For a rocket scientist, you are a real problem. You are the most problematic machine you can ever deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your weak memory, your complex structure. You are unpredictable. Fickle. You need weeks to get in shape. You have to worry about enough water, oxygen, food you'll need in space, how much extra fuel you'll need to cook shrimp for dinner or heat up beef pancakes. Whereas the photocell or engine nozzle is permanent and unassuming. They don't emit waste, they don't panic, and they don't fall in love with the crew leader. They don't have an ego. They are not hindered by the absence of gravity, and they do just fine without sleep.
But, in my opinion, you are the best thing that could happen to rocket engineering. Man is a mechanism that makes the whole process of conquering the cosmos infinitely intriguing. To find an organism whose every cell strives to survive and thrive in a world of oxygen, gravity and water, to place this organism in the void of space for a month or a year - what could be more absurd and at the same time more exciting? Everything that is taken for granted on Earth must be reviewed, re-examined, verified - grown men, educated women, released into orbit by a chimpanzee in a spacesuit. Here on Earth, strange models of open space have been created. outer space: capsules that will never fly; hospital wards where they lie for months healthy people, simulating the absence of gravity; crash laboratories where corpses are thrown to Earth, simulating a splashdown.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine from NASA worked in the 9th building of the Space Research Center. Johnson. This is a building with models of lock chambers, hatches and capsules. For several days, René kept hearing an intermittent creaking sound. In the end, he decided to find out what was the matter. And this is what he saw: “Some unfortunate guy in a spacesuit is moving on a treadmill, suspended from a hefty contraption that simulates gravity on Mars. And around - great amount computers, timers, communications and a crowd of excited faces. Reading his letter, I thought that it is possible to visit space without leaving the Earth. Well, if not in real space, then in a cheap attraction from the “waking fantasy” series. Something like where I spent the last two years.
Of all the millions of pages of documents and reports on the first landing on the moon, not a single one says more (to me, according to at least) than a small paper presented at the Twenty-sixth Annual Conference of the North American Vexillology Association (vexillology is the science of flags). The report was called “Where the flag has not been before: political and technical aspects of hoisting american flag on the moon".
It all started five months before the launch of Apollo 11. The newly formed Committee on Symbols and Their Use in the First Moon Landing met to discuss the legality of planting the American flag there. According to the "Outer Space Treaty" signed by the United States, there is a ban on claims to sovereignty over celestial bodies. Was it possible to raise the flag without claiming "ownership of the moon"? A later proposed plan to use miniature flags of all countries was rejected after consideration. The flag will still be raised.
But not without the help of the NASA Technical Services Division, as it turned out. The fact is that the flag cannot fly without wind, and on the Moon there is no atmosphere as such, and therefore there is no wind. And although gravity on the Moon is six times weaker than on Earth, it is enough to half-mast the flag. For reliability, a cross beam was attached to the flag pole, and a panel was sewn to the upper edge of the flag itself. Now it will already seem that the “stars and stripes” is really fluttering in the fresh breeze (the illusion created was so convincing that it caused decades of disputes and gossip about the reality of the moon landing itself). Although in reality the flag looked more like a curtain with patriotic motifs than a real symbol of the state.
But the difficulties did not end there. Where to find a place for a flagpole in a cramped, crowded lunar module bay? Engineers were tasked with creating a foldable flagpole and support panel. But there was still not enough space. Already they began to think about how to place the entire installation of the lunar flag (as the flag, flagpole and support panel were now “respectfully” called) outside the lander. But this would mean that it would have to withstand temperatures of 1100 ° C from the nearby landing stage engine, and the test showed that the flag melted already at 150 degrees. At that time, a special protective case was created from aluminium, steel and thermoflex in the Department of Structures and Mechanics.
And just as everyone began to think that the flag was finally ready, someone noticed that the astronauts, due to hermetic spacesuits, would be very constrained in their movements, including the ability to take something with their hands. Will they be able to extract the components of the flag from the case? Or will they gasp in vain with their hands in front of millions? And will they be able to open the sliding segments? There was only one way to answer these questions: to assemble a crew and conduct a series of tests to assemble the flag.
