us: after you’ve survived the thrill of a shuttle launch and snored in space for a couple of nights, your sense of perspective takes a hit, the way a near-death experience might make you care less about who’s going to win theAmerican League. And so, after taking a day to recharge their spacesuits as well as their own batteries—and to celebrate Wetherbee’s fiftieth birthday, which earned him some ribbing from the ground—Herrington and Lopez-Alegria headed outside once again. Like shift workers punching the clock, they picked up where they had left off, releasing the launch locks on the three radiators and pulling the CETA cart toward its home position, wedged onto the S0 truss.
After another daylong break (although packing and unpacking continued apace), Saturday called for more of the same, finishing up the truss’s installation with six hours of plumbing. Exhausted and fresh out of adrenaline, Herrington and Lopez-Alegria clambered back inside and slept as soundly as men who had seen everything in their lives go exactly as they had hoped it might. Making full use of their eye masks and earplugs, they slept a deep, dreamless sleep.
When they woke up, the last morning’s worth of work was well on its way to being finished. A computer printer, sent up to replace a balky one that had already been punted into the station’s junk drawer, was the last bit of cargo brought on board. Expedition Five had nearly finished their packing up, too, stowing the last of their gear in
Endeavour
for the flight home. As a goodbye gift, the ground had given them and their colleagues the rest of Sunday afternoon off, mostly to prepare themselves for Monday’s departure. After the frenzy of the previous few days, it was a much-needed chance for everybody to say goodbye—three to the station, and three to the earth.
· · ·
Part of the farewell process included formal exercises, usually orchestrated by the ground and held in front of cameras. Among these was an elaborate change of command ceremony, which concluded with the following exchange between station commanders old and new:
“Ken, I’m ready to be relieved,” Valery Korzun said before passing the radio to Ken Bowersox.
“I relieve you of your command,” he said.
“I stand relieved,” Korzun replied.
As terse—and rehearsed—as the conclusion might have appeared from the vantage point of living-room couches, for the people involved (especially for Expedition Five, about to abandon the only home they had known for nearly six months), it was an important part of the leaving ritual, as symbolic and poignant as a torch going out.
But more important, perhaps, were the quieter, more private moments before departure. There were meals enjoyed together, and last, longing looks taken through the windows, the bundling up of photographs and stowaway keepsakes. That was the hardest part, because what once were treasures suddenly seemed disposable, like the astronauts themselves, having served their purpose and been told that it was time for them to go.
By Monday morning, the feeling had forced Korzun, Treschev, and Whitson into making a subtle mental switch, the building of a distance between themselves and station. Each of them would have happily stayed longer if needed; a small part of each of them even wanted to—the same secret part of them that had felt stung when they were first overrun by the new arrivals. But now they turned their minds from their leaving one home to their imminent arrival at another. (For them, for all of us, it has always been easier to swallow the idea of saying hello rather than goodbye.)
Korzun, a veteran of a long-duration mission on Russia’s Mir, braced himself for the assault of gravity, imagining himself stepping down from the shuttle’s cockpit onto solid ground. Whitson gave in to lighter-hearted fantasy: she began telling everyone how much she was looking forward to a thick juicy steak, a Caesar salad (with lots of
After another daylong break (although packing and unpacking continued apace), Saturday called for more of the same, finishing up the truss’s installation with six hours of plumbing. Exhausted and fresh out of adrenaline, Herrington and Lopez-Alegria clambered back inside and slept as soundly as men who had seen everything in their lives go exactly as they had hoped it might. Making full use of their eye masks and earplugs, they slept a deep, dreamless sleep.
When they woke up, the last morning’s worth of work was well on its way to being finished. A computer printer, sent up to replace a balky one that had already been punted into the station’s junk drawer, was the last bit of cargo brought on board. Expedition Five had nearly finished their packing up, too, stowing the last of their gear in
Endeavour
for the flight home. As a goodbye gift, the ground had given them and their colleagues the rest of Sunday afternoon off, mostly to prepare themselves for Monday’s departure. After the frenzy of the previous few days, it was a much-needed chance for everybody to say goodbye—three to the station, and three to the earth.
· · ·
Part of the farewell process included formal exercises, usually orchestrated by the ground and held in front of cameras. Among these was an elaborate change of command ceremony, which concluded with the following exchange between station commanders old and new:
“Ken, I’m ready to be relieved,” Valery Korzun said before passing the radio to Ken Bowersox.
“I relieve you of your command,” he said.
“I stand relieved,” Korzun replied.
As terse—and rehearsed—as the conclusion might have appeared from the vantage point of living-room couches, for the people involved (especially for Expedition Five, about to abandon the only home they had known for nearly six months), it was an important part of the leaving ritual, as symbolic and poignant as a torch going out.
But more important, perhaps, were the quieter, more private moments before departure. There were meals enjoyed together, and last, longing looks taken through the windows, the bundling up of photographs and stowaway keepsakes. That was the hardest part, because what once were treasures suddenly seemed disposable, like the astronauts themselves, having served their purpose and been told that it was time for them to go.
By Monday morning, the feeling had forced Korzun, Treschev, and Whitson into making a subtle mental switch, the building of a distance between themselves and station. Each of them would have happily stayed longer if needed; a small part of each of them even wanted to—the same secret part of them that had felt stung when they were first overrun by the new arrivals. But now they turned their minds from their leaving one home to their imminent arrival at another. (For them, for all of us, it has always been easier to swallow the idea of saying hello rather than goodbye.)
Korzun, a veteran of a long-duration mission on Russia’s Mir, braced himself for the assault of gravity, imagining himself stepping down from the shuttle’s cockpit onto solid ground. Whitson gave in to lighter-hearted fantasy: she began telling everyone how much she was looking forward to a thick juicy steak, a Caesar salad (with lots of
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