Tim and Tim have been outside for only four hours, and they have a number of items left on their to-do list, but a water leak in a helmet always means it’s time to come back inside, now. Tim Peake will clean up the work sites as Tim Kopra heads immediately back to the airlock. We want to get them back inside quickly, but rushing increases the chances of something going wrong. So we go through the procedures methodically, one by one, so as to be sure we aren’t screwing anything up. I think of a saying I once heard that was attributed to the Navy SEALs: “Slow is efficient. Efficient is fast. Slow is fast.” When I bring them back inside, I get Kopra’s helmet off first. He seems fine, if a bit moist. Then we get Peake’s helmet off. They both look tired, but neither of them have the exhausted look that Kjell and I had after our first two spacewalks. We’d been in our suits almost twice as long.
A few days later, the Seedra in Node 3 fails again. Often when it goes down, the ground can get it up and running again, and I spend the day hoping they will be successful. I’ve been daring to hope that I could get back to Earth without having to mess with the Seedra again, so when the ground tells us that Tim Kopra and I will have to take it apart and spend a couple of days on repairs to get it working, I acknowledge it with a heavy heart.
The next day, Tim and I slide the beast out of its rack, move it to Node 2, secure it to a workbench, and take it apart. Over the course of the day, we isolate the problem. When I took this machine apart with Terry Virts, it was a multiday operation that left him bandaged and both of us tired and frustrated. Today, I’m aware from the start that the repair is going much better than it had previously. It’s still a very complicated and challenging job—just moving the five-hundred-pound mass is a hassle when it could damage a hatch seal, sensitive equipment, or a body part. But I’ve had so much experience with this machine that I can now work on it with an incredible level of confidence and efficiency. At this point, I could write a repair manual for this damn thing if I wanted to. I feel like I know it the way a cardiologist knows a human heart.
We save time by using tricks I’ve figured out on previous repairs and get the work done in a fraction of the time it took Terry and me to do it back in April. I can’t help but take some pride in that. I also can’t help but wish fervently that I will never have to take this thing apart again.
Later in the day, I’m working in the Japanese module when I come across a drink bag wedged behind a piece of equipment. I dislodge it and find it’s marked with the initials DP. No one up here has the initials DP, or has in a long time. It must have belonged to Don Pettit, who was last here in 2012. I save the bag until Don is working as capcom, then hold it up in front of the camera and ask, “Is this your drink bag?”
Don laughs at the absurdity of the situation. But he understands, as all space station astronauts do, how easily objects get lost up here. At home you would never put down a glass of water and lose it for three years, but up here, as careful as we are, it’s incredibly easy to lose your drink or anything else. There is just too much stuff, and it all floats.
A few days later, I take a great picture of the city of Houston and the Gulf Coast on a beautiful night pass. When I send it to Amiko, I use the word “home,” and I’m surprised to find that I’m starting to set my internal compass there again. I’m starting to allow myself to look forward to getting back. I hadn’t been able to indulge in these kinds of thoughts for most of the year, but now it actually feels good to yearn for home a bit, knowing I’ll be there soon.
Later in January we see through the second major botanical project on board the station. Growing lettuce back in August was relatively easy—we set up nutrient “pillows” under the grow light in the European module, watered the plants according to schedule, and watched the leaves sprout as expected for an easy harvest. Now I am growing flowering plants, zinnias, which we expect to be more difficult because the plants are more delicate and less forgiving. The sequence was set up this way on purpose—we will use what we learned from growing an easier, less demanding species to aid us in growing something more finicky. The zinnias prove to be even more difficult than we expected. They often look unhealthy, and I suspect that our communication lag between space and the ground is to blame. I take pictures of the plants and send them to scientists on Earth, who, after looking them over and consulting among themselves, send me instructions about what to do—usually “water them” or “don’t water them.” But the lag in communications means that by the time I get the instructions things have gone too far in one direction or the other. By the time I’m told not to water them, the little plants are often waterlogged and growing mold on their leaves and roots. By the time the instruction to water them reaches me, they are dehydrated and on the brink of dying. It’s frustrating to be growing a living thing up here and to watch it struggle, not to be able to take proper care of it. At one point I post a picture of one of the zinnias on social media and get back criticism of my botany skills in return. “You’re no Mark Watney,” quips one smart-ass commenter, making reference to the stranded astronaut in The Martian. Now it’s personal.
I tell the payload ops director that I want to take over deciding when to water the flowers. That might seem like a small decision, but for NASA it’s huge. Having to touch the plants and the medium they grow in with my bare hands would be a major change in protocol. The ground seems terrified that if I touch the plants and they have mold on them, the spores could infect me. The initial reaction I get is skeptical, but I’m convinced that the flowers are going to die unless I’m allowed to take care of them myself, as a gardener on Earth would do, and it’s frustrating to see all the effort and expense that went into designing and launching this experiment going to waste. Some involved with this decision doubt I will check on the plants every day, because that will take a lot more of my time and attention than simply following directions. But I finally get my way.
It’s hard to describe the feeling of watching the flowers come back from the brink of death. I’ve carried memories of the flowers I saw in the botanical gardens with my grandparents when I was a kid, and maybe because those weekends with them were a peaceful respite, I associate flowers with my grandmother and her loving manner. I think about Laurel’s violets that I kept in my office after her death. Once the zinnias are my personal project, it becomes incredibly important to me that they do well. I check on them as often as I can. One Friday I bring some of them down to the Russian segment and attach them to the table as a centerpiece.
“Scott,” Sergey says, a puzzled look on his face. “Why are you growing these flowers?”
“They’re zinnias,” I clarify.
“Why are you growing these zinnias?”
I explain that we are working toward being able to grow tomatoes one day, that this is one of the experiments we are doing to further our knowledge for long-term spaceflight. If a crew is going to go to Mars, they will want fresh food and won’t have access to resupply like we have on the space station. If we can grow lettuce, maybe we can grow zinnias. If we can grow zinnias, maybe we can grow tomatoes, and tomatoes would provide real nutritional value to Mars travelers.