And now that day has come. The flag was carefully packaged, hoisted even more carefully onto the lunar module, and sent to the moon. And there, as is already known, the folding panel did not open to the required length, and the soil turned out to be so hard that Neil Armstrong barely managed to stick the flagpole more than 15–20 cm, so it seemed that the takeoff stage engine was simply blowing off this flag .
Welcome to space! Not that limited space, what can be seen on TV, with its triumphs and tragedies, but something in between - small funny incidents and everyday achievements. It is this truly human and sometimes simply absurd fight, and not at all heroic, full of adventure stories attracted my attention. The Apollo astronaut, who was afraid that his morning “walk” would cause him to lose the race to conquer the moon, and therefore tried to speak as much as possible in order to restrain himself. Or the memories of the world's first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin about how he walked along the red carpet in front of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, greeting a crowd of thousands, and suddenly noticed that the lace on his shoe was untied, and could not think of anything else.
At the end of the Apollo program, the astronauts gave interviews, answering wide circle questions. Here is one of them: if during the "walk" one of the astronauts dies, what will you do? "Let's drop it," the astronauts replied. And it was the right answer: any attempt to return the body of a dead comrade could endanger the lives of other crew members. Only the person on personal experience aware of the danger of boarding spaceship in a space suit, could utter those words so unambiguously. Only those who feel their insignificance in the vast universe can understand that being buried in space for an astronaut means the same as dying at sea for a sailor - this is not disrespect, it is a great honor. In orbit, things are different: meteors flicker somewhere below, and the sun rises in the middle of the night. Space exploration is, to some extent, an exploration of what it means to be human. From what exactly and for how long can we refuse? And what will it cost us?
One day, I found that moment - 40 minutes into the 88 hours of the Gemini 7 flight - that became the focus of my entire astronaut life and explained why this topic attracted me so much. Jim Lovell, an astronaut on that very ship, reports to Mission Control what he managed to capture on film: Lovely frame with full moon against the background of a black sky and stratus clouds that enveloped the Earth resting somewhere below. Seconds later, his crewmate Frank Borman reports: “Borman is throwing out the urine. Urine in about a minute."
The familiar heroes of the cosmos, whom we know from official portraits and reports, appear in this book in a completely different form. Why did the psychological selection of astronauts for a flight to Mars end in a fight, how do they train on corpses at NASA, and why do they pour soup into a spacesuit? The author gives delicate and truthful answers to all these scandalous questions, based on numerous interviews with cosmonauts and astronauts. Those who want to know what space is from the back door will find a lot of interesting information in this book.
Countdown
For a rocket scientist, you are a real problem. You are the most problematic machine you can ever deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your weak memory, your complex structure. You are unpredictable. Fickle. You need weeks to get in shape. You have to worry about enough water, oxygen, food you'll need in space, how much extra fuel you'll need to cook shrimp for dinner or heat up beef pancakes. Whereas the photocell or engine nozzle is permanent and unassuming. They don't emit waste, they don't panic, and they don't fall in love with the crew leader. They don't have an ego. They are not hindered by the absence of gravity, and they do just fine without sleep.
But, in my opinion, you are the best thing that could happen to rocket engineering. Man is a mechanism that makes the whole process of conquering the cosmos infinitely intriguing. To find an organism whose every cell strives to survive and thrive in a world of oxygen, gravity and water, to place this organism in the void of space for a month or a year - what could be more absurd and at the same time more exciting? Everything that is taken for granted on Earth must be reconsidered, re-examined, tested - grown men, well-bred women, spacesuited chimpanzees launched into orbit. Here on Earth, strange models of open space have been created: capsules that will never fly; hospital wards, where healthy people lie for months, simulating the absence of gravity; crash laboratories where corpses are thrown to Earth, simulating a splashdown.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine from NASA worked in the 9th building of the Space Research Center. Johnson. This is a building with models of lock chambers, hatches and capsules. For several days, René kept hearing an intermittent creaking sound. In the end, he decided to find out what was the matter. And this is what he saw: “Some unfortunate guy in a spacesuit is moving on a treadmill, suspended from a hefty contraption that simulates gravity on Mars. And around - a huge number of computers, timers, communications and a crowd of excited faces. Reading his letter, I thought that it is possible to visit space without leaving the Earth. Well, if not in real space, then in a cheap attraction from the “waking fantasy” series. Something like where I spent the last two years.
