How to Astronaut

by Terry Virts

  Learning to work as a team, with clear and concise communication between spacewalkers, an astronaut inside the ISS who was flying the robotic arm, and mission control in Houston was an important skill. Some may argue that communication was the most important as well as the most difficult skill we learned in the NBL. It may sound simple, but it’s not, and until you have so many things going through your brain at once—keeping yourself attached to the ISS, keeping track of all of your equipment and tethers, keeping track of the schedule and pacing, keeping track of your crewmate, talking with Houston, all while being separated from instant death by just a 1-millimeter-thick plastic visor—you have not experienced busy.

  Another memorable task I trained for in the NBL was for the LEE R&R (NASA acronym for removing and replacing the hand of the SSRMS, the NASA acronym for the Canadian robotic arm). The station’s robotic arm has been in space since 2001, and because it’s a mechanical system it occasionally breaks. So we put together an awesome team of fellow spacewalker Jeanette Epps and team lead Faruq Sabur to develop the procedures that would be used when the LEE eventually broke. It was satisfying to see our work put into use when the crew on the ISS replaced one of the LEEs in space a few years later. The road to that point ran through the NBL, where Jeanette and I reviewed procedures, worked with Faruq, and practiced them in the pool, in an iterative process that took about six months.

  A big challenge for the LEE R&R was how to move that washing-machine-size thing. We used a technique called inchworming. I would say, “You have the LEE,” Jeanette would acknowledge, I would move my body a foot or two, extend my hand, she would slowly float the LEE to me and say, “You have the LEE,” I would acknowledge, she would then move herself, over and over. In this slow but deliberate manner, we moved that giant piece of broken equipment roughly 100 feet to its storage location. Then we’d grab the fresh LEE and inchworm it all the way back to the arm. It’s slow, but it works. If we had accidentally let go and lost the multimillion-dollar LEE (Canadian dollars, eh?), we would have been given a nickname, so we were very careful when moving it.

  A humorous story occurred on one of my first NBL runs, back in 2006. I was practicing egressing the space shuttle airlock, which is not easy. After trying a few different techniques, I came up with a brilliant idea; I would float out of the airlock on my back, looking up at the pool surface. This actually worked very well and I came right out of the hatch with no problems, but I just kept on going and going and going. I had accidentally let go of the handrail and shot myself directly into the shuttle’s payload bay. In real life, I would have had a safety tether to slowly bring me back, but in the pool I just floated out, not holding on to anything. Not exactly an optimum way to begin my spacewalking career. Thanks to my fighter-pilot instincts to always sound cool on the radio, I calmly said, “Safety diver, you can take me back into the airlock.” But man, did I give my instructor a lot to laugh about. On the positive side, I never again let go of structure. Some lessons are best learned by making a mistake!

  In spite of nicknames like “house of pain,” and failed attempts at bribery with doughnuts to minimize that pain, my training at the NBL was absolutely critical to my three spacewalks on the ISS. Some of the best people at NASA work in the EVA community, and I’m forever in their debt for the torture (actually I mean training) they put me through.

  The Art of Putting on a Spacesuit

  And You Thought Launch Was Complicated . . .

  When you think of astronauts doing spacewalks, you think of them being outside, talking in cool astronaut language, with the beautiful Earth below, calmly working on their tasks and enjoying the view. However, well before any of that happens, there is a long and elaborate process of getting suited up. In NASA-speak, the two people who go outside are called EV1 and EV2 (extravehicular 1 and 2). The person on the inside who helps them get suited up is called IV (intravehicular). There was never any doubt in my mind, nor is there in most of my colleagues, that the job of IV is much harder than actually doing the spacewalk. The slightest error while suiting up the spacewalkers could very easily result in their death, so the stakes were as high as possible for Samantha as she got us suited up for the most extreme activity a human being can do.

