Preflight Interview: Dominic Gorie

The STS-108 Crew Interviews with Dom Gorie, commander.

The STS-108 Crew Interviews with Dom Gorie, Commander of space shuttle Endeavour on this mission to the International Space Station. Dom, this mission is designated UF-1, for Utilization Flight-1; but tell me what that really means as far as the space station program goes, and, in a nutshell, what STS-108 is going to space to accomplish.

OK. UF-1 is one of those, I think, cornerstone flights that marks a transition period from the initial build of the space station to its full, fully functioning role as an orbiting laboratory and we are sort of at the turning point there where not only are we doing a crew transfer but we're bringing up science and payloads and bringing down completed science and payloads that are in work on the station. So I think from here on we could probably consider the space station as a fully functioning, commercial and technological venture that's serving its purpose as a full laboratory. Up to now, it's been in a build status, and we're going to build on it in the future but we really get to participate in both of those kind of roles where we're doing a crew transfer, we're going to do an EVA to do some repairs, but we're also doing a lot of science transfers that we're really excited about. And I think if you consider UF-1 as that pivotal flight in our history of building the station, that's probably a pretty good description of us.

This is your third space shuttle flight but your first as the Commander. Tell me what it's been like for you to have the responsibility to lead this group of people to get ready to fly this mission?

Well, I think, gosh, any time you get to fly in space, it's really an incredible event. But to be asked to be the Commander of a flight is just unbelievably rewarding. I can't imagine something that would eclipse that in your professional life; certainly in mine. Having said that, it's not that big of a challenge because the people that I've been given on this crew are so incredibly good. We had an ascent sim that we did the other day where I said I was going to simulate a heart attack or something that would make me unconscious, and they gave those, the rest of the crew an incredible array of malfunctions and failures, and they did it flawlessly-they got to orbit fine without me. So I guess I question my real role. But I think what I'm really looking forward to is to take these three folks and the Expedition crew to orbit and have a great time and complete all our tasks and do [them] the way we've been trained to, but the whole Commander assignment has just been a blessing so far, and I'm thinking it'll probably, I'll probably feel the same way after we land. It's just going great.

How did you get to be an astronaut anyway? I mean, how did you get to become a guy who was "astronaut material"?

Well, I think when you talk about "astronaut material" you look at the Astronaut Office and the range of personalities and backgrounds are so widely varied that it's hard to come up with a true definition of what "astronaut material" is. I think maybe the common thread is that everybody is very persistent and they're maybe even stubborn in their desires to get things done and accomplish goals. They do those in remarkably different ways, but in my particular case, I had this dream of flying ever since I can remember, and that meant flying airplanes like my father did. But I also remember watching guys walk on the moon when I was that same age, and there was that dream of being, and doing, that kind of thing. But I think I put it in the same perspective as maybe being a pitcher in the World Series, or in the Super Bowl: it was a far-out thing. Becoming a test pilot made that a possibility, and then I applied to NASA a couple of times, and here I am. But "astronaut material" might be a bit of a misnomer.

Back up even a couple of steps before that-chart the career path that got you to be a test pilot.

Well, I went to the Naval Academy right out of high school because I knew I wanted to fly airplanes and I thought aircraft carriers were probably the most exciting place to fly airplanes from. And I did that: I flew A-7s and F-18s for a long time, and there came a next decision point what I wanted to do, and I wanted to go fly as a test pilot and look at our newest and best technologies and fly airplanes and test those things. And once you've done that, once you've become a test pilot, then you can truly make a reasonable application to NASA because all the pilots they've ever selected have been test pilots. And NASA finally relented on the third attempt and that's how I got here.

As you look back, because I'm asking you to, over your life, do you see that there are people who were, or maybe still are, the really significant influences in your life and in your getting here?

Well, I think there's people in everybody's lives that affect them tremendously. Certainly your parents and even in your adult life, it's your family that I think allow you the, or give you the motivation and desire to be persistent and stubborn, like I said, in your achievement of goals. And if you don't have that support I don't think you're going to be able to accomplish what you want to accomplish and have a good, an enjoyable time while you do that, which I think is critical. And if you're not enjoying what you're doing in your life, no matter what you are doing, what your job role might be, you're probably not going to be very successful. And if you have a family that supports you in everything that you try to do, I think that's probably critical. And I certainly have that.

