A Mir Story

Astronaut Wendy Lawrence at the Visitor Complex.
Astronaut Wendy Lawrence demonstrates sleeing in space.

We rode in "Thomas" back to the Press Site, from where I drove to the Visitor Complex.

Upon arrival I discovered that the day's visiting astronaut was Wendy Lawrence, and I raced into the lecture theatre just as her talk was beginning.

Wendy had a fascinating tale to tell, involving Scott Parazynski and Andy Thomas and flight assignments to the Mir space station. I had heard it before from both Scott (who had done a guest speaking gig in Melbourne at my behest some years ago) and Andy (who has visited Melbourne many times), but it was nice to get Wendy's version of the tale. Just minutes before the launch of STS 131 on April 5 I had interviewed another player in this drama - Michael Foale.

Basically, Wendy had been bumped off the crew list for a Mir space station long duration stay because her arms were too short for the space suits used in "spacewalks". Scott had also been bumped because he was too tall for the Soyuz capsule. For some years afterwards Scott wore a name patch on his blue astronaut overalls that said: "Too Tall Parazynski."

And so it came to pass that Andy, who had trained as back-up astronaut with no real expectation of going to Mir found himself living aboard Mir for many months.

Both Wendy and Scott did eventually make it up to Mir, not as a long stay residents, but as a visiting shuttle crew members. One of the surprises of Wendy's talk was the detailed photos she showed of the damage to Mir caused by a collision with a Progress tanker.

Oh, and Michael's part in this? Well, he was NASA's fifth long stay resident on Mir, and was there when the Progress cargo ship crashed into Mir's Priroda module. He had been due to hand over the reigns as NASA's long duration mission to Wendy.

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Text, images and audio Copyright to Andrew Rennnie, 2010