Extra-urban Texas seems to hearken to the 1950’s, or
earlier. Perhaps this is just my hazy
notion, gained through a few movies like The Right Stuff, where dusty ranges, a
few palm trees, one-story houses and concrete highways stretching through the
desert seem to recall the United States’ golden age, the peaceful decade and a
half following the end of World War II.
The social stresses which became obvious in the 60’s were still largely
out of view, we had yet to embark on any disastrous wars of choice, and society
floated evenly on a steadily rising tide of oil (to adopt a phrase). To my still childlike imagination, it was the
age of NASA. And little hearkens to NASA
like the huge airfields of the arid south, and command control centers like
Houston. (Imagine if half the money
blown on these stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had been spent instead on
education and space exploration. It
might be the age of NASA again. Instead the national and state governments are being starved and billionaires play spaceman.)
I found myself in Houston, Texas last week, for a three-day
class in offshore survival, a critical part of the resume of any offshore
freelancer. Right now, while I still
gain my doctorate, offshore gigs which pay nicely are my best means of supporting
Kate, Eva and Eliot, so for the next two years at least I’ll be flying out for
odd one-to-four-week jobs in order to keep us clothed, sheltered and fed. And that kind of plan won’t work without a
certificate stating you can mind your P’s and Q’s when things go wrong out on
the water.
The class itself ranged from interesting—the teachers knew
not to dwell on things that the students already knew well—to fascinating, when
we hit the pool. It was held at the NASA
Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a huge metal building which houses one of the
world’s largest pools, 100’ x 220’ x 40’ deep.
In the water is a full-scale mockup of the International Space Station,
and astronauts on a daily basis spend 6-hour training periods submerged,
drilling on maintenance jobs. The point
of the water, of course, is to simulate the nearly gravity-free environment of
orbit, where astronauts can rotate and travel in any direction with only slight
nudges.
Apparently the film Armageddon, about an impending asteroid
collision with Earth, used this facility to film the training sessions of the
men-who-would-save-the-planet. One of
our instructors worked at the lab during the filming, and said most of the cast
and crew were nice folks, except for Bruce Willis who was a real jerk (adding that
Ben Affleck isn’t as intelligent as you might think).
That is what really charmed me about the visit: the heritage
of NASA, right there, and in that part of Houston. When we went outside for a few training
sessions with lifeboats, our teacher Chris casually referred to the asphalt lot
as “NASA’s backyard”. There were more
mockup parts of the space station, as well as a mockup space capsule.
Something about the grounds, just walking and driving
around, seemed reminiscent of sixty years ago.
Without the frost heaves of winter, roads down there tend to remain in
much better repair, and of course many of the cars are older because they don’t
need to salt the roads three or four months a year. The architecture of the buildings, including
the huge covered walkways (to shield from sun and the pouring rainstorms, when
it does rain) even seemed from an earlier era.
It was easy to walk around there with a bit of added spring in my step,
and feel proud of what my country had accomplished, and proud to be a citizen.
The pool sessions were escape drills. First, we jumped in the water and then
boarded a life raft. I can tell you,
they get crowded in a hurry. Even after
five minutes inside an air-conditioned building, it was getting hot. On the ocean, where it might be well over 100
degrees, or close to 30, it would be even less fun. Especially after the first hour. Or first six.
Of course, as we were told, average rescue time in the Gulf of Mexico
ranges from 45 minutes to an hour and a half.
But that’s just the average, and that’s only in the Gulf. Nigeria or even the North Sea might be
somewhat different.
The second set of drills were helicopter escapes. Assuming a copter bringing us out to a rig
were forced to ditch, we would then need to exit and then float to a rescue point. But it’s not good to exit too quickly: if the
rotors are still spinning freely in the air, then as the copter sinks the
rotors will simply hit you on their way down.
So you actually want to wait a little bit before leaving the downed
machine. We did about seven iterations
of this drill, inside a specialized capsule with seats and windows, which was
lowered by overhead crane into the pool.
The final iterations included rotating the capsule so that we were
upside down.
I didn’t go to see any more of the NASA campus while I was
there—I thought I might want to save the surprise, even for myself, until the
whole family can go. Since Eva is
fascinated with planes, helicopters and almost anything that flies, I think it’s
a virtual certainty that the Sutherland family will be vacationing in Texas at
some point in the coming years. And we’ll
all discover the NASA campus together.
Oh, and I happened to be in the locker room when the
astronauts came back in after their six hours in the water. After stripping down out of their tighty
whities, they were wearing diapers. Six
hours straight in an airtight suit? Makes
perfect sense.
