If you’ve been reading all the Space Camp posts, today is the day you have been eagerly awaiting. The day I tell you whether or not I puked on the centrifuge.
The early astronaut program consisted of a lot of unknowns, like how the body would handle weightlessness for example. So they tested and trained for every conceivable possibility. The astronauts were essentially guinea pigs for doctors, scientists, and therapists. In their autobiographies, many of the astronauts would put a humorous spin on some of the more humiliating tests that they had to run through. Much of the training followed the motto, “better safe than sorry” and so astronauts were over-trained in areas that turned out to be of little concern while in others all that training that seemed like a waste came in very, very handy.
Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, he flew in the Gemini Program for the first docking of a spacecraft to another object. Once docked, the joined crafts began to spin out of control due to a malfunction on the Gemini Capsule. Armstrong undocked from the Agena and due to excessive training on the MASTIF (Multi-Axis Spin Test Inertia Facility) knew how to regain control from a tumble.
At camp the trainer allows campernauts to experience the tumble in a free-spin; no regaining control for us! For your motion sickness pleasure, here’s a first-person view of what it’s like to be in a tumble from that fancy little spycam I bought just for this purpose. For the record, I say it’s “awesome” not “awful”–the audio is rather scratchy.
A lot of the training the early astronauts went through is described in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff. Now that we have a better understanding of what training is necessary, the space program has been able to modify and, in some cases, cut back on types of training. One type is of course the centrifuge. In the first three space flights, lift-off and re-entry could cause upwards of 12Gs–that’s a lot of pressure. Thanks to advanced technology, astronauts now experience a little more than 3Gs–not much more than some roller coasters.
I have no photos of riding in the centrifuge–you’re in a small enclosed capsule on the end of a long arm that spins around and around andaround andaroundandaround. Surprisingly, there is very little dizziness and as the arm slows its spin you get a feeling of weightlessness, almost as though you are falling upwards. During lift-off, astronauts are still pushing buttons so their centrifuge was equipped with a panel so that they could run through procedures under high pressures. We only had one button to push and that was more to make sure we had not passed out. One campernaut did throw up shortly after getting out of the capsule. I’m not naming names, but it was not me.
One of the things Wolfe points out in the book is how many times the astronauts are trained on simulators running through their missions. During these training sessions, anything that can go wrong probably will. This was intentional and the purpose was to make response to various situations second nature. Habits were so ingrained that the astronauts remained calm and able to work through the problem.
Throughout the week we had a series of one-hour missions, each preceded by a one-hour training session. These mini-missions were the emergency training for our final mission–six hours in the shuttle. For each of the mini-sessions, we would experience a different role involved in launching a spacecraft. In one session you might be on a space walk, on another in mission control. In addition to technical errors, the six-hour EDM (Extended Duration Mission), your crew could run into intellectual problems and have to create a filter similar to the one used on Apollo 13 or your pilot might have a heart attack during life-off. Counselors slip crew members notes that say things like, “Steal things from the Space Station experiments and bring them back to Mid-Deck.” During our short time on the Space Station during the EDM it took forever for my crew mates to realize I was a kleptomaniac. Their solution–tape my hands up. (Fun Fact: rolls of duct tape are stored all over the shuttle. It’s unlikely that this was what NASA had in mind for its use.)
Occasionally during a long training mission, a crew member might die. At camp you have the ability bring them back to life. Normally by embarrassing yourself by singing a silly song in the cafeteria. Sometimes the dead crew member is not so lucky–like when an emergency forces the pilot to disconnect the Canada Arm located in cargo bay. If you (and I mean me) are on the Arm at this time, you will be lost in space. Remember, in space, no one can hear you scream.
No one will shed a tear for you either.
Photos of the EDM, training missions, and skills training sessions are available here.
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