To Infinity and Beyond!

In a small rural town in upstate New York, there once lived a little boy with big dreams. I didn't know that then. I was a little girl in a little world unaware a large, diverse world lay just beyond the town limit and very much within reach. But this little boy: he knew. In fact, he knew that entire galaxies and planets lay beyond that little town limit. Now, in a series of posts, I will share with you the inner secrets of the life of an astronaut orbiting the earth 16 times a day, 17,500 mph. OK, not all the secrets..... But some.
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See, this little boy who once walked on the roof of my house to scare me, rushed over at the scent of mom's cinnamon rolls baking, drove three hours to share a pizza with me when I moved to USC and knew nobody, traded me a Rolling Stone cassette for a Neil Diamond (or Kenny Rogers?) one (ha! Loser!) on a midnight ride up I-77, windows down, music blaring; this little boy, you see, grew up. And now, instead of walking down the hill to help pull Mark's bulldozer out of a snowbank before my uncle got home, he is walking along the ISS - spacewalking -- to make various emergency repairs.
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And I wonder, when he was pulling that dozer out of the snow, did he really think, "I'm gonna walk 8 hours in space someday to fix an amazing life-supporting machine much larger than this."
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The last time I saw Doug, he was sitting at my dining room table, full of animation, telling us the glorious details of his research and training to prepare for his upcoming first visit to the International Space Station (ISS) in October '07. On this trip, he would be delivering the Node 2 module "Harmony" to the ISS. This module opened up the capability for future labs to be added to the ISS. Doug, in my new grown-up little rural town in SC, was telling us of his upcoming 6.2 million mile, 15-day trip in which he'd orbit the earth 238 times. Surreal. Now, three years later, he is on his second visit to the ISS -- a 6-month visit -- and we are talking via phone and email.-
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Shortly before his visit to my house, Doug had completed training in the NASA Extreme Environments Mission Operations (NEEMO) program, a 10-day undersea mission, a great way to train for living on the ISS in outerspace. In fact, NASA has a 6.2 million gallon pool -- 202' x 102' and 40' deep --outside Houston in which the astronauts train and rehearse space walk procedures. They've found the underwater environment to closely mimic that of the microgravity environment aboard the ISS.
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On Doug's first trip to the ISS, he performed three spacewalks. On this trip, I think he also did three, one of which was record setting at 8 hours, the longest ever. The 8 hours is the actual time outside the ISS, while spacewalks in totality consume around 22 hours straight. I'm looking forward to asking Doug a little about these. Here's another photo of spacewalk rehearsal in the pool.

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The ISS is presently carrying 6 astronauts at a time, alternating in three month shifts, and they are, as the name indicates, international. Canada, Europe, Japan, and Russia are very much involved. Currently, there are three up there with three more to go up soon. The three up there consists of two Americans -- Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker -- and one Russian cosmonaut, Fyodor Yurchikhin. The next crew to go up will be US Astronaut Scott Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts. I will offer a lot more detail about life on the ISS in future posts.
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Tracy Caldwell Dyson was on the ISS for 6 months, 3 of those with Doug and she accompanied him on the spacewalks. In an interview on the NASA channel right before she left the ISS to return home, Tracy discussed her spacewalks, which were her very first ones ever.

"The cooling module (on the ISS) went down. The most significant part was how everyone came together. Each team and team member thought about their systems and how it would be impacted... there were so many problems to solve and the way it was all considered and mitigated in addition to the main job of replacing the failed part, the significant part was the teamwork required. The international aspect -- Japan, Munich, Russia, the US, -- widespread. This is what NASA does best. We have a problem and we solve it."

Caldwell Dyson returned to earth a week or so ago with two cosmonauts on the Russian Soyuz. This was her first time in space and she wasn't experienced with re-entry and landing. The process was something like this: Put on launch and re-entry suits, exit through long process in closure hatch, disembark, do a deorbit burn and rotate the Soyuz to re-enter the atmosphere. Easy peazy.
Two parts would then split off into orbit as they descend to re-entry. "I've heard it described as a train wreck," said Caldwell Dyson on an ISS Update, "followed by a car crash, followed by falling off your bike. They've trained us well for this. Our seats are molded to fit us. We strap ourselves in, brace ourselves for the soft landing jets to fire." She said she'll make sure her head is back and her tongue isn't between her teeth. Upon landing in Russia, following extraction, she would be carried like a princess to a fur chair, which she was very excited about. She'd then be carried, in her fur chair, by 4 people and given an apple, a sorely missed food item on the ISS.
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I know they landed fine, but I haven't watched it on the NASA channel yet. I am very eager to hear from Doug and ask him my own questions, as well as questions from my local school children. When asked by a Houston 9th grader how he stayed determined over all obstacles to be an astronaut, here was Doug's reply: "It's just determination and belief in yourself and your dreams. Regardless whether you're studying to be an astronaut, a teacher, or a doctor, whatever it might be, you're going to face obstacles. You can either come up with a solution or let that problem steal your dreams away from you. I don't like that second option, I'd rather look for a solution to the problem and use your resources -- your schooling, training, teachers and people around you that want to help you reach your goals."
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So hold tight, my eager reader, and I'll bring you a series of posts about life on the International Space Station. I hope to soon have live travel reports from my old friend, Commander Douglas H. Wheelock as he orbits the earth 16 times a day for 180 days or more. While Doug is flying overhead at 17,500 mph, catching a sunrise approximately every 90 minutes, he will, at some point, call me. I imagine he has great signal out there.
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Doug's Bio.
NASA ISS Info.
Doug's Twitter Account
Doug's awesome twitter photos.

My first ISS post.
My second ISS post: Change of Command
My third ISS post. To Infinity & Beyond: A Young Boy's Dream?
My fourth ISS post. ISS: Home Away From Home
My fifth ISS post. One Big Science Lab
My 2nd fifth ISS post. No Vacancy
My sixth ISS post. In Which Doug has a Screw Loose, I mean a Loose Screw
My seventh ISS post. Personal note from Doug about working with the Russians
My eighth ISS post. Doug talks about the emergency on the ISS
My ninth ISS post. Everyday Life on the ISS
My tenth ISS post. Heading Home