by Scott Kelly
As eager as we are to greet our new crewmates, we need to make sure the seal between the Soyuz and ISS is good. The leak checks take nearly two hours. The space between the two docking compartments has to be filled with air, which we then test to determine whether its pressure is dropping. If it is, we don’t have a good seal, and opening the hatch will cause ISS and Soyuz to lose their atmosphere. Occasionally, as we wait, we hear the crew on the other side banging on the hatch in a friendly greeting. We bang back.
The leak check finally complete, Gennady opens the hatch on our side. Anton Shkaplerov, the only cosmonaut on board the ISS, opens the Russian hatch on their side. I smell something strangely familiar and unmistakable, a strong burned metal smell, like the smell of sparklers on the Fourth of July. Objects that have been exposed to the vacuum of space have this unique smell on them, like the smell of welding—the smell of space.
There are three people up here already: the commander and the only other American, Terry Virts (forty-seven); Anton (forty-three); and an Italian astronaut representing the European Space Agency, Samantha Cristoforetti (thirty-seven). I know them all, some much better than others. Soon, we will all know one another much better. I’ve known Terry since he was selected as an astronaut in 2000, though we haven’t overlapped much in our work. Anton and Samantha I’ve only gotten to know well since we’ve been preparing for this mission over the last year. The last time I hung out with Anton was in Houston, before my last flight. We both got pretty drunk at my neighborhood bar, Boondoggles, and later ended up spending the night at a friend’s house nearby since neither of us was in shape to drive.
Over the course of this year in space, Misha and I will see a total of thirteen other people come and go. In June, a Soyuz will leave with Terry, Samantha, and Anton, to be replaced by a new crew of three in July. In September, three more will join us, bringing our total to nine—an unusual number—for just ten days. Then, in December, three will leave, to be replaced a few days later. Misha and I hope that the change in crew members will help break up the mission and the monotony to make our year less challenging.
Unlike the early days of spaceflight, when piloting skill was what mattered, twenty-first-century astronauts are chosen for our ability to perform a lot of different jobs and to get along well with others, especially in stressful and cramped circumstances for long periods of time. Each of my crewmates is not only a close coworker in an array of different high-intensity jobs but also a roommate and a surrogate for all humanity.
Gennady floats through the hatch first and hugs Anton. These greetings are always jubilant—we know exactly who we’re going to see when we open the hatch, but still it’s somehow startling to launch off the Earth, travel to space, and find friends already living up here. The big hugs and big smiles you see if you watch the hatch opening live on NASA TV are completely sincere. As Gennady and Anton say their hellos, Misha and I are waiting our turns. We know that many people on the ground are watching, including our families. There is a live feed playing for everyone at Baikonur, as well as in mission control in Houston and online. The video signal is bounced off a satellite and then down to Earth, as with all of our communications. Suddenly I get an idea and turn to Misha.
“Let’s go through together,” I suggest. “As a show of solidarity.”
“Good idea, my brother. We are in this together.”
It’s a bit awkward floating through the small hatch together, but the gesture gets a big smile from everyone on the other side. Once we’re through, I shake hands with Anton.
Next I give Terry Virts a hug, then Samantha Cristoforetti. She is the first Italian woman to fly in space, and soon she’ll be the record holder for the longest single spaceflight by a woman.
Our families in Baikonur are waiting to have a conference call with us, which we’ll do from the Russian service module. I float down there and make a wrong turn. It’s weird to be back here—floating through the station is so familiar, but it’s also disorienting. It’s only day one.
As the smell of space dissipates, I’m starting to detect the unique smell of the ISS, as familiar as the smell of my childhood home. The smell is mostly the off-gassing from the equipment and everything else, which on Earth we call the new car smell. Up here the smell is stronger because the plastic particles are weightless, as is the air, so they mingle in every breath. There is also the faint scent of garbage and a whiff of body odor. Even though we seal up the trash as well as we can, we only get rid of it every few months when a resupply craft reaches us and becomes a garbage truck after we empty it of cargo.
The sound of fans and the hum of electronics are both loud and inescapable. I feel like I have to raise my voice to be heard above the noise, though I know from experience I’ll get used to it. This part of the Russian segment is especially loud. It’s dark and a bit cold as well. I feel a shiver of realization: I’m going to be up here for nearly a year. What exactly have I gotten myself into? It occurs to me for a moment that this might be one of the stupider things I’ve ever done.
When we reach the service module, I notice right away that it’s much brighter than when I was here last. Apparently the Russians have improved their lightbulbs. It’s also much better organized than I remember, which I suspect is a result of Anton trying to impress Gennady with his organizational skills. Gennady is a stickler for keeping the Russian segment neat and tidy.
During the conference call, our families can see and hear us, but we can only hear them. There is a loud echo. The comm configuration up here is slightly off. I hear Charlotte telling me what the launch was like, then I talk briefly to my daughter Samantha and then to Amiko. It’s great to hear their voices. But I’m conscious that my Russian colleagues are waiting to talk to their families, too.
