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Good morning.
First off, I would like to thank you for the opportunity
to be here and welcome you to the conference.
I was unable to make part of the earlier parts of this
due to schedules. And we all missed out on
the opportunity perhaps to see the launch but
nonetheless I see badges from all over NASA
and all over the county people that are perhaps
in many cases played roles in the activities that
Tommy has been talking about and others.
Some of you that are hopefully learning something or
gathering some of the lessons that have been learned
so that we carry all that forward.
I was asked to sort of follow up with Tommy and
talk a little bit about the era of collaboration and cooperation.
How we learned about what we needed to know
in order to build that International Space Station.
And I'm going to talk generally around STS 74.
If you look at this crew patch,
one of the key things is the bottom of it.
The fact that it's our US flag,
there's a Canadian flag, which is
a lot of people are used to, but there's also a
Russian flag. And this mission was specifically oriented
or designed to do one thing, which was,
in our patch, combine Atlantis with Mir
with a docking module which is built in Kunichev.
The Russian facility, part of the Russian Space Agency
flown to the Kennedy Space Center and integrated
into Atlantis and carried into orbit.
This was the first time we really assembled
a space station or started that assembly process
where not only were we going to fly up and rendezvous
which had been done, fly up and dock, which had been
done in '71, but now we wanted to help build their
space station. Primarily so that it would make it easier for
us to continue to bring Shuttles up there.
In order to uh dock on STS 71, they had
to move the Kristall module so that it was oriented
in a way that was more favorable for the station
and protect its solar arrays and you'll see I hope
some of the difficulties that had to be overcome
in doing that. But before we get there
I want to go over a couple of, what I think are historically
significant photographs and describe a little bit about how
we got there. Because uh, really this is cooperation
this Shuttle Mir program as we called it
was about collaboration and cooperation
and learning how to do it.
So, and I hope this isn't too washed out.
This should be a picture that is familiar to most
uh, we've seen it a lot. It looks very ordinary
or very much like what we're always used to
but it isn't quite. Of course there's the cape.
Another picture further up the coast line, with a long
lens, is actually the picture of New York City here
uh that was fundamentally started the space
race. And coincidentally got me involved
as a young student in participating in that space race
as we adapted. And it's not because of whats going on
in New York City that's important
because of the platform from which this photograph
and the one before were taken.
And if we back out with the lens, what we're lookin' at
is of course a picture of New York City
and the whole economic area of New England
taken from a Russian space craft, or
in some cases a Soviet space craft in the beginning.
And if we backed out a little bit further
This is a little tougher to see in this room also
There's New York City of course, same picture.
These are the modules and solar panels of Mir.
That's Cape Cod
and the coast all the way up to Maine
and if we go down past New Jersey and the uh
Chesapeake Bay is a little bit obscured but
you can actually make out in better lighting,
the Outer Banks. So the entire east
coast of the United States, or as far north as Boston
was under the gaze of the Soviet Union since
the Sputnik. And that got us all started
thinking about space program at the time that was going on.
Now to get to where we
this is where the platform from which those photographs
were taken of course, this is the Russian space station, Mir,
which base block was launched in 1986.
About three weeks after the Challenger.
So at the time we were perhaps at our worst
with the Shuttle program, they had just launched the new
base block of Mir uh as a space station,
after about seven Salyut space stations
had been launching since about 1971.
So the Russians had maintained a program of exploration
of low earth orbit in space
um, through Salyut type space stations
since the time or just after we were
successfully landing in 1969 and then on
through 1972 on the moon. So they have
a lot of history in long duration flight
low earth orbit, supporting a vehicle.
The early Salyuts of course were
just go up there and, kind of like Skylab
just go up there and be on board it. Uh later the
Salyu, Salyuts and Almaz, which you don't really hear too
much about because it wasn't a big flyer.
But it was again a platform up there.
Uh, later they became more complex.
You could have a progress and a re, resupply vehicle
as well as a personnel carrier.
And of course Mir is a modular vehicle.
So the base block is here, it has a
it has an axial docking port for Kvant 1
and then for a progress and then
the radial docking ports housed, hold the other modules
the large science or research modules and then the Soyuz
goes off the nose of the base block. So
of course this hardware was carried forward to ISS
in a second version. What
we're looking at, the target of interest is on the end of the
Kristall Module which is now on a radial port
and the difficulty in docking with that of course is that
these solar arrays, antennas and lots of pointy things
uh, get in the way. And thats what we had a problem with.
