STS-49: Postflight Press Conference

recently you've known that the the worm is out that's the Insignia we're back to the the NASA meatball the the mission Insignia uh we uh manned up a half hour earlier than Crews normally do since we had a short launch window we agreed to to go out a half hour earlier to allow us to work any crew equipment problems we could conceivably have and uh that helped because we had trouble getting the uh the hatch closed uh the weather was trying not to cooperate but uh ultimately it did and I believe it was about 40 minutes late uh we got the the engines ignited the boosters lit off and we're on our way it uh I've never flown or launched through a cloud you'll see here in in a second we go into a cloud uh and that's not beyond our our flight Rule limitations we have flight rules that govern types of clouds we can fly through and coverages and it all met those criteria one of the interesting things uh going through a cloud it really lights up you get all the light reflected back from the srbs and this as I said the first time I ever done it not only that you can feel the heat from the srbs radiated back in the cockpit so you felt kind of a little warm blast uh as you went through the cloud beyond that uh the roll work fine first stage went uh as uh designed and in fact the the whole acccent was uh really good we uh launched at such a time of day with the low Sun angle that I think probably you get a chance to see the SRV separate and and Tumble although we don't have a lot of it in the movie but for the spectators watching the srbs tumble away was pretty impressive because of the sun lighting them up as well as it did second stage had a little bit of vibration uh uh and that's uh generally uh dependent upon the type of payload you have and and where it's located in the payload Bay and we got up on the orbit in fine Style with seven people six of them being uh experienced the uh getting established the post insertion on orbit went very quickly here we're uh going over you can see the Florida Keys and over the towards down towards the Bahamas and it was uh the first day was essentially just getting established on orbit which went very fine here's your chance to to meet the crew uh obviously that's me is Kevin first rookie uh or the only rookie on the flight uh so it was a new vehicle with a new pilot uh Bruce uh and his Coast Guard Allegiance uh there is Pierre Rick hee both of who uh set record Evas uh Kathy who's got the record for the uh women for the longest Eva and Tom who has got over 16 hours in two Evas well the rest of the crew hit the ground running on day two Bruce hit the ground cycling and uh here on the cycle ergometer that had flown on STS 42 previously they'd had a few problems with it and the engineers back here at Johnson did a great job re-engineering the cyc ergometer and uh we both wrote it on day two and three and it just performed superbly and is queued up and ready to fly again on ss50 our next mission day four we got up and got about the the important stuff Dan and I here working together on the Rendevous portion of the mission as we come in for our first uh first Rend and and this is happiness on a Rendevous mission is when you're about 40 Mi away and look through the crosshairs in the overhead window and see that little star which isn't a star at all it's it's the Intel sat satellite lined up in the crosshairs and we're we're coming in on it and while the folks on the flight deck are busily uh Rend deing with the satellite Rick and I and Tom were down on the mid deck getting ready to go do a spacewalk uh we got pretty good at putting these electrodes on Rick and I got to put them on I guess three times but these are the bio instrumentation electrodes we wear underneath our liquid cool garment uh we're out in the payload Bay now Rick's on the left side of the screen and I'm on the right and We're translating back a see the motor in the back portion of the payload Bay with the yellow handrail around it uh moving out there in Zer G is a lot different than moving in the water tank it takes a much lighter touch as we've been told and it took a little while for us toh get used to that light touch required to translate along and what we're doing right now is we're just doing all the preparation of the capture bar and the adapter ring in preparation for grabbing the satellite I mind you while Rick and Pierre out in the payload Bay Dan was still flying the approach as we came in and at the same time juggling cameras to try to get good photo documentation of the satellite as we approached it uh so we could send some live downl through our electronic still camera to the ground to let them know how it's was doing Kathy over there at the right is up against the windows shooting the handheld laser through the overhead window as you can see it got quite crowded on the half flight deck and uh here's the the satellite as we approached it over the Gulf Coast that's Corpus Christie below uh and this Final Phase of the approach on the flight deck again Tom with the aerlex camera to to film The Final Approach in on the first Rend day and here's the results of his work as you can see the satellite perched about 30 ft above the bay as we're were getting into close proximity of the satellite uh Rick was going ahead and preparing the capture bar and Pierre went ahead and put a foot restrain attachment device on the end of the RMS once he got the attachment device on he hopped on board the arm and here you can see he's hanging by his heels as we get in closer to the Intel that to apply the capture bar uh the last part of this after we rotated him in we rotated the arm right up into a more of a vertical position Pier went ahead and moved the capture bar to a horizontal and was started to make his attempts to attach it