Chasing Space Read online

  My next trip was to a conference in Orlando that NASA cosponsored. The National Association of Minority Engineering Program Administrators (NAMEPA) focused on developing strategies to increase diversity in the engineering industry. In my presentation, “Living Your Dreams,” I showed images of young African American kids morphing into astronauts. The stories I shared included an account of Charlie Bolden’s journey to space and the top ranks of the space program.

  Charlie grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, and was a gifted student who had hopes of entering the U.S. Naval Academy. His only problem was he needed to be nominated by a member of Congress, and then senator Strom Thurmond, a staunch opponent of federal efforts to bring racial integration to the South, refused to do it. “No way are you going to get an appointment from me to go to the Naval Academy,” he said.

  Eventually, Representative William Dawson, an African American congressman from Chicago, nominated Bolden, who went on to earn a BS in electrical science. He later became a Marine Corps officer and a naval aviator who flew more than one hundred combat missions during the Vietnam War before getting a master’s degree in systems management. In 1980, he applied to become an astronaut at the urging of Ron McNair, his friend and mentor who died in the Challenger explosion, just two weeks after Bolden returned from his first shuttle mission aboard the Columbia. Four shuttle missions later, Bolden left NASA and returned to active duty with the Marine Corps. He retired in 2003, but a few years later, he returned to lead NASA as its administrator. Ironically, one of his first duties was the thankless task of overseeing the retirement of the space shuttle program.

  I hoped sharing these stories about achievers like Bolden would inspire kids to see themselves in places that hadn’t always been open to us, like the space program.

  In June, I traveled a lot farther. I was headed to Tokyo, Japan’s capital and largest city. The greater Tokyo metropolitan area consists of more than 37 million people, making it the world’s largest metropolitan area. Fortunately, I was scheduled to go to Tsukuba and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to become certified to operate a new robotic arm scientists there had developed. The flight into Tokyo was easy enough. So was the hour-plus bus ride from Tokyo to Tsukuba.

  The training was essential if I ever hoped to get into space and work the shuttle craft’s robotic arm to move payloads—the cargo, equipment, or spare parts for the space station—between the spacecraft and the station. What I learned from meeting the scientists, engineers, and space officials during the training sessions was that there are key similarities that unite us, no matter where we’re from or our cultural differences. Everyone wants the best for their children, food on the table, and a roof over their head. They desire dignity and respect. Most just want to be heard.

  I did manage to get a couple of days off for a trip back to Tokyo, where I met my friend Koichi Wakata and his family for sushi. Wakata is a Japanese engineer and astronaut who participated in four NASA space shuttle missions, a Russian Soyuz mission, and a long-duration stay on the International Space Station. The small restaurant where we had lunch stood out for the way it served the food. The dishes came out on a little conveyor belt, and you grabbed what you wanted. The unagi and yellow tail were pretty good. So was the green tea sponge cake.

  I had my big 35-millimeter SLR camera and several big lenses with me, and after lunch spent time walking around the city. Eventually I wound up near the residence of Japan’s prime minister, where his procession was about to enter. Although the police were holding visitors at a distance, enthusiastic citizens motioned for me to come closer. Seeing my big camera and lens, the security assumed I was part of the foreign media, and they let me pass the barricade to get closer to the prime minister’s entourage.

  Wakata got a good laugh out of that. I always called him “The Man” because everywhere we went people who recognized him would bow down to him as if he were royalty. At the time, the two of us were learning Russian and would say, “You’re so den’gi,” which is Russian for money. The line was from the movie Swingers. It was a little surreal to be in Japan telling each other “I’m so money” in Russian.

  I spent much of 2004 on the road, but some of my travel was devoted to pleasure, not business. The year before, while traveling with Jake, I had spotted a unique-looking vehicle at Stinson Beach near Muir Woods in northern California. It was a van with four-wheel drive and a pop-top. I looked inside and saw a fully decked-out camper, but not like the shaggin’ wagons of the 1970s with the dice and lime-green shaggy carpet. It was more reminiscent of my dad’s bread truck. On my trip back, I got on the phone with my good friend Karen and we learned more about Sportsmobile, the company that had made the van. With the company’s help, we started designing my own customized camper. I picked it up in July 2004, and Jake and I set out to explore once again.

  Our country includes an abundance of marvels and splendors, many of which are too distant or inaccessible for most Americans to witness firsthand. In some respects they compared to the wonders of the cosmos, and I was quite grateful to be able to explore them. My appetite for wandering had continued to percolate ever since my father instilled it in me long ago, and driving around the country with Jake reinforced my certainty that such tendencies were part of the national personality. During restful moments, I read from John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. Writing about his campsite neighbors, he noted, “I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation—a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.” More than forty years after Steinbeck’s trip, I could see that some of his observations still rang true.

  Among the places we visited that summer was Columbia Point in Colorado. The U.S. Department of the Interior had dedicated a 14,000-foot mountain to the fallen crew of the Columbia and renamed it after them with a commemorative plaque. We also spent time in southern Idaho, where I had lunch at a diner and was served by a waitress who had never met a black person. I enjoyed my visit, but I took care to stay away from the northwest portion of the state, which was known by the locals for its white supremacist group activities.

