Aaron Van Baalen

28 April 2002  

"Depress: An Emergency in Space"

(This is semi-fictional account of the depressurization of the Russian Mir space station following a collision with a resupply spacecraft in 1997.  The title also alludes to the psychological state of the crew.  My objective was to write about an actual event from the perspective of the three crewmen onboard, similar to Bainbridge's account of the Scott Expedition in The Birthday Boys.  I work on the "self vs. other" in terms of the U.S. and Russian space programs, and the different perspectives of the crewman.  I examine the crews' adaptability to the rapidly changing situation on Mir--key to their survival and their ability to save Mir.  I also address the isolation of the crew from their families, the ground, and each other.)

 

May 5, 1997. L-10.  Houston, Texas.

Thirty-six years to the day since the day Alan Shepard’s became the U.S. astronaut to fly into space.  In ten days Mike Foale and five other Americans will be thrust into orbit on STS-84.  The 84^th flight of the Shuttle fleet, and the 19^th flight of orbiting vehicle Atlantis.  In twelve day, Mike Foale would be come the fifth American to live aboard the Russian Mir space station as part of the Phase One Program.  A series of joint Shuttle-Mir flights intended to give the NASA some much needed first hand knowledge of long-duration space mission.  The last Americans knowledge of long term life in space ended with the 4^th Skylab mission in 1974.  Very little of that experience remained in NASA collective mentality.  The U.S. was in the midst of designing a new space station.  Endless political infighting and countless redesigns had left it several years away from flying.  The cash strapped Russian space program was willing to fly anyone on Mir willing to pony up hard currency.  From this, both sides saw Shutle-Mir as a synergistic program of opportunity.  A rare win-win situation for both the Russian and U.S. space programs. 

Foale was spending the last few days before his four and a half-month mission relaxing as best he could.  Mentally preparing for the challenges and adventures ahead.  He had spent most of the afternoon floating around in his backyard pool.  Casually swimming a few laps or soaking up the sun on a floating lounge chair.  His mind was replaying the countless Russian training session in Star City, and the briefings and conversations he had with the four astronauts who had preceded him on Mir.  Taking a deep breath he closed his eyes, and gently sank to the bottom of the pool.  One of the training sessions found its way into his head.  His mind immersed itself in the session and began to replay the events of the exercise.  His trainer Archady had started the session with a jolt sounding the master alarm in the Mir training mock-up.  Foale was all too familiar with the sound of the alarm, but it was especially piercing at the start of a 6:00 am training session.  Archady was two feet away and began shouting instructions that were nearly impossible to decipher over the deafening din of the alarm.  Finally, Archady silenced the alarm and began to describe the scenario – the pressure hull of Mir had been breached.  A small bolt shed from a spacecraft years before had slammed into Mir at 17,000 miles per hour.  Mir’s hull had been pierced.  The thin aluminum pressure vessel held in the simulated terran atmosphere against the hard vacuum of space.  The vehicle was under going a rapid “dp/dt”.  Engineering-eze for a change in pressure with respect to time.  A small insignificant yellow light lost in the myriad of indicators on the Mir command console was the only remaining indication that Mir was deflating like a tire with a nail in the sidewall.  Foale had been through similar scenarios countless times, and they all had come to the same final ending – crawl into the Soyuz escape capsule, close the hatch, and abandon ship.  This time the exercise was taking a different tack, things were not going according to the training script.  Foale’s ears were popping from the pressure change with a sharp cracking that resonated through his head.  His lungs were beginning to ache with the telltale signs of the first step in the process of suffocation.  His field of view began to constrict into an ever-tightening keyhole as his brain began to starve for oxygen.  Suddenly, Foale burst back to the surface of the pool and gulped fresh air to clear his lungs and head.  The background scream of East Texas cicadas echoed the sound of Mir’s master alarm.