Of all the millions of pages of documents and reports on the first moon landing, none says more (to me, at least) than a small paper presented at the Twenty-sixth Annual Conference of the North American Vexillology Association (vexillology is the science of flags). The paper was titled "Where the Flag Hasn't Been Before: The Political and Technical Aspects of Planting the American Flag on the Moon."
It all started five months before the launch of Apollo 11. The newly formed Committee on Symbols and Their Use in the First Moon Landing met to discuss the legality of planting the American flag there. Under the United States-signed Outer Space Treaty, there is a ban on claims to sovereignty over celestial bodies. Was it possible to raise the flag without claiming "ownership of the moon"? A later proposed plan to use miniature flags of all countries was rejected after consideration. The flag will still be raised.
1. He's smart, but his birds are sloppy
Japan selects astronauts
First of all, you need to take off your shoes, as if entering a house in Japan. In exchange, you will be offered a pair of special blue vinyl slippers with the logo of the Japan space research
capital letters of the company logo are tilted forward, as if they were about to leave the ground and great speed break out into outer space. The isolation chamber, where you will be asked to put on such slippers, is an autonomous structural unit in Building C-5 of JAXA Headquarters in Tsukuba Science City. This building is supposed to be home for a week to ten finalists of the competition for the position of one of the two astronauts of the Japan Corps. A month ago, there was nothing remarkable there - a room with sleeping places separated from each other by curtains, and another ordinary room with a long dining table and chairs. But that was before. Today, five hidden cameras are located there, allowing psychiatrists, psychologists and company managers to observe applicants. And the decision as to who gets the right to wear the JAXA logo on a space suit rather than slippers will largely depend on the impression made on those observers.
the main task test data to understand who these men and women really are and whether they are suitable for life in space. Educated, goal-oriented person can easily hide negative sides your character in an interview
or a questionnaire that helps to weed out only candidates with obvious personality disorders, but continuing to hide something for a week under the scrutiny of professionals is far from easy. As one of the psychologists of the company said
Natsushiko Inoi, "it's hard to be white and fluffy all the time." The isolation chamber allows, among other things, to assess the ability of a person to work in a team, his leadership skills and behavior in conflict situations- qualities that cannot be assessed solely by the results of the interview. (NASA does not use containment chambers.)
Surveillance is conducted from the room on the floor above. Today is Wednesday, the third day of "imprisonment". Monitors sit at long tables with notepads and cups of coffee in front of a row of CCTV monitors. Now there are three of them: university psychiatrists and psychologists are staring at the screens like shoppers in a supermarket, and one of the TVs is playing some kind of talk show.
Inoi sits separately, at the control panel for cameras and sound, in front of another row of already, however, small monitors. At forty years of age, he is a highly qualified and valuable specialist in the field of cosmic psychology, although there is something in all his appearance and manner that makes one involuntarily want to reach out and pinch his cheek. Like most of the male employees of the company, he wears open-toed slippers over his socks. As an American, it's hard for me to understand all this "slipper etiquette" Japanese culture, but I think this suggests that JAXA has become another home for its employees. This week for sure: Inoi's shift starts at 6 am and ends only after 10 pm.