Members of a shuttle flight crew have to possess a whole range of talents to do all the jobs that are needed to do to successfully complete a mission. As Commander, tell me what will be your top jobs on this mission, and tell me what it's been like to spend a year working, studying, preparing to carry it out.

I think all the easily identifiable roles are, as a Commander are taking charge of the ascent and the rendezvous and the landing but I think it may be even more of a general nature is, as a Commander what I see my role is, is to ensure that the crew is able to compartmentalize every single task that we do and focus on them and not get distracted. Yes, the Commander has to land the shuttle and he has to fly the rendezvous, but Mark can do that also. I think my role is to ensure that when we start a task that we throw out everything that has come before it and is to follow and concentrate solely on that thing and if we can do that as a crew, every single time a new phase of the flight comes along, we're going to be successful. It may be not 100% of the time, but at least 99% of the time. And that, I think, is our, my true challenge. So far with our crew, it's been wonderful. I think our training for the last year has accomplished our ability to work together as a team; we've gone golfing together, we've gone sailing together, we've had dinners together, so I think our ability to function as a pretty much as a family will ensure that we can work nonstop for eleven days…where in a normal military environment you need to just accomplish one-hour or two-hour block for a flight that I'm familiar with, but we need to be able to work together for a long time and I think we've accomplished the goal of working together as a team and we're looking forward to getting on orbit and making it happen.

Who's the best golfer in the group?

We call Dan "Tiger," after Tiger Woods, so he, and he's probably the most avid golfer. I think he's probably got the best swing.

You and those three folks have been working for a year to prepare and have had to coordinate your training not only with the Expedition crew that you're bringing to orbit, but the Expedition crew that you're going to bring home, and of course, they're already in space. How do you deal with the challenge of trying to keep up to speed on all that needs to be done and coordinate that with people that you can't deal with face-to-face?

The challenge early on was to try to grab Frank and the Expedition 3 crew whenever they were available. They obviously are looking at a five-month spaceflight, and our small piece of that is only just a small percentage of what they try to accomplish. So to get them to join us in a couple of training events was a challenge, but our training coordinators did that and we got together with them for some deorbit prep, events we assigned them tasks for basic housekeeping when we get ready to come home, and that means setting up the seats and the escape pole and stowing all the things that we have set up on the space shuttle. And those guys were really, really good at that. Vladimir and Mikhail Tyurin were just really excited to get to know the shuttle and learn those different tasks. Once they're on orbit we have to rely on e-mail and a couple of telephone conversations to ensure that they know what to expect and if there's been any changes in our plans, but we don't expect that they're going to have any trouble at all.

In your case you completed a space station mission before, albeit to a different space station. Has the experience of preparing for that kind of a flight helped you in preparing for this one?

I think having done a rendezvous to the Mir and docking with a space station and crawling around the inside of that thing, and experiencing the different dimensions that a space station offers you has been really, really important. When we set up our crew for rendezvous tasks, for example, having been a part of one that was successful and ran very, very well, I think it was easy for me to assign similar roles and tasks and that has made it certainly easier. Just the joy and the rewarding nature of going to space and docking with some other vehicle is very, very rewarding, and having done that, that will probably take out some of the apprehension or questions about what it's like to operate the docking systems to meet another crew, to know what to expect from them and where their priorities would be and their concerns. So I think that's been pretty important to have been a part of the STS-91 flight.

In order to do all that needs to be done on UF-1, the first big hurdle after launch is to dock to the International Space Station. Give us a description of what happens on that docking day, and in the course of that tell me what you're going to be doing.

