Future Astronaut Will, suited up with me at the KSC Visitor’s Center

If you ever had any doubts about the power of the space program to inspire, they would have completely evaporated these past few days at the KSC Visitor’s Center, where I gave a number of talks at The Astronaut Encounter (http://tinyurl.com/25dn9ko). My own passion for space began at age 5, growing up in the shadow of Apollo and my father’s work on the program. Although our present day Space Shuttle is about to retire and the path ahead for human spaceflight is less than clear, Americans will continue to fly into space on one vehicle or another — and a new generation of young explorers is watching and waiting for their turn. My little friend Will (pictured above, and coincidentally a 5 year old), came with his parents to hear me speak, fully decked out in his space suit. Go for launch!

Prior to each of my presentations at the Astronaut Encounter theater, a beautiful film that highlights NASA’s 50 years of achievement (as well as the painful losses of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia) is screened. The film closes with a quote from our 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt. He described my philosophy on the good life with a clarity I’d never be able to muster:

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” 

Exactly, what he said. Period.

It was great to be back at the Cape, and to work with the fine folks at the Visitor’s Center. Nick, Livia, Jon and many other staff members took great care of me, and will host you well should you make a trip of your own. And I suggest you do so, ideally in time to see one of our final Space Shuttle launches…

It's a rare day when I feel short, but even on tiptoes my 6'3" frame was overshadowed by these KSC visitors from Holland! I sure hope that Wendy "Too Short" Lawrence never sees this photo...

As I was headed down to dinner on my final night in Cocoa Beach, a very familiar face boarded the elevator. “Al? Hi, my name’s Scott Parazynski, you may not remember me, but I think you’re taking over from me as the Duty Astro at KSC tomorrow!” Al Worden (http://www.alworden.com/), Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot and larger-than-life hero, was right down the hall from me in the hotel! It was a thrill to speak with him briefly, and thus “pass the microphone.” He was headed out to visit the legendary but severely ailing Guenter Wendt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guenter_Wendt), former Pad Leader for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Prayers for comfort going out to Mr. Wendt and his family in this difficult time…

High Fiving just before the finish line in Austin

Dealing with drizzle on Day 1

Finishing felt like Lance on the final lap sur la Champs Elysee dans le Tour de France...

What an epic adventure it was! Almost 180 miles over 2 days, and roughly $4000 dollars raised for MS research. Thanks to everyone who supported me and/or other riders in the fight against this devastating disease… The last few miles on Day 2 were quite a bit less than fun, with my quads yelling at me to get off my bike and thumb a ride home, but the adrenalin within Austin City Limits was exhilarating — and I hope to ride again next year.

I thankfully never leave home without my iPhone these days. Even though the camera resolution and aperture control isn’t the greatest in the world, I’m glad to have captured the following from my trip to the National Space Symposium and the Rockies…

Very impressed with SpaceX's Dragon test article --- ready to thumb a ride!

L3's poster at the National Space Symposium: Ares-1 relabeled "Commercial!"

The view from Jeff's Piper: flying over Gray's, Torrey's, Evans and Bierstadt

High Flight: there's no place like home...

Bones (Jeff Ashby) enjoying the good life...

Buzzing mountaintops at 140 knots

With the MS-150 just a week away, I headed for the hills today with a couple of teammates from my gym’s cycling team, the Houstonian Hammerheads. Although I’m still in great shape post-Everest, owing to frequent spin classes and generally being a gym rat, this was my first and last chance to do a serious road ride before the 2-day, 188-mile Houston-to-Austin bike ride. Today’s was a 52-mile loop from New Ulm through the rolling hills of Colorado and Austin counties.

My compadres and guides, Mark and Mike, are long-time cyclists and multi-MS-150 riders. Mark told me they only dropped whiners, so I made a mental note to either: A) not whine, or B) only whine if riding behind them. Pulling into the parking lot just after 0700, with a cold drizzle underway beneath dark skies, I was seriously considering Option B before even getting out of Mark’s truck. 

