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Author
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Topic: STS-9: Contingency EVA (Young vs. Parker)
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taneal1
Member Posts: 230
From: Orlando, FL
Registered: Feb 2004
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posted 07-05-2008 10:20 PM
   
If the Shuttle's Payload Bay doors refused to close at the end of a mission, an EVA would be required to perform a manual closure. If an EVA was scheduled during a mission, the EVA astronauts were trained to perform this operation as well. However, if a mission did NOT have a scheduled EVA, a pair of astronauts would be trained for this contingency EVA.NASA Photo S83-33487 and Text (below) 06/09/83 STS-9 contingency extravehicular activity (EVA) simulations are conducted underwater in the weightless environment training facility (WETF) at JSC. Pictured are Astronauts John W. Young (top), crew commander, and Dr. Owen K. Garriott, one of two mission specialists. This information certainly implies that Young would perform a contingency EVA if required. Something of a surprise to see a Mission CDR scheduled for this... Rumor hath it Young wanted to perform a spacewalk and he certainly had plenty of experience operating in a vacuum albeit at 1/5 g, not microgravity. But, would NASA risk the CDR when they could easily have trained MS Bob Parker instead? |
Jay Chladek
Member Posts: 2272
From: Bellevue, NE, USA
Registered: Aug 2007
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posted 07-07-2008 03:40 AM
I believe the reason for Young to do the EVA is that he and Bob Crippen had already trained extensively for it on STS-1. Every one of the flight test crews did training for a possible payload bay door closing contingency and a few of those crews probably came up with the procedures to use as well rather then the MSes. Plus, they probably got a lot of training in the couple years of delays the shuttle program faced prior to STS-1. Young also to date had flown as CDR on a Gemini flight with an EVA and Apollo 16 (which included Ken Mattingly doing a spacewalk to recover film from the SIM bay in addition to the lunar explorations). Garriott of course had EVA experience from Skylab. So the best two crewmembers on hand would have been good choices to perform the EVA if they were selected for it.The Shuttle EMUs were carried on all the shuttle flights for a contingency EVA, even though STS-4 was the first scheduled inflight testing of the suit in the airlock and STS-5 was the first scheduled EVA (pushed back to STS-6 due to suit failures on both EMUs). Another factor probably had to do with the relatively new nature of shuttle EVAs as to my knowledge, by the time STS-9 was on the roster, there would only have been one scheduled EVA (STS-5, bumped to STS-6) and as such, procedures would still have been ironed out for the MSes. Granted Parker would have been around as long at NASA as guys like Story Musgrave and Joe Allen (who had trained for the STS-6 and 5 EVAs respectively), but we don't know what his specific focus was during that period as the early shuttle astronauts were split up to monitor development of the various aspects of shuttle, same as for Apollo. | |
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Ultimate Bulletin Board 5.47a
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