  The process of getting into an EMU (acronym for go-outside spacesuit) is much more involved than getting into a launch suit, and it takes much more preparation than it did for NBL training. In fact, the process begins many weeks before a planned spacewalk. First, the spacesuits are arranged and sized properly for each person. The HUT (acronym for upper-body section of the spacesuit) comes in a M, L, and XL, so the appropriate size is set aside for each of the two spacewalkers. Usually, there is one M, two Ls, and one XL available for use on the ISS, though that can change. If both spacewalkers want a size M or a size XL, one will have to bite the bullet and take a size L. It’s not optimal, but it’s a limitation we live with. Also, recently there has been a lot of press about the fact that there aren’t more spacesuits for smaller crewmembers such as women.

  A quick word about suit sizes. I have a big chest, and after I tried to squeeze into an L several times during years of training, the EVA team in Houston told me I was forbidden from even trying it again because it was such a tight fit. I couldn’t breathe and it felt like it would break my arms off! During my actual spacewalks both my crewmate and I wanted an XL, but alas there was only one XL on board the ISS (storage is incredibly tight and we only had one M, two Ls, and one XL). I won “rock, paper, scissors,” so I went outside in the XL and my crewmate was stuck with the L—there’s a great scene in the film A Beautiful Planet of Samantha having to pry him out of the suit after our spacewalk. More recently, there was a case of two female astronauts wanting an M, but there was only one on board. Despite the juicy news stories that this made about NASA discriminating against women, the reality is that we just don’t have a wide variety of sizes on the shelf because of logistics! Sorry, press.

  Next, the limbs are attached to the EMU, including arms, lower body, and helmet. The length of each joint can be adjusted in very fine increments of ⅛ inch. This process takes a few hours, so once a suit is tailored for an astronaut it’s a good idea to leave it alone for the remainder of that astronaut’s mission. The ability to precisely fit an EMU for each individual spacewalker, making it easier to move around in, is the main advantage of the American suit over the Russian. However, the Russian suit is simple and doesn’t require so many hours to set up. Also, cosmonauts can put on their Orlan spacesuits by themselves, without an IV to help them suit up. The downside is that they are bulkier, operate at a higher pressure and are therefore stiffer, and don’t fit as well. That all means it takes more effort to move around in the Orlan than in the EMU.

  Once the spacesuit is properly sized and organized, it’s time to get the equipment ready, an extremely time-consuming process. First, you have to retrieve multiple RETs, AETs, and ERCMs (NASA acronyms for equipment and safety tethers), and they all have to be organized by serial number. Then the actual equipment has to be gathered and placed into crew lock bags or ORU (NASA acronym for piece of equipment) bags, also organized by serial number, and always arranged in a very specific configuration. This process took three of us an entire day for my third spacewalk. Preparing this gear demands total attention to detail; you don’t want to end up outside with equipment improperly arranged, or worse, the wrong tool or gear. It’s better to spend an hour of time organizing while still inside the spaceship if it saves a minute of time while outside the spaceship.

  The actual spacewalk day begins quite early and has a rigid schedule that is similar to launch day. First, you need to go to the bathroom. Because once you get in the spacesuit, all you’ll have is your diaper, which is fine for number one, but you don’t want to be in a vacuum-sealed spacesuit having just gone number two in your Pampers with several hours to go before you can take it off. You especially don’t want to be the IV, pulling a person who just pooped his diaper out of the suit! Therefore, it�
�s best to visit the bathroom before getting suited up.