Leaving the start just before 0730 in a driving rain, chilled to the bone within a quarter mile, I was convinced that my stoic teammates were completely nuts! Upon further thought, though, I reflected on the fact that I’d once forged upwards towards Denali’s summit in whiteout conditions and 100 mph winds. And then there were those 4 months I’d spent in the high Himalayas. Turns out these were my kind of people! Almost as if a reward, the intensity of the rain abated within 15 or 20 minutes, and I began to notice Bluebonnets and other wildflowers as far as the eye could see. Blue was peaking out between cloud layers, birds were singing, flags were waving and bunnies were hopping (or whatever it is that bunnies do…). As the miles and rolling hills clicked by, I realized that I was going to manage the ride unscathed. The closer I got to the finish, the quicker my pace… and this evening I feel just great (and expect to hit a double-header spin class in the morning). Hopefully this means that I’ll manage 4x the distance over two days without permanent injury or disfigurement.

Please consider making a donation to this effort: no donation is too small! I set a goal of raising $5000 for MS research, but am about $1500 short. For information about the charity and the ride, please visit my personal MS-150 site:

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/TXHBikeEvents?px=7282717&pg=personal&fr_id=12962

Two people in my life suffer from this debilitating disease, and I’d imagine you probably know someone with MS as well. I appreciate you reading this post, and thank you for your support.

Scott

In the past 72 hours I’ve been misquoted in print and added as a signatory to a policy letter I never saw in draft form (and really didn’t agree with; my name has since been removed). Although I’m certainly not a government policy or budget maker, for some reason I get asked my opinion on the future of human spaceflight on an increasingly frequent basis. If you’re interested in my opinion on this emotionally charged issue (for some), feel free to read on. Otherwise, please enjoy the great photo that my friend Dave Strome took soon after the launch of STS-131: the high altitude contrails of Discovery are lit with a dramatic sunrise, a view unlike any I’ve ever seen.

So what does this former Space Shuttle astronaut think of the double whammy of Shuttle retirement and Constellation Program (CxP) cancellation? And what of the future of Commercial Spaceflight (CSF), the gap in US access to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and long range planning for Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO)? Although I think our nation will really miss the capabilities of the Space Shuttle, and I’m concerned about the impacts to our talented aerospace workforce in the short term, I think there’s a silver lining in all of this for our Space Futures.

Times of change can be very uncomfortable, and this is a time of unprecedented — but not unexpected — change. In the aftermath of the Columbia tragedy, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board set the wheels in motion for Shuttle retirement in 2010 (else undergo a major and prohibitively expensive recertification process). Developing a new spacecraft architecture like the CxP, even though solid rocket booster segments were being repurposed for the Ares-1 launch vehicle, is technically challenging and expensive in its own right. With Constellation costing more and taking longer to develop, it didn’t surprise me that it would at least be on the budget cutters’ radar screen during this current recession.

From my perspective as an extreme high altitude construction worker on the International Space Station (ISS), we would be crazy not to reap proper rewards from our investment in this National Laboratory, particularly since we’ve essentially completed its construction and now have a full 6-person crew to take advantage of its science capacity. Flying ISS until 2020 or beyond is a no brainer, provided we have affordable access for crews and their science. The Augustine Commission and the budget proposal also see it this way.

With Russian Soyuz seats running a cool $50M and likely to rise (simple supply vs. demand, coupled with Russian capitalism), affordable access isn’t necessarily assured. To the extent possible, closing the gap in US access to LEO is an imperative. I’m encouraged by the investment the Administration’s new budget makes in CSF, especially if it is spread between several of the viable candidates, ultimately resulting in options to LEO. NASA and other space agencies may one day be able to shop a la carte for LEO transportation, weighing safety margins, price and other factors into their decision making process. There will be setbacks to be sure, with cost overruns and schedule delays for these new launch vehicles as well, but ultimately a few of them will succeed in human-rating their vehicles for LEO. Since the frontrunners in this launch industry are all American companies, the US industrial base will maintain and even extend its leadership in aerospace, not spiral into oblivion as some suggest. Moreover, having NASA focus on the technologies and architecture for BEO exploration leverages what the agency does best.

Where I differ from the Administration (and from how I’ve recently been misquoted), I’d prefer to see us garner as much as we can from our investment-to-date in the CxP: possibly launching an Orion-derived capsule on an EELV as one of the commercial options, for example, and accelerating our work on a heavy lift vehicle for BEO. Moreover, we need a milestone- and destination-driven program if it’s to last beyond the attention span of the current Congress. Anything that lacks definitive goals and milestones is by definition discretionary spending, and therefore imminently deferrable/cancelable. NASA has done a great job developing a lunar architecture that one day could form the basis of our life-searching exploration on Mars. I’d like to see us incrementally test these on the moon first, just 3 short days away from home, rather than risk their failure several months away on Mars.

