This morning, I showed Andy the view of the Bahamas from the Cupola. Later in the day, he comes to ask me whether the window shutters need to stay closed. At first I’m confused by his question, because I thought the shutters were open. We go to the Cupola, and it’s dark outside, a deep, deep black. I explain to him that we happen to be passing over the Pacific during orbital night with no moon and the lights outside the space station turned off for some reason.
In the morning, Gennady greets me, “Good morning, Comrade Commander,” with great affection in his voice. I’m going to miss him next week when he’s gone—he has been a great commander, and I have learned a lot from him.
Today is Friday, and because there are so many of us we eat Friday dinner in Node 1 rather than trying to cram into the snug Russian service module. Andy has brought us some corned beef and cabbage, which hits the spot; I’ve been craving a corned beef sandwich from the Carnegie Deli in New York for a long time. After we’re done eating, Andy hands each of us a Danish chocolate, an unexpected treat. When we start opening the chocolates, we find that each of them contains a message from someone we know—my chocolate has a poem from Amiko. It was a great idea of Andy’s and a really thoughtful gesture.
Football days wet grass cold skinny dips
Foot massages sweet and sour dirty lips
Soft towels home cooking little strings
Burgers and buns no more pipe dreams
Thunder rolls blind folds and fast cars
Palm scratches loamy smells distant stars
Road trips minute beers breezy nights
Real slow dances in pin-striped tights
Sunset warm sand and callipygian
Hot sauce—a lot or just a smidgen
Early morning dew and fireside chats
Enjoy your secret chocolate snack
I’ll give you something sweeter
When you come back
On Sunday we have a traditional Kazakh meal, irradiated and packaged into space-food servings: horse meat soup, cheese made of horse milk, and horse milk to drink. The horse meat is a little gamey, but I eat all of it. The cheese is really salty, which is actually a nice change from the low-sodium food we generally have. I comment that the horse milk is really sweet—as commander, I feel like as a gesture of goodwill I should try everything—and Aidyn tells me that it’s closest in taste to human breast milk. That does it for me. Now my concern is what to do with a nearly full bag of unpasteurized horse milk. I tell Aidyn I’m going to put it in the small fridge along with the condiments and some science experiments and drink it in the morning with my breakfast. When he isn’t looking, I triple-bag it and dispose of it in a spot reserved for the smelliest items.
The next day, I’m floating down to the service module to talk to the cosmonauts when I find Aidyn in the passageway between the Russian and U.S. segments, wedged into a crevice between some hardware stowed on the floor, reading a Russian car magazine. I grab him and say, “Come with me.”
I lead him down to the Cupola and show him how to open and close the window shutters.
“You’re more than welcome to come down and hang out in here anytime,” I tell him. This is a view he would only have a very limited chance to enjoy.
Unlike Aidyn, Andy is very busy. The European Space Agency has sent many science experiments with him. I feel bad for him, because he is spending most of his time on his own in the European Columbus module, which is windowless. I check in with him often to see if he needs any help, and he always seems to be doing well. When Andy isn’t working, he can often be found hanging out with us, watching TV or chatting. I encourage him to spend time looking out the window, but I get the sense he wants to be part of the crew just as much as he wants to enjoy the view. I want to say that he’s only up here for ten days, so he should be spending all of his free time with his face pressed to the window, but I don’t want to tell him what to do. On a ten-day shuttle mission, everyone would be hanging by the windows as much as possible, oohing and aahing.
As much as I enjoy having new faces up here, we definitely feel the strain of having such a full house. With NASA’s permission, Sergey sleeps in the U.S. airlock. Without asking permission from the Japanese space agency, I let Andy sleep in their module, since I don’t want him to have to spend all his time in the windowless Columbus module. Aidyn sleeps in the habitation module of the Soyuz they will be going home on.
Near the end of Andy’s ten-day stay, he remarks, “Boy, do I need a vacation.”
“You know what?” I say. “You’re complaining to the wrong guy.”
He gets it and laughs at himself.
A few days later, I give myself a flu shot, the first one administered in space. We are safe from infectious illness up here, so the shot isn’t to protect me; instead it’s part of the Twins Study comparing Mark and me. He will be injected with the same serum at the same time—in fact, he insists on injecting himself as well—and then our immunological responses will be compared. When we both tweet about our flu shots, the response is surprising. I even get retweeted by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. Just the fact that I injected myself seems to be the subject of fascination. I’m learning that sometimes it’s the more mundane aspects of life in space that capture the public’s attention the most.
On September 12, we gather to see off the short-duration crew. As always, I find it strange to say good-bye to people leaving space. The bond we form up here, a bond of shared hardship, risk, and extraordinary experiences, is powerful. Gennady has prepared the Soyuz, and the crew is suited up in the underwear that go with their Sokol suits. We set up the cameras for the ground to watch as we gather in the service module, then make conversation as we wait awkwardly for the clock to tick down. When it’s finally time for them to float through the hatch into the Soyuz, I hug each of them good-bye, especially Gennady. I tell him how much I’m going to miss him. When they are all in the Soyuz, I float in after them and joke that I’m going to stow away. “I’m done, guys. I’ve decided I’m going back with you!” Everyone laughs as I float back into the station.
We close the hatch, and a couple of hours later they are gone.
Three days later, I hit the halfway point of my mission.
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