8 AGENDA November 23, 2003 Astro boy

After the Columbia disaster in February, many people thought America’s space program was over. But now NASA is planning a new shuttle launch, and Australian Andy Thomas will be aboard. He spoke with Dani Valent.

couple of weeks ago, Andy Thomas drove model spacecraft from cardboard tubes and plastic to the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape kits. “Not flying rockets, because we didn’t have Canaveral, Florida and looked for a place to them at that time,” he says. “Kids today have flying Apark his rental car. The car park was rockets, which would have been amazing.” packed, but finally he spied three vacant spots He was a tinkerer, the kind of kid who could marked “astronaut”, right by the entrance. He had pull his bicycle apart then put it back together, and that covetous feeling the average worker bee gets later, fix his own car. He took an engineering when he sees a prime spot reserved for the CEO. degree at the University of Adelaide and graduated And then it clicked. “I pulled up and thought ‘Ooh, with honours in 1973. By the time he finished his that’s nice. I can actually park there’.” doctorate in mechanical engineering five years After nearly 12 years as an astronaut, Andy later, he was already working for aerospace firm Thomas still has trouble believing that a boy from Lockheed in the US. Adelaide can fly in space. But two weeks ago it was Thomas went to America planning to spend a announced that Thomas, 51, would be one of seven couple of years at Lockheed before heading back astronauts aboard NASA’s next space shuttle flight home. But his career took off, he was promoted up — the first since the Columbia disaster in February the management chain and, by the mid-’80s, he that claimed the lives of all aboard and threatened to realised his future lay abroad. halt the agency’s space program. About the same time, one of Thomas’s best Thomas was understandably rocked by the acci- friends was killed in a motorcycle accident. “We dent. “It’s a terrible thing to have seven colleagues used to do a lot of things together, mostly try to pick “You don’t go The next day he phoned his parents in South Aus- and friends 16 minutes from home and to discover up girls,” he recalls. “He was always better at it than tralia. “I’m not sure they really understood it because that they won’t be coming back.” But as deputy chief me. He was taller.” The loss was a defining moment. around saying, I’d never shared that I wanted to be an astronaut,” he of the astronaut office, he was less surprised than “I thought, ‘There’s got to be something more to life says. “You don’t go around saying, ‘I want to be an many that it occurred. “It showed that space travel is than this’. I thought about what I would really like to ‘I want to be astronaut’. People would say, ‘Grow up, get real’. My inherently dangerous,” he says. do. I thought I’d like to be an astronaut.” mother said, ‘That’s nice dear’. My father said, ‘Oh, The “return to flight” shuttle, scheduled to Thomas looked at the CVs of serving astronauts an astronaut’. perhaps that will make the newspapers’.” launch in September 2004, will be Thomas’s fourth and realised he’d already ticked a lot of the right People would Four years later, in May 1996, Thomas took his trip into space. He and his crewmates on the shuttle boxes. He began to make career choices that would first space flight, a 10-day mission on the space shut- Atlantis will test a range of inspection and repair fill in the blanks and in 1991 he applied to NASA. In say, ‘Grow up, tle Endeavour. In 1998 he spent five months on the techniques that may have saved Columbia had they October of that year, he was sitting at his desk when Mir space station, and in March 2001 he flew aboard been in place 10 months ago. the phone rang. It was NASA wondering if Thomas get real’.” the Discovery shuttle to the International Space Sta- Despite the danger, Thomas insists that the would like to come and be interviewed for a position tion, where he did a six-hour spacewalk. prospect of space travel holds no fear. “I’m not as an astronaut. “It’s the sort of phone call you never scared. I’m very glad, very excited. In many respects expect to get,” he says. “I was trying to be calm: ‘Yes, ndy Thomas has spent 163 days in space this will be the safest space shuttle mission ever.” yes, I’d like to come down’.” but nothing has pushed him to the Thomas has had a lifetime to prepare for it. In Five months later, he got another call, offering extremes that he experienced over two 1961, when the first men flew into space, he was a him a spot on NASA’s astronaut training program Anights in Siberia. They called it winter sur- nine-year-old boy in suburban Adelaide. Entranced — if he was still interested. He was, but he wasn’t vival training. Enduring it was a pre-condition to by the idea of space travel, he would take a chair into allowed to tell anyone for 24 hours, pending a press spending time on the ageing Mir space station. the backyard, lay it on its back, hop aboard and release. So he bought a bottle of champagne and To simulate an emergency landing in an inacces- imagine himself rocketing into space. He made popped the cork alone. sible backwater, Thomas and two other cosmonauts November 23, 2003 AGENDA 9

