To be an astronaut?
Some things need to be experienced to be truly understood. In a special series, Calgarians share their stories of personal triumph, near tragedy and sheer, exhilarating thrill.
“The words don’t exist to explain everything about it, but if you force to me use a word, I would say magic. We fly about the inside of our spacecraft, getting from one module to another module with just the gentle push off the wall, the ceiling or the floor, and we fly like Superman to our destination.”
That’s how University of Calgary chancellor and former astronaut Robert Thirsk described the experience of living in the International Space Station. Thirsk has gone to space twice, in 1996 and 2009, and holds the Canadian record for most time spent in space ( 204 days).
“Six seconds before liftoff, the shuttle’s three main engines ignite and the whole shuttle stack begins to shake ... the computers check to make sure each of the engines is operating properly. At 0.3 of a second before liftoff, the solid rocket boosters ignite and at T= 0 these eight bolts ... that are holding the shuttle down to the launch pad explode and we lift off like it’s a kick in the seat of the pants.
“Lot of rattling, lot of noise, lot of vibration. I had placed an emergency procedures checklist before my face and it was moving like this ( he shakes his hand around). It was impossible to read, I don’t know why I put it there.
“After two minutes we’re 40 kilometres high ... all of the propellent in the solid rocket boosters is used up, so we jettison them and we continue the rest of the way up to orbit on the shuttle’s quieter three main engines. It’s like riding a Cadillac, very nice.
“But the G- forces start picking up and it feels like there’s three people sitting on your chest, so you actually have to work at your breathing ... You have to think about breathing in order to get the air into your lungs, and then after eight and a half minutes, we’re in space, the engines shut down, you go from three Gs to zero Gs in a microsecond.
“We release our seat harness, float up out of our seats, a lot of yelling, screaming, high fives and it’s a lot of joy. We just survived one of the more dangerous things that human beings do.”
Leaving the space station, Thirsk and his crewmates hurtled back to Earth in a Soyuz capsule.
“We undock from the space station and we do one orbit around the Earth, which is 90 minutes in our Soyuz capsule — we’re just checking all the systems to make sure that all systems are ready to do the re- entry burn.”
The crew then repositions the capsule’s obit from circular to elliptical, “and the bottom part of the ellipse now passes through the Earth’s atmosphere — and once the Earth’s atmosphere has got you, you’re coming home.
“The G- forces build up quite a bit higher than on the shuttle. Coming home in a Soyuz vehicle is like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. But a barrel that’s on fire — 2,000 C temperature. I saw molten slag going by my windows ... At about 10 kilometres altitude the parachute comes out and there’s just all this swaying beneath the parachute shrouds. The oxygen level begins to rise on the inside of the cabin, so we actually have to de- pressurize the cabin so that we don’t get into a flammability issue.
“About a metre off the ground there’s four small rocket engines on the bottom of the capsule that fire and that help to cushion the strike on the ground, but it’s still pretty dramatic and it feels like a bit of a car crash when you hit the ground.
“I sat there and I thought, ‘ It’s good to be home, I don’t feel like moving.’
“In about 20 minutes the search and rescue team were there. They opened up the hatch and then this scent of grass and flowers comes in ( sniffs). Ah, I’m home.
“Obviously, I missed my family during the six months I was away. I also missed nature as well. Living aboard a space station, you know, you’re living in kind of a sterile environment. ... I realized I’m an Earthling, I always want to come back home to Earth.”