For '71, we moved, we moved this whole module
up to where the uh Soyuz is. So
that when uh the STS 71 crew docked
they didn't have that interference, but
as the program evolved we realized we were gonna fly
there more often. We utilized the Russian docking module.
But first, to get to this place and really operate there
we had to go here, and this
is the statue of Yuri Gagarin at the
uh, Yuri Gagarin cosmonaut training center in
Star City or just outside Moscow.
This is their combination of Johnson Space Center
engineering, they do the mission controls from down town
Moscow. Many of you are familiar or have visited there
on the era of Space Station.
Believe me in 1994 this was new stuff
and these are the apartments buildings behind the
statue of Yuri. Where a lot of the crew,
I went over there as the first director of our
operations in Moscow, or in Russia.
Norm Thagard and Bonnie Dunbar, mission specialists,
who were there to be trained to fly on the Soyuz
Norm was the first American to fly on the Soyuz vehicle up to Mir.
And if you change the point of view
viewed from the window of one of those apartments
you can see the Russian complex.
All these buildings over here, across the forest
are the technical area. This is gymnasium
and sports arena. Over here was where the uh are are
what they call the Profilactorium but it is where
my apartment, where the NASA offices were
and then a lot of the other administrative buildings are not
visible. Viewed in the springtime
from the window here it is a very inviting and nice place,
they have, it's forests. When we got there in January
of 1944, 1994, it was uh
it looked more like Dr. Zhivago had lived there.
It was quite different. Uh,
Of course it's named after Yuri Gagarin,
and Yuri is one of the greatest hero's in uh in
Russia, an icon. And the uh Russian culture
honors both Yuri and the other cosmonauts
I would say much more than the United States looks
to that um
astronauts. Even more than they look at NFL or NBA
um players. I mean this is very serious stuff for them.
Part of what we had to learn was the culture
of the Russians and the Russian space program.
Because we were going there um to learn
not really to teach. So
part of learning is learning how to operate their equipment
getting into what we do at Johnson Space Center
and Huntsville and all the other centers where we train
before missions. And we wanna
train the way we're gonna fly 'cause we will fly the way
we train, is the mantra.
So, here inside the large hall is the Mir
mock up, it's a fixed base, uh partly integrated with
computers for training and partly
a mock up sorta like building nine. But
you can get used to procedures, you can verify
some of the electronics inside the modules
and become accommodated to the various systems that
will be operated during the stay on Mir.
We also had the Soyuz trainer
this one has both the descent module as well as the
orbital module on top.
This allowed the crews to accommodate both for ascent
training we integrated, entry training integrated
and then some on orbit procedural training.
You go from the decent module into the orbital module
or you open it up, once you're um up there.
Now cooperation and collaboration isn't really
just about bringing hardware together.
It is a lot of tons of hardware coming together
from different countries, but the uh main fact is
we've gotta bring crews together.
It's both crews on orbit and some cases crews
on the ground here in space cosmonaut training center.
Then a lot of engineers and technicians have to come
together and understand each other. Remember
they use the metric system, they use the Cyrillic alphabet,
uh, you know they were the Soviet Union.
There were a lot of barriers that we had to overcome
in learning how to operate effectively.
Uh, an occasional toasting helped out sometimes.
So, the docking module was the key.
So that was that barrier, that boundary bridge
that you saw on my, you know on the crew patch
that was built in Russia for purposes really of flying
Bouran up there. Modified we, they
added two solar panels so that we could add, add more
electrical power to Mir. It was flown in a transport aircraft
to Kennedy and then Russian sci, engineers and technicians
worked with the KSC folks to complete testings
since the vehicle, it was vibe tested and shaken,
but it had to be integrated into the orbital payload bay
in order to make sure it could fly up there safely and then do its job.
This is a picture from the mission.
If you were an IMAX camera or carrying one EVA
seated at the aft bulkhead of the payload bay
looking forward, this is the perspective you would have.
So straight ahead is um, lets see which hand,
there's the aft bulkhead of the crew module.
