Airmen train to walk among the stars

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Matthew Rosine
  • Air Force Print News
HOUSTON (AFPN) --  There are some Airmen who train to push a 4,000 pound hunk of steel and electronics out of their way with a flick of their pinky finger.

Some Airmen train to fly at more than 17,000 mph, or roughly 5 miles per second. And some Airmen even train to "fly" without the use of any aircraft at all.

But all of these Airmen are training to be astronauts at the Johnson Space Center.

The training astronauts receive at the Johnson Space Center is intense and extensive. Astronauts train in multi-million dollar mock-ups and can train for up to two years for a single mission.

"Here we train to do things the right way every time," said Lawrence Thomas, assistant dive operations manager at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. "That is the way they train in the military.

"We have a very ridged semi-military environment," Mr. Thomas said. "We train the astronauts to do space walks (at the buoyancy lab.) Their lives are in our hands and we take this responsibility very seriously. And, I think military members acclimate faster to the NASA way of training and thinking than do their civilian counterparts."

The NBL is the world's largest indoor pool and calls the Sonny Carter Training Facility its home. The pool is over 200 feet long, 100 feet wide and 40 feet deep. It holds 6.2 million gallons of water, which are completely re-filtered every 18 hours. It took the SCTF over one month to fill the pool with water -- any faster and the city of Houston would lose water pressure.

Astronauts train in the pool to simulate zero gravity through neutral buoyancy. Neutral buoyancy is achieved in the pool when their space is "weighted" so that it does not rise or sink. The pool holds a complete mock-up of the International Space Station or any space modules astronauts need for space walks or maintenance training. They will spend about 10 hours in the NBL for every hour they will spend walking in space.

Astronauts also receive in-depth training on the modules themselves. This is particularly important to maintain mission safety.

"I think that just like the military, it becomes your culture to live in a culture of safety," said Tim Reynolds, Space Vehicle Mockup Facility control center manager. "In this business you have to if you're on the deck of a carrier or you're out on the flightline. You also have to be the same out on the launch pad or on a spacecraft on orbit. One of the main things we teach in this facility is safety classes. Safety is our No. 1 concern here -- it has to be."

The SVMF holds full-sized mockups of the space shuttle's flight deck and mid-deck. It also houses a full-sized mock-up of the space shuttle itself without its wings. It also holds different habitation modules, such as the Destiny Space Lab, so astronauts can familiarize themselves with these environments for each mission. Before an astronaut flies there first mission, they can train for more than 300 hours in these mockups.

The facility also houses other mission mock-ups such as international space modules and even the future Orion moon base module.

But, for Airmen going through training at the Johnson Space Center, it is their Air Force training that sets the foundation for their success.

"It was through the Air Force that I became a fighter pilot and a test pilot, which enabled me to meet the requirements just to become an astronaut," said Shuttle Commander Mark Polansky. The shuttle commander is in outer space on a mission to the International Space Station, as of Dec. 21. "The kinds of things we did in the test world are very applicable in space."

During his 14 years in the Air Force, he logged over 5,000 flying hours in more than 30 different aircraft before leaving active duty in 1992 to pursue his NASA career.

Pilot astronauts also train to maintain their flight status. This training is also important because they fly specially modified jets that help simulate space shuttle landing. The space shuttle requires a runway approach that is seven times steeper than commercial aircraft. These pilots will fly over 1,000 approaches before landing the space shuttle.

They also receive constant flight simulator training on the shuttle -- training that basically never ends.

"The training here is kind of open ended," said Jerry Swain Jr., the JSC flight training director facility manager. "If a mission gets pushed back, the astronauts can come back in here and run the simulator several more times before that actually launch."

During this training, the instructors throw almost every possible scenario they can at the astronauts.

"Our training is probably overkill," said Mr. Swain a retired Air Force pilot who flew two tours in Vietnam. "But, we never throw anything at the astronauts that they couldn't over come with the proper training and know-how. Sure sometimes they do something wrong, but that is why we train."

While the Air Force's role has expanded and grown over the years, the Air Force will continue to support the space mission.

"The Air Force has a number of support roles with NASA," said Michael Sarafin, mission control specialist. "Originally, the space shuttle was supposed to be a joint asset that was going to provide launch services for both the Department of Defense and NASA and that role has evolved over time."

Today the Air Force provides support for many aspects of each launch from pre-flight to post-flight operations and everything in between.

The most recent NASA mission is STS-116, is in orbit as of Dec. 21. This mission brought the newest solar panel array to the International Space Station as well as a change of crew for the ISS. The additional solar panel array will provide enough power to add the newest modules onto the space station.

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