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This is a continuation of Monday’s Logbook about the movie “Gravity”. If you have missed it, please read L-420 Logbook first! Picking up where I left off, here are some more aspects of the movie that tend towards the fiction side of science fiction. Again, spoiler alert! 8)      Spacewalking. Spacewalks in the movie are impressive performances worth of a Cirque du Soleil show. Unfortunately that’s not very realistic. Actual spacewalking suits are very rigid and have metal joints that constrain movements: range of motion and dexterity are limited and so is one’s field of view from inside the helmet. Even with all the extra boost from a big adrenaline rush, sorry, there’s just no way you could pull off all those numbers. 9)      Airlock ops The ISS airlock that Dr. Stone breaks into is the Russian one, which is used for spacewalks on the Russian segment with the Russian suit Orlan. The airlock is beautifully rendered in amazing detail, so never mind that the blue knob turned by Dr. Stone would not initiate repressurization, that repressurization would anyway take much longer and that getting out of the EMU suit, even with help, takes quite some time. Where I really would like to set the record straight is the underwear department. The tank top and shorts that Dr. Stone is wearing are, well, quite an astonishing fashion statement as far as spacewalks go. In reality, spacewalkers wear very unfashionable, but way more protective, long-sleeved underwear and a cooling undergarment which is a mesh of about 100 meters of tiny tubes (see picture). Water is circulated in those tubes to remove heat from the body and it  which is then rejected into space via a sublimator. In the world of real spacewalks, no cooling, no party. 10)      Undocking the Soyuz. Yes, it is a bit more complicated than just pushing the ‘ON’ button and sending the undock command. You need to perform leak checks and bring a number of systems online before you can leave. The thought of just jumping into a Soyuz and go was so amusingly grotesque to me that it’s one of those moments when I burst out laughing. But, here’s a big but: thinking about it some more, I actually think you could do it. I mean, in principle you could show up in your underwear, turn on the control panel, power up the docking system and send the command to open the hooks. As long as the hatch is closed the command would be accepted and once the hooks open up the spring loaded pushers would give you some separation velocity. I guess if you were really in a hurry, why not? You better have a good plan of what to do next, though, and start turning on vital equipment as soon as you are on your way. 11)      Parachute I won’t say this too loud, but… you can actually release the parachute from the descent module while comfortably sitting inside. It’s standard procedure to release one string after landing to avoid being dragged by the wind. In case of a water landing, you release both strings to avoid being dragged underwater by the parachute weight. That said, doing an improvised spacewalk was certainly more spectacular. But keep in mind that in the actual Soyuz there is no provision whatsoever to do spacewalks and not even a hint of a handrail to translate on. I guess this scene was a tribute to earlier times of the Soviet space program. Enough for today, to be continued!