The external air lock and the arm has been used by
Chris Hadfield to pick up this docking module
out of the birthing, see I think you can see v guides
out of the aft part of the payload bay
turn it, and then stack it on top of an external air lock
that part was before we ever got to Mir.
That left now, habit, habitable volume,
all the way up to this ref, uh reference point
which is where we would contact Mir
and it would look like this if you had not come inside
during that particular viewing opportunity.
So, now we've got the external air lock
docking module, Kristall and then uh lets
the uh, the core block is kind of, in this perspective, aligned
with the long axis of the orbiter.
So you can see these panels, they were solar panels
and some of them have further antennas sticking out of
them and it really was a complex vehicle.
We had to uh, ensure that we didn't damage it.
We had the right energy to make good contact with the
docking system. And then of course after our
relatively short stay on board
we had to uh, separate.
and this time we broke at the interface
that we had made first, leaving the docking module.
Interestingly there is one control panel inside the Shuttle
that operated either of the two docking adapters.
The androgynous uh attachment facilities. So we
had a big swi, a big switch
cause it would have been a lot of points off if we had
separated from the wrong end of that thing.
But once we left, you can see that is uh now
the portal for subsequent dockings that have to
make the interface here, where you can actually
look out the aft payload bay windows
and make the docking interface. Where as
with the docking module attached during installation
uh sorry, its, this is the point of contact.
It is really outside of the view of the crew,
and you will see how we adapted to that to
manage that uh shortly.
So inside, once we had successfully docked
here's Yuri Gidzenko the commander of the Russian
space station and my, and me
and we were shaking hands in, on the inside of the docking
module, we had just delivered. You
notice how clean and tidy everything is. It's all covered
with what we call mouse fur. It's kind of
I don't know, a velcro similar, but it was Russian
mouse fur. And uh, compared to
Yuri inside the Mir module
where it is distinctly untidy. However [ audience laughter ]
you have to remember that Mir had been up there for
about 11 years. And every, it's like living in your garage
where every 3 months a pick-up truck comes
and drops off another load of people and stuff
and then takes away and, so pretty soon it gets pretty
crowded. We had a mission to not only deliver the
docking module but to transfer cargo
and bring things back. The good news was they
knew where everything was. So inside they had
cabins where uh, this is Sergui Avdeyev,
can rest, get the mail and uh look out the window.
Also a very interesting feature that we pointed out later
putting windows where the crew sleep, give them view
of the outside world is psychologically very helpful
the Russians recognized that early.
Thomas Reiter in the Specter module with
thermoelectric freezers, which they were using
to fast freeze urine and blood samples while
they were up there for three months
going through exercise and diet protocols
we were going to meet them at the halfway point of
their mission. We arrive
and the first thing we did of course was invite them over
for a banquet, probably blowing their whole diet protocol
right out of the water. But it is a naval tradition
that when port man ships gather in ports you exchange
crews and dine. We brought up
one of everything as well as
we had a whole freezer to bring down all their frozen
blood and urine specimens.
And I was able to convince our NASA management
that the freezer would be more reliable and operate better
if it was full of stuff going up hill
so that it didn't, you know, the little regulator mechanisms
didn't get out of whack or whatever.
Then we volunteered of course to fill the freezer with
some kind of plain vanilla stuff.
You know, what I called thermal regulatory capacitance
mass. [ Audience laughter ] You just have
to know how to work the sys, you know.
Inside Mir, uh this is the core module
we got together. This was infact the 50th anniversary
of the United Nations, during this mission.
We had a video conference with the secretary general
as well as with dignitaries from both Russia and the
United States, to uh mark the occasions
and uh hand over control of the docking module.
When we left, you can see that there's Mir
now the docking module, orange
on the end of Kristall and I think seven more
Shuttle flights docked, learned to transfer cargo
people learned, US astronauts learned
to operate there for long periods of time
and we began really to trust each other in our operations
in flying in space.
Uh, for us homecoming was back to Kennedy Space Center
touchdown on runway 33.
And then we had the typical crew get together
it was half the crew, the other half if you want to call
it that, of our crew, those, the Russian patch part
was still up there. And we would have reunion
some months later, because they were halfway through
their mission. And here in the uh main uh hall
in the United Nations, secretary general got his
uh, uh, this was uh flown item
we uh, it was a proclamation and uh I guess a UN
uh proclamation of the peaceful uses of space and
the protection of US astronauts
or of any astronauts actually.
