by Scott Kelly
After spending a few days sharing a dank room with a NASA flight surgeon who was monitoring the training of the previous crew, I joined American astronaut Doug Wheelock and cosmonaut Dmitri Kondratyev as a three-man crew. I didn’t know yet that I would wind up flying in space with both of them much later in my career. Doug was an Army officer and helicopter pilot, even-tempered and easy to get along with. Dima was a fighter pilot who had flown the MiG-29, one of the people I might have wound up in air-to-air combat with at an earlier stage in our lives. In fact, years later we figured out that we were once stationed on opposite lines of the Soviet border in Scandinavia, him protecting the Russian Bear bombers and me in the F-14 Tomcat protecting the carrier battle group.
The survival training was grueling. We were sent out to a field with a used Soyuz capsule to simulate a remote landing, equipped with nothing but the emergency supplies carried in the spacecraft. Dima didn’t speak much English, and neither Doug nor I spoke great Russian, but the three of us communicated well enough to get through the training. We built shelters, made a fire, and tried to keep from freezing to death while we awaited “rescue.” It was so cold the first night we were unable to sleep, so we stood in front of the fire, slowly rotating in order to keep any side from getting too cold. In an uncharacteristic act for a Russian, Dima broke with protocol and at five a.m. announced we would build a teepee in order to stay warm. Cutting down trees with a machete in the freezing dark winter night was miserable, but by seven a.m. we had our shelter assembled out of birch limbs and the Soyuz parachute. We were now able to keep warm, though the teepee quickly filled with smoke. We kept our heads as low as possible so we could breathe as we slept.
On the last day, we hiked through the woods, a navigation exercise to simulate meeting up with rescue forces. The landscape was stunning, with stands of birch trees stark against the sky, everything covered with a fresh layer of fluffy snow, the new flakes sparkling in the morning light. We emerged from the forest onto a large frozen lake that was steaming in the subzero temperatures, dotted with old Russian men sitting on their pails, ice fishing. This image struck me as serene and quintessentially Russian. Seemingly frozen in time, like an epic scene from the film Dr. Zhivago, it was a moving sight that will be etched in my memory forever.
—
IN MAY I moved to Russia to start my position as DOR. It was a big transition. NASA and Roscosmos were in the process of figuring out how to train international crews together to work on an international space station, a huge undertaking with a lot of potential for power struggles, cultural conflicts, and temper tantrums from big egos on both sides. But I liked the job in Star City and found it easy to settle in. I lived on the eighth floor of one of the cinder-block Soviet apartment buildings, and each day I walked the path from my apartment, past Gagarin’s statue, past the town houses the U.S. astronauts lived in while training for flight, to the profilactorium (or “profi,” as we called it), the Star City cosmonaut quarantine facility where NASA had also been given offices.
I found it challenging at times navigating the issues between the Russians and Americans. We had different languages, different technology, and different ideas about the best way to fly in space. But I liked the Russians I met and took a real interest in their culture and history, building the foundation for our future collaboration on the ISS.
The first module of the International Space Station, the FGB, had been launched from Baikonur in November 1998, followed two weeks later by Node 1, the first U.S. module, which launched on space shuttle Endeavour. When the two were joined together, it was a major international accomplishment. The infant space station wasn’t ready to be permanently occupied, though, because it lacked necessary features like a life support system, a kitchen, and a toilet. It orbited empty for the next year and a half until the addition of the Russian service module, which made it habitable.
Leslie and Samantha came to join me in Russia for the summer. In late October 2000, I traveled to Baikonur for the launch of Expedition 1, the first long-duration mission to the ISS. Bill Shepherd would be launching on a Soyuz with two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. This would be only the second time an American was traveling on a Soyuz. Another three-person crew would be replacing them in March, and it was hard to believe that the station would be occupied nonstop from then on. Since I still thought of myself as a space shuttle guy, I didn’t assume I would fly a long-duration flight on station myself—I hoped to be assigned to another shuttle mission soon, as pilot again. Then if I was lucky I might fly two more space shuttle missions as commander, and that would probably be the end of my spaceflight career. Having spent a total of eight days in space, I found it impossible to imagine that I would live on the space station one day, let alone set records there.