  I had organized my personal items the night prior, so I had a Ziploc bag with ibuprofen that I took prophylactically. It was to prevent at least some of the pain that eight hours in an EMU would cause. Just like in the NBL, I downed a five-hour energy drink and Power Bar and then put on the diaper, thin base layer, and LCVG. Next came an oxygen mask to start purging our bodies of nitrogen. In the same way that divers can suffer the bends, astronauts risk having nitrogen gas come out of their body tissue as pressure drops, which can lead to a multitude of serious medical problems. That risk wasn’t a problem with the pressure change we experienced in training underwater, but it definitely was for actual spacewalks. So we went through a long process called ISLE (acronym for breathing 100 percent O2 while doing light exercise in the spacesuit) to help rid ourselves of N2. The “exercise” was basically twitching a few times a minute, but it did the job. The combination of breathing pure oxygen and moving limbs around helps to force the nitrogen gas out of our blood and tissues, so that when the spacesuit pressure drops to about a third of sea level pressure, nitrogen bubbles don’t work themselves out of our tissue and into painful places like joints, or dangerous places like our brains or lungs or hearts. Knock on wood, the various prebreathe protocols that astronauts have used over the years have all worked. It’s a fair amount of overhead in terms of time required before a spacewalk, either breathing pure O2 from a mask, as in my case, or spending the night at a reduced pressure with the airlock sealed off from the rest of the station, a technique used in prior years, but it’s worth it.

  With gas mask on, the suit-up began with the help of the IV. First came the LTA (acronym for bottom half of the suit). I found a spot on the floor of the overcrowded airlock to awkwardly hold myself down while pulling on those million-dollar, hundred-pound pants. And to paraphrase Christopher Walken in the “More Cowbell” skit from Saturday Night Live, astronauts put their pants on one leg at a time. Except after we do, we go out into space. Getting those things on is a struggle because of the several layers of bulky long underwear, as well as the sticky rubber lining in the LTA. I used small detachable metal handles to gain leverage to pull the pants on. The boots were attached to the pants and were also difficult to get in. I had to point my foot down, like a ballet dancer, and wiggle them down past the rubber bladder. Once both feet and legs were stuffed into the LTA, I stood up and leaned forward, stretching my hamstring like a sprinter getting ready for a race, in order to get my feet deep into the boot.

  At this point Samantha, our IV, did the boot/bladder manipulation, which meant she had to unhook the boot from the pants, rearrange the rubber bladder in my boot, and then reattach the boots to the suit. This helped prevent the bladder from being bunched up and causing serious pain in one spot on my feet. An inflated air bladder can feel as hard as steel, and having a pressure point on your foot is a sure way to be miserable for hours. I always appreciated my IV’s help with the boot/bladder manipulation because that laborious process saved me a lot of pain!

  Next came the HUT. I positioned myself below it, stuck my arms straight up in the air in a surrender pose, and then began a wiggle-worm dance of pushing my body into the suit, right arm, torso, left arm, torso, right arm, head, torso, left arm, inch by inch. The EMU isn’t really designed for humans, as the joke goes, but it wouldn’t be funny if it weren’t partially true. You really have to be a contortionist to fit comfortably into one of those things; my upper body is big and stocky and it just doesn’t fit in there well. There is a new procedure that allows the IV to remove the suit arms, which makes getting your upper body into the EMU dramatically easier, but it also takes time to remove and reinstall the arms, so I just dealt with the pain and arm bruises.

  Finally, the dreaded helmet. You see, I have a big head. I know—I’m a fighter pilot and astronaut so of course I have a big head. But I mean I actually have a large cranium.

  After I squeezed into the HUT, it was time to connect the bottom half to the top half, or the LTA to the HUT. This was usually a two-person job. Astronauts want to be wedged into the suit as tightly as possible, which makes moving around outside much easier, but in order to do that you need a lot of force to squeeze your pants up to attach them to the upper body section. It was often comical to see how hard the IV had to push to get the top and bottom connected. Because I filled out the suit it was a wrestling match to get my HUT and LTA connected, and I really appreciated Samantha’s and Anton’s work smashing me into the EMU.

  Next came gloves. Gloves are the most important appendage to ensure proper fit. Your fingers are constantly squeezing and moving for eight to nine hours during a spacewalk in order to move yourself around, hold equipment, and manipulate tools. I wore a specially cut series of moleskin patches on my fingers and hands to prevent sores and hot spots. Above them were thin glove liners and above them were the actual spacesuit gloves. This required pushing my hand as hard as I could while Samantha held the glove still with all her might, and once my fingers were all the way in she connected the metal glove ring with a distinctive click to the suit arm ring.

