by Patty Pitts
Robert Thirsk will be the next Canadian astronaut in space
A little bit of UVic will be orbiting the Earth next summer when Dr. Robert Thirsk becomes the next Canadian to go into space. Thirsk will be carrying a UVic crest with him aboard the space shuttle, symbolic of a year spent on campus studying Russian and pursuing his research as an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering.
The road to the launch pad requires extraordinary skills, immense self-discipline and tremendous patience. After being the back-up astronaut in 1984 to Marc Garneau, the first Canadian to go into space, Thirsk remained in the space program and watched while three other Canadians, Roberta Bondar, Steve MacLean, and Chris Hadfield, preceeded him to Cape Canaveral.
Then, last spring, he learned he would get to realize his dream.
³I'm scheduled to fly aboard the space shuttle on June 27,² said Thirsk on a brief pre-Christmas visit to UVic from Houston, Texas where he and his family live while he trains for his mission. ³My professional goal is to perform all my in-orbit duties with excellence and my personal goal is to experience the thrill of flying and floating in space.²
While all that floating and flying is the epitome of space travel, it takes a severe toll on the astronauts' bodies and is the focus of much pre-, post-, and on-flight research. Thirsk would like to develop an anti-gravity suit to help astronauts decrease the effects of weightlessness on their cardio-vascular systems. He hopes his research at UVic will take him closer to his goal.
Last year, Thirsk took a 12-month sabbatical from the space program to update the clinical skills he had put on hold while in astronaut training and to study Russian, in case the next space mission took him to the space station Mir. Since his parents live on Vancouver Island, Thirsk relocated his wife and two children from Ottawa to Victoria while he pursued his studies. He brushed up on his medical skills at Victoria General and Royal Jubilee Hospitals, studied with the University's Department of Slavonic Studies and conducted research with the Department of Mechanical Engineering on the effects of space travel on astronauts' cardiovascular systems.
Engineering students under the direction of Thirsk and Dr. Ged McLean (Mechanical Engineering) developed equipment and procedures for an experiment called measurement of venous compliance (MVC). This experiment is designed to investigate how veins, muscles and blood flow in the legs of astronauts adapt to a weightless environment. Typically, blood in the legs is redistributed toward the chest and head during spaceflight while leg muscles atrophy. When the flight is over, it may take astronauts two to three days to regain complete use of their legs and to lose the lingering feeling of lightheadedness.
MVC experimentation helps simulate weightless conditions for pre-flight research. Ultimately, it might be performed during shuttle flights to help astronauts maintain adequate blood volume in their legs during re-entry to Earth. The students also developed software aimed at instructing a laptop-toting, free-floating astronaut how to conduct the experiment. The shift from hard copy instruction books to a floppy disc is both pragmatic and timely.
³Mass and volume are two precious commodities on the space shuttle,² said Thirsk. ³It costs $50,000 for every kilogram of cargo we carry. So if you can reduce a lot of paper to a floppy disc and combine that with the power of a computer, it's the way to go.²
Throughout the summer, students did their best to feign weightlessness while reading instructions on their computers to take various pieces of equipment out of a box and hold them in place with velcro until needed for an experiment.
³The UVic students had success with the computer program, but they had difficulty manipulating the MVC equipment so that aspect of the research is continuing,² said Thirsk. ³We're discussing a better way to develop the equipment. The collaboration will go on until June.²
Since being named as Canada's newest astronaut, Thirsk admits he schedules his life in hour-long segments (³Aboard the space shuttle our schedule is broken down into five-minute segments.²) In Houston, he is learning about the 22 experiments he'll be doing during his 16-day flight.
His fellow shuttle crew members are American and French, while the back-up crew members are Italian and Spanishevidence of the international spirit that now exists at Houston.
³Technically, the training hasn't changed much since I was there last time,² said Thirsk, ³but the attitude at NASA has changed 180 degrees. The shuttle was solely a NASA program in the early 1980s. There wasn't as much regard for international space participation as we would have liked. Today NASA runs a very international program and one hears lots of different languages spoken at Houston now.²
Thirsk hopes to conduct conversations with school children during his space flight and will join with other crew members in answering questions sent to them via the worldwide web and passed along by NASA .
³I want to involve Canadians as much as possible in the flight. For instance, the Canadian Space Agency is inviting students to submit possible experiments that I can perform in space.²
But, in spite of the intense collaborative effort required to send a crew into space and keep them there for 16 days, Thirsk knows that the most memorable aspect of space travel will be a very personal one.
³The biggest joy will be looking out the window at Earth and imagining that the shuttle isn't there, that it's just me flying through space.²
The Ring
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