 

25 June, 1997.  Mir Space Station.  210 nautical mile, 51.6°, circular Earth’s orbit.

Six weeks into the mission and the crew has fallen into a comfortable routine.  Life onboard Mir is a balancing act between competing priorities.  Not unlike managing any aircraft – aviate, navigate, and communicate.  The first priority is maintaining the aging vehicle system.  Several hours each day are spent in mundane activities such as cleaning filters clogged from floating debris or mopping up coolant from the aging and leaky plumbing.   Not very glamorous work, but very necessary.  The next tier in the daily list of chores is monitoring Mir’s many systems that maintain everything from the breathable atmosphere within the hull to pointing the solar arrays at the sun to generate the power that keeps Mir alive.  When the tasks of keeping the ship happy and habitable are complete, Foale spends his time in the Spektr module performing scientific experiments to gather data on the long-term affects of micro-gravity on human health.  Interspersed between Mir maintenance and science experiments, the crew finds time to maintain themselves.  Long periods of exercise are required to fight the debilitating effects of micro-gravity.  Micro gravity has relieved the crew of the need for much of their bone structure and muscular strength, and the wonderfully adaptive human biological machine has been rapidly adapting to the new environment by shedding both.  The body’s response is kept in check by exercise in an attempt to counter and minimize the adaptation process.   Although rigorous, exercise is a welcome break from the constant care and feeding of the mechanical and electrical systems of ship.  Shoe horned into all of this, the crew finds time to prepare and eat meals and talk to the ground.  Even though Mir is relatively small compared to a terrestrial laboratory, it is broken up into several modules that isolate the crew from each other.  Meals and conferences with the ground provide a welcomed chance to spend time together and provide necessary physical, mental, and social sustenance.    

I have set up shop in the Spektr Module.  My Russian crewmates where already settled on board and had claimed the small crew quarters for their personal spaces.  They suggested I “camp out” in the Spektr module.  Locating my person things with my science activities makes sense, as it makes it easier to tend to my experiments around the clock.  The downside is that it is easy to find myself sequestered for long periods of the day in Spektr.  The modular nature of Mir tends to minimize interaction with my crewmates.  I make a conscious decision to take all my meal with them in the Mir Core Module, and to participate in all the air-to-ground conferences.

Although my new home is far from plush, it is reasonable comfortable, and I’ve adapted to the Spartan conditions.  I can handle just about anything as long as I know it is finite. The few luxuries I enjoy on board are too infrequent.  Conversations with my family back home, e-mail with my family and friends, ham radio contacts, and several small windows that provide a truly miraculous view of Earth below and the constellations above.  Six weeks into the mission and the euphoric joy of living without gravity is beginning to feel almost normal.  The trade off of not having to wrestle against the relentless pull of Earth’s gravity is offset by continually having to tie things down, or risk never finding them again.  My daily routine has me in a good state of mind.  It keeps me very busy, and allows only minimal time for my mind to drift to thoughts of home.  There will be time to prepare myself for homecoming later. 

Today we are preparing for a visitor.  A Russian Progress re-supply vehicle has been parked in orbit seven kilometer above us.  When the Progress originally arrived a Mir it was filled with supplies, spare parts, fresh food, fuel, water, and care packages from home.  It provides a vital supply chain with the ground and our families below.  After being emptied of its precious cargo, it was transformed into a trashcan for the station.  Anything that was no longer needed was stuffed into the vehicle for incineration when it reenters Earth’s atmosphere.  Before commanding the vehicle on its final trip down, it provides a practice dummy to test a new manual docking system, the TORU.

We have been busy for most of the morning with the final preparations for the rendezvous and docking procedures used to bridge the small expanse of space between the Progress and Mir.  Vasily Tsibliyev, the crew commander, is copying last minute ground procedures from the TsUP, the Russian Control Center, and running though a series of checkouts with the KURS unit – the computer-automated docking system the TORU will replace.  In parallel, Aleksander Lazutkin, the flight engineer, is setting up the TORU system in the station’s command module.  The objective of today’s rendezvous is to test out the manual system.  Being the only American onboard, I am not trained in either system.  I and provide as much help as I can, and take advantage of the freedom to observe as much as possible.  There is a definite mixture of anticipation and anxiety in the actions and language of the ground and flight crew. 