  My work for the space program picked up again in the fall of 2004. In October, I flew to Brussels for a conference put on by Astronaut Frank De Winne, who would command the International Space Station on my last shuttle flight. Frank was very passionate about education and had been given resources to start a program in Belgium about space education. The topic of the conference was Space Serving Education. I had made an impression with the work done with the Educator Astronaut Program, so I had been invited to share the results of our efforts. I even got the chance to speak before the Belgian Senate, sharing my experiences serving as an astronaut educator.

  By January 2005, my fellow astronaut John Herrington and I were in Alaska. We met with teachers and education officials in a few remote villages. Ours was a goodwill endeavor under the auspices of the Educator Astronaut Program (EAP) and another program called Explorer Schools to promote interaction with students and teachers. Much has been discussed about the immense distances astronauts travel in space, but we often cover a surprising amount of ground while carrying out less glamorous but important missions on Earth. And those bring their own rewards, such as getting to meet people all over the world, including children who may be so inspired that they will someday follow in our footsteps.

  • • •

  By summer, instead of palling around the great American Southwest with Jake, I began kayak training conducted by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) at its site in Palmer, Alaska, with fellow astronauts Jim Halsell, TJ Creamer, Paolo Nespoli, Terry Virts, and Robert Thirsk. Our instructors were Andy and Chris with NOLS Pro. After packing our gear and going through orientation, we tra
veled by boat to Prince William Sound, where we were dropped off on a small tidal island near Nassau Fjord. We learned to choose a campsite and practice Leave No Trace (LNT) tactics to maintain it. Leave No Trace is a national partnership between federal land management agencies, educators, conservation groups, and private businesses to preserve the land for future generations. The tactics are important to future astronauts who must be diligent in keeping their environment inside a spacecraft as sterile as possible. The habits we learned from Leave No Trace can make the difference between life and death in space.

  The next day we learned how to enter a kayak and quickly get out of an overturned one. Kayaking long distances daily with our team challenged us all physically and was used to test our resolve under pressure. It helps trainers evaluate the behavior of astronaut candidates in harsh conditions, particularly as we may have to spend extended time in outer space. We initially did four and a half miles and camped on Nassau Fjord. We started each day with a team briefing and discussion of what we wanted from the course. In addition, we learned important maxims such as, “If the map does not agree with the ground, the map is wrong.”

  My journal from the trip includes observations about the weather and an itemized list of knowledge I wanted to gain from the experience:

  1. Mastery or at least a strong comfort level in the solo flotilla. Understand pace/fatigue factor and carrying capacity. For dog, 2-person exploring, what would be the better choice, kayak or canoe? Types, etc.

  2. Wilderness medicine

  3. Ropes & knots

  4. Navigation: celestial

  However, my favorite entry simply reads, “Taking extravagant pleasure in being alive.”

  • • •

  Later that month, I was reminded of the fragility of life and the speed with which joy can give way to desperation when Hurricane Katrina devastated most of New Orleans and huge portions of the Gulf Coast. Displaced by the storm, many people hurriedly stuffed their belongings into their cars and left the area for safer communities, including Houston. Others stayed to face the full fury of the storm. The sadness and uprooting caused by the storm’s destruction and the broken levees drove home the limitations of progress in the modern world. On the one hand, we possessed the technical savvy to create vehicles and satellites capable of reaching distant regions of the heavens. On the other, we still haven’t figured out the solutions to some very basic questions on Earth, such as how to keep every one of God’s children, safe, fed, and warm.

  Witnessing the genuine difficulties that other people experience helped distract me from my personal, far less troubling questions involving whether I would ever get to space. Getting that clearance waiver was one thing; getting assigned to a mission would be quite another. I continued to work at NASA and, as the calendar pages flew, I found myself contemplating an eventual return to Virginia.

  I thought about how nice it would be to go back there someday and start to build a little homestead. I had talked to my dad about me getting a few acres in the country to build on. That dream turned into an idea about raising kids there and educating other kids, perhaps operating a camp in which they would learn skills that incorporate art with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Art is an important part of STEAM, the educational concept to encourage youngsters to appreciate scientific and technical instruction.

  One day my dad called me and told me he had bumped into a man named Mr. Wheeler and had asked him if he knew of anyone that had any land for sale. The man replied that he did and my dad went with him to his house. The funny thing was, when my dad walked into his house, Mr. Wheeler’s wife realized she had gone to school with my father. The possibility for the transaction had been set.

  Before Thanksgiving of 2005, I flew to Lynchburg and walked the fields in Appomattox, Virginia, where the Civil War ended, and close to the land we hoped to buy. The visit to Appomattox made me realize that soldiers had probably camped out on that very farm. After my dad and I walked the land, we both liked what we saw and made an offer. I came back in July 2006 and closed the deal. It was so peaceful there. I could see huge clouds meandering in the sky, casting shadows on the serene fields. I quickly thought of Serenity and named it that, soon after closing.

