| Planet Earth... | |||||||||||||||||
| Closeup of the broken door on The Orbitter |
I never forget the week when the docking bay mens door jammed. It was such a nightmare where we never thought we would be able to return to good old planet earth again. You see - we were carying some tools while entering the mens door, and that is strictly forbidden. But we thought we could save about 40 minutes of spacewalk by using that door. What happened was a little bit of static electricity discharging from one of the tools. It killed some of the sensitive circuits in the door wich resulted in a mailfunction that misused and finaly killed the hydraulics. And yes - The hydros broke one of the airlocks too, wich reduced our oxygen level a lot. Instead of having oxygen for 90 days, we discovered a reduction to 13 days. And repairing it, took a long time. It jammed constantly, but we had to fix it. The broken door would have made a re-entry quite impossible. I mean - it could get realy hot during the re-entry. And with a broken door, we wouldn't be able to keep presure while heating up. If You ever tried to make an egg in a Microwave oven - You know what I'm talking about. You see - Re-entry is a serious thing! But anyway - After a few spacewalks we succeded. A few? It took eleven days leaving us with less than two days for re-entry! | ||||||||||||||||
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Here You see me after the return to our little blue planet - You know - Earth. I really got tired standing there in the waves - suddently feeling all to much gravity again. But anyway - it was great to be home, and despite our landing in - I think - half of the earths seaweed, the air smelled fantastic. | Even water can have a hard surface... | ||||||||||||||||
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