The night before the Soyuz launch, there were celebrations and the traditional toasts and revelry. A NASA manager in town for the event had more than his limit—way more—and I spent the day taking care of him because he was too ill to be left alone. The next morning I saw Shep briefly when he was on his way to get suited up for launch.
“What the fuck was going on last night?” he asked me. “It was like a fucking frat house with people yelling and screaming and banging on my door. I barely got any sleep.”
“Sorry about that, man,” I said. “Good luck in space.”
The Soyuz launched safely that day, but I didn’t get to see it—I was busy helping my naked colleague vomit in the bathtub. I was sorry to miss the launch, but happy to be in Baikonur on this historic day. I was enjoying living and working in Russia more than I had expected. I watched on television in the old cosmonaut hotel as the spacecraft disappeared into a tiny point in the sky; I had no idea how much of a role the Soyuz, and this place, would play in my future.
—
SOON AFTER I came back from Russia the following year, Charlie Precourt, the head of the Astronaut Office, asked me to serve as backup to Peggy Whitson for Expedition 5 to ISS (the fifth expedition of overlapping crew members), to launch in June 2002. Normally, the backup crew would fly two expeditions later, so their service flows naturally from their backup training to their flight. Because of unusual circumstances, I wouldn’t be on the upcoming flight, so serving as backup would be a pretty shitty deal. My first reaction was to decline. A mission to the International Space Station was very different from what I had trained for and, to a certain extent, from what made me want to be an astronaut in the first place: test piloting a rocket ship.
“If I’m being honest, I’m not sure whether I ever want to spend six months on the space station. I’m a pilot,” I told Charlie. “I’m not a mission specialist. Science really isn’t my thing.”
Charlie understood; he was a pilot too. He explained that he hadn’t been able to get anyone to agree to serve as Peggy’s backup, having gone through most of the more experienced astronauts. He offered me a deal: if I would serve as Peggy’s backup, which would mean returning to Russia for a significant period of time to train on the Russian ISS systems and on the Soyuz, he would assign me as commander of the space shuttle on my next flight, and as the commander of the International Space Station after that. After giving it a lot of thought, I went into his office with a list of reasons why I still thought I was the wrong person for the job. Charlie listened patiently.
“All that said,” I told him, “I’ve never said no when someone asked me to do something hard. So if you ask me to do this, I won’t say no.”
“I’m not going to accept that,” Charlie answered. “You’re going to have to say yes.”
“Okay,” I said somewhat grudgingly. “Yes, I’ll do it.”
I had been given this assignment later than normal, so in addition to taking a job that didn’t feel natural to me, I was trying to play catch-up. I trained a great deal in Russia, learning their Soyuz and the Russian part of the ISS. I also worked to hone my skills in the Russian language, which I had always found excruciatingly difficult. In addition to this, I had to learn the U.S
. segment of the space station, which is incredibly complex; how to fly the space station’s robotic arm; and how to do spacewalks.
I went through Russian water survival training with Dima Kondratyev, whom I had gone through winter survival training with, and cosmonaut Sasha Kaleri, my two new backup crewmates. We left early in the morning on September 11, 2001, on an old Russian Navy vessel from Sochi, a palm-tree-covered coastal town on the Black Sea at the base of the Caucasus Mountains. As we slowly motored out to sea, we were given a tour of the ship and shown how to use some of the equipment. Toilet paper was forbidden, as it clogged up the sanitation system. We were told instead to use a brush soaking in antiseptic next to the toilet. Community ass brush? I thought to myself. Shit!