and this is a A View From the elbow camera and I believe this is the very first attempt on the first day and as Dan mentioned it was a very Dynamic situation and it was something that uh I'm not sure we could really train for very well uh particularly with hindsight uh it's a very Dynamic situ situation and and trying to put all those elements together uh in one g to try to simulate Zer G is very difficult and we and we found that out uh we also found out with that first attempt that the spacecraft was not quite as stable as as we had anticipated and the first time I touched it it started uh coning off a little bit uh this is another attempt on the first day and you see in position getting ready to put the bar on and this time the satellite's in a little bit of a coning motion so we were having to I was having a con bru in and hav him moved me around quite a bit to get me in position uh had no luck uh with this attempt see some motion of the arm as I try to put the bar on and then I think what you're going to see is the uh last try on the second day uh the first try on the second day was as probably as good as we could have done it and uh we actually got the bar up and got it up against the pads and actually about half the rotation of the spacecraft but couldn't get the latches to fire at this point we' got the satellite down to basically no rotation and and I tried to put the bar on using the manual fire triggers and I just couldn't hold the bar up quite tight enough uh to the ring to get the manual latches to fire or to get them to grab and after I touch it this time uh you can see the spacecraft started uh kind of tumbling in in a little different Manner and we kind of put in a in a flat spin so now it's rotating about an axis 90° from its normal spin axis and there's a a shut out the F Flight Deck window of what it looked like to Dan and those guys you can imagine at this point we were all uh scratching our heads and pretty disappointed and starting to think about what was next while in the MCC they had the same reaction and uh these are the Capcom and then some of the flight directors Al Pennington and Phil Engel off and and right away they said well let's let's start going to work seriously on what we're going to try next and here's a tiger team that was assembled to come up with another way to do business and you see a lot of the engineers in in one of the back rooms and they're putting some plans together and figuring out okay how are we going to do it what's next can we fit three people in an airlock and and all the questions that were addressed in in those couple days and on board on the in between day we went ahead and put our suits on there's Pierre and Tom already in the airlock and then I was out in the mid deck in the early part of this uh setup on my umbilical and then tucked my feet in and sort of f we we folded me into the airlock along with Tom and and Pierre and Kathy came down and got the airlock closed we just checked everything out that we could check out and we all fit which we were pretty happy to see that it worked that way once we proved that we could all fit then the next question is well how exactly are we going to use these three people and back on the ground in the water tank they had three folks in the wed F and you see them there and off on the left and then in the center of the picture and to the right on the end of the arm with all the divers and and making sure that they knew what they wanted to do with three folks and when they called up the plan we were very pleased to hear how they'd set it up and so you see here this is how it looked on orbit essentially the same picture uh kind of neat shot here shows the satellite coning and you see that it's misaligned with the Orbiter axis in this picture but as it cones and Wobbles around Dan had it psyched out and lined up so that it would come and present a flat side to us every 3 minutes or so is what it turned out to be and we were talking among ourselves okay who's lined up now you know if Rick's lined up with his grapple point where is it to Tom and where is it to Pierre and so we got in agreement on exactly what the configuration was going to be when it was time to make the grab and then it was just a matter of sitting there and waiting for it to slowly rotate around it seemed like it was moving extremely slow it took forever already at this point we had no idea how long we were going to spend holding on to it Bruce is operating the arm in response to Pierre's hand motion signaling up down left right and on this picture you can see clearly Pierre motioning to Bruce to raise him up a little bit so so that we'd all three be in position and and Solly we came around to just the right orientation and and uh what I was going to say was ready ready grab and it turned into wait wait let's do it and I've concluded that's what happens when you put a civilian out there as you can see the guys in the flight deck were really happy there once we' made the grab and I'm sure this is a point where all you folks on the ground after watching us for a few minutes were going well they've got it and they don't know what to do with it and uh because of the wobble of the uh spacecraft as it came in we ended up having to rotate it third of a revolution around turns out we did that at about the same speed a minute hand moves around the clock so it was slow this is where all the Finesse work was done which uh I'm not sure everyone appreciates uh Rick and Pierre very gingerly putting the capture bar on and I never did feel it and Bruce moving the arm uh within inches of the Orbiter structure to get Pierre in the proper position to do that now once we got the capture bar installed the next step we had to do was actually hard dock it the capture bar just goes up fires a couple triggers