I understand the doom and gloom being expressed by some in the human spaceflight industry, particularly with the way in which the budget was first rolled out, but I see an opportunity for a brilliant American future in space. I believe that if we deliberately move ahead with ambitious stated goals (moon, near earth objects, Mars), realistic milestones (even if many years out) and proper funding (included in the current budget proposal), America can retain its technological leadership in space and inspire our kids to dream of and pursue space as a realistic destination for their talents. This wouldn’t be transient “Cash for Clunkers” spending, but rather an intelligent expenditure on high tech industry and people, with an enormous potential return on investment… 

In closing, I’ll refer you to a couple of amazing videos that capture the essence of why human spaceflight is so important to our collective futures. One is of my friend Lars’ son Adam, observing the recent Space Shuttle launch: http://bit.ly/cWKy5g If we could only find a way for every American family to see a launch, there would be no question as to how motivating human spaceflight is to young people. I vividly remember seeing Apollo IX launch from Cocoa Beach as a young boy, and it obviously had a lasting impact on my life…! The second clip is from the incredibly eloquent Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, explaining why NASA is so vital to our prosperity: http://tinyurl.com/yepv7wp

So there you have it. My opinion comes free, and it’s worth every penny…

I can finally stop holding my breath: Discovery is getting ready to release the EBTL series. Well, it’s still a few months off, but you can register your email, and they’ll probably ship around July 13th:

http://store.discovery.com/detail.php?p=257946&v=discovery

If you’d like to see me and my buddies slug it up the mountain beforehand, you can even visit Amazon.com (Amazon Video On Demand) and view my episode (#3) or the entire series with a credit card and a click of a mouse:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00326Z888/internatio086-20

I received an exciting email tonight from Karel Masek, an Everest climbing buddy from the 2009 season, who’s back to try again with my other 2009 compadres Louis Carstens and Chris Berghum. Wishing them a safe round trip to the summit and back…

Climb on!

Bob in the Cupola, Space Rocks in view…

GREAT VIDEO: Dedication of the Cupola: Space Rocks and a tribute to Lacy Veach

These photos aren't easy to take! It's hard to "drop" an object perfectly still and quickly take a photo...

Space Rocks on permanent display aboard ISS

Space Rocks Plaque, repackaged for flight

"Space Rocks," hermetically sealed...

Like a proud father, here’s a family photo album of the Space Rocks a.k.a. nuggets on-orbit, and as they were repackaged just before launch. The resin in which the lunar samples were embedded turned out to be more flammable than we’d like in a closed environment like the International Space Station. Thanks to a number of hard-working and wonderful people — Louis Parker, Doug Peterson, Ven Feng, Richard Guidry, Christopher Mcelroy, Rob Lazaro, Abigail Cassell, Paul Miller, Steve Huning, Shelby Lawson, Scott Wolf, Nathan Vassberg, Tony Brown and probably several I’m not even aware of — it was repackaged and manifested on the last Space Shuttle mission, STS-130. Much gratitude to the folks listed above, as well as the onboard crew, some of whom took the amazing photos in this post!

Luke and his Dad hanging out in the Whistler Olympic Village

Thrilled with the opportunity to reconnect with the US Luge Team and the Olympics, it had been my intent to Twitter and blog from the Whistler Olympic Sliding Center trackside, complete with action photos and vignettes of our talented US Olympic squad. Sharing the Vancouver-Whistler experience with my son and seeing the competitions through his eyes, however, I quickly discarded the real-time reporting approach in favor of just taking it all in. Besides, there were boatloads of professional journalists  — with much greater eloquence and photographic hardware than I could muster — to do the real reporting. As my friend Rick Husband, the late, great Space Shuttle Columbia Commander used to say: “You can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting a (fill in the blank) reporter!” It was a memorable life experience, though, so here are my recollections and reflections…

The loss of a fine young man and luge athlete from the Republic of Georgia, Nodar Kumaritashvili, during a training run the day before the games began, was difficult for the luge family, doubly so for the athletes. Nodar was a talented, up-and-coming slider by many reports, and he had earned the right to represent his country at the Olympics through respectable performances in World Cup competition. The Whistler track, especially from the Men’s start, is wickedly fast — probably the fastest such track on earth — and a subtle error at high speeds of almost 100 mph might magnify into a grisly ricochet ride towards the bottom of the track. Nodar’s final moments being vaulted up and over the lip of the track, directly into a steel beam structure, were horrifying to watch over and over again on TV, but his was just one of several crashes during the build-up to the Games. Even the sport’s elite considered the track technically challenging, and occasionally resulted in spectacular impacts. I’m sure the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and the FIL (Federation Internationale de Luge) will conduct a detailed investigation and reconsider the trend of building ever faster tracks with such thin margins for error. Events such as luge, skeleton, bobsled and downhill skiing will always entail substantial risk that athletes can chose to accept or not, but it sounds like warning signs on this particular track may have gone unheeded…

