Shuttle Discover's final mission brought joy to sSpace Station crew
Dan Liftman
March 30, 2011
The crew of the last mission of the space shuttle Discovery brought up materials needed to add a room onto the Space Station. While most of the press coverage was focused on the fact that it was Discovery´s final flight, very little was mentioned about the reason for the extra room.
Instead of electronic equipment or something else of great importance, Space Station personnel needed the additional room for "leisure time activities." Astronaut Steve Robertson, a bachelor with a reputation as a ladies´ man, wanted a DVD player and a wide screen TV so he could watch Girls Gone Wild videos.
Flight engineer Bob Carson, the oldest member of the crew, reserved one corner of the new room for his large collection of Daffy Duck comic books. Known to his fellow crewmen as "the jokester," he said, "We get bored up here. It´s not all work. Three months without Daffy and I´d be daffy."
Cosmonaut Yuri Kolshansky, the crew´s only Russian member, shares time on the DVD player with Robertson to watch videos of The Simpsons, subtitled in Russian. Robertson said Kolshansky´s impressions of Homer and Bart are "very funny, and his Krusty the Clown has us all in stitches."
Crew chief Dave Billings, a game fanatic, received a Foosball table. "We all enjoy an occasional game," he said. "It gets fast and furious at times. The ball hit a window once and broke it. We had to hurry up and cover it with plywood and Crazy Glue or the decompression would have killed us all."
Perhaps most surprising, a minibike was delivered to Peter Parkins, the mission´s cook. Before becoming an astronaut, Parkins was a member of a motorcycle "daredevil" act in a traveling carnival. "I spend a lot of time sweating over a hot stove," he said. "I need a way to really relax during my down time. I ride this baby all over the station. Even on the walls."
During a live chat with President Obama, who said he had once seen Parkins´ act and "really enjoyed it," Parkins revealed that his most difficult chore on the Space Station is "looking after Dinky the cat, our mascot. When it´s time to change his litter box, I suit up, grab it and gun my bike out the back door. I collided with a piece of space junk once and the litter went all over me. I really needed a shower when I got back inside and NASA´s going to get a helluva bill for dry cleaning."
Instead of electronic equipment or something else of great importance, Space Station personnel needed the additional room for "leisure time activities." Astronaut Steve Robertson, a bachelor with a reputation as a ladies´ man, wanted a DVD player and a wide screen TV so he could watch Girls Gone Wild videos.
Flight engineer Bob Carson, the oldest member of the crew, reserved one corner of the new room for his large collection of Daffy Duck comic books. Known to his fellow crewmen as "the jokester," he said, "We get bored up here. It´s not all work. Three months without Daffy and I´d be daffy."
Cosmonaut Yuri Kolshansky, the crew´s only Russian member, shares time on the DVD player with Robertson to watch videos of The Simpsons, subtitled in Russian. Robertson said Kolshansky´s impressions of Homer and Bart are "very funny, and his Krusty the Clown has us all in stitches."
Crew chief Dave Billings, a game fanatic, received a Foosball table. "We all enjoy an occasional game," he said. "It gets fast and furious at times. The ball hit a window once and broke it. We had to hurry up and cover it with plywood and Crazy Glue or the decompression would have killed us all."
Perhaps most surprising, a minibike was delivered to Peter Parkins, the mission´s cook. Before becoming an astronaut, Parkins was a member of a motorcycle "daredevil" act in a traveling carnival. "I spend a lot of time sweating over a hot stove," he said. "I need a way to really relax during my down time. I ride this baby all over the station. Even on the walls."
During a live chat with President Obama, who said he had once seen Parkins´ act and "really enjoyed it," Parkins revealed that his most difficult chore on the Space Station is "looking after Dinky the cat, our mascot. When it´s time to change his litter box, I suit up, grab it and gun my bike out the back door. I collided with a piece of space junk once and the litter went all over me. I really needed a shower when I got back inside and NASA´s going to get a helluva bill for dry cleaning."
Print
Email
