“How does it feel?”
“Awesome.” Jones moved around the air lock and checked the flexibility.
Kessler put on Jones’s gloves and connected them to the arms of the upper torso section. Jones moved his fingers.
“Will do.”
“All right. Turn around. Got to hook you up to the PLSS.” Kessler removed the Primary Life Support System, the backpack unit used to provide oxygen, pressurization, and ventilation to the pressure vessel, from a rack on the air lock wall.
Kessler strapped the PLSS on Jones’s back and then connected a few tubes to the suit. He moved to Jones’s front.
“Time for your Snoopy cap. Stand still.” Kessler put a skullcap on Jones’s head. It held a microphone and earpiece that Jones would use for communication. “And this is in case you get a little thirsty.” He inserted a small in-suit drinking bag filled with water. It had a drinking tube with a suction-actuated valve.
“Thanks, but to tell you the truth, I kinda prefer Jack Daniels.”
“You mean to tell me that you’re nervous?”
“Not really, but right now I think I’d give up my left nut for a cigarette.”
“Sorry, pal. Being here does come with some sacrifices.”
“All right, let’s crank this puppy up.”
Kessler attached the PLSS’s display panel and control unit to the front of Jones’s suit and activated the system. Cool water began to circulate around his body through the plastic tubes of the suit liner. At the same time the system began to spew oxygen for breathing and attempted to pressurize the suit.
He reached for Jones’s helmet, a rigid, one-piece hemisphere made of ultraviolet polycarbonate plastic. He locked the helmet in place, and also the gloves. Now hermetic, the suit quickly pressurized to four PSI, equivalent to roughly 34,000 feet in altitude. One of the major challenges during the design of the shuttle space suit was to make it flexible enough to allow EVA activities without extreme physical exertion. NASA had answered that challenge by stitching tucks in the shoulder, elbow, wrist, knee, and ankle areas.. This allowed Jones’s joints to flex without excessive muscle fatigue.
Kessler elevated the pressure inside Jones’s EMU to eight PSI and shut off the oxygen supply. He waited sixty seconds before reading the digital display on Jones’s chest-mounted control module, and verified that the suit’s pressure had not dropped by more than 0.2 PSI, the maximum allowable rate of leakage of a shuttle EMU. Satisfied, Kessler turned the oxygen supply back on and brought the suit’s pressure back up to air-lock pressure. He checked his watch.
“Thirty minutes to go.”
“Yep,” Jones responded as he began the final pre-breathing session before the pressure in his suit would be permanently lowered to four PSI.
Kessler grabbed the plastic oxygen mask that Jones had used and also began to breathe pure oxygen, conforming to NASA’s regulations requiring a backup astronaut to be ready for EVA in case of an emergency. Because Kessler had been too busy running dozens of diagnostic algorithms to determine the extent of the shuttle’s damage, he had failed to follow the pre-breathing rule, and now he tried to at least partially comply with it.
A half hour later Kessler removed his oxygen mask and slowly lowered the pressure of Jones’s EMU to four PSI before securing the visor assembly over Jones’s helmet. The visor provided protection against heat, light, and impact. Finally, Kessler strapped a TV camera just above the visor, positioning it along the same line as Jones’s own line of vision.
“You’re ready.”
“But you’re not. You better get your unprotected little ass back inside the crew module. I’m ready to get out there.”
“Listen. Be careful with that MMU,” Kessler said, referring to the Manned Maneuvering Unit, the fifteen-million-dollar jet-propelled backpack system designed to provide completely untethered transport for an astronaut during EVA. “It’s supposed to be much more sensitive than the one we practiced with at the WET-F pool. In there at lease we had water resistance. Up here there’s nothing to counter our movements except for the jets and-”
“Blah, blah, blah. You worry too much. Now how about you letting me go around the ship and find out what kind of shape we’re really in.”
Kessler pounded lightly on Jones’s shoulder. “Careful, this is the real thing, man. Later.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Kessler shook his head and went through the D-shaped opening and into the mid-deck compartment, closed the aluminum-alloy hatch, and locked it in place. He pushed himself up through one of the openings connecting the flight deck to the mid-deck compartment, floated into the flight deck, and stood in front of the aft control panel.
He brought his left hand down to the bottom left section of panel 13L and flipped the switch to deploy the Ku-band antenna system. The servomotors of the seven-foot-long antenna, gimbal-mounted on the starboard side of the payload bay, responded to Kessler’s command by deploying the antenna until it formed a sixty-seven-degree angle with the orbiter’s longitudinal axis, while turning the three-foot-wide parabolic dish at the end of the graphite-epoxy structure toward the closest TDRSS satellite in geosynchronous orbit.
Kessler nodded as he saw the Ku antenna’s talkback indicator light confirming deployment. Lightning now had Ku-band communications capability with Houston through the TDRSS-White Sands Ground Terminal link. The Ku-band system could handle much higher quantities of audio, video, and telemetry data than the S-band system.
Kessler reached the UHF-mode control knob on Overhead Panel 06. He turned the knob to the EVA setting and flipped one of three UHF switches above the knob to select a frequency of 259.7 Mhz, linking Jones, Lightning, and Houston for audio communications.
“How are you doing, CJ?”
“All systems appear nominal. Getting ready for EVA.”
“Hold on. Let’s check your video signal.”
“Camera’s on,” responded Jones.
Kessler moved over to an array of switches and talk-back lights controlling Lightning’s five payload bay cameras and the two cameras mounted on the Remote Manipulator Arm. He turned on the keel/EVA switch, disabling all video inputs except for the one coming from Jones’s camera. Kessler glanced at the two black-and-white TV monitors on the adjacent panel. The ten-by-seven-inch monitors were arranged one over the other. Kessler activated the top one.
“I’m receiving a good clear image from Jones’s camera, Houston. Do you see it?”
“Roger, Lightning. The image is crystal clear.”
“Copy, Houston. Go easy, CJ. Remember to stay clipped to something until you reach an MMU.”
“Relax, Mike.”
“Lightning, Houston here. Listen to Kessler, Jones. Go extremely easy, particularly because it’s your first spacewalk.”
“Ah, roger. Well, here I go… Oh, man! This is terrific. What a feeling!”
“Now, close the hatch behind you and be careful,” Kessler said. “Go directly to the MMU and strap yourself in.” Kessler watched Jones through the aft view windows. Jones gracefully floated toward one of two Manned Maneuvering Units, briefly inspecting it before backing himself against it.
“Strapping in… there! all right, let’s turn this puppy on.”
Kessler watched Jones reach with his left hand for the on/off switch located on the MMU’s right-hand side, over Jones’s shoulder. He saw the indicator lights come on. The MMU appeared to be in working condition.