vast majority of spacewalks are seven hours or less, but because Scott and I were both telling the ground how well we were doing, we were allowed to stay out almost eight, to try to get everything done.
Nearing the end, I look down to watch the world pour by. Having overcome this obstacle and knowing the two of us have got everything buttoned up right and have accomplished what we set out to accomplish—it’s a big moment. But with a spacewalk, the very last step is as important as the first one, so not until we’ve repressurized the airlock and are actually back inside our spaceship do I let myself relax. As soon as I do, I feel completely drained and just float limply, shivering with cold. My body is out of fuel. But when one of the crew medical officers floats over with a 3-foot-long cotton swab he’s fashioned out of stuff he found on board and tells me he’ll be jabbing this thing in my eye to take samples, I do still have enough energy to laugh.
Later, discussing what went wrong, we all suspected the droplets from my water bag—maybe they’d mixed with a bead of sweat, or something from my hair, or something inside the suit itself. We were going over all the possibilities with Mission Control when the CAPCOM asked, “Chris, did you remember to use your anti-fog stuff?” Of course I had. The night before I’d polished the visor of the suit so it wouldn’t fog up like a ski mask. “Well, we think you didn’t do it perfectly. Probably you didn’t get it all off.” Apparently the solution is basically dishwashing detergent; mix it with a few droplets of loose water and it’s as though you’ve squirted soap directly into your eye. My first response to this news was, “Really? We’re using detergent? No More Tears baby shampoo wasn’t an option?”
But my second response was, “Next time, I’ll b
e even more detail-oriented.” A spacewalk with a multi-million-dollar piece of equipment that was—is—absolutely vital to the construction of the ISS was jeopardized because of a microscopic drop of cleaning solution.
When I went out for my next EVA two days later, I wiped off my visor so vigorously that I’m surprised I didn’t rub right through the thing. Eventually, NASA changed the solution we use to clean our visors to something a little less noxious. But in the meantime, thanks to my widely publicized oversight, all astronauts knew to be fanatical about wiping down the interior of their visors. And when a couple of them also wound up temporarily blinded on their own spacewalks, Mission Control knew what the trouble was: “Remember Hadfield? It’s the anti-fog solution.”
That’s why it’s so worth it to sweat the small stuff. And even in my line of work, it’s all small stuff.
5
THE LAST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD
THERE’S NO SUCH THING as an accidental astronaut. On average, new astronauts are 34 years old; wanting the job has driven their choices for many years. The odds of being selected are now slimmer than ever. During the last recruitment in Canada in 2009, just two astronauts were chosen from a field of 5,351 applicants; that year NASA reviewed 3,564 applications for nine spots. The selection process is both rigorous and invasive. A Ph.D. is just table stakes, and a nose polyp is a deal breaker; applicants who make the final rounds are subjected to psych tests, rectal exams, and endless interviews and written tests. People who are willing to put themselves through all that are, by definition, highly competitive.
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth Page 9