How to Astronaut

by Terry Virts

  One of the more interesting aspects of training in the spacesuit was learning how to perform an emergency egress of the space shuttle. There were eight different modes of egress, including the crew being strapped in on the launch pad all alone, being on the launch pad along with the closeout crew, being in flight after launch, or even gliding back to Earth and having to parachute out of the orbiter. Each of these eight different situations had its own, very specific procedure to safely get out of the orbiter in an emergency. If necessary, the launch director or commander would call, “EGRESS, MODE 1!” or whatever the appropriate mode was for the situation. There were actually five shuttle missions when the engines were shut down seconds before liftoff, putting the crew in a potential emergency egress scenario, though thankfully in each case they were able to get away from the launch pad without incident.

  A few weeks before launch, we flew to the Cape to perform what was known as a TCDT (Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test). As part of that training, we practiced strapping in to Endeavour while she was on the pad. After the nominal procedures were finished, the launch director called for a Mode 1 egress, which meant we would have to get ourselves out of the orbiter unassisted, then across the gantry and into the baskets. There were a series of four refrigerator-size, wire-mesh baskets at the top of the launch pad, and we crawled into them two by two, visors down and locked and emergency oxygen bottles activated. Once you were in the basket with your buddy, the guy in back would tap the guy in front on the shoulder and he would whack a big guillotine handle, cutting a safety wire that released the basket, allowing it to slide down a wire several hundred feet to the ground, where the basket (with its two nervous astronauts) would safely drag to a halt in a big pit of sand. What could go wrong?

  After that, we rushed to a waiting M113 armored personnel carrier (APC), which I was responsible for driving, sticking my head out of the overhead window to see where we were going. There was basically no visibility from inside that ancient army tank, so I had to stand up to drive. At this point our visors were still down to prevent toxic gas from killing us after escaping from a burning shuttle. There was a safe-house underground bunker about a mile away where we could hole up and await further instructions. Either the shuttle would blow up, and we’d (probably) be safe that far away, or NASA would declare that everything was safe, and they’d come get us.

  On our TCDT training day, we performed the Mode 1 egress in our pumpkin suits, got in the baskets, and chopped the safety rope, though the baskets were firmly attached and slid only a few inches. Of all the crazy risks NASA was willing to let us take, going for a 300-foot zipline ride wasn’t one of them. So we got out of the baskets, went down the elevator, and made our way to the M113. As we got in the old APC, my crewmates snickered at me, because they had all done this training before. I was the only rookie and it was my job to drive the blasted thing, which was done with a handle in each hand, the left controlling the left tracks, the right controlling right tracks. Both handles forward = M113 forward. Left forward and right middle = M113 turn right, and so on. I set out at what I thought was a normal pace, both handles partially forward, and the vehicle lurched ahead, steadily, as everyone smirked. Finally, someone said, “Move aside and let me show you how it’s done,” and he moved both handles full forward. Boy did we take off, bouncing violently down the road. Kicking up a huge cloud of dust. Running over foliage as if it weren’t there. It was a blast, but a driving technique that I wasn’t used to, though it was smart—if we were trying to escape a burning four-million-pound bomb, it was best to drive full-speed ahead and tell any policemen who pulled you over, “Sorry, officer, no sir, I didn’t know how fast I was going, but OMG there’s a space shuttle about to blow up, let me drive as fast as I want!”

  Getting to wear spacesuits and strap into space shuttles and drive tanks was awesome. Thankfully, I never needed any of those emergency procedures in real life, but they sure were cool to practice.

  When Nature Calls

  A Spacesuit Has No Fly

  So much of being an astronaut is cool. Wearing spacesuits. Flying supersonic jets. Riding rockets. Floating like Superman. Eating astronaut ice cream (OK—that’s not really a thing). And when it comes to professions, to quote an awesome AXE commercial, “nothing beats an astronaut.” But there are a few things that aren’t cool about our job, and one of them is what to do when nature calls during an inopportune moment in the mission.