Although intended to become a routine manual approach for replacing the fully automated system, Tsibliyev, has had two prior experiences with the TORU that were anything but routine.  In January of 1994, during his first mission aboard Mir, Tsibliyev had the responsibility to manually fly a departing Soyuz module around Mir to take pictures in preparation for future joint Shuttle-Mir missions.  While using the TORU system to fly the Soyuz, Tsibliyev lost control, and the Soyuz struck Mir twice before he could regain control.  Fortunately, neither vehicle was damaged, but Russian engineers were unable to explain why control of the vehicle was lost.  Three years later, with Folale’s predecessor American astronaut Jerry Linengar onboard, Tsibliyev used the TORU unit in a test of the manual docking systems, similar to today’s test.  With a Progress vehicle stationed 7 kilometers away from Mir, the TsUP sent commands to the vehicle to fire its engines to start it on a near miss course with Mir.  A video camera on the Progress should have begun beaming images of Mir when it is within 5 kilometers of Mir.  By observing the size of Mir growing in the cameras field-of-view, and using distance and speed information from the KURS system, Tsibliyev is to follow procedures to bring the Progress vehicle to a halt about one hundred meters from Mir.  When the Progress reached the 5-kilometer point, it did not begin transmitting images of Mir, and Tsibliyev’s monitor in Mir remained blank. Lazutkin and Linengar searched in vain for the inbound module through the Mir’s small windows.  With less than two minutes before reaching Mir, the Progress vehicle came into view from behind a solar array.  It is fast approaching on what appears to be a collision course with Mir.  Lazutkin and Linengar make there way to Soyuz module attached to Mir, and begin preparing it for an emergency escape by disconnecting and removing the myriad of cables and tubes that connect it with Mir.  Tsibliyev remains at the TORU console blinding attempting to steer the Progress away from Mir.  Fifteen seconds before impact, Mir’s image from the Progress camera fills the Toru display screen, and Tsibliyev realizes the vehicle will not hit the station.

Tsibliyev settles in at the Mir command station and begins to work through the length procedures to check out and prepare the KURS and TORU units.  In spite of the two past difficulties he has had with the TORU, he tries to reawaken the confidence in the unit and himself to perform today’s rendezvous and docking.  The Progress vehicle waits coldly and quietly 7 kilometers above.  Tsibliyev likens the failing of the automatic KURS systems to the disintegration of his super power homeland.  To his mind, the once the proud Soviet space program was the unquestioned ruler of manned space operations.  Mir gave them a permanent presence in space, and allowed them to be the world leader in longer duration space flight.  They didn’t waste their time with the silly little experiments like the Americans flew on the short flights of the Shuttle, they just flew, and proved what could be done in space, day in and day out onboard Mir.  They were bold explorers probing the unknown of the new frontier, not timid technicians and scientist like the Americans.  Now instead of using Mir flights as a political tool to wield Soviet global authority, they were forced to prostitute it, by flying astronauts from any country with hard currency.  Just to keep Mir limping around in orbit.  Their crumbling Soviet power was evident in the fact that the failing KURS units, once manufactured in the Soviet republic of Kiev, were no longer available from the independent country Ukraine.  This forced the Russian Space Agency (RSA) to cobble together the TORU unit to provide the crew with a means to manually dock the Progress if and when the KURS units failed.  Getting paid a “bonus” to successfully complete the manual docking was a nice perk.  God knows he and his family needed the money, but it also had the effect of cheapening the nobleness of space exploration.  Tsibliyev was drawn to space for patriotic and personal reason.  He had always be the best – from flying model airplanes as a boy, to flying MIGS against the Americans in the height of the Cod War, his confidence and his patriotism had never wavered.  But recent events had allowed doubt to find a tiny crevice in a remote corner of his mind.  Even if the problems were not his fault, but were technical problems with the docking systems, the results were the same.  He was at the helm when the problems had happened.  His career would suffer the consequence, not the docking engineers on the ground that could prove their systems worked perfectly in countless ground tests.  Anyway, they weren’t sitting in a can in space, with a half a centimeter of aluminum between their lives and the unforgiving vacuum of space.  They weren’t waiting for a ten-ton Progress to be blindly hurled at them at two and a half meters per second. 