For the athletes, overcoming the accident, dealing with the resulting anxiety (the “pucker factor”) and continuing the race could not have been easy.  As a result of the fatality, a plywood wall was installed to prevent a slider from cresting the lip of the track and impacting the steel support structure behind it. Each of the luge events were also dropped in start altitude to reduce the overall speed: the Men’s Singles event was run from the traditional Women’s Singles start, and the Women’s Singles and Doubles luge were run from the Junior start. These changes played against many of the athletes, including our US team, as they’d become accustomed to the speed, g-forces and cadence of the track as originally designed. The powerful German team dominated, perhaps because they have more tracks in their country than any other competing nation, and they can quickly adapt to different track conditions as they often do in their training. Regardless, our US team was truly impressive under great pressure, and hopefully they’ll stick around for Sochi 2014 when they’ll be a real force to be reckoned with.

Luke and Scott at the Whistler Olympic Sliding Center with 2x US Olympian and Silver Medalist Gordy Sheer!

One of the real treats of the trip was getting to spend some time with several of our current and former luge Olympians. Hearing their personal stories of drive and determination for an Olympic moment was truly inspirational to my son and me. A conversation while leaving the track (after the Women’s Singles competition) with my friend Gordy Sheer stands out. Gordy typifies the Olympic spirit and character of our team: a 2-time Olympian and one of the first Americans to ever medal in the sport of luge (Silver, on a doubles sled with Chris Thorpe in Nagano 1998), you’d never know of his “rock star” status in the sport. I told him how inspired I was to be at the Games, and how I’d gladly trade him one of his Olympic experiences for one of my spaceflight experiences — no medal required! — and he surprised me by saying he’d also wanted to fly in space as a kid. [We eventually concluded the trade would be tough to make, but that for each of us our 1 out of 2 wasn’t half bad either…] Anyway, I told Gordy how much I admired him, our talented 2010 US Olympic Luge Team (Tony Benshoof, Chris Mazder, Bengt Walden, Julia Clukey, Erin Hamlin, Megan Sweeney, Christian Niccum, Dan Joye, Brian Martin and US flag bearer Mark Grimmette) and all the other athletes who’ve accomplished so much by making it to the Olympics. I hope our 2010 team can stay with it through to 2014 and bring home the medals from Sochi!

Luke and Dad on a Whistler chairlift, in between speed runs

In addition to 5 major events at the luge track, we saw the Men’s downhill ski race from the slopes (we have a commemorative cow bell to prove it), and saw plenty of other Olympic competition on local TV when we weren’t out skiing or exploring the village. What a big thrill to hang out and play hooky from school (and work) to ski with him for a few days!

Quote of the trip, courtesy of my son, when watching the sport of curling on CTV: “I wonder how they find people for curling? Do they recruit maids?” (naturally meaning no disrespect for the housekeeping profession…!)

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Here are a couple of links that harken back to my luge experiences, if interested:

Astronaut, former luger visits Lake Placid schools http://www.lakeplacidnews.com/page/content.detail/id/500920.html?nav=5005

NYT: Astronaut’s Adventure on Earth: Luge http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/06/sports/olympics-astronaut-s-adventure-on-earth-luge.html?pagewanted=1

 

 

How lucky can a lucky guy get? I’m thrilled to to serve as an Honorary Captain of the US Olympic Luge Team, about to take on the rest of the world’s best in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Having once trained and competed for such a coveted spot, I admire these athletes deeply. Luge is an incredibly demanding sport, requiring dedicated training for many years to have a shot at the Olympics — and without the fanfare and sponsorships of the likes of downshill skiing or figure skating. They train, they go to school, they work, and soon they’ll compete for their nation and for themselves. It will be a great honor to be there with my son to cheer them on. 

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wyles-scott-parazynski-serves-as-honorary-captain-of-us-luge-team-in-vancouver-games-82694757.html

In the days ahead I’ll introduce the team here (along with some of the coaches and my fellow HC’s). Make sure you catch the competition February 13 through February 17!