“There’s got to be some more here somewhere,” I say. I look in the few places that seem most likely, then search in the computer inventory management system. I ask Houston where I should be looking. After a minute, they say we don’t have a stash of puke bags on board. We don’t include them among supplies sent up to the station because the Russians used to bring them on the Soyuz.
“We’ll improvise something,” I assure Kjell. As with everything else up here, vomit has a tendency to go everywhere, so there has to be a way for the bag to absorb it and hold it in place. It’s also nice to be able to wipe off your face, since surface tension holds liquids on your skin when they can’t drip off due to gravity.
Rooting through our supplies, I invent a new puke bag for Kjell made out of a ziplock bag lined with maxi pads. It works.
For much of what Kjell and Kimiya do on their second day, they need me floating at their elbows, talking them through the procedures, offering help in learning to maneuver in zero g. Kjell’s first task is to inventory the contents of a bag of spare parts that came up with them on their Soyuz and then stow them on ISS. On Earth, it would be a simple task—you could put the bag down on the floor, take everything out, and check off each item on a list as you put it back in. In space, as Kjell quickly learns, the moment you open the bag, objects jump out at you and start drifting away. Just getting everything back under control can take up all of the time that was allotted for the job.
Working through this together is time-consuming, but it will be worth it in the long run. I’m teaching Kjell general techniques he can use throughout his time here—for instance, the importance of putting things away in the right places. I tell Kjell he can keep the contents of a container from leaping out at him when he opens it by slowly spinning in place while holding the bag. Centrifugal force pushes the contents toward the bottom of the bag and holds them there as long as you keep spinning. Organizing the parts being inventoried is a bit trickier, but I show Kjell how to use a mesh bag to hold the objects that would otherwise be floating all over the lab and perhaps hiding themselves. Then he can move each item from the mesh bag back into the original bag as he accounts for it. For small or delicate objects, I show him how to lay out long pieces of duct tape faceup on the wall, bisected by shorter pieces facedown to hold the long one in place. Then he can stick items on the tape, keeping them from wandering off. There are patches of Velcro strategically placed on the walls, and new items often come up with Velcro dots affixed. It’s hard to express how much easier this makes life; when a certain number of new items arrive without Velcro dots, I express annoyance that probably seems out of proportion to those on the ground. But every object that arrives without Velcro on it threatens to rob me of time, patience, and ingenuity, all of which are sometimes in short supply.
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KJELL HAS a great attitude so far and seems enthusiastic about everything he approaches, even though he looks a bit pale, with dark circles under his eyes. Every once in a while, he gets a distracted look, then excuses himself to throw up. The first few days in space can make anyone cranky, but Kjell doesn’t seem to have forgotten for one second that he is living his boyhood dream, and his positive attitude is contagious.
Kjell was born in Taiwan, to a Chinese mother and a Swedish American father. They moved to the American Midwest and then to England, where Kjell spent most of his childhood. He grew up wanting to be an astronaut, and when he was only eleven he wrote to the Air Force Academy asking for an application. When he applied as a high school senior, he was admitted and did well there. His plan had been similar to mine: become a pilot, fly jets for the military, become a test pilot, then apply to NASA and fly the space shuttle.
But after Kjell finished his degree at the academy and started flight school, a flight surgeon diagnosed him with asthma, a disqualifying condition. Kjell hadn’t experienced any symptoms, but the flight surgeon’s verdict was absolute. It looked like Kjell would never get to fly military aircraft. Forging a new life plan, he became a researcher studying the cardiovascular effects of spaceflight, then earned a medical degree. He completed residencies in emergency and aerospace medicine, then earned a master’s in public health. He went to work for NASA as a flight surgeon, looking after astronauts preparing to go to space.
Some of Kjell’s new flight surgeon colleagues were surprised or even skeptical about why he had been grounded when they heard his story. He still had not experienced any symptoms of asthma, never taken asthma medication, and was an avid runner and in great health. Some of his colleagues at the Johnson Space Center pointed out to him that while he might have been disqualified from military aviation, NASA went by its own rules. They encouraged him to apply when there was a call for new astronauts, and he did. When he was examined, no trace of asthma was found. Kjell was accepted into the astronaut corps in 2009.
I met Kjell for the first time in Star City, when he was a flight surgeon and I was training for Expedition 25/26. He is sincere and enthusiastic without ever seeming fake or calculating. He is a little on the tall side for an astronaut, with a military haircut and demeanor, but with a perpetual smile. Kjell is religious but is tolerant and respectful of other people’s beliefs; he is one of the most positive people I have ever met.
Kimiya Yui has a background similar to the one Kjell thought he was going to have. He went to Japan’s military academy and joined the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. He flew the F-15 fighter jet and then became a test pilot. Like Kjell, he joined the astronaut corps in 2009, the first class to join NASA knowing they would never get to fly on the space shuttle. Kimiya is an outstanding pilot. He is also one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known. It’s difficult enough to learn the systems of the space station, the inner workings of the Soyuz, and a foreign language, all at once—Kimiya learned two foreign languages (Russian and English).