Canon EOS 5D Mark II
ƒ/2.8
16 mm
1/160
6400

It was a special treat to watch NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski (the only person to reach both outer space and the top of Mount Everest) learn the delayed feedback of ballast trimming to try to hit a target depth without overshooting.

He drew many analogies to his five trips to the space station and seven spacewalks. He replaced the CO2 scrubbers, which bore a visual similarity to Apollo 13. I had to request that they carry duct tape on every dive. =)

He told us that when their CO2 levels hit 3%, they had to end their spacewalks. We kept it well below that, but had to surface when we found a wreck on sonar but the CO2 crept to 1% with all of our heavy breathing.

He starts off tall, too tall to fly on Soyuz as he learned the hard way after learning Russian and preparing for the flight only to be disqualified the end of the process!

But on the ISS, he elongates by a full 2.5 inches as his spinal disks expand in microgravity. This came back to haunt him on his first Everest attempt, where high on the mountain, his L2/L3 disc ruptured, requiring surgical repair. He was ever the optimist. Up there, he said, there is an unlimited supply of ice for your back.

HD Video compilation.

7 responses to “Inner Space”

  1. and his emergency rescue of the ISS
    800px-Astronaut_Scott_Parazynski_repairs_a_damaged_ISS_solar_panel
    without this makeshift repair of the solar array (like stitching together window blinds), they did not want to undock the Shuttle for fear of an collision.

  2. navigating the Star Wars asteroid field of JelliesIMG_9604Driving the subIMG_9608 The four thrusters operate much like the RCS engines on a spacecraft, but with a more lag. A corner thruster can be seen top left, and the joystick is the fly-by-wire interface to the array. They can simulate failures, and so we had a side conversation of Neil Armstrong’s stuck thruster on Gemini 8.

  3. Space vehicles should have a silhouette one has to walk through before training on them. Much like an amusement park height gauge.

  4. @Toby – you’d think… But hey, that’s Russia. =)

    Just read a fun exchange from Apollo 8, the first flight around the moon. This was 2 hours before lunar orbit insertion:

    CMP Jim Lovell: "As a matter of interest, we have as yet to see the moon."
    Capcom: "Roger." [pauses to ponder this] "Apollo 8, Houston. What else are you seeing."
    LMP Bill Anders: "Nothing. It’s like being on the inside of a submarine."

    It got better. =)

    P.S. Here are a bunch of other submarine photos

  5. P.S.S. Scott surprised us with a nice letter afterward, and it still hangs on my son’s bedroom wall…steveSpace

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