huge cracks away from you with deep-throated frustrating. You let go of something for just a rumbles.” moment and it will float away and be gone.” With the temperature down to minus 50 degrees, Pencil tightly in hand, Thomas sketched the the three stumbled upon a wooden fishing hut, Earth, the spacecraft and the other cosmonauts when which they broke up to make a fire; the freezing cos- they went outside to do a spacewalk. “I really enjoyed monauts stood so close to the flames that their ther- it,” he says. “I would get so involved that I would mal gear began to melt. They heated water to drink intellectually remove myself from my environment in an effort to keep warm but whenever they put a and hours would go by. I’d feel completely liberated.” cup down to stoke the fire, the water turned to ice by the time they picked it up again. All around them demanding career in aerospace hadn’t left was nothingness. “It was dead still, icy cold,” recalls much room for relationships, but after a Thomas. “I thought, ‘This is as close as you can get couple of space flights, Thomas started to to being on another planet’. It was extraordinary.” Athink about forming closer ties on Earth. “I wondered whether being self-focused detracted from ith training like that, it’s little wonder my ability to get involved. Now that I’ve achieved my that space travel can be the easiest part personal goals, it’s made me look at the age I’m at of being an astronaut. Thomas’s space- and ask ‘Do you want to remain as a single person Wwalk was a breeze. “I’d gone through it on this planet or do you want a partnership?’ I’m so many times on the ground that once I got going, doing that, I have a lady friend.” it just started to unfold and went very smoothly. We Andy Thomas on the Thomas started dating Shannon Walker after he train for it by doing everything in a really huge tank Glenelg Jetty during a touched down from Mir. She manages NASA’s Mis- of water with a full-scale mock-up of the space sta- recent holiday in his sion Evaluation Room, the room full of engineers tion. It’s so accurate that when you actually do it in home town, Adelaide. that keep an eye on the spacecraft during flight. space you have the sense that you’ve done it before. Walker monitored the space station systems when You put your hand out expecting a handrail to be Main picture: Thomas was on his last shuttle flight, but he insists there, and it is.” Astronauts Andy there was no place for sweet nothings in the teleme- It’s no free ride, though. Space shuttle missions Thomas, left, and Paul try streams. “When you’re in orbit there’s a cast of are brief and busy. “On my last flight of 12 days,” Richards prepare for thousands looking at everything. Even though you’re Thomas recalls, “we would get up and it would be 16 their planned six-hour isolated in space, you’re not alone.” hours of go, go, go. You grab a bite to eat on the fly spacewalk in And nor, says Thomas, are the rest of us. It is when you can. Suddenly, they call up from the Discovery’s airlock in a almost inconceivable, he says, that there is not life ground and tell you it’s time to go to bed. You won- view from television elsewhere in the universe. “I think life is a natural der where the day’s gone.” March 12, 2001. manifestation of the way physics and matter behave Mir was different: 130 days and over 2000 orbits in the universe, and I don’t think the conditions here were dressed in their spacesuits, put in a tiny cap- of the Earth left plenty of time for reflection. Thomas were so unique that it would only happen here.” sule and dumped on the coast of northern Siberia. watched summer arrive in the northern hemisphere, Looking for this extraterrestrial life is one reason the The temperature was minus 40 degrees, and they saw ice sheets melt and vegetation colour the land- space program is so important, he says. were set the task of surviving for the two days it scape. His inner greenie was piqued by deforested He doesn’t have much time for the naysayers that would take rescuers to find them. swathes he saw in south-east Asia and South Ameri- chime in whenever there’s a setback. “After the The three cosmonauts were squeezed inside a ca. He worried about the bad air over China, and Columbia accident I saw a cartoon that showed Mag- space capsule “like the front seat of a Mini”. Inside, about a huge slash-and-burn fire that he saw run out ellan or Columbus, I am not sure who, sailing off the air temperature was 37 degrees, to simulate the of control in Mexico, sending a plume of smoke as into the sunset looking for new worlds. Behind them heat that would be generated on re-entry. “You start far as Chicago. “It was sobering to see that,” he says. was a bureaucrat in a rowboat paddling madly to dripping in perspiration, then you have to take all of He wasn’t a passive observer. Knowing he would catch up. And the caption said ‘Stop, stop, you can’t your clothes off,” Thomas says. “You don’t want to have some free time on Mir, Thomas decided to take go. It’s much too dangerous and much too expen- sweat too much because it’s going to become really up sketching. “I’m not professing to be an artist,” he sive’. It’s sad that people have that view. cold and if you’re wet in the cold you’re in a lot of says. “In fact, I hadn’t done any drawings prior to “My own feeling about human exploration of trouble. So we sat there, stripped off to our under- that, but I thought it would be nice to try and record space is that it’s going to allow us to answer some wear, and slowly putting clothes back on as it got some of these experiences in drawings.” profoundly intriguing questions. It will help us to colder and colder.” Sketching in zero gravity poses problems that no understand how life arose and what conditions you Finally, when it was as cold inside the capsule plein air artist would dream of. For a start, Thomas need for life to arise. Knowing the answer to the as it was outside, the trio stepped on to the ice. “It needed to put his feet under straps on the floor to question ‘Is there life elsewhere in the universe, or was three in the morning and a full moon. There stop himself floating away. He needed to fix his paper in the solar system even?’ would have a huge impact we were, isolated, the northern lights were shim- in a special clipboard, and his pencil had a velcro strip on us as a species. It would affect our culture, our mering, the Hale-Bopp comet was visible. Each so he could stick it to the wall when not drawing. If it society. I can’t imagine any question that could have step you took on the ice would break it and send became detached, it would disappear in a trice. “It’s so a more profound effect on humankind.”

“Summer Lovin” from $239*

26 Flinders Street Melbourne Vic 3000 Tel: 03 9668 1111 Email: [email protected] www.hotellindrum.com.au *Valid 01 December 2003 - 29 February 2004 (excl. 31 December 2003 & 29-31 January 2004).Conditions apply.