One of the subjects is now visible on the monitor. He takes out a stack of fairly large envelopes from a cardboard box. On each envelope is a letter from "A" to "J", which is the identification letter of the subject. The envelope contains instructions and a flat, rectangular parcel wrapped in cellophane. According to Inoi, these are materials for a pressure tolerance and accuracy test. Participants tear open envelopes and take out sheets of colored paper. “This is a test for… Sorry, I don’t know the exact word in English. Kind of like paper art."
Mary Roach
back side astronautics
With cosmic gratitude
Jay Mandel and Jill Bialosky
Countdown
For a rocket scientist, you are a real problem. You are the most problematic machine you can ever deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your weak memory, your complex structure. You are unpredictable. Fickle. You need weeks to get in shape. You have to worry about enough water, oxygen, food you'll need in space, how much extra fuel you'll need to cook shrimp for dinner or heat up beef pancakes. Whereas the photocell or engine nozzle is permanent and unassuming. They don't emit waste, they don't panic, and they don't fall in love with the crew leader. They don't have an ego. They are not hindered by the absence of gravity, and they do just fine without sleep.
But, in my opinion, you are the best thing that could happen to rocket engineering. Man is a mechanism that makes the whole process of conquering the cosmos infinitely intriguing. To find an organism whose every cell strives to survive and thrive in a world of oxygen, gravity and water, to place this organism in the void of space for a month or a year - what could be more absurd and at the same time more exciting? Everything that is taken for granted on Earth must be reconsidered, re-examined, tested - grown men, well-bred women, spacesuited chimpanzees launched into orbit. Here on Earth, strange models of open space have been created: capsules that will never fly; hospital wards, where healthy people lie for months, simulating the absence of gravity; crash laboratories where corpses are thrown to Earth, simulating a splashdown.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine from NASA worked in the 9th building of the Space Research Center. Johnson. This is a building with models of lock chambers, hatches and capsules. For several days, René kept hearing an intermittent creaking sound. In the end, he decided to find out what was the matter. And this is what he saw: “Some unfortunate guy in a spacesuit is moving on a treadmill, suspended from a hefty contraption that simulates gravity on Mars. And around - a huge number of computers, timers, communications and a crowd of excited faces. Reading his letter, I thought that it is possible to visit space without leaving the Earth. Well, if not in real space, then in a cheap attraction from the “waking fantasy” series. Something like where I spent the last two years.
Of all the millions of pages of documents and reports on the first moon landing, none says more (to me, at least) than a small paper presented at the Twenty-sixth Annual Conference of the North American Vexillology Association (vexillology is the science of flags). The paper was titled "Where the Flag Hasn't Been Before: The Political and Technical Aspects of Planting the American Flag on the Moon."
It all started five months before the launch of Apollo 11. The newly formed Committee on Symbols and Their Use in the First Moon Landing met to discuss the legality of planting the American flag there. Under the United States-signed Outer Space Treaty, there is a ban on claims to sovereignty over celestial bodies. Was it possible to raise the flag without claiming "ownership of the moon"? A later proposed plan to use miniature flags of all countries was rejected after consideration. The flag will still be raised.
But not without the help of the NASA Technical Services Division, as it turned out. The fact is that the flag cannot fly without wind, and on the Moon there is no atmosphere as such, and therefore there is no wind. And although gravity on the Moon is six times weaker than on Earth, it is enough to half-mast the flag. For reliability, a cross beam was attached to the flag pole, and a panel was sewn to the upper edge of the flag itself. Now it will already seem that the “stars and stripes” is really fluttering in the fresh breeze (the illusion created was so convincing that it caused decades of disputes and gossip about the reality of the moon landing itself). Although in reality the flag looked more like a curtain with patriotic motifs than a real symbol of the state.
But the difficulties did not end there. Where to find a place for a flagpole in a cramped, crowded lunar module bay? Engineers were tasked with creating a foldable flagpole and support panel. But there was still not enough space. Already they began to think about how to place the entire installation of the lunar flag (as the flag, flagpole and support panel were now “respectfully” called) outside the lander. But this would mean that it would have to withstand temperatures of 1100 ° C from the nearby landing stage engine, and the test showed that the flag melted already at 150 degrees. At that time, a special protective case was created from aluminium, steel and thermoflex in the Department of Structures and Mechanics.