  One of the funniest scenes in The Right Stuff is when Alan Shepard was sitting on the launch pad, ready to go, and then launch was delayed. And delayed. And then delayed some more. His mission was only supposed to be a fifteen-minute suborbital flight, so some contingencies weren’t planned for. The film depicts this lack of forethought with a beautiful montage of water scenes: a man drinking coffee, water bubbling at the water cooler, folks on the ground going to the restroom, and a clearly agonized Shepard, who had to go. Finally, Gordo Cooper, the CAPCOM, offers relief by radioing to him, “Permission to wet your diaper at any time.” Except there was no diaper! Nobody had thought it was necessary for such a short flight.

  By the time I flew on the shuttle, we had this issue solved. Yup, astronauts wear diapers for launch, landing, and spacewalks. We are in those spacesuits for such a long period of time that finding a bathroom is impossible and it’s not safe to dehydrate yourself, so our flight surgeons tell us to drink plenty of water and wear Depends. And like everything else that we do related to spaceflight, this skill has to be trained.

  There are many challenging and difficult things I had to do as an astronaut. Learn Russian. Practice spacewalks. Listen to bad “Houston, we have a problem” jokes for two decades. But one of the more challenging skills was learning to pee in a diaper, lying on my back. Whether you are on the launch pad in a space shuttle or Soyuz, you’re on your back for several hours, and that is precisely when you don’t want to be stressed out because your bladder is full and you can’t go. So early in my training I was given a diaper and told to go home, put it on, lie in the bathtub, and pee. And boy was that difficult—it’s just not natural. Your brain is screaming “Hold it!” but you gotta go. What’s more, unless that diaper has a good seal, you will have a warm back and neck and hair. It’s important to ensure a good fit, to say the least.

  We called that big, industrial, designed-to-hold-air-pressure zipper the jaws of death. No need for details, but, again, use your imagination.

  The only time I actually used a diaper was during my spacewalks. For launches, landings, and countless shuttle and Soyuz training sessions, I was good to go (so to speak). My bladder had enough margin, and diaper operations were not necessary. However, for spacewalks I really wanted to be hydrated because of the physical exertion required, so I drank a lot before going outside. While getting suited up, we go through a prebreathe protocol and use a mask and hose to breathe 100 percent O2 before finally climbing into the suit. It was while wearing that mask that I took one final trip to the restroom.

  A few hours later, I was suited up and waiting in the airlock as the air pressure dropped to zero. It was during that wait, just before going outside, that I inaugurated my diaper. I figured that nature would call at some point during my spacewalk, and better to take care of business during the calm before the storm, chilling out for twenty minutes, waiting for the air to be sucked out of the airlock. This technique worked well for me; I used the diaper at the start of each of my three spacewalks, and never had to use it while actually outside in the middle of a complicated task, which would have required an awkward call to the ground. “Houston, stand by, I’ll be off comm for a few minutes; I’ll let you know when I’m ready to continue.” That was one radio call I was glad I never had to make.

  Diapers are not the only interesting bathroom stories surrounding spaceflight. Allegedly, Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, ordered a pit stop on his way out to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome way back on April 12, 1961—and relieved himself on the wheel of his crew van. B
ecause Russians tend to be a superstitious lot, literally every crew launched from Baikonur since then has stopped on the way to the pad to take care of business. As a guy, this wasn’t too big of a problem for me, although the Russian Sokol spacesuit zips up from the back, making it not exactly conducive to number one. Use your imagination. But for the ladies, this task was even more difficult. I never asked, nor did I ever understand, nor want to understand, how that worked for them; us guys simply did what we needed to and let our female compatriots do what they needed to. Tradition fulfilled.