The water survival training wasn’t much more pleasant than winter survival training—an old Soyuz was lowered into the water, and we had to climb into it wearing our Sokol launch and entry suits. The hatch was closed behind us, and we sat there in the stifling heat until we were directed to remove our Sokol suits and put on our winter survival gear, followed by a rubber anti-exposure suit. It was almost impossible to follow these directions in the tight confines of the Soyuz. Dima, Sasha, and I had to take turns one by one lying spread out across one another’s laps to struggle out of one suit and into the other. The capsule heaved up and down with the rolling swells of the Black Sea, and I thought about how impossible this would be if we were returning from space and already weakened from living in zero gravity. Once in my winter clothing—not pleasurable since the Soyuz was as hot as a sauna—I then had to put on the full rubber anti-exposure suit, including layers of hats and hoods. We were drenched in our own sweat and exhausted even before climbing out of the Soyuz and jumping into the sea. This wasn’t really about training on the hardware or learning techniques; like winter survival training, it was almost exclusively a psychological and team-building exercise in dealing with shared hardship. To me, it would have been more effective to just admit that fact.
Once we finished up our training, we headed back to the bridge of the ship, where the captain toasted our success with vodka. I reflected on how strange this scene would have looked even just a few years before—me, an officer in the United States Navy, drinking alcohol on the bridge of a Russian Navy ship with its captain and Dima, a Russian Air Force pilot.
As we got back on shore, we got a call from Star City telling us that two planes had just crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center. We were as shocked as the rest of the world, and for me it was a horrible feeling to be so far from my country when it was under attack. We found the nearest television, and like most people at home, I spent hours watching the coverage and trying to understand what was happening. The Russians rose to the occasion, doing everything they could to help us. They brought food, translated the Russian news so we could understand what was going on, and even canceled the remaining training to get us back home as soon as possible. We flew out of Sochi the next day, and I was startled by how much the security had increased at the airport, despite the fact that the terrorist attack had been in another country on the other side of the world. As we waited in Moscow for flights to the United States to resume, we saw flowers piled high outside the gate of the U.S. embassy in a show of solidarity that I will never forget.
While in Russia, I also got to spend time with the prime crew—Peggy Whitson, my classmate, as well as Sergei Treshchev and Valery Korzun. Valery, who would be the commander of Expedition 5, was an atypical Russian with a welcoming smile and an endearing personality.
As part of our training, we had to learn to fly the Canadian robot arm, so Valery and I traveled together to Montreal in one of NASA’s T-38 jets. This was a rare opportunity to fly in a T-38 for a Russian cosmonaut, and it was fun for me as well to fly with a former Russian fighter pilot. After we completed our training in Montreal, I wanted to stop at my old Navy base, Pax River, for the annual test pilot school reunion. There I could catch up with old friends like Paul Conigliaro, and I thought Valery would enjoy meeting some Navy test pilots and they him. I made sure to get the appropriate permission before landing on a U.S. Navy base with an active-duty Russian Air Force colonel. I also had to make sure a U.S. customs official would meet our plane, since we would be flying directly from Canada.
When we landed and parked on the tarmac, right next to the Chesapeake Bay, the customs official wasn’t there yet. When I called, he said he hadn’t left his office—ninety minutes away in Baltimore. He told me sternly that we were not to leave the airplane until he arrived, but it was below freezing and windy, and Valery and I were wearing only our NASA blue flight suits and light flight jackets. I told the customs official we weren’t going to freeze to death waiting for him and would be in the Officers’ Club and hung up while he was still yelling at me to stay at the airplane. Had we had the proper supplies, perhaps we could have constructed a teepee.
We proceeded to the bar and spent the next couple of hours by the keg, sharing airplane stories. Valery told us about what it was like being a Russian fighter pilot and cosmonaut and charmed my former Navy colleagues. Eventually, the customs officer barreled into the O Club, telling everyone who would listen that he wanted to take Valery and me to jail for violating his orders. The base commanding officer knew me from my previous tour as a test pilot and had enjoyed Valery’s company, so he told the customs official to do his paperwork and then get off his base. Valery went on to become the deputy director of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City, and he’s had my back ever since.