So that any international astronauts or cosmonauts
or whatever you want to call them, who
needed some help. I mean imagine if you were diverted
into Atlanta because of a plane change
and now your stuck, you gotta get a motel, and all the
rest of that stuff. If you divert into
who knows where in a Soyuz or a Shuttle,
you don't have a passport you don't have a Mastercard
you don't have a cell phone, you're pretty much toast.
So without all those key items which you don't carry
you gotta have some help and then UN had
signatory nations to provide cell phones
and Mastercards or whatever was needed
for astronauts that might need them.
Lets see, would you click that?
ok, this is a short, about nine minute video
I will kind of narrate it, but it kind of put you in
the point of view of the crew as we
go through the events that I just described.
There we go, ok, um.
As I mentioned, you can see it now lit makes a little more
sense whats on the patch. And
The launch count like all of them starts about
four days before hand. The
crew is down at the Cape. In this case we were
down here to condition ourselves to the time zone.
Remember Mir operates on Moscow time
that is a significant time change and if you're familiar with
jetlag after crossing over a few uh time zones.
Then think about rocket lag, which crosses half the country
in uh actually 45, every 45 minutes
we wanted to make sure we were prepared for that
so we come to the Cape and live in a room thats
lighted when Moscow is lighted and dark when Moscow is
dark so that we are ready. We launched about 7:30
in the morning. You can see me waving there
out the window to make sure that they knew I had
my gloves on. That is really what it is.
And uh, phenominal launch.
We had a great ride up to Mir.
The docking module did extremely well.
And of course when you're being pushed by 7.5 million
pounds of thrust, no matter whats on board
you're definitely going somewhere.
We, I think, cover up through
loss of the solid rocket motors
then we go through the normal orbital insertion
we do orbital burns. We were flying to rendezvous
with a spacecraft that was at 51.6
uh degrees inclination of orbit.
Which means, from the launch we only had five minutes
plus or minus around the launch time where we could
effectively join them. And that's because
of the earth's rotation, gives us about 1,000 miles
an hour. Now the docking module was picked up by
the arm, as you saw. We position it
precisely using a camera mounted into the window
of the, of the uh external air lock
looking at a target or actually a mirror on the door
of the docking module. That allows us very accurate
positioning. We fired thrusters
to jam the Orbiter up in.
We needed the mechanical energy.
Then we continue to orbit the rendezvous
with the guys here. There's Bill McArthur with the
rendezvous software on a laptop.
Chris was using a laser, a hand held laser.
And there's the Kristall module
where our docking module, and this is a
view from the camera out on the arm, the elbow camera.
Here again, elbow camera, this is the docking module
affixed to the orbiter.
We're lookin', I'm actually flyin' by lookin' at these
monitors, not by lookin' out the windows, try
to line up this target with the uh, uh, little uh
three wire system. Once
we get in position, you'll see again we fire the
thrusters just as the pedals of the docking system
over lap each other and thats to provide and extra boost
of mechanical energy so these mechanical latches
can make. It's a little bit like slamming a door or
closing a screen door. You need to close it hard enough
so that the latches are catching but not so hard
that the window on the door breaks.
So, once we had done it we locked up,
then they had to reorient.
You can see we are reorienting the space craft getting
power back to the solar arrays.
Now Jim is applauding because that hatch stuck
they couldn't get it open at first, and this
has happened before for us too. And I thought to come
all this way and not be able to get the door open isn't
going to work. But we did, they were kickin' it and we
got it open. Now, they look happy
to see us. Frankly they had been up there for three
months, they would've been happy to see anybody. [ Audience laughter ]
But we did bring them mail, packages, food and
lots of things. We also transferred cargo. This is
protein crystal growth experiment. You'll hear more about
science on orbit. Uh the scientists
consider that it was, you know their payloads were
probably viewed by us the way
American tourists or luggage is probably viewed by gorillas.
They were a little worried about how we'd handle it.
We had to video tape our installing this PCG experiement
So that they knew we had not bounced it off any bulkheads
So we're just about on track. We did bring ice cream
up, and there is some actual ice cream eating.