Rendezvous is another one of those really, really busy days. We wake up in the morning and we get into the rendezvous procedures and the checklists almost instantly. We set up with a couple orbital burns that adjust our trajectory, and the trajectory is designed to fly underneath the space station at six-hundred feet and then we rotate to a position that's nose high and then we back into the space station at a, about a quarter of a foot per second to start with, and it slows down to be a tenth of a foot per second at the very end. That's a very slow pace-it's about the pace of my hand moving across so it's very controllable. Everybody on the crew is assigned different tasks during that time. I probably get the most enjoyable task of just looking out the window and putting my hands on the controls and moving in for the final docking. Dan is going to be in charge of the whole rendezvous checklist; he's pretty much the master of ceremonies for that whole event. Linda's got her head out the window and she's going to be holding a handheld laser, determining our range and range rate, and she's also controlling all the cameras that give us our views that we use for the rendezvous-critical task. And Mark is flying a few of the burns from the forward cockpit, and then he takes over the rendezvous computer and offers suggestions and advice on how to make inputs for the final flight; so he is also, and he's also doing some final adjustments of our attitude for a possible fly-out if there's a slight misalignment of the two vehicles. So, everybody's fully ingrained and then we've got the Expedition 4 crew that are just going to be taking charge of the comm and the cameras.

Terry Wilcutt described a rendezvous of this sort to me once as not difficult but delicate…does that sound right to you?

I think delicate is a great term to describe a rendezvous. It's a very slow ballet of a maneuver…you're not forcing anything like you would with an F-18 that I'm used to slamming an airplane on an aircraft carrier deck, but you are just very smoothly and precisely flying this thing with very slow and controlled rates. And I think delicate's probably one of the best words you could use.

Once you've successfully completed that, the top priority becomes the exchange of the crews. Now, on the STS-102 mission, the station crewmembers moved over onto the station one at a time over several days, but this past August the Expedition 3 crewmembers all moved over on the same day. How's that going to be accomplished on your mission?

Our flight we plan on transferring all the Expedition 4 and 3 crews simultaneously. And it's usually a function of what the EVA plan is. And if we do a spacewalk out of the shuttle airlock, our safety rules require us to close the hatches and keep an entire Expedition crew on one side and the other Expedition crew on the other side. If you do an early spacewalk you need to have some handover and transfer tasks still going on at that time, so you'll probably put a mix of the two Expedition crews across the hatch so that they can have their handover discussions and demonstrations going on. In our case our EVA is planned later on in the flight, so we plan on having the whole Expedition crew handover done early so that we can have the new crew over on the space station, figuring out what their new home is all about, while we do the EVA. And that'll give them added time to get up to speed and maybe even generate some questions for when the hatches open and Frank and his crew comes back and they can answer [them] then.

So, if those three people are the top priority cargo that you're exchanging, they're by no means all of it. Along with the crew you're delivering supplies and logistics and equipment to the station, a lot of it being carried inside the Multipurpose Logistics Module, Raffaello. Tell me what it is that you'll be doing on the day after docking when you and your shuttle crewmates install the MPLM onto the Unity module.

For MPLM install day, the Commander is pretty much of a manager, which sort of means I'm not doing a whole lot-I get to watch Dan and Mark and Linda do the majority of the tasks. Linda is in charge of the robotic arm, and she's going to be lifting up the MPLM and installing it to the space station. Mark is our backup arm operator, and whenever we have a prime task with the arm we have two operators, and Mark is in that role. And Dan is going to be in charge of the Space Vision System, which is a system that tracks all these small black dots that are on the space station and the MPLM, and then a system tracks those and with computer-generated information it can tell the arm operators where those two pieces are in relation to each other and then assist them in the docking. So, I get to sit back and watch and just enjoy what those other three folks are doing that day.

Apparently given the amount of time that we have seen it take before, it's a fairly intricate maneuver…it's not just lifting this cargo carrier up and slapping it onto the station.

It is a very delicate maneuver. Any time you move a piece of equipment that size with the robotic arm we do that very slowly and deliberately, and that's why we have both Linda and Mark on that role. It positions in a couple of different areas and we evaluate the previous maneuver, and we consider what is coming up in the subsequent maneuvers. And finally when we get close, we get thirty-six inches away from docking, is when we do our final adjustments with the Space Vision System, get its determination and calculations, and if, as long as it agrees with what the arm position thinks it is, then we continue in and drive it straight on in. But again, it's a very slow and deliberate maneuver.

Have you guys gotten any advice from previous crews about how to improve this process?

