But lots of time was spent like any other busy business traveler - waiting at airport gates for a flight. Here the crew waits at Houston's Hobby airport for a flight to Cleveland, Ohio for training on the combustion module experiments. As usual Dave has his camcorder running.
The most intense training are the "Joint Integrated Simulations" (JIS - pronounced 'gis') where Mission Control, the astronauts, and others participate in intense realistic simulations. The training team creates problems for the astronauts, mission control, scientists, and others participants to solve. Kalpana Chawla talked about an amusing event.
KC described another event with Ilan during a JIS - "In one of our sims there's a bicycle where you're supposed to exercise and some data measurements are taken. In our simulator we do not have the real bike. Somebody for fun brought a kid's tricycle and Ilan was there sitting on this tricycle with some of the [experiment] gear on his nose and face - he was just following the procedures, simulating it. I just find that extremely impressive as a person."
The Shuttle Motion Based Simulator is a sophisticated flight simulator, similar to ones used to train commercial and military pilots. The shuttle version can tip over its cabin 90 degrees for launch simulations.
After the STS-89 landing Mike Anderson told author Philip Chien how well the simulator recreates the sensations inside the shuttle's cockpit.
Much of an astronaut's training is classroom lectures on the shuttle's systems, how to live in space, operate payloads and every other aspect of the mission.
In the left image crew trainer David Pogue briefs the crew.
And a lot of preparing for a mission is just normal office paperwork.
The astronauts learn how to use still cameras and camcorders. Some, like Dave Brown, are already enthusiastic shutterbugs or wanna-be Steve Spielbergs, others have very little experience with cameras.
A definitive shot of Dave Brown - camcorder in hand. Brown's inside the Spacehab module wearing a clean room smock and shower cap.
Just in case there was a problem with Spacehab the astronauts learned how to open up the floorboards and access the equipment underneath and perform repairs. This training turned out to be extremely useful when there was a leak in the humidity removal system (seen here in a photo taken during training) and the crew had to mop up the water which had leaked.
One of the least glamorous parts of astronaut training is how to use the shuttle's sophisticated toilet.
Spacewalk training - just in case
No spacewalk was planned for STS-107. However two astronauts are training on each mission just in case an emergency spacewalk is necessary. The tasks they train for include manually closing the payload bay doors, manually folding in the Ku-Band antenna or if necessary ejecting it overboard, and an extremely risky technique to reach the bottom of the shuttle to manually close the umbilical doors.Mike Anderson and Dave Brown were selected as the emergency spacewalkers. Typically the astronauts get about 40 hours of training including time in a vacuum chamber to learn how the gloves and suit feel like when there isn't pressure on the other side, and underwater when their spacesuits are carefully weighted so they don't sink or rise.
Technicians assist Dave Brown inside a mockup of the shuttle's airlock. |
Dave Brown adjusts his headset inside the vacuum chamber. |
Dave Brown enters the vacuum chamber. |
SMS and WCS photos by the author.
Astronauts waiting in airport, Dave with camcorder, and office photos courtesy of the Brown family.
Other photos by NASA.
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