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MacLean Excited About Shuttle Liftoff Despite Weather Delays, Says Williams

Posted on: Sunday, 27 August 2006, 18:00 CDT

By ROSS MAROWITS

MONTREAL (CP) - As he waits for the skies to clear over Cape Canaveral for this week's shuttle launch, Canadian astronaut Dave Williams is thinking about his own return to space next year and his first walk outside the craft.

"I think it's going to be pretty incredible," he said in a phone interview from Toronto.

"You can imagine opening the hatch of the air lock and looking down about 300 to 400 kilometres to the Earth below you."

The 52-year-old doctor is eager for his first return to space since 1998, when he spent 16 days aboard the shuttle Columbia.

He is scheduled to make three space walks during the shuttle Endeavor's 13-or 14-day mission in next June.

That would make him the third Canadian to walk in space, after Chris Hadfield and Steve MacLean.

"One of the challenges, though, is to remember that we're there to do the construction tasks so even though the view is compelling, we actually hit the ground running, so to speak."

The Endeavour crew will add a truss segment and relocate solar arrays on the International Space Station.

Joining him on the mission will be teacher Barb Morgan, who was backup to Christina McAliffe before the space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff in 1986.

The mission could make him the last Canadian to board a shuttle before the vehicles are retired in 2010.

But this week the focus is on MacLean, whose mission was postponed on Sunday after lightning struck the launch pad and poor weather hovered over emergency landing sites.

In a telephone call Sunday, MacLean told Williams he was excited about heading back to space aboard Atlantis.

"He's really excited looking forward to going and right now they're just waiting to see whether it's going to be on Tuesday or when it's going to be."

Nerves won't likely kick in until two minutes before liftoff, following a four-hour pre-launch check list, he said.

"A lot of people think about different things in those two minutes," Williams said.

"But for most of us at some point, it crosses your mind that you're about to have seven million pounds of thrust ignite beneath you and going from being stationary to travelling 25 times the speed of sound in eight minutes."

The decision about when that takes place is in the hands of the mission management team, which is ensuring the space orbiter is ready to go.

Williams is one of the few Canadians who has experienced the decision from both sides: as an astronaut and as the first non-American to hold a senior management position within NASA.

As director of the Space and Life Sciences Directorate at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Williams was involved in the liftoff decisions of some 21 shuttles.

"We spend a tremendous amount of time focusing on all the technical issues associated with the launch making sure that the shuttle is ready to go."

One of his first decisions was giving the medical green light for Senator John Glenn to become the oldest man in space at 77.

The lure of a return to space led him to trade in his business attire for a NASA space suit.

"Flying in space is pretty unique so any time you get a chance to go to fly you're certainly not going to turn it down."

Along the way, he also became the first Canadian to have lived and worked in space and in the ocean. He spent 25 days in two missions aboard an underwater research laboratory off the coast of Florida.

While next year's mission will be his last aboard a space shuttle, Williams hasn't ruled out other space missions as NASA prepares for flights to the moon and Mars.

"Maybe I can fly like Senator Glenn when I'm 77."

Source: Canadian Press

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