A Passion for Space by Marianne J. Dyson

Author:Marianne J. Dyson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Another thing I noted was a report of a “beverage container” failure when Marion had been on shift. Marion had written “it was a bit of a mess” and “3rd beverage container that has broken in flight.” Why hadn’t anyone noted this before? Oh wait! Could they actually be talking about the fecal bags, and not want the news media to catch on?

Hmm. I wondered about this until after flight. But the transcript made it clear they’d been talking about an actual beverage container. Gordo said the failure happened near the valve, and added some comments about the chilled water actually being lukewarm.

Preparing the list of changes for the next day’s timeline was routine now. We reviewed the CAP Update a full three hours and 11 minutes prior to crew awake time.

We’d make good on our decision to not have any more 7-hour sleep periods. We cancelled or moved everything after the evening meal. I wished I could have an extra hour, too!

Then, about an hour and a half before crew wakeup, the pen plotter failed. We always printed out a “fresh” as-planned timeline for the team using this “sunken table” that took up as much floor space as a large desk. Pens were suspended above the plot area and shifted into place by computer X-Y position commands. I’d stand beside this table and watch (impatiently) as it drew each line in black ink on large sheets of thick white paper. When people talk about a process being “drawn out” this precise, but painstakingly slow pen plotter is what I think of!

Once a plot was done, we’d pull the paper out, and send it to “Repro.” The original had to be reduced to a normal 8.5 × 11-inch size that we could copy and distribute. After one page was done, we’d queue up the next plot and wait while it drew each line like a ghostly robotic sketch artist. From start to finish, it took about 30 minutes to plot each page.

Our first try to print at wakeup minus two hours had resulted in a batch of pages that were shifted like someone had bumped the table in the middle of the run—though no one had touched it. We reset and started the job over. We got about one in four pages to plot correctly. It took (whir, scratch scratch, whir, scratch scratch) f o r e v e r!

The managers who wandered in at the beginning of the day expected us to have these timelines. The controllers used them. The media used them. They were displayed under the TV camera in our support room and “broadcast” to everyone. My section chief was not happy that we didn’t have them ready. But the plotter didn’t discriminate. It ignored his pacing just as it had mine.

My handover to Marion was complete at 5:05 a.m. For once, it was still dark out when I left Building 30. When I got home, Thor was still in bed. I was extra quiet opening the door, though Jasper came to greet me.

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