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Mission Journal 11-Bob Thirsk: Mission Training Day 4: Thursday, October 7, 2004 Five days down, one to go. We are nearing the end of our on-site training! About half of our time has been spent learning habitat and advanced scuba skills, and half has been spent training on the NEEMO 7 science experiments. The training pace is quite aggressive. As soon as we finish with one training activity, we move immediately to another. We hit the ground running each day at 8:30 am and usually don't finish training until mid-evening. It is, in fact, a bit of a chore to then complete personal and other administrative chores. Getting to bed by the scheduled time (10 pm) is wishful thinking. 11 pm or midnight is more realistic. Tomorrow will be our last day of on-site training with science experiment briefings in the morning and our final pre-mission dive in the afternoon. Each day Otter and Ross (our NURC dive instructors) have introduced an additional piece of hardware to our dive rigs and an additional complex skill to acquire. Today's added complexity was a one-piece mask that covers our entire face and includes a radio unit that allows us to talk to each other underwater as well as to the ExPOC (i.e., mission control) in Houston. I now look like the Michelin Man with all the gear hanging off me as I enter the water. Craig McKinley, my crewmate, succinctly summarized our feelings at the conclusion of this morning's briefing when he exclaimed "Everyday it's one more thing!" Splashdown (i.e., the start of the NEEMO 7 mission) is still on schedule for Monday morning. Everyone is psyched and ready! Some of our mission support team will head out of town for the weekend but I intend to stay here in Key Largo and do as little as possible. I'll use my "down-time" to gather my thoughts, study my training notes and review the mission timeline one more time. The actual mission timeline is also quite aggressive. Similar to training
week, we will be hopping from one activity to the next throughout each
day. I'm sure that the eleven days will just fly by. My crewmates and
our partners from NURC, CMAS, NASA, and the CSA are success-oriented and
we are going to do all we can to help each other out and make this happen.
Gotta go … it's time for bed. |
Mission
Date: October, 2004 Mission Summary Aquanaut Profiles Expedition Journals Mission Pictures |
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