Finally, the interminable serious of checkout procedures and coordination had been completed.  The time had arrived to test the manual rendezvous and docking procedure – the same procedure that led to a near miss three and a half months earlier.  Tsibliyev activates the Progress camera and an image of the Earth appears on the TORU display.  Mir is still too far away to readily identify at this point.  Convinced the critical display is work, he begins sending command to the Progress.  Initially there is no response to indicate the commands are successful, but after repeated attempts, the correct response is received, and all appears well.  There is now even a small blip on the display.  Mir is a small fixed spot against a background of clouds sliding across the screen.  Tsibliyev pushes a lever on the TORU to fire the Progress’s thrusters and it begins its trek back to Mir.  In seventeen minutes, the progress should be 50 meters away, and ready for Tsibliyev to perform the manual docking.  Although Tsibliyev is confident he is tracking the Progress on the monitor, Lazutkin is not so sure.  Lazutkin and Foale peer through Mirs small windows, but are unable to locate the inbound ship. Tsibliyev instructs Foale to use the laser rangerfinder to estimate the distance and speed of the Progress, but Foale is still unable to spot it.  Lazuttkin’s attempts with the rangefinder meet with the same fate. Tsibliyev and Lazuttkin confer on the relatively small size of Mir in the display.  They consider firing the thrusters to speed up the Progress, but are unsure since no one has been able to see the vehicle from the windows.  With two minutes left to go Tsibliyev fire the Porgress’s thrusters to slow the vehicle by one meter per second.  The station continues to grow on the monitor but no one is able to see the Progress from the windows. Tsibliyev brakes again.  The Progress should be about a kilometer away, and should be easily seen through the windows, but it is no where in sight.  Ninety seconds to go.  The Progress should be four hundred meters away and creeping towards the docking port, it must be very close.  Tsibliyev begins to brake again, when suddenly Lazuttkin see the Progress drift into view from its hiding place behind a solar array.  Tsibliyev cannot believe what has happen.  “Nyehtt! Nyehtt! Ya neh pahneemahyu!”, No! No! I don’t understand!  Lazuttkin is shocked that the vehicle is so close – 50 meters away moving quickly on an apparent collision course for Mir.  Tsibliyev continues to fire the Progress’s Thruster in an attempt to brake it speed.  Lazuttkin is sure it is about to collide, and tells Foale to get to the Soyuz vehicle quickly, and prepare to abandon ship.  As Foale quickly makes his way through Mir toward the Soyuz capsule, he feels a shudder through the vehicle as the two vehicles collide.  As he nears the confusion of cables running into the open hatch of the Soyuz, his ears begin to pop, and the master alarm begins to wail.  The collision had caused a hull breach, and Mir was beginning to lose its pressurized atmosphere. 

Foale and many in NASA community had never been comfortable with the way the Russian’s ran cables and hoses through the open hatch.  In an emergency, they presented an added complication to an already bad situation.  Before the hatch could be closed, each cable had to be broken at a connector, and each end of the cable had to be securely stowed to prevent it from interfering with the closure of the hatches of both the Soyuz and the Mir.  There were a lot of differences in the culture of the two space programs.  If anyone had proposed such a situation on a shuttle flight, flight managers would have quickly and solidly overruled the configuration in the paramount name of flight safety.  It seemed a bit incredible to Folae that these same managers had chosen to look the other way when it came to flying Americans onboard Mir.  With time Foale too had taken it for granted.  That was just the way that things were on Mir – "Shikata ga nai" – there is no other choice. 

Becoming partners with the Russians was meant to be a means for NASA to quickly learn how to live in space on long duration flights.  To Foale, Mir missions had evolved into something entirely different.  They had become how to live in space as a Russian cosmonaut, something entirely different that an U.S. astronaut.  The U.S. relied on technology, models, and simulations to optimize every aspect of space flight.  The Russians on the other hand, took a different approach.  They adapted and made do with whatever was available, and only develop space flight unique capabilities when nothing else would fit the bill.   Running cables through an open hatch was one of the many examples of this difference.  NASA would have spent millions to route the cables through an interface panel that would not interfere with closing a hatch.  The millions were easily justifiable in the name of safety, to protect against an event like the one unfolding on Mir now.  Any NASA manager worth his salt did not want to stand before congress explaining why the decision to save a million dollars had caused the loss of life of an astronaut or a national asset.  The Russian space program did not have the luxury of millions to spend on complex design solutions.  They were driven by economics to utilize simpler methods.  This allowed the use of simpler approaches and common sense in solving technical problems.  Common sense was not very comforting to Foale as he stared at the hatchway full of cables that stood between him and the safety of a closed hatch.