And just as everyone began to think that the flag was finally ready, someone noticed that the astronauts, due to hermetic spacesuits, would be very constrained in their movements, including the ability to take something with their hands. Will they be able to extract the components of the flag from the case? Or will they gasp in vain with their hands in front of millions? And will they be able to open the sliding segments? There was only one way to answer these questions: to assemble a crew and conduct a series of tests to assemble the flag.
And now that day has come. The flag was carefully packaged, hoisted even more carefully onto the lunar module, and sent to the moon. And there, as is already known, the folding panel did not open to the required length, and the soil turned out to be so hard that Neil Armstrong barely managed to stick the flagpole more than 15–20 cm, so it seemed that the takeoff stage engine was simply blowing off this flag .
Welcome to space! Not the limited space that you see on TV, with its triumphs and tragedies, but something in between - small funny incidents and everyday achievements. It was this truly human and sometimes simply absurd struggle, and not at all heroic, adventure-filled stories that attracted my attention. The Apollo astronaut, who was afraid that his morning “walk” would cause him to lose the race to conquer the moon, and therefore tried to speak as much as possible in order to restrain himself. Or the memories of the world's first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin about how he walked along the red carpet in front of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, greeting a crowd of thousands, and suddenly noticed that the lace on his shoe was untied, and could not think of anything else.
At the conclusion of the Apollo program, the astronauts gave interviews, answering a wide range of questions. Here is one of them: if during the "walk" one of the astronauts dies, what will you do? "Let's drop it," the astronauts replied. And it was the right answer: any attempt to return the body of a dead comrade could endanger the lives of other crew members. Only a person who, through personal experience, knew the danger of boarding a spaceship in a spacesuit, could utter these words so unambiguously. Only those who feel their insignificance in the vast universe can understand that being buried in space for an astronaut means the same as dying at sea for a sailor - this is not disrespect, it is a great honor. In orbit, things are different: meteors flicker somewhere below, and the sun rises in the middle of the night. Space exploration is, to some extent, an exploration of what it means to be human. From what exactly and for how long can we refuse? And what will it cost us?
One day, I found that moment - 40 minutes into the 88 hours of the Gemini 7 flight - that became the focus of my entire astronaut life and explained why this topic attracted me so much. Jim Lovell, the spacecraft's astronaut, reports to Mission Control what he captured on film: "A beautiful shot of a full moon against a black sky and stratus clouds enveloping the Earth at rest somewhere below." Seconds later, his crewmate Frank Borman reports: “Borman is throwing out the urine. Urine in about a minute."
And two lines later we find in Lovell: “What a sight!” We don't know what exactly Lovell was talking about, but most likely not about the Moon. According to several astronauts, one of the most beautiful scenes in space can be seen when the sun illuminates frozen droplets of liquid waste. The cosmos does not just contain everything great and funny. It blurs the boundaries of these two concepts.
1. He's smart, but his birds are sloppy
Japan selects astronauts
First of all, you need to take off your shoes, as if entering a house in Japan. In exchange, you will be offered a pair of special blue vinyl slippers with the logo of the Japan Space Exploration Agency (JAXA). The large letters of the company logo are tilted forward, as if they are about to break off the ground and break out into outer space at high speed. The isolation cell where you will be asked to put on these slippers is a self-contained structural unit in building C-5 of the JAXA headquarters in the science city of Tsukuba. This building is supposed to be home for a week to ten finalists of the competition for the position of one of the two astronauts of the Japan Corps. A month ago, there was nothing remarkable there - a room with sleeping places separated from each other by curtains, and another ordinary room with a long dining table and chairs. But that was before. Today, five hidden cameras are located there, allowing psychiatrists, psychologists and company managers to observe applicants. And the decision as to who gets the right to wear the JAXA logo on a space suit rather than slippers will largely depend on the impression made on those observers.