and grabs the ring on the bottom of the satellite from that point on we had to maneuver Pierre underneath the satellite to where he could take a power tool and and tighten up a bolt that would actually clamp the capture bar firmly to the satellite before it went to Grapple it uh we took the arm into places where it had never been expected to be taken before the flight and uh and it's a real credit to our training team in particular the Eva trainers and the RMS trainers that we were able to uh perform these these tasks without a whole lot of preparation before and we were properly trained to where we could go ahead and and operate throughout the entire envelope of the Orbiter and and get the task accomplished once Pierre got the capture bar installed and hard docked had to move him out of the way go went ahead and took him over to the sill of the Orbiter and dropped him off all this time Tom and Rick were the the two legs of the table holding the satellite up and that was a real concern point in mine was how good these two could stabilize a satellite for the grapple as it turns out was able to go over and grab the satellite and they held it real tight and it worked out perfect after we had it grappled and uh from that point on it was pretty much like we trained before the flight once we had it grappled Rick and Tom and and now they actually Tom could help Rick and Pierre do their anal procedures they went back and prepared the kick motor for the actual birthing of the satellite meanwhile and it looks it goes real slow here matter of fact at one point Dan said can't you move that arm any faster but that's just the way things were once things started working out well for us we wanted to speed things up and and get it done but we moved the satellite back into the hover position and went ahead and birthed it uh once Bruce got the satellite sat down on top of the motor Rick and I went to work with Tom's assistance um mating the clamps the umbilicals and the push-off springs and and that went essentially exactly the way it did in the water tank um and it was actually a big help having time out there CU he got to do a couple of foot restraint changes for us that that actually sped things up uh you can see Rick right there he's he's working with the torque wrench and finishing up torquing one of the uh the clamps on the satellite uh our Elation that having finally captured the satellite quickly turned to disappointment when we couldn't seem to get rid of it the first three attempts to deploy were unsuccessful and we were starting to think about sending somebody out in the payload Bay to cut it loose and get rid of it when the ground called up a reconfiguration of power buses and that the fourth attempt at deploy was successful inat spun out of the bay and separated from us at about 2/3 of a foot per second and it's now in geosynchronous orbit uh it's all appendages deployed solar drum deployed uh they didn't do any damage to it it seems to be working fine it's in the middle of its checkout and should be an operational communication satellite by the middle of July we did let them back in after a Time although they were asking me why dinner wasn't ready when they came in true but in actual fact none of us had eaten during those days well between the excitement of Evas and rev certainly one of the most pleasurable things about space flights looking out the window at this uh beautiful planet we call Earth and so we took quite a few still photos but I hope to share with you here in a minute here's a nice photo of a the birth of a hurricane out over the ocean you know we ended up with enough gas we determined to do one more Rond up there and so we were looking for any Target of opportunity however the ground said we didn't have quite enough to to reach the moon on to finish up the day as we uh Coast here over uh you can see Cuba in this scene uh the tip of Florida to the right the Bahamas just I think the Bahamas that area is just one of the most magnificent sites we saw up there as far as looking down on Ocean scenery Andros Island the area called the tongue of the ocean there and we'll we've got a good still photograph of this we'll talk a little bit more about later but really a beautiful planet we live on after uh three vas by the the morning of our fourth Eva we pretty much had the preparation procedures down packed and most of the crew was trained in how to do that this is a shot of uh me before I got in the suit uh using the Zer G technique of getting the uh air bubbles out of our water bottles that we carried in our suit and that water and a little food stick is all the water or food we had during the time that we were outside and really you didn't have enough time out there you were so busy to eat or drink this is a shot of the mid Deck with the extra two space suits that we had to move out of the air loock along with all the other gear for seven crewman that we uh had to Stow and keep in order during our Evas inside the uh airlock uh one of the first things I noticed was how much more room there was in there with just Kathy and not uh Rick and Pierre in there with me Bruce came in and started making suggestions that he thought he'd fit in my suit about here and this is my response to that I was quite happy to get a chance to go out after having dressed them up and send them out to play the day before I thought it was nice that I would get a turn to do that climbing this pole for the first time was actually kind of a thrill as you can see it's moving around as I'm climbing it I'm holding on very tightly with my hands and my feet but in actual fact it was very easy to do that movement was was quite easy out there the the harder part is stopping and I was moving slowly so that I wouldn't go squirting off the top when it came time to stop uh as the earth