Orbital Maneuvers Read Online Free PDF Page B

suit, kind of like a female version of Robbie the Robot.  Even with that thought she had to remind herself of how vulnerable she was cocooned within this microcosm of Earth.  On the other side of her suit the temperature was about 250 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, nothing like the balmy 75 degrees she felt the morning of the launch.  Outside her suit there wasn’t any air that would gently caress her skin, squeezing her on all sides with fifteen pounds of pressure per square inch, like it did when she walked on the beach near the Cape.  There was a vacuum, no pressure at all: harsh and unforgiving.  Within her suit she was provided with a comfortable temperature and pressure, but it was not designed to provide her protection from the cosmic rays, micrometeorites, and high-energy particles that are blasted from the sun with each solar flare that erupts.  She was at the mercy of things she could never see, or even feel, but could be extremely deadly nevertheless. 
    Susan followed Jill out into the payload bay and after they attached their tethers to the tie-downs by the hatch she took a moment to marvel at the Earth overhead.  It was so different to see Earth in its entirety from the bay than to peek at it through a small porthole inside the shuttle.  The multihued globe commanded Susan’s attention, which she gave willingly.  It was only with much effort that she was able to tear her eyes from her home world and focus on what had to be done.
    “Wow!” Jill said.  “What a view!”
    “Yeah, I know.  And just think, we’re getting paid to be here!” Susan said.
    “It’s even better than I imagined, even better than you said it would be.  Amazing!”
    “Yes, it is,” Susan said.  A twinge in her stomach brought her back to the moment and the dread that was building inside her.  She forced herself to move on to the work that she was expected to do.
    Jerry had retracted the arm so that SCIEXSAT was nestled in the bay; looking somewhat like a high-tech marshmallow on a stick.  Jill’s task was to remove the sample plates on the satellite and replace them with new set of plates, which would be collected in a year by another shuttle mission.  Susan’s main task was to tend to a piggyback experiment that was mounted on the sidewall of the payload bay.  These small, self-contained experiments went along on a mission because there was some room to spare.  Usually they required little or no support, but this one in particular needed to be monitored and adjusted after being in space for space for seven days.  She would be working with Paul who was conducting the experiment from a station on the middeck.  He designed the experiment and his company paid for its space on this mission.  Susan caught herself smiling as she thought about Paul.  She figured that if it were a hundred years earlier Paul would have been a rancher raising cattle in Texas.  In this day and age, he could forgo the spurs and steers and instead get his doctorate in chemistry at the University of Texas.  He seemed to be a very relaxed person who was able to enjoy whatever he was presented with, be it riding the fence line on his ranch or mixing up some noxious smelling chemicals in the lab.  She wished she could be that relaxed, but then again, she knew she would have made a dreadful cowgirl.
    Susan listened to the conversation between Jill and Mission Control as she made her way over to the experiment enclosure.  “Paul, I’m about to open your box.  Are you ready?”
    “Roger, that, Susan,” Paul replied, his voice sounding thin and small through the helmet’s headset.
    “Okay, I’ve got the replacement cartridges and I will swap them out on your command.”
    “Copy that, Susan.  Hang on a second while I get the system set for recalibration.”
    Susan smiled, “You don’t mind if I just float?”
    “Ah…yes, float, I got it!  That was a good one!  Hang or float, your choice, just don’t leave the cargo bay.