Foale climbed into the Soyuz and stuffed himself into his entry couch and began to strap himself in, waiting for his crewmates to join him.  Flight rules and training were very clear for a hull breach in a station module that cannot be sealed off – abandon ship immediately in the Soyuz craft and return home.  Home had been four and a half months away, but now, things had changed.  At first it had seemed a shame to have to cut the mission short.  After all the long hours of preparation and training – operating the Mir systems, developing a passing fluency in the Russian language, learning how to run the science experiments – nothing would be finished.  The scream of the master alarm broke through his thoughts to remind Foale that this was not a training exercise, but a real in-space emergency.  Loss of the science objects was inconsequential compared with the dangers the crew faced in escaping from the ship.  But the thoughts of home, of seeing his wife and kids kept creeping backing into his head.  A four and a half-month separation did not seem too bad when there were no options or alternative.  The collision brought an alternative, an early return home.  It felt good to be going home.  But where were the Russians?  In spite of the clear-cut flight rules, no one was joining Foale in the Soyuz.  Where his crewmates ignoring the rules and trying to save the ship?  Foale realizes that to get home, he has to stay focused on the situation at hand.  Unfastening his straps he popped his head into the Node joining the Soyuz with Mir just in time to see Lazutkin emerge from the Core Module. 

Flight engineer Sasha Lazutkin had watched the Progress gliding silently above the Mir Core Module.  From his vantage point peering through the small window in the Core Module he was certain that the Progress would strike the Spektr Module.  Mir begins to shake abruptly and Lazutkin’s worst fears came true as he watches in disbelief as the worst collision in space flight history was taking place thirty feet from his eyes.  He quickly makes his way toward the Node attaching Spektr.  As Lazutkin enters the Node he saw no obvious damage, but the popping in his ears cause his stomach to wretch as he realizes the situation was dire.  Cautiously floating into the Spektr, Lazutkin could hear the atmosphere being suck through a hole in the pressure vessel.  To save Mir he had to isolate Spektr by closing the hatch between it and the Node.  Tearing the ventilation tube in half, Lazutkin furiously begins to separate each of the eighteen cable connections back to the Node.  Upon reaching the condensate line he realizes he cannot clear it from the hatchway without a tool and he searches furious around the cluttered Node before he can locate it.  He hands the tool to Foale and instructs him to remove the tube, while Lazutkin refocuses his attention on the remaining cables.

Foale does not realize the leak is in Spektr and cannot understand why Lazutkin is trying to isolate it instead of concentrating on powering-up the Soyuz and preparing to evacuate Mir.  He realizes that if they do not stop the depressurization, they will loose Mir, but he is more concerned with saving his life than the dying vehicle.  He is worried his Russian crewmates do not share his priorities, and are prepared to go down with the ship.  Just short of trying to physical restraining Lazutkin, Foale ask why they are isolating Spekt?  Lazuktin abruptly responds that he saw Progress strike Spektr, and Foale understands the situation.  By closing the hatch between the Node and the Spektr, they can isolate the leaking Spektr from the rest of Mir.  Before they can seal it off, they have to clear the hatchway of the cables and tubes, and close the hatch.  If they can do all this in time, there is a chance they can save the vehicle and their lives.

Lazutkin has separated fifteen of the eighteen cables.  Foale has used rubber bands to bundle up the cables and keep them clear of the hatchway.  Lazutkin is unable to find a connector to allow him to separate the last three cables between the two modules.  He finds a knife and cut through a data cable from a NASA experiment inside Spektr.  He then slices through a French cable left over from an early Euro-Mir mission.  As he starts to cut through the final cable preventing the hatch from closing, he receives a sharp shock and is blinded by an explosion of sparks.  The final cable is a power cable connecting the solar arrays mounted on Spektr to the Electrical Power System of Mir.  Lazutkin does not want to cut through the cable for fear of being electrocuted.  He and Foale follow the remaining cable into the leaking Spektr Module in hope of finding its end.  Th module is a darkened confusion of loose cables and equipment and it isn’t obvious where the cable ends.  They search under cable bundles and equipment trying to find where the cable connects to the walls.  Luzutkin spots the end of the cable and jerks the cable out of the wall. 