goes by below you if that's all you can see you get the Sensation that you're pitching because you're you're surround the scene is moving in front of you and and um your body's not moving but it it sort of seems that way we built half a bay of truss which was half of a cube about 14 ft on a side moving those members 14 or some as long as 25 ft was uh kind of interesting when you're only handling it from one end to make the joints the Eva joints you had to be very precise in your positioning in the strut and as it turns out it it was rather than positioning it very precisely you just sort of waited till it drifted through the right position and and uh if you were lucky you could slam it in when it was just right it was far easier to do an operation like you see here where there was one of us on each end of a strut one of the space station Freedom Assembly tasks that we were trying to accomplish up there was to be able to mate two large structures so what we did was we pulled out the nest here with the arm which is the multi-purpose experiment support structure uh Tom and Kathy went ahead and build some built some legs on this structure and then we went ahead using voice commands only try to B uh attach the legs off the mest with the structure that they built the big fixture back in the back of the payload Bay and tried to dock those together just using voice commands and this is after doing that pallet attach uh technique going ahead and uh stowing the equipment in our tool boxes we had there on the the platform the [Music] mest we also uh did a an evaluation of a crew self rescue device called our uh crew propulsion device CPD which uh is designed to be used if a crew member was become detached from space station when you didn't have an Orbiter around to come and uh rescue you it's uh a modification of the old handheld maneuvering unit we used during Gemini and Skylab days it's a nitrogen uh gas device that uh has small jets that you can use to rotate your body and to translate it turned out the rotation and translation uh worked quite well uh the problem was that that we saw rather quickly was in determining what direction you were rotating in the payload Bay and then to put that wand in the proper position to stop it our pre-flight plan was for two as Evas and on the first one Tom and I were to build the structure and on the second one Rick and Pierre were to take it down since we were cut down to only one as Eva Tom and I also had to disassemble the structure the flight crew got tired of saying they couldn't go outside hearing we couldn't go outside so Dan decided to demonstrate that we were capable of well maybe they made the right decision us outside um we we had a little stress relief here after the intense Mission and on the day before coming home we doing a little fluid dynamics here in this case with some Kool-Aid and lemonade droplets and letting them float together and mix and zero gravity and then Bruce shows the alternative method of drinking fluids in orbit um the military members of the crew a couple of them of course had to do a little close order drill while we're up there and uh this has been done before but want to point out you notice our feet are not touching the floor in this motion here and that you can move like crazy up there and you won't really translate unless you bump into anything but you can rotate uh we decided after this that the Coast Guard marches much better than the Air Force Pierre living out one of his Walter midi dreams here to uh One Day become a magician uh demonstrate a little levitation here of KT off the mid deck floor all he lacked he said was the hula hoop to to run down the length of her body to prove there are no hidden wires or strings attached but uh and KT uh after her hard Eva the day before decided to show us how she preferred to unwind on orbit after after a stress filled day really did find that kind of difficult to relax up there if you like to exercise or go run or whatever to relieve stress you just didn't didn't have that opportunity on zero gravity so this was a well spent day as we prepared for re-entry and I cleaned up the ship and got her ready to come home and did the final checkouts before entry day well as the sun quickly said in the west the mission came to an end and it was time to come home uh we got to do uh an entry during daylight which was really interesting we made a low pass on Hawaii and uh came into the Edwards complex landing on Runway 22 we still had one primary objective left and that was to test the the drag shoot after over 3 and A2 million miles uh we uh touch down and about the time the nose gear touches down you'll see the drag shoot to start out from below the horizontal tail right about now there it goes that pilot shoot the the drag shoot in a wreath condition it opens about halfway first and then uh opens full open the half opening we really didn't feel any of the opening shock but when it opened the the full way as you see it here there was a a significant tug in our shoulder harnesses and we were getting about an 8T per second squared deceleration rate uh we did that to about 100 knots at which point we started using the brakes a little bit uh and at 60 knots we detach the drag shoot and we do that so it doesn't drape down over the engine BTS that's going to be the standard procedures at 60 knots dropping it off onto the runway uh the uh roll out was completed and then as most flights you have about a half hour or so's worth of uh of powering down and then reconfiguring in the cockpit uh and then we're able to get out uh we felt pretty good about the mission that had been real interesting and challenging and uh and we're real happy uh with the way Endeavor performed it performed like a real champ which is phenomenal for the first flight of a new vehicle