  Each spacewalker has two pairs of gloves in orbit—a prime as well as a backup set, in part because the prime gloves may end up not fitting if your fingers swell, but also because each EVA really takes a toll on gloves. Many hours of holding metal bars and equipment, constant flexing, and extreme temperature swings can chew up the hardened rubber surfaces on the outside of the gloves (called RTV). That rubber on the palm side of your fingers is the part of the glove that gives you grip. After a few spacewalks, the RTV is usually so worn out that the crewmember needs new gloves. What’s more, the outside of the station is full of little craters, created by years of being bombarded by small things zooming around space and impacting the ISS. If one of these sharp edges tears the glove RTV, you can keep going—to a point. But if it tears the actual glove fabric, called Vectran, then the glove is no-go and needs to be replaced by a spare on the next spacewalk.

  I was always amazed at how chewed up my gloves got after an EVA. I used the same pair for all three spacewalks, but the RTV grip pads were pretty cut up, and if I had done a fourth EVA I would have switched to my spare gloves.

  Finally, the dreaded helmet. You see, I have a big head. I know—I’m a fighter pilot and astronaut so of course I have a big head. But I mean I actually have a large cranium. The Russians have measured every astronaut and cosmonaut for their custom-fitted Sokol spacesuits for more than fifty years, and they told me that I had the largest head they had ever measured, dating back to Yuri Gagarin. My F-16 and T-38 jet helmets had to have all of the lining layers removed in order to fit my giant cranium. When putting the Sokol suit on for training, it would always squeeze my face so hard that I would bruise my chin. It was embarrassing—if you Google pictures of me after landing, you can see bruises on my chin.

  All of this meant putting that helmet on was a challenge for me. On one particularly difficult day at the NBL, we almost canceled the training run because after ten minutes of trying to smash it on it wasn’t budging, until we finally got it on. After years of difficulty, a suit tech finally showed me a handy technique: He put the helmet on while it was rotated 90 degrees, so I was staring at the ear part of the helmet, slid it over my head almost the whole way, and then rotated it back to the normal position before clicking it to the spacesuit. Thank God for that technique; it saved a lot of pain.

  Once completely sealed in our spacesuits, we performed a detailed series of checkouts, making sure the pressure controls and communications and cooling and air conditioner systems worked. All while breathing 100 percent O2 and lightly exercising (twitching periodically).

  Our bodies were finally adapted for the imminent reduced pressure we would face outside, our equipment was organized, and spacesuits were ready to protect us from the unforgiving, hellish combination of vacuum, blazing sunlight, and frigid chill of the blackness of space. Getting suited up for my spacewalks was truly a team
effort, beginning with our IV Samantha Cristoforetti, but extending to the tremendous support crew we had back in Houston, led by Alex Kanelakos and Faruq Sabur. And most of all, thanks to the suit technician who taught me how to put my helmet on without squashing my brain. I owe you one.

  Brief the Flight and Fly the Brief

  Don’t Fly by the Seat of Your Pants

  The final days of February 2015 were particularly memorable for me—my three spacewalks happened that week. The first two were largely spent running power and data cables and also putting grease on bolts, as I was Terry the Cable Guy and Grease Monkey. Our third EVA was a completely different ball game, going out to the right and left sides of the station to install reflectors and antennae, as well as cables. To do this we needed an entirely new set of procedures and equipment, and the days leading up to that final spacewalk were some of the busiest of my life.

  The frenetic pace led me to have a conversation with our lead flight director down in mission control, the boss for that spacewalk. We agreed not to do any get-aheads, or work that you prepare for in case you finish your normally planned tasks early. Even though they are not mandatory, they require studying and preparing equipment. Because this was our third spacewalk that week, I did not want to add to the list of tasks to prepare for our final trip outside. So “flight” and I came to a mutual agreement—no get-aheads on this EVA. If we finished an hour or two early, we would declare victory, come inside, and high-five each other. We wouldn’t add to our workload and prepare for any additional tasks.