Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 24, 1994 TAG: 9411080066
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: NF1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
With all the changes in travel McBride's father saw during his lifetime, this was the most amazing. His son was the pilot of the Challenger.
The Challenger that McBride piloted in 1984 was the same ship that exploded seconds after launch in January 1986, but McBride was not part of that crew.
When Jon McBride was growing up, space travel was new and every kid wanted to be an astronaut. McBride held onto his dream and made it become real, but it took a lot of hard work.
He went to college, became a U.S. Navy pilot and flew combat missions in Vietnam. When he was chosen to become an astronaut, he spent another year at NASA in Houston in the classroom before he was assigned to a space flight. Then, he spent many more months training with the other six members of his crew for their shuttle mission.
Becoming an astronaut is a lot like growing up and becoming anything else. ``You have to stay in school, study hard and do what your parents and teachers tell you," McBride said.
The difference is that you fly into space, something only about 200 people have ever done.
The most dangerous part of any space flight is the time from ignition (when the engines light up) until the ship is in orbit, McBride said. The shuttle accelerates from sitting still on the launch pad to 18,000 miles an hour in 8.5 minutes.
Until you leave the Earth's atmosphere, gravity is three times stronger than normal so it's hard to even move your arms. ``You don't get to look out the window a whole lot'' for the first three or four minutes, McBride said.
When McBride did check the view, all he could say was, ``Wow! Awesome!'' He could see the whole East Coast from one window.
During the eight-and-a-half days he was in space, McBride was never afraid and believed he and his crew could handle any emergency. ``I get more scared driving on the highway than I ever did in the shuttle,'' he said.
The ship made 133 complete orbits around the earth, one every 11/2 hours, so the crew saw a sunset or sunrise every 45 minutes.
Eating was pretty tricky because there's no gravity in space. A person and everything else is weightless and floating around. "If you didn`t tie things down or attach them to a piece of Velcro, they would float away,'' McBride said.
Food could float right off your fork. Drinks had to be in closed containers with straws that had clamps that opened and shut or the liquid floated right up the straw and ``all over everything,'' he said.
But weightlessness could be fun, too. ``All of a sudden you're like a bird - you can fly,'' McBride said. ``You could push off a wall with one finger and go around in circles."
You could also sleep wherever you wanted to - even in mid-air. One of the astronauts slept floating in the middle of a room. He hit his head on a wall, then floated until his feet touched another wall, back and forth, during his sleep period, McBride said.
Most everyone probably is curious about how astronauts go to the bathroom in space. Well, here's the answer to the mystery: very carefully.
The area is not called a toilet or commode, but a waste management system (WMS). There's a seat on the top with a urine collection device (UCD) in front. Below the seat is a footrest. After sitting down, just as we earthlings do, and placing both feet on the footrest, an astronaut pulls up a spring-loaded bar that rests on his or her legs and prevents the astronaut from floating off the seat.
Then, the astronaut pulls back on a knob which turns on vacuum pressure for the UCD and opens a transporter tube under the WMS. All waste is carried to holding tanks, one for solids, one for liquids.
Pilots don't get to walk in space, but one of McBride's jobs was to help the two astronauts who did get into their space suits. The space outside the shuttle is very cold, so the astronauts wore several layers of special clothing, which, altogether, weighed 300-400 pounds.
The astronauts worked 14-16 hours a day, which is a lot longer than most people work on Earth. Most astronauts are in the military and are paid the same amount as regular military officers.
Aside from piloting the ship, McBride also spent time doing repairs on the shuttle, taking photographs and videotape (which became ``The Dream Is Alive,'' a film shown at Omnimax theaters), operating equipment and doing experiments. Whenever he got his work done, he would ``sit back and look out the window.''
From space, Earth looked beautiful, the greens and blues, the oceans and the deserts. But, ``you could see a lot of the pollution of the atmosphere we've caused,'' McBride said.
He urged people to take better care of the Earth, and for children to ``do a better job than your parents and grandparents have done in protecting Earth.''
McBride`s days of space travel have ended, but the dream he lived will always be with him. Whether or not being an astronaut is your heart's desire, his advice to you is, ``You can be anything you want. Why not reach for the stars?''
(Special thanks to Patti Williams' fifth-grade class at Forest Park Elementary School, Roanoke, for telling me what kids really want to know about an astronaut.)
by CNB