Once we finish the call, I head down to the U.S. segment with Terry and Samantha Cristoforetti, where I’m going to spend the better part of the year to come. Though ISS is all one facility, for the most part the Russians live and work on their side and everyone else lives and works on the other side—“the U.S. segment.” I notice it’s much darker than I remember—burned-out lightbulbs haven’t been replaced. This isn’t Terry and Samantha’s fault, but a reflection of the conservative way the control center has come to manage our consumables since I was last here. I decide to make it a project over the coming months to improve how we use our resources, since I’m going to be up here for so long, and good lighting will be critical to my well-being.
Terry and Samantha show me around, reminding me how things work up here now. They start with the most important piece of equipment to master: the toilet, also known as the Waste and Hygiene Compartment, or WHC. We also run through a quick safety brief that we will redo more thoroughly in a couple of days once I’m more settled. An emergency could strike at any time—fire, ammonia leak, depressurization—and I’ll have to be ready to deal with whatever comes, even on day one.
We head back to the Russian segment for a traditional welcoming party—special dinners are held there every Friday night and on other special occasions, including holidays, birthdays, and good-bye dinners before each Soyuz leaves. Welcoming parties are one of those occasions, and Terry has warmed up my favorite, barbecued beef, which I stick to a tortilla using the surface tension of the barbecue sauce (we eat tortillas because of their long shelf life and lack of crumbs). We also have the traditional foods we share at Friday night dinners—lump crabmeat and black caviar. Everyone is in a festive mood. It’s been a long, tough day for the three of us who just arrived. Technically, two days. Eventually we say our good nights, and Terry, Samantha, and I head back to the U.S. segment.
I find my crew quarters, or CQ, the one part of the space station that will belong just to me. It’s about the size of an old-fashioned phone booth. Four CQs are arranged in Node 2: floor, ceiling, port side, starboard side. I’m on the port wall this time; last time I was on the ceiling. The CQ is clean and empty, and I know that over the course of the next year it will fill with clut
ter, like any other home. I zip myself into my sleeping bag, making a special point to appreciate that it’s brand new. Though I will replace the liner a couple of times, the bag itself won’t be cleaned or replaced over the next year. I turn off the light and close my eyes. Sleeping while floating isn’t easy, especially when you’re out of practice. Even though my eyes are closed, cosmic flashes occasionally light up my field of vision, the result of radiation striking my retinas, creating the illusion of light. This phenomenon was first noticed by astronauts during the Apollo era, and its cause still isn’t thoroughly understood. I’ll get used to this, too, but for now the flashes are an alarming reminder of the radiation zipping through my brain. After trying unsuccessfully to sleep for a while, I bite off a piece of a sleeping pill. As I drift off into a restless haze, it occurs to me that this is the first of 340 times I will have to fall asleep here.
4
FOR THE REST of that fall of 1982, I walked around the campus of the University of Maryland–Baltimore County with a new outlook on life. Before, I had always wondered where everyone got the motivation to get out of bed early to make it to class. They left parties while the music was still playing and while there were still beers unopened. Now I knew why: they each had some kind of goal. Now I’d found mine too, and it was a great feeling. I counted myself lucky to have picked up a book that showed me my life’s goals so clearly, and I intended to fulfill them. Not only was I going to become a Navy pilot, I might even become an astronaut. These were the most challenging and exciting goals I had ever come across, and I was ready to get started. I had only one problem: the path to becoming a naval aviator is an extremely competitive one, and I was still a chronic underperformer with a terrible academic record. I would have to become a commissioned officer in the Navy, but that pipeline was clogged with accomplished young people who had excelled in high school and were then nominated to the U.S. Naval Academy by their congressman or senator. They had aced their SATs. Because I’d daydreamed and bullshitted my way through high school, I didn’t have the basic knowledge even to begin the kinds of courses I’d have to take: calculus, physics, engineering. Beyond that, I knew that even if I started at a remedial level, I still probably wouldn’t be able to keep up. However strong my motivation, I lacked the skills necessary to learn.
Everywhere I looked, I saw students who could listen to an hour-long lecture, asking intelligent questions and writing things down. They turned in homework assignments on time, correctly done. They took a textbook and lecture notes and did something they called “studying.” They were then able to do well on exams. I had no idea how to do any of this. If you’ve never felt this way, it’s hard to express how awful it is.
By now, my brother was a freshman at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. Our maternal grandfather had been a Merchant Marine officer in World War II and later served as a fireboat captain for the New York City Fire Department. Mark was thinking of following in his footsteps in the Merchant Marine, but he wasn’t dead set on it, so he liked the idea that the education he was getting at the academy was a good starting point for a range of careers. Given my new goals, this seemed like a good place to start for me too, because Kings Point offered a path to a commission in the Navy. Even if I couldn’t get into a military academy, Kings Point would still give me the structure of a military environment, which I felt I needed. Best of all, I would already know someone there who could help me get my bearings as a transfer student. I arranged a meeting with an admissions counselor over the Christmas break.
