|
NEEMO 7 |  | | Astronaut/Aquanaut
Mike Barratt prepares for a NEEMO 7 extravehicular activity training session. | | RELATED
LINKS | |
|
|
NEEMO
7 Journals
NEEMO
7, Mike Barratt
Day 4, Thursday, October 7, 2004
I remember
as a youngster reading Jacques Cousteau's book, "The Silent World,"
and wanting to learn to dive as soon as I could. Until today, our
reef training had indeed been fairly silent, broken only by a few
bubbles from our own exhalations. All that changed with the addition
of comm masks to our technical diving rigs. These are elegantly
functional super-masks that envelope your head and allow you to
talk freely without a regulator mouthpiece. Learning to use these
units provided one of the more comical moments of our training thus
far. The external battery and transducer pack must be wet to operate;
as such, we gathered around a large tub of rinse water, donned our
masks, dunked the comm boxes by their wires, and proceeded to establish
communications with each other. If you can picture four bug-eyed
aliens on their knees sipping through straws from a large communal
soup bowl, with occasional flamboyant one-handed gestures to one
another, you'd just about have it.
The sea state
was a bit heavier today, with four-to-six-foot waves making boat
launching and recovery dicey. Once in the water, it is tremendously
fun to ride the waves at eye level, although checking one another's
rig is definitely more challenging. Usually when the thumbs-down
sign is given for descent you really do enter a suddenly quiet world.
But today, the chop and slop of the surface was traded for the hum
of group single-sideband communication. For much of our work on
the mission, such communication will be necessary, and it truly
is amazing to be able to converse and discuss complex topics while
down under. But I can already foresee wanting to go back to a simpler
time of hand signals and gestures, with no thought of holding your
exhalations so that the bubble rush doesn't overpower the incoming
voice.
Our team is
coming together nicely; each one brings something unique to the
table, and we are learning where to use everyone's talents. We may
never feel 100% prepared technically, but we are so ready to go
camp in a can together.
|