I took advantage of my unexpected free Sunday and went to see “Gravity” yesterday. For what it’s worth, I really think you should see it, if you haven’t already. A disclaimer here: my knowledge of cinematography is about equal to my knowledge of Sanskrit grammar. But I dare to say that you will inevitably be moved by the aesthetic beauty of the movie, its stunning visuals, its captivating music. I wasn’t too much sold on the storyline, but who cares? It’s a great excuse to take a trip to space and watch Earth from the orbital perspective. And to visit some of humanity’s hardware in space, from the Hubble to the International Space Station to the Soyuz spaceship, all reproduced with painstaking detail down to the labeling of the buttons on the control panel. Go the movie theater, put your 3D glasses and go take a look. Then go out, look up at the sky and think that all those things exists for real, right now, in Earth orbit. Let that thought sink in. Ok, now to what you really want to know. Yes, the hardware reproduction is amazingly accurate, but how about what actually happens? Is it realistic? (Spoiler alert) Well, sorry, no. In my opinion, not a bit. For one thing there’s a series of physical impossibilities. Flying from Hubble to ISS on a jetpack? C’mon. They are in completely different orbits: different altitudes, different orbital velocities, different planes. If it’s not your daily work, out-of-plane orbital transfers can give you a headache, they’re just not intuitive. And they take a lot, really a lot of fuel. Not stuff for a tiny jetpack. Or let’s talk about the drama moment when the brave Commander releases the hook that ties him to his crewmate: it was certainly of great emotional impact  to see him floating away under the spell of some magical force, but, ehm, in reality not much would have happened.  He would have just kept floating right there. Anyway, enough said about the physical impossibilities. Let’s talk about the things I noticed that in my opinion make no sense from the point of view of real space operations on ISS. 1)      Training. Dr. Stone said she trained six months for her flight. Well, I have trained for two years and I have one more to go. And, no, I can’t even fly a Chinese spacecraft. 2)      Tethers. During the Hubble repair scenes you see a lot of free-floating tools. In a real spacewalk, nothing is ever left untethered. And crewmembers are additionally attached by a coiling safety tether that would pull them back to structure if they came off. 3)      Jetpack flying. Crewmembers really don’t fly around using a jetpack like that. The jetpack (called SAFER) is just an extra safety measure and has just enough gas to quickly fly back to structure if one was ever to come off. 4)      Loss of communication The communication satellites, called TDRS, are geostationary satellites. They are in a 36.000 km orbit. They can’t be taken down by debris “flying around” in Low Earth Orbit. 5)      O2 in the suit running out. Actually, the first consumable that would run out would be CO2 scrubbing. Dr. Stone would have died of CO2 intoxication well before she’d run out of oxygen. 6)      Airlock hatches. In the movie Dr. Stone seems to be easily able to “break into” any Space Station that so happens to be in her same orbit by turning a convenient external handle of the airlock hatch. The hatches conveniently open to the outside and the airlocks are conveniently isolated from the rest of the Station. In reality, we don’t have external handles on hatches and we don’t keep airlocks isolated – if you open the hatch, you depressurize the whole Station. Also, hatches to vacuum open to the inside, not the outside, otherwise they wouldn’t be very safe, right? Think of all that inside pressure wanting to push them open all the time. Of course, since they open to the inside you have to depressurize the airlock first, otherwise you would have a very hard time opening them. 7)      Extra ships. On the various Stations conveniently located on her orbit, Dr. Stone also finds spaceships conveniently left behind by the Station crew. In reality, we have two Soyuz spaceships for six people of ISS. If we have to leave, we use them both. On an evacuated Space Station there would be no Soyuz left behind. OK, I’ll leave the rest for tomorrow. In the meantime, go see the movie, bring your friends and tell them all that hardware really exists up there in orbit and it’s a magnificent achievement. (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://anne.cpamoa.free.fr/blog/index.php/category/logbook-samantha GRAVITY – In theaters October 4, 2013<

Unplanned Sunday in Cologne. Due to the temporary “government shutdown” in the US, some non-critical training in Houston has been postponed to a later time, therefore I will leave later in the week. So, instead of being on a plane right now, I’m on my way to see the movie Gravity. Looking forward to that, after having heard so much about it! Also, I’ve sorted some more pictures. Here’s a set of photos of Orlan training in the Hydrolab in Star City that I hope you will enjoy: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astrosamantha/sets/72157633228799518/ You will notice that there is no jetpack attached to the Orlan suits. That’s true on orbit as well. Only NASA’s EMU suit has a jetpack, which is called SAFER. And to answer a common question of folks who have seen Gravity: no, we don’t fly around using the SAFER. It has only enough gas to fly you quickly back to structure if you were to become detached from Station. But that’s a very unlikely situation and it’s never happened before: the regular tether protocols should keep you safe and, if you were to make a mistake, in the EMU we have a safety tether that provides an additional level of protection. (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://anne.cpamoa.free.fr/blog/index.php/category/logbook-samantha

A flashback logbook today, as I am spending a weekend in Cologne and I am taking some time to sort through a mountain of photos from the past months. This is a picture from last June, when Anton, Terry and myself had our water survival training in a lake not far from Star City. The most challenging thing about water survival is the heat – in the tiny descent module, the three of us had to doff our Sokol pressure suits (that you see in photo), put on several layers of thermal clothing and a dry suit, before jumping into the water to evacuate a descent module that we simulated to be slowly leaking. In the confined space, all that changing of clothes took us over an hour and a half in which we were drenched in sweat, taking turns to rest and use the ventilation hoses to cool down. It was fine balance between working fast to get out quicker and working slowly to avoid overheating. Just in case, before the training we swallowed a wireless  sensor via which the doctor could monitor our core temperature during the exercise. It’s unlikely we’ll ever have to use these skills, but for sure it was a great exercise in team building! If you’re interested, you can find many more pictures here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astrosamantha/sets/72157634342550408/ (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://anne.cpamoa.free.fr/blog/index.php/category/logbook-samantha