When I arrived on campus that January wearing the most formal thing I owned—khaki pants and a polo shirt—I was greeted by the dean of admissions himself, in full military dress uniform. I’d never dealt with a uniformed officer before (aside from cops, of course). He invited me into his large office that seemed to be constructed almost entirely from wood—wood furniture, wood bookshelves, wood chairs, model ships, and other nautical memorabilia all over the walls. A tarnished brass ship’s engine order telegraph stood alone in the far corner of the room. The dean looked me in the eye and asked me why I wanted to transfer there.
“Well, sir, I want to become a commissioned officer in the Navy. My goal is to fly fighter planes and land on aircraft carriers.”
In my mind, this was such a clear and compelling goal. But the man’s eyes glazed over as I spoke, and he kept looking at his watch, as if he was already thinking about his next appointment, or maybe about what he was going to have for lunch. He kept looking behind me, toward the window, rather than meeting my eyes. When I was done talking, he cleared his throat and closed the folder on his desk that contained my sad credentials.
“Look,” he said, and sighed.
Not a good sign.
“Your high school grades are pretty terrible. Your SAT scores are below the average for our incoming freshmen. Your grades in your first semester of college are no better than high school. There’s just nothing here to indicate that you would be successful in the very challenging program here.”
“I intend to improve my grades now,” I explained. “I know I can do it. And my SAT—I didn’t even study for it. I think I could do much better if I tried taking it again.”
“Well, your two scores would have to be averaged,” he explained, “so you’d need a perfect score in order to bring your new score up to our average. And even that wouldn’t be enough to balance out your grades.”
This wasn’t quite how I had expected this conversation to go.
I told him about growing up as the son of two cops, about my parents’ deplorable boats, about working as an EMT. I told him about reading The Right Stuff and realizing what I wanted to do, finally finding a clear direction in life. I told him about the jets and the aircraft carrier and the risk and the possibility of achieving something important. I told him I thought it could all start at Kings Point. I asked him what I could do to change his answer.
He just shook his head. “I’m sorry, son,” he said. “There’s just no way with this record. You wouldn’t succeed here.” He stood, thanked me for coming in, and explained that it was only in deference to my brother, who was doing extremely well, that he had agreed to see me. He shook my hand and showed me the door.
Back outside in the bright sun, I blinked and looked around, stunned. I wasn’t going to join my brother here, and I wasn’t going to get started on the next step of my life. I was closer to tears than I’d been since I could remember.
I realize now that that dean of admissions must have spent a lot of his time listening to young people describe lofty goals that they had neither the talent nor drive to achieve, and to him I must have seemed no different from them. Maybe I wasn’t. I can put myself in his position now, but at the time his indifference was devastating. Kings Point had seemed to be my only possibility: I could only assume I would meet rejection anywhere else I tried. Of course I couldn’t get into Annapolis. I didn’t have a plan B. Meanwhile, other people my age with the same goals were surging forward, and I would be years behind them. It seemed like it would take me a long time just to get to the starting gate—maybe so long the Navy wouldn’t want me anymore. I knew there was an age limit for being commissioned into the Navy.
Everything else I’d done in my life up to this point, like working as an EMT, had been choices that had played to my strengths and hadn’t particularly challenged my weaknesses. This new goal was going to expose every weakness I had.
—
IN MY SECOND SEMESTER at UMBC, I signed up for more challenging classes and tried to apply myself for the first time in my life. I remember walking into class on the first day of precalculus—more or less the same material as the trigonometry class Mr. Tarnoff had begged me not to drop in high school—and thinking, This is it. If I can’t show what I’m capable of in this class, I’m not going to get the chance to do much more. During my first semester I’d taken the easiest math class, algebra, in order to satisfy a requirement, and I’d barely passed it. Now I was in a cla
ss that would build on the knowledge I had already failed to absorb, and I had to do much, much better.
After the first class, I sat down to do the homework, feeling the pressure of everything I had now decided to do. I had to force myself to stay in my chair. I kept thinking of something else I needed to do in another room, a reason to walk down the hall of my dorm. I needed to sharpen my pencil. I needed a glass of water. I stayed in the chair anyway. I forced myself to read through the chapter, over and over. It still didn’t make a lot of sense because a lot of the terms were ones I was supposed to have learned in high school and hadn’t. I forced myself to work through the homework problems, and while I was pretty sure I had gotten the right answers to the easier ones, the harder questions were still pretty fuzzy. It was late at night by the time I was done, and I tried not to reflect on the fact that everyone else in my class had probably ripped through the homework in fifteen minutes. I tried to focus on the fact that I had set myself a goal—to read this chapter, to do the problems—and I had done that. I turned out the light feeling like I might finally be able to turn things around.
A few weeks later, I was doing my homework and realized that it was getting a little easier. It was still a lot like banging my head against a wall, but some of the material that I had struggled with the week before now seemed to make a little more sense. The whole process of learning became a little less painful, a little more reliable with each problem I slogged through. It was still a mighty struggle to stay in the chair, and I only got a B– in the class. Still, that B– was one of the major achievements of my life thus far. I had decided to learn something hard, and I had learned it.