“I’m pushing it,” she says. “It’s just not working.”
The videoconference ends abruptly when we lose comm coverage. The image on my screen is static—the larger window showing Amiko, her face drained and expressionless in the dark closet; the smaller window showing my own face, frozen around the words I was saying. We both look incredibly annoyed. What if this were to be the last time we saw each other? I stare at the two faces for a moment, then turn off my laptop. The CO2 is climbing, and I can feel the accompanying headache coming on.
A couple of hours later, when we have coverage again, I call Amiko’s cell.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m so sorry I wasted our videoconference trying to fix the speakers,” I say. “I should have just left it for later.”
“I know you don’t like to leave things undone,” she says. The warmth is back in her voice. We talk for a bit longer, then say good night.
The next day I suggest to Amiko that she could download the stereo manuals from the manufacturer website, which made it easier to fix the problem. The following week, our videoconference party goes off without a hitch.
—
STILL NO WORD from the Russians on why the Progress malfunctioned. We don’t know whether they have a good theory and just haven’t confirmed it or if they actually have no clue whatsoever. Terry, Anton, and Samantha still don’t know what their landing date will be. Every afternoon Terry floats over to the Russian segment through the dark, angled corridor of PMA-1 and into the FGB, over the tons of cargo strapped to the floor. Arriving in the open space of the service module, Terry pauses to look out the three Earth-facing windows in the floor that make the module feel like a glass-bottom boat, then asks Anton, who is always hanging halfway out of his crew quarters working on his laptop with his headset on, whether he has heard anything new about the Soyuz return. According to Terry, Anton shrugs and says no. Gennady tells us Moscow has identified a possible culprit for the Progress failure. He also tells us that our Soyuz, the one we came up here in and that Gennady will take back down with two other people in September, might have the same issue—a sobering thought that we could have been hopelessly lost. Not good news.
Since the ground was never able to get the Node 3 Seedra working again after the fire alarm, today Terry and I are working together to repair it. The experience is kind of like doing a transmission overhaul—a complicated, absorbing, detailed job—but our lives just happen to depend on this one. The other Seedra has not been operating smoothly, which puts a lot of pressure on us to make sure this one is repaired.
Dismantling the beast with Terry’s help is much better than struggling with it on my own, but it’s still unbelievable how much of a pain in the ass this thing is. The valves are positioned in places where no human hand can reach them, and we have to use four different-size wrenches, each turning a bolt only ten or twenty degrees, multiple times. It takes half an hour just to remove one bolt, and Terry tears up the back of his hand so much in the process he has to bandage it—in space, blood wells up into spheres and, if liberated, floats everywhere. We are finally able to get the Seedra out of its rack and float it to the Japanese module, where there is more room to work. Moving such a large mass is a slow and deliberate process. After a break to eat lunch, we return to finish the job. The next day, once we think we have it fixed, we return Seedra to Node 3 to reinstall it into its rack. It doesn’t fit. We try different angles, different approaches, use more or less force, jiggle it, bang into it with our shoulders. Gennady comes down to add some extra muscle. Nothing works. Terry and I examine the beast and realize that there are some washers on the bottom of it that seem to serve no other purpose than to hold it in place once it’s seated correctly. (They were probably designed to protect the Seedra from the vibration of launch.) If we remove those, I think it could shift down a bit and settle properly into place.
I call down to the ground to describe my idea about the washers, expecting to get the typical NASA answer that this will require further study and consultation with experts—days of emails, phone calls, and meetings—before they reach the conclusion that it would be an acceptable solution. NASA’s tendency toward an abundance of caution and excessive analysis is both a good thing and a bad thing. We always err on the side of doing things the way they have always been done if those things haven’t killed any astronauts or destroyed any important hardware. Yet this attitude often keeps us from trying new things that would save everyone a good deal of time and trouble. I don’t think the control center always takes into account that our time and energy are resources that can be wasted.
After a short interlude of consultations, the ground tells us to try removing the washers. Terry and I exchange a surprised look. Maybe the culture in the control center is changing; maybe the flight controllers are getting better at trusting astronauts’ judgment.
Having been given the go-ahead, I happily pry off the washers using a crowbar and a good deal of effort. Terry has to steady the Seedra in place while I pry, since in weightlessness the mass of the machine doesn’t hold it down against the force I’m applying. Terry and I now can slide the Seedra into its rack perfectly, and the thunk it makes as it slides into position is deeply satisfying. We’ll wait until tomorrow to try powering it up.
As we are putting our tools away, Terry shouts something with a childlike excitement in his voice: “Hey! Candy!”
A little piece of something edible looking is floating by. It often happens that bits of food get away from us and provide an unexpected snack for someone days later.
“Remember the mice,” I warn him, “It might not be chocolate.”
He takes a closer look at it. “Shit, it’s a used Band-Aid,” he says. He catches it and puts it in the trash. Later that night, we tell Samantha the story and she tells us that last week she ate something she thought was candy and realized only too late that it was garbage.