The last couple of flights with the MPLM install have all gone very, very smoothly with that procedure. We certainly talked to every crew that comes back and get their suggestions on how to do that, and the last couple of flights have been fairly standardized and so we're pretty comfortable with the MPLM task. We don't have any concerns, although we're going to treat it very, very delicately. It doesn't look like it's a big hurdle for us at this time.

Once it's attached you've got four or five days in your timeline to unload the items that are coming up in the MPLM, as well as the other stuff in the shuttle middeck, and then pack Raffaello up again with things that are coming home. Describe the kinds of supplies and logistics that you're going to be delivering, as well as what sort of things you bring home.

The whole MPLM unloading and reloading task is a challenge. We've got that sandwiched on either side of the spacewalk. Linda is our transfer czar, she's in charge of the whole unloading and repacking of the MPLM. And inside that MPLM are a whole host of items that you would need on a five-month camping trip, and that's what the Expedition 4 is going up there for: they've got clothes and food and EVA equipment and parts of suits, we've got equipment for health monitoring, pieces of equipment for their exercise equipment-it's just a unbelievable range of items. There's also some science experiments in our middeck that we're transferring to the space station. But the cargo that's in the MPLM is all inert, it's not active payloads but it's everything that Dan and Carl and Yuri need to live and work up there for five months.

And the plans for the spacewalk on your mission have changed during the time that you've been training, because of changes in circumstances on orbit. First, Dom, tell me what's the current plan for EVA on STS-108, and what the circumstances are that have been driving the changes.

I guess what's interesting to note is that the station has reached a level of maturity where now we're in the mode of looking at maintenance and maybe even repairs of the space station, and that's what we're doing on this EVA. We're going to go do a slight modification to the solar array motors that we think right now are malfunctioning a little bit because of thermal transients. And we think that the thermal situation that attacks the motors in the sun and night cycles have caused them to malfunction slightly and they are having some current spikes and a little bit of sticking. And so, we're going to have Dan and Linda go out and with these thermal blankets attach them sort of like a blanket on a water heater in your home, and hopefully stabilize the thermal condition. And we'll take a look at that for two or three weeks before we consider any further action. So the thermal blankets is the big task on this flight.

Are there special safety precautions involved, given that the work is going to occur up on the top of the P6 truss at the business end of those solar arrays?

The big consideration is the power that's being generated through those solar arrays; and also the solar arrays continually track the sun in their collection of solar energy, and so we have to stop the motors in their optimum track for the duration of the EVA, and we also have to make sure that the powerdowns are set so that there's not any danger to the EVA crew. So we're going to coordinate those efforts inside the shuttle with the station, to make sure that we stop the arrays and that we've got the power in a good configuration as well.

OK, let's talk about the details. Tell me what your job is going to be inside the shuttle during this spacewalk, and then walk us through it-what are the tasks involved for Dan and Linda outside?

During the EVA what I'm doing is called the IVA, the internal vehicular activity officer. And I sort of can be equated to a choreographer, maybe between Dan and Linda's actions and the requirements that are being accomplished on the space station. Mark is going to be operating the arm, so he moves Dan and Linda from our airlock up to the station truss location, and then they translate up to the end of the P6 array, the solar array, where they do the work. And my job is just to coordinate the powerdowns, the status of the solar arrays, and also give Dan and Linda a little help if they need reminders on the next tasks and just to make sure that we're in a good configuration for tools and just if they have any questions, they come up and ask for a little help or reminder on what comes next. But this EVA is looking to be a very straightforward EVA. Dan and Linda have been in the pool hours and hours, and I don't think they're going to need much help at all from me.

Along with all that we've discussed, your flight has got some of its own science on this mission, including a satellite that's going to be deployed near the end of the mission, after you've undocked. Tell me about STARSHINE and about what it is and what your crew does to get it on its way.

The STARSHINE is one of those exciting payloads that you like to see a part of every shuttle flight. It's being funded by a small group that has sent mirrors to hundreds of schools around the world, and each school has polished a mirror to a perfect surface, and they all get sent back to the folks that are putting it together in Colorado. And they've built this about 95- or 100-pound payload that's going to be ejected out of a Get-away Special-we call it a GAS can-that's in the payload bay and we do this the day before we come home. It also has a little nitrogen thruster in this STARSHINE payload that spins it up so that the mirrors are reflecting light much better for the students on the ground to track. And the students then are able to learn about orbital mechanics and trajectories and basic physics…pretty exciting for them to see something that they've had their hands on and now can track and learn a lot of really valuable science for them. We're pretty excited about that one.

