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Ross-Nazzal: How do you clean the suits?

McDougle: We have a Stericide [disinfecting-sterilizing solution] that we use to clean the suits. We take the suits into the drying locker, hang them up, invert them and spray it down real good. After they dry, they’re inspected and seals are cleaned and lubed. There is some spot cleaning involved on some equipment.



Of course if urine got in the suit, which could happen—even when they wear their diaper it can leak out sometimes—we use a baking-soda-and-water solution. You have to be careful with what you use to clean of course. It has to be approved because you don’t want anything that’s going to damage the equipment or cause any problems.



The engineers check everything out before we use it. Remember the culture shock I told you about? When they’re going in space it’s different than just flying a plane at high altitude. So they really have to check, check, and recheck. I got used to it, but I was still in shock with how things worked. A lot more procedural-based, you have to make sure you read everything and follow procedure.



I hate to say it, but I feel like I got dumber once I got here because you’re so dependent on reading everything. Whereas in the military you learned it, and it was there; you didn’t depend on reading word for word what you need to do. After repetition you know it, but still you have to read your procedures. Everything is procedure-driven, so you have to read it. And you have MIP (mandatory inspection points) steps. That’s where the quality inspectors check. They make sure the reading on the gauge is what you wrote down and all specs are met. I understood it after I’d been here a while.



It was a culture shock from how we did things in the Air Force. “If it’s broke, fix it.” Something that takes ten minutes to fix in the Air Force can take three days here because you have to wait for it to go through all the proper channels for approvals. Which isn’t a bad thing, I just wasn’t used to it. I wasn’t used to not being able to just repair discrepancies when needed. You have to wait, get it approved, and documented.

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