  The space shuttle launch experience had an interesting twist. The 195-foot level at the launch pad is the floor where the crew walks the plank from the elevator over to the orbiter. The order in which crewmembers went into the shuttle was highly choreographed, and while waiting to board there was a phone to make a last-minute call to your family or order pizza for the launch director. This was a scene repeated many times over the years at the Launch Control Center—knock knock knock, “Domino’s Pizza here; we have a delivery for Mike Leinbach.” There was also a bathroom, which was a big relief (pun intended). This was significantly easier for male astronauts, with one significant catch. The zipper was in the front of the shuttle suit, as opposed to the back of the Russian suit. We called that big, industrial, designed-to-hold-air-pressure zipper the jaws of death. No need for details, but, again, use your imagination. You didn’t want to lose a grip on that zipper and let it accidently come crashing closed while you were in the middle of taking a leak. That would have a giant and irreversible impact on potential future offspring.

  Being a practical joker, when one of my crewmates went into that launchpad restroom before boarding Endeavour, I gave him a few moments to get the jaws of death opened, and then I loudly banged on the door. I think my poor buddy had a heart attack, but it sure did make me laugh, and him, too, eventually, a few weeks later after we were back on Earth. I’m quite certain that I will be repaid at some point, when I’m least expecting it. But that was a lighthearted moment to take the edge off the incredibly dangerous thing we were about to do—ride a four-million-pound spaceship into space.

  Not every detail of an astronaut’s life is glorious. Some details are downright mundane, in fact. But at the end of the day, these are the stories that make us human.

  And just in case you were wondering about number two in a diaper? The answer is no. Not ever. I’ve never heard of it and just can’t imagine it happening unless under the direst of circumstances. You’d do anything in your power to prevent that situation. So, that answers that question.

  The Red Button

  How and Why a Shuttle Could Be Intentionally Destroyed

  When I was an ASCAN, we took a trip to Florida to see our future launch pads. As part of that trip we visited the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, a facility adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center, America’s primary East Coast launch site, complementing Vandenberg Air Force Base on the West Coast. After the trauma of the Challenger accident in 1986, the Department of Defense (DoD) pulled out of the business of using space shuttles for military missions, and the shuttle was henceforth based exclusively at KSC, where there was quite a bit of military/civilian collaboration for launch: weather planning, rescue operations, logistics, and one very important, if obscure, detail: the Red Button. More on that shortly.

  That trip to KSC in October 2000 was one of the highlights of my time at NASA. I was beside myself with excitement. We had seen the STS-92 shuttle crew preparing to launch. We stayed at a hotel where astronauts and their families often stayed. I jogged up and down the sand and on the A1A road through Cocoa Beach. We shopped at Ron Jon Surf Shop, buying cheesy T-shirts and stickers. Life was good.

  My astronaut class was called “the Bugs.” Back in 2000 there was a glut of new astronauts because NASA had hired too many from 1995 to 1998. Space station assembly missions were being delayed, and it was obvious that it was going to be a long time before we could fly. I innocently thought that it might take five whole years, so I steeled myself for a long wait. It eventually took our group of astronauts between eight and twelve years, but it was worth the wait. With all of this in mind, we liked the nickname “Bugs,” because at least some bugs flew. The class before ours was called “the Penguins,” and as far as I knew no penguins actually flew.

  That week we met with various KSC employees to learn about the significant effort that went into a launch. Administrative workers who tracked the schedule, mechanics who kept the unending list of broken equipment repaired, engineers who solved complicated mechanical problems, scientists who organized the experiments that would be launching into space, security personnel who kept us safe, military liaisons who coordinated search and rescue forces and kept the range clear of small planes and boats, support personnel who kept us fed and clothed in the astronaut crew quarters, public affairs workers who kept the press and general public apprised of our status, etc. The big learning point for me? Launching rockets, especially with people strapped to them, is a complicated business involving thousands of people.

  And then I asked, “What is that red button for?” An innocent question to be sure. Our poor guide, who was having a great time touring these neophyte astronauts, stopped dead in his tracks and the blood literally drained from his face.

