McDougle: We could have two to four crews in training at one time. Let me show you what the schedule looks like, which is blank pretty much now. [Shows calendar] When you have three or four crews in training, while they’re up, this schedule is usually full. Right now we only have STS-133 and STS-134 training. Their training events are coming up on the schedule. Then we have presentations we support. We go out to schools and community events and do presentations on the ACES and our department.
All the equipment has usage lives and/or shelf lives. The suit is overhauled—inspected and tested. You’re constantly testing and repairing. The equipment can have discrepancies. We work to repair all those discrepancies, get them ready for the next use. It’s constant. People tend to think, “After they launch, you all just sit around.” No, you constantly have crews in training and we have to prepare all of their equipment. It’s not as extensive as the equipment that’s going to flight, but you still have to prep it, get it packed up and support the different events.
We have a team of 19 people, and there can be 5 to 7 people assigned to a mission. STS-133 may have a training event one day—and there can also be two training events in one day. STS-134 could be training at Building 5, 133 could be at Building 9—so you could have a majority of the team out because they’re supporting these events. If it’s an event that’s going to last all day, we’ll leave one person over there in case the crew needs help and everybody else comes back to the lab and works until it’s time to recover the event. Now for the bailouts where they go out the top of the mockup, practicing if they have to escape from the Shuttle, everybody stays in place because it’s very busy. You have to reset their oxygen bottles and assist them with a variety of things because they’re in and out of the Shuttle mock-up.
We have a lot of repairs and overhauls we perform on gloves, the suits, the helmets, the harnesses, everything. Constant work here. You can have people on travel. An example is you have 133 down in Florida, and our tech team is down there with them. If the astronaut crew is done, they come back to Houston that same day. My guys have to stay a couple more days to finish processing the gear, inspecting it again, and testing it again after it’s been used for TCDT. STS-133 crew came back though. They have a training event the next morning, but their team isn’t here so techs here are going to have to go and support. It gets crazy.
This is probably one of the slowest times besides the return to flight when we were waiting for STS-114 to go up, and there was no training or anything going on. That was bad. We thought we were going to get laid off then. It was about two years before return to flight. I was so shocked they didn’t lay us off, because it was really really slow.
There’s always a lot of activity going on. We have a whole fleet of suits and helmets. Even Class 3 equipment has to be repaired because we use it for training, and it still has to be operational even though it’s not going to fly. Of course people still take vacation and have appointments. They’re not all here all the time. With only two launches there’s not a whole lot of training going on.
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