Today I got to spend some time with my good old friend, Star City’s centrifuge. Except that it wasn’t turning. I really got there pretty much by chance. I was scheduled for a class in manual descent, but the control panel we train on was installed in the centrifuge cabin, because the current prime and backup crews had their manual descent exams this week. In front of me in the picture is the descent format, that shows the nominal descent curve. The curve starts on top with the moment of entry into the atmosphere and ends at the bottom with parachute deployment. The goal is to get as close as possible to the nominal point of parachute opening, but in our manual control scenarios we’re not on the curve to start with: we simulate that there is an error in the time in which we contact the atmosphere, which is typically somewhere between 40 seconds earlier to 40 seconds later. As an example, if we entered the atmosphere later than planned, we need to dive in steeper to make the parachute deployment point. That can be tricky, because a steeper trajectory means also higher Gs. I guess that’s why they make us do the exam in the centrifuge: then we feel the consequence of our control inputs! (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ (Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/ (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://anne.cpamoa.free.fr/blog/index.php/category/logbook-samantha

Today I spent a couple of hours in the Soyuz sim practicing manual rendez-vous and docking. Always nice to sit at the controls of the Soyuz and certainly very beneficial to refresh my skills a bit! In the afternoon I had a long and detailed overview of all the equipment of the Russian segment that might be used in case of an emergency: gas masks and fire extinguishers, of course, but also power switches that you might want to turn off, valves you might want to actuate, hatches you might want to close – and there are several different hatch types in the Russian segment. Actually, it seems that the crew on ISS is scheduled to do such a review tomorrow: as a basis for my class today we used a Radiogram (a Russian operational message to the crew) with tomorrow’s date! We also went through a couple of scenarios to refresh the knowledge of the procedures. As you can see in the picture, at one point we had a fire in the FGB module. Traduzione italiana a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ En español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/

I’m in there, somewhere! It takes a village to make the mold for the Soyuz seat liner, as I found out today. A couple of people were pouring liquid plaster on me, a couple more were holding me down so I stayed in good contact with the walls of the “bathtub” and someone was kindly covering my face, so I didn’t get plaster splashes on it. After a first rough mold was done, it took some iterations of adding and scraping away until I was confident that I had no hot spots and had an even contact all along my spine and, most importantly, my neck. A few more iterations in the actual Sokol spacesuit and the mold was done! The seat liner is especially important at reentry. As you know, there’s no such thing as a soft landing in the Soyuz: impact with the ground can be violent. But if the liner fits properly, it will distribute the impact load evenly and prevent injury. Oh, and yes, days like this do make it feel so real! Traduzione italiana a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ En español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/

Some more briefings today about Russian segment emergency response, in particular about the depressurization scenario. First big action: calculate how fast the pressure inside the Station is dropping and then figure out how much time you have before you need to evacuate. We call that reserve time. Second thing: make sure that it’s not your Soyuz that is leaking. At least you know that you have a safe ride home. After that: find the leak and isolate it. We have procedures that lead us through a systematic isolation of portions of the Station: every time we close a hatch we can determine on which side the leak is, until we pinpoint it to one specific module. We can then isolate it and preserve the rest of our pressurized volume. Now, as you can imagine I am not talking here about movie-style leaks with things and people being drawn out to space. The location of the leak would be quite obvious in that case and you would have different priorities anyway! After talking Station leaks in the morning, Anton and I had a leak in the engine piping during our afternoon Soyuz sim and as we performed the emergency reentry we got to fight various computer and engine failures.. The picture I’m sharing was taken another time though: that day Terry was with us as well and our crew was complete! Traduzione italiana a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ En español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/

I’d like to share some more thoughts about Orlan training. I’ve been asked if the Orlan is very different from NASA’s EMU suit. I’d say yes. For one thing it is very quick to don: as you can see in the picture, you pretty much climb into the suit, close the “door” behind you and you’re ready to pressurize and get into the water. The other big difference is that it’s pressurized at higher pressure, about 1.5 times higher. This gives you a greater margin in case of a leak, but it also reduces dexterity a bit and greater energy is required to work in a more rigid suit. As in so many other things, it’s a balance of different needs! Traduzione italiana a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ En español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/