  I was the proud owner of ninety acres of farmland, half wooded and the other half soybean fields that at one time were used for tobacco. Streams, fox, deer, and bear tracks were peppered all over the property. There was an old tobacco barn and a log cabin, now planked over, that was the house that Mr. Wheeler was born in. He had permitted the Bushwhackers Hunting Club to use the land, and when I purchased it, I let them cross my property to hunt. However, I determined that such activities would have to stop once I began to build, and certainly could not continue with children present. One Christmas, the club gave me tenderloin from the freshly killed deer as a token of gratitude.

  By the time I took over the land it was nearly overgrown and starting to go to seed. Mr. Marston was a farmer who lived a few miles down the road in Red House, Virginia. He cleared the land, planted soybeans, and kept the yard clear down by the old house. I had no experience with farms, but my mother grew up on one. It was only a farm because of the fields; I had no livestock to worry about. My dad would drive down every so often to walk the fields and check on everything. It gave him a sense of pride. I lived in Houston and would only get to Lynchburg on holidays, but I would find peace every time I would visit Serenity, our family farm.

  The idea behind Serenity fit my demeanor. Extreme emotions of elation or despair weren’t part of my makeup, despite my life’s unforeseen twists and turns. I had low points, of course, but often resolved them by turning to faith lessons I had been brought up to believe in. At times, I often consulted 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” Perhaps more than any other factor, living a life of faith had prepared me for that moment in June, when Kent Rominger, chief of the Astronaut Office, called to tell me I was going to space.

  The news was unexpected. It came totally out of the blue. I was in my bedroom when I got the call. Jake was sleeping on the floor.

  Kent told me I was assigned to STS-122 on the space shuttle Atlantis. Our primary mission was to transport the Columbus Laboratory and attach it to the International Space Station. It would be the first permanent European research facility in space. Stephen Frick would command the shuttle, and I would join a crew consisting of my fellow mission specialists Stan Love and Rex J. Walheim, along with Hans Schlegel and Léopold Eyharts, from the European Space Agency. Alan Poindexter was our pilot. I would have the responsibility of installing the lab once we reached the space station.

  I remember jumping up in the air and letting out a loud scream, pumping my fists in the air, and saying, “Yes!” Jake woke up and wondered what was going on, and I got down on the floor and hugged him and we started playing. I called my folks, who were very excited. Word spread through my hometown. My sister, Cathy, threw a party at the Lynchburg Public Library and the mayor gave me the key to the city. The Big Blue Crew showed up, as did my good friend Butch Jones. My old coaches, Mark Storm, Jimmy Green, and Rufus Knight, were there, too.

  • • •

  The projected launch date for STS-122 was December 2007. Our mission was to deliver the European Space Agency’s $2 billion Columbus Laboratory to the International Space Station. The space agency regarded the Columbus as its future center of activities in space and had been waiting ten years to have the twenty-three-by-fifteen-foot research laboratory installed.

  It would be my job to connect the modules. I recall walking into a meeting in September 2006 with about a dozen or so members of the European Space Agency and hearing my mission flight director introduce me. “This is Mission Specialist Leland Melvin. He is going to install the Columbus,” he said, and the room burst into applause. I felt pressure knowing that all of them had been waiting so long for this moment, and I was their guy to do the job. One of the project
leaders, a European flight controller, turned to me as I walked out of the room, and in a thick German accent, said, “Don’t screw it up.”

  Training requirements for a mission are laid out almost a year in advance, according to a precise template. The instructors all meet, check off everyone’s tasks, and indicate when they think the crew is ready. The commander and the chief of the office talk and reach an agreement. If a crew’s vehicle isn’t delayed for some reason, they are slated to go when the shuttle is ready.

  For my first flight, most of the training took place in Houston, where the fixed- and motion-based space shuttle simulators are located. The facilities also include a virtual reality lab, which allowed us to integrate robotics operations and enabled extravehicular activity astronauts to don virtual reality goggles, gloves, and portable life support systems before immersing their bodies in the virtual worlds of the space shuttle and the space station.

  In the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory we practiced robotics and extravehicular activity procedures to properly reach, feel, and move objects. The goal was to make sure what we did here under supervision could be duplicated in space. There was a submerged space shuttle, space station, and both robotic arms, which gave us the opportunity to practice ground-control approach maneuvers close to the station structure. If done wrong, these maneuvers can kill an astronaut. They can be crushed by the arm if wedged between it and the structure, or the arm can actually break the astronaut’s glass visor.

  It was important for Rex, Stan, or Hans, the spacewalkers, to give me clear calls regarding the direction and distance they wanted to travel while attached to the robotic arm. I got to a point in the training where I knew where they needed me to be to perform the task and put them in the right place to get their jobs done. They had to trust that I was looking out for all their body parts through the cameras and would actually call them if I could not see sufficient clearance. If anything looked unsafe we would say, “Stop motion,” and reassess to ensure safety. I loved flying the robotic arm, especially when I was in the zone and could put all of my training and skill to work, employing the rotational and translational hand controllers to make the arm move and dance freely in space. As lead for robotics, that’s how I briefed all participating crewmembers before every practice run. And it paid off in training and on the flight.