  We also visited the beach house, the site of many astronaut parties as well as tearful farewells, where crews said goodbye to their friends and families in the days before launch. We saw countless alligators and egrets and even a few manatees. We marveled at the cavernous VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building), one of the world’s largest buildings, where the massive Saturn V had been assembled. We stood in awe at the multimillion-pound crawlers, which had moved the mighty Apollo rockets as well as modern space shuttles out to the launch pad. We saw absolutely fascinating artifacts from the 1950s and 1960s at the Air Force Space & Missile Museum at the Cape, the site of the original Mercury mission control.

  We pondered the tragedies that had occurred here—the Apollo 1 fire as well as the Challenger disaster. I wondered what would have possessed the managers to make the decisions they made that ultimately doomed both of those crews. I was acutely aware that NASA leaders are very smart, motivated, and patriotic people. They certainly were not consciously putting those crews’ lives at risk. I wondered what kind of pressure would cause otherwise brilliant and good people to have made the decisions they made.

  Myriad thoughts poured through my head: “I can’t believe I’m really here,” “This sure is complicated,” “I can’t wait to fly,” etc. The emotions and ideas that fill a new astronaut’s head are magnified times a thousand when he or she visits the Mecca of American spaceflight—the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

  One moment made this particular afternoon even more memorable. As we visited the various offices and departments of the Kennedy Space Center—Liquid Nitrogen Supply, Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster Parachute Rigging, Rail Logistics, Space Station Module Processing, etc.—we made our way down to the south end of the facility, on the Air Force Cape Canaveral side. We went into one of the launch control facilities that looked very cool, like something from a James Bond movie: dark, lots of computers, flashing lights, official-looking and official-sounding people, fancy seats, and titles for the various people who worked there.

  And then I asked, “What is that red button for?” An innocent question to be sure. Our poor guide, who was having a great time touring these neophyte astronauts, stopped dead in his tracks and the blood literally drained from his face. He sheepishly replied, “Uh, you really don’t know?”

  Nope—none of us knew. But we quickly found out. You see, rockets basically launch on autopilot, though the space shuttle had a very limited capability for the crew to take over manually. So, in the extremely unlikely case of a shuttle or even unmanned rocket veering off course and heading toward Disney World in Orlando, there were some time-critical steps that would be taken. First, flight controllers in Houston would notice the trajectory deviation and cal
l the crew along with recommended actions. In the first ninety seconds of a shuttle launch, manual flying was not possible, so the commander would engage the backup computer and hope that it would start flying in the right direction. If the off-course flight occurred after the ninety-second point, the commander could take over manually and adjust course to head out to sea, away from populated areas. If neither of those options worked—well, that’s where the Red Button came into play.

  First, Houston would call the crew with a secret code word, warning them what was about to happen. Next, the Range Safety Officer would take control of the situation and press the Red Button, sending computer commands to the rocket that would trigger multiple explosive devices on board, causing the rocket to split apart, avoiding populated areas and unsuspecting civilians, but also killing the astronauts on board. This decision would have to be made within seconds.

  Our poor guy’s face turned as white as a ghost as he apologetically told us the details of how he, a Range Safety Officer himself, had in his finger the power to send this FTS (flight termination system) signal to our vehicle that would command the shuttle to blow up, and there was nothing that we could do about it. This was good news for Disney World and the people of Florida, but not for the humans on the rocket.

  This little gem of knowledge caused some awkward laughs and morbid fighter pilot jokes—“Can I have your stereo dude? Where are the keys to your car?” It was entirely understandable that the safety of civilians on the ground was more important than astronaut safety, and during my sixteen years at NASA I never heard anyone question this system. However, it did make me chuckle and wonder if this guy won the award for “most ironic duty title”—Range Safety Officer. It certainly wasn’t Astronaut Safety Officer.

  Red Button notwithstanding, it was a great first official trip to the Kennedy Space Center, and my belly was burning with desire to go into space after seeing Atlantis and her crew on the launch pad. And though the FTS system had been used over the years to terminate unmanned rockets that had gone helplessly off course, thankfully it was never used to preemptively terminate a human mission. But it was a sobering reminder for our class of the seriousness of the profession we had chosen.