Reentering the node, Lazutkin and Foale try to close Spektr’s hatch and seal off the leaking module from the rest of Mir.  They fight to close the hatch against the escaping atmosphere, but the pressure is too great, and does not allow them to pull the smooth hatch shut.  Inside the node there are two circular lids that were used to cover Spektr’s hatches when it was originally launched.  Lazutkin tries to free the heavier of the two lids, but it is securely tied down to the hull by six straps that will take time to unfasten or cut away.  Time that is quickly leaking through the hole in Spekt pressure shell.  Lazukin locates the lighter lid, and cuts away the two light straps securing it to the node wall.  Lazutkin and Foale maneuver the lid into position over the open hatch.  The atmosphere that has been rushing through the hatchway forces the lid into place and seals of the wounded Spektr module.  A small yellow light on the Mir command console turns off.  Mir has stopped loosing pressure.  Tsibliyev frantically communicating their situation with the TsUP and silences the master alarm.   Mir and their lives appear to be safe for the moment.

The effect of the collision begins to ripple through Mir’s systems.  The impact force has overwhelmed Mir’s Guidance, Navigation and Control system.  Unable to compensate and maintain the vehicle attitude, the Guidance system has shut down.  The effect of drifting free in space has a cascading effect on the Electrical Power system.   Unable to maintain attitude, Mir’s Solar Arrays no longer point at the Sun, and the Power system switches over to battery power to continue to operating the spacecraft.  In normal flight, the batteries are charged by the Solar Arrays when the Sun is visible, and the batteries are used to power the vehicle when it swings behind the Earth into the shadow of orbital night.  Without attitude control Mir has begun to drain its batteries before it passes into night.  As Mir passes into night the batteries become exhausted and Mir’s system shut down.  The background cacophony of pumps, motors, and fans die away, and the crew finds themselves in a wonderful but potentially deadly silence.  All of Mir’s systems have shut down.  Without fans to circulate air, the crew is concerned that they will asphyxiate in a bubble of the their own exhaled carbon dioxide.   They gather together in the Core Module to keep each other in sight, to make sure no one nods of from CO₂ poisoning. 

During the silence of the night pass, the crewmen begin to plan how to regain control of Mir.  With Mir back under control they can begin to generate power and recharge the batteries.  Crucial to saving the spacecraft.  All efforts are on recovering Mir.  Thoughts of abandoning ship have evaporated.  Foale’s mind monetarily wanders back to thoughts of home.  He looks forward to the challenge of recovering Mir, but realizes an early return home has been put off, at least for the moment.  He resigns himself to completing the rest of his mission without his personal belonging and his experiments, all trapped in the Spektr Module. 

 

Works Referenced

 

Dragonfly, NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir, Bryan Burroughs, 1998.

 

History of Shuttle-Mir, Oral Histories, C. Michael Foale (Sessions 1, 2, 3), June 16, 1998, Interviewers: Rebecca Wright, Carol Butler, Mark Davison.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/people/oral-histories/foale.pdf

 

HoustonChronicle.com , Section: Space Chronicle, 15 Years of Mir, 6/23/1998, Mir Memories, One year after crash, astronaut remembers the black silence, by Marcia Dunn.

 

Houston Chronicle, 16 February 1994, NASA astronauts prepare for Mir, By Mark Carreau.

 

Time Magazine, 1 September, 1997, VOL. 150 NO. 9, Life After Mir in Which Commander and Mrs. Tsibliyev Share a Quiet Evening on Earth, by Garry Trudeau.

 

Nation, 28 July, 1997, VOL. 150 NO. 4, A Veteran Commander as Worn Down as His Craft, by Bruce W. Nelan.

 

STS-84 Mission FAQs:

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/chron/sts-84.htm

 

STS-86 Mission FAQs:

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/chron/sts-86.htm