There are a number of other experiments out in GAS cans and on the Hitchhiker carrier in the payload bay. Tell me about the goals of some of those investigations and what role the shuttle crew has with them.

We've got on the order of fifty different experiments going on in our middeck, and it's, there are a whole host of active and passive payloads. Some we are involved with computer commands to initiate their actions or start up their power or power them down; others are just passive, passively running or…they're just passive for the whole duration of the mission. Some of those are plant and animal growth experiments from students and leading-edge technology organizations. We also have heat transfer devices combustion experiments, a physics just a, the whole range of experiments and, that would you expect in a payload bay all operating simultaneously. Pretty exciting stuff going on back there.

Inside the orbiter with you, this crew's responsible for tending to a couple of space station experiments that will ride up and down on Endeavour. One of [them's] testing out a piece of hardware called the Avian Development Facility; tell me about what goes on with that experiment.

The avian is sort of a proof-of-concept experiment, but it's also doing some science in it, in its own right. What it is is a pair of carousels that are about twelve inches in diameter, and each one of those carousels has on it a number of quail eggs, and those quail eggs are going to be used to study the, I guess the otolith, which is the ear system of those quails, and they're also looking at bone development. And they have obvious relationships with human bone development and maybe even otolith systems of different animals as they develop in space, which could be critical to long-duration spaceflight and if we went even beyond our own planetary system. But one of the carousels is in constant rotation as a test group so that it simulates one g, and the other carousel that is stable or in microgravity, and when we come back from the flight, after the quail eggs' development has been terminated, we can compare the control group with the microgravity group and see the differences between the bone development in each. And when this system is verified, then it's going to be a long-term rider up on the space station.

You folks are also tending to another experiment on the middeck that's a commercial package with a goal of improving the treatment for osteoporosis and bone cancer.

The CBTM module is really exciting. When we first looked at the payloads, these twenty-four mice that we're flying, we had the obvious humor that would go along with carrying those animals with us. But when we learned the really significant science that's going on with those, it put it in a whole new light. And I think when anybody thinks about osteoporosis, we all have relatives and family members that suffer from that disease, or you think about astronauts that lose a couple of percent of bone mass a month on orbit, anything that we could do to minimize the effects of that would be very, very valuable. So when we inject half of these mice with this new protein and study the effects after we get home, I think that'll be really, really exciting to see if this is a valuable tool, and maybe in some time in the future it will, it could be used to help us out on spaceflight as well as older people that suffer from osteoporosis.

It's an awful lot of stuff to do in eleven days; you guys going to have any fun?

I can't imagine going to space and not having fun. I think that's one of my goals on this flight, is to ensure that everybody on the crew has an enjoyable time, and I think that's going to be possible because we're all very comfortable with our roles and our responsibilities. But every single time you put your nose up to the window and look outside and see our incredible Earth going by, it is a joy. And I think, as well as we get along in our crew, we can't help but have an enjoyable time whether that's during a rendezvous or a landing or enjoying dinner together. It's going to be an incredibly fun time.

In the past year, Dom, about a year since the first permanent residents of the space station arrived on orbit…in the past year we've gotten to the point where we're swapping out crews and delivering supplies and doing science, all on a station that can pretty much take care of itself right now. Finally, I'd like to get your perspective on what comes next. Where do you see the, what the International Space Station program is going, what's it going to, where is it going to take us in the short term and the long term?

Well, I think in the short term, it's taking us directly into commercial utilization of space. We've got companies that are dying to get their payloads and their science and their technologies on orbit so they can use the benefits of microgravity. So we're going to become much more of a commercial venture as time goes on. We're developing technologies and experience with microgravity that are going to allow us to go beyond the space station. But I see us working and being a part of the space station for the next decade, certainly, and then I would love to see us take that information and the knowledge that we've learned and press on and get beyond our own Earth's orbit. I think that's where we will go someday; I'd like to see it happen fairly soon.