Peggy’s launch went off without a hitch in June 2002, and soon after I was assigned to be the commander of my second space shuttle mission, STS-118, tasked with delivering new hardware to the International Space Station. The mission would be twelve days, and we were scheduled to fly on the space shuttle Columbia in October 2003. True to his word, Charlie Precourt had made sure I was assigned as commander, even though he was no longer the chief astronaut.
Since this was only my second shuttle flight, and I hadn’t yet been to the ISS, the new chief astronaut wanted my pilot to be someone who had spaceflight experience. That sounded simple enough, but all the pilots who had already flown at least once were my classmates, and generally classmates aren’t asked to command one another, especially when they have the same amount of experience. Kent Rominger, the new chief, and I discussed the options. The only pilots not currently assigned to a mission were Charlie Hobaugh, Mark Polansky, and my brother. Of these, I thought my brother was the best fit: we got along (at least since we stopped beating the crap out of each other at age fifteen), we understood each other, and we knew that being classmates wouldn’t cause any issues between us. NASA was all for it.
As we got closer to making the assignment official, I thought better of it. The story of identical twin brothers serving as commander and pilot of the same mission would bring an enormous amount of attention. In some ways this would be a good thing, of course—NASA was always looking for ways to engage the public’s imagination and get people interested in spaceflight. But I didn’t want this flight to be seen as a publicity stunt, and I didn’t want the story of twins in space to distract attention from our mission or my other crew members.
Another concern was more personal. Both Mark and I were always aware of the risks we took each time we went to space. For me, the possibility that my daughter might be left fatherless was always offset slightly by the fact that, even if the worst happened, she would still have her uncle Mark in her life as a stand-in father—one who would remind her of me. Each time Mark went to space, I was aware that I might have to play the same role for my nieces. If Mark and I were to fly in space together, we would have to accept the possibility that our children could lose both their dad and their uncle all at once. The more I thought about it, the less I thought it was a good idea.
That left just two candidates: Charlie Hobaugh and Mark Polansky. Polansky wasn’t interested in flying as my pilot, since he technically had more experience than I
did, having flown to ISS before, which was understandable. That left “Scorch”—Charlie Hobaugh. Scorch had a reputation for being very direct—if he thinks you’re wrong, he won’t hesitate to let you know. He told me he didn’t mind flying with a classmate as his commander. He said he appreciated any opportunity to fly in space, and I knew he meant it.
So my crew was set: Scorch would be my pilot, and the rest of the crew would be rounded out by five mission specialists: Tracy Caldwell, Barbara Morgan, Lisa Nowak, Scott Parazynski, and Dave Williams.
I was most concerned about Lisa, whom I had known longer than most of my colleagues, about fifteen years, since we were in test pilot school together at Pax River. She was a technically brilliant flight engineer. But lately she had become obsessive about small details that didn’t seem to matter much, like what she was going to have for lunch that day. She could become hyperfocused and had trouble letting things go, even if they were irrelevant. On Earth this wasn’t a problem, but on a spaceflight, every member of the crew was crucial to its success, and these peculiarities of Lisa’s personality began to concern me.
—
ON THE MORNING of February 1, 2003, I was standing on my front lawn looking north. It was a Saturday, just before nine a.m., and a shuttle mission with seven of my colleagues, including three of my classmates, was returning to Earth. I thought I might be able to see the streak of fire as Columbia entered the atmosphere north of Houston on its way to land at the Kennedy Space Center. It was foggy, but as I watched the sky I saw a bright flash in a break in the fog. Columbia! I went back inside and ate a bowl of cereal. As it got closer to the planned landing time, I started paying more attention to the TV. The orbiter hadn’t landed yet, so NASA TV was switching between live shots inside mission control and the runway at Kennedy Space Center. I noticed Charlie Hobaugh in the control center—he was acting as capcom that day—and I saw he was slouching low in his chair. That was a strange sight, especially for him; he was generally a squared-away Marine, so slouching on the job was uncharacteristic. I emailed him, half joking, saying that he should sit up straight because he was on TV. Then I heard Charlie say, “Columbia, Houston, comm check.” A long pause went by. There wasn’t an answer. This wasn’t normal.