This was Bluebell ice cream by the way.
We found out later uh, best ice cream in the universe.
[ Audience laughter ] and that was, that's what they said on
Dallas tv. We also brought up a guitar.
Thats a uh, an acoustic well
they had one on there that had been in space
for 17 years. It was transferred from the Salyut
we brought up an electronic version.
We had our go, going away, talk to the dignitaries
and then really say our good byes
after really a brief stay, four days up there.
And then I was the last person out, I counted the co--
cameras, cause anything that I left up
there, they were probably going to make me pay for.
And counted noses, because we wanted to make sure
Thomas Reiter stayed there and we had all
our guys. Uh, and then they'll close the hatch.
You'll see the target on the uh hatch
which we had used, and there's that little ring site, as well.
As this is a stand off cross.
There were some springs to push us away initially.
We were going down towards the Nader, orbital
mechanics help pull us away so we didn't have to fire
too many thrusters, because we were afraid
the out gasing from the thrusters might damage
the solar arrays. Just the way a
a loud, you know big gust of wind might damage the sails
on a sail boat. This is shore out of course from uh,
Mir looking out the window, and once we get clear
we got about to 500 feet, uh Jim did a fly
around, which has been down almost every mission.
So that we can do photo surveys of the vehicle.
Remember this has been up there for many, many years.
Uh, photo documentation of the space craft is very
important for understanding real configuration as well
as trying to notice any damage or degradation
that might occur. I've got uh the rest of this uh
is a litte bit of notes on life in orbit.
That are not unique to this mission, but they are uh
at least unique or interesting. We slept in sleep cabins
or these little closets. I think they are a lot better than
just hanging out Velcroed to the bulkheads because
it allows you to be, you're not bumped into
and you have, you don't have the light and dark.
uh, 2001 was a big influence on a lot of people they want
to run laps in the mid-deck. Chris Hadfield was a Canadian
or is a Canadian, this was his first mission. We figured
he must be an ice skater so we'd spin him up and
do physics experiments. Rookies get to do that
then it comes time for the orbit burn and return
there's a whole lot of reconfiguration and preparation
going on the day before, where we check out
the flight control system. You will see we're all in, were
still in kind of routine flight clothes while we use the
hydraulic power to cycle the elevons, uh get the GPCs
ready to go. Check out all the guidance
systems. Then we do the de-orbit burn and come in
in our launch and entry suits.
And you'll get another view of the plasma, this is the
overhead windows of course, looking over head and back
at the plasma trail. Which's not really, I think it's more
like a constant trail that just flashes back and forth
into the window, but it's very dynamic.
but to me unpredictable. Gravity experiments
that we're now getting deceleration
thats really not gravity, it's showing the Orbiter
is now decelerating, as it gets lower and lower.
One thing thats interesting about this mission and about
winged vehicles. We came into the reentry at 90
degrees angle back, right wing down the whole way.
Which allowed us to fly 700 miles off track
to get to Kennedy Space Center we were,
from our particular orbit, we had, we had to fly to it
rather than just glide or, or cruise to it.
This was not ballistic at all and that advantage for a winged
vehicle is tremendous flexibility.
Coming into the Kennedy Space Center of course, this is
uh a wildlife sanctuary and a bird refuge
and you'll see eagles aren't the only vehicles that fly
into Kennedy Space Center. Uh
touch down runway 33. And this is where
you'll remember that the chief of the astronaut office
always says this is a reusable space craft.
So, fly gently, we use a drag chute to help
us slow down of course and also to help us uh reduce
the load on the nose gear as it falls through.
Once the nose gear, once the nose falls through a certain
level, you can't stop it, other than uh
uh, the drag from the chute.
We call real stop, there's the chute dropping off.
Usually about 60 knots so the shroud doesn't
bother the main engines and then
uh, we get out of the vehicle here
you can see the space port and then the last slide
if you want to push forward.
There you go, gets us to the next step which is
science on board the space station.
There were a lot of flights, a lot of learning and
an awful lot of teamwork went into uh
to get us to this. But I like to think we started
step by step and built up with our Shuttle-Mir program.
That's all and I guess we'll have questions at the end.
Thanks very much. [ Audience applause ]