10
You’re Going into Space, or You’re Going to Blow Up

The Engineering Professor at the University of Western Ontario in London leans back in his chair, and rather reluctantly begins to talk about himself. He tells you he was born in Iceland, and while he only lived there for the first seven years of his life, explains how a small incident when he was six had a lasting impact on so much of what he has done ever since. “A cousin who was about fourteen came to visit our home in Reykjavik,” the professor explains. “I didn’t really know him at the time, but when he showed me some pencil drawings that he had done, I became quite interested in him and in what he had drawn. I did not know what the things were though, so I had to ask. He told me they were airplanes.”¹

At this point in his life, Bjarni Tryggvason had never seen an airplane, or even a picture of one. Forty-six years later, he became the only person from Iceland to circle the Earth on a space shuttle.

The intervening years were long and circuitous, but the images of those airplane sketches were never far from Tryggvason’s mind. In fact, the cousin gave him one to keep, and he treasured it for a long, long time. A year or so after getting the drawing, the young Icelander not only saw his first plane, he flew in it. That was because the Tryggvason family was leaving Iceland and coming to live in Canada; in Nova Scotia.

Because there was no direct air connection between Reykjavik and Halifax then, or even today, the move entailed flying to New York, and from there on to Nova Scotia, by way of Montreal. All three of those flights left young Bjarni with an unquenchable love for planes, for flying, and for the aura of adventure that the machines evoked. Even today, as a member of Canada’s first astronaut group, his eyes shine when he talks about flying — in any type of aircraft. But it was that journey to Canada that instilled a love of the air in the man who today has over five thousand hours in his log books.

“We flew to New York on a DC-6 or something,” said Tryggvason, “and I spent the entire time glued to a window, looking down at the Earth and ocean, and on the clouds in particular. I just couldn’t figure them out. I didn’t know if they were real clouds or fog, but I was intrigued. Then, when we landed in New York, I saw something I will never forget.”

Bjarni Tryggvason, who flew on STS-85, was born in Iceland and still is the only astronaut from that country. He became a Canadian when he was a youngster.

As anyone middle-aged or older will recall, at one time airports and the planes that landed and left them were not cocooned in the veils of security that we encounter today. Being able to walk out onto the tarmac to greet arriving loved ones was commonplace; even going out just to look at planes was permitted. That was the way it was at the time. However, the day the Tryggvason family landed in New York, one of the first things they were told was that no one was allowed to go out onto the tarmac. That was because a jet plane was parked out there!

“Now, I had never seen a jet plane before,” Bjarni Tryggvason says today, “but it really made an impression on me. First of all, there were no propellers, and I thought that was amazing. And this jet was so small, and it had such an exciting shape. I can still remember both those things. In fact, I can still see the plane parked there. Then I asked, or probably my father asked, what kind of plane it was. It turned out to be a T-33. Ironically, years later, I flew T-33s when I worked at the National Research Council in Ottawa.”

The Tryggvason family moved on to Nova Scotia, and remained there for two years before going to British Columbia, where the future astronaut grew up and continued his education. Today, he cites both provinces as wonderful places to be young. He regales you with stories of his formative years, of games, fishing, swimming, sports of all kinds, exploring, and being happy and carefree in days that seemed to last forever. In British Columbia, the family lived in Kitimat for four years. When every street and backyard in the town had been checked out, he and his friends would hitchhike elsewhere, often as far as forty miles from home. There was no danger in doing this, he explains, or if there was, it was never really considered. “We lived a block from the forest, so we spent a lot of time running around in it. When we were not in the forest, we were on our bikes, going all over the place.”

Then, one day a marvelous thing happened. “When I was in grade six, Sputnik was launched — and that made a huge impact on me. It was the same kind of impact that the drawing of the aircraft had when I was much younger. When we first heard about Sputnik, everyone was doing normal things, going to school, going to work, whatever. But when we found out about that satellite, it made me realize for the first time that there were people out there thinking of grander things, and doing amazing things that the rest of us knew nothing about.

“It was the launch of Sputnik that gave me a kind of motto or purpose in life that I never had up until that time. It impressed me to the point that I decided then and there that I was never going to let people around me or the things around me be a limit to what I could do. That has been my intent ever since.”²

In 1959, the Tryggvason family moved to Vancouver, where Bjarni’s father became involved in the fishing industry. The son continued his education during the week, but on weekends, and some evenings, he spent as much time as he could in the Air Force Reserve. There, he learned all he could about planes; everything except flying them, although several pilots who also worked there liked the young Icelander, and took him up on occasion. In the two summers he spent with the reserve, he did everything from aircraft repair to participating in search and rescue operations at the Air Force base at Comox, on Vancouver Island. And — he recalls — got paid for doing what he loved.

At one point during his teenaged years the young cadet thought he might join the Air Force itself, largely because he wanted to fly jets. In time, he did fly jets, but did not have to go the military route to do so. One thing that’s quickly apparent when talking to the man, Tryggvason embodies a mind and spirit that are obviously far too freewheeling to conform to a military environment. “And I knew this,” he explains. “I knew myself well enough to realized that army or air force life were not for me. I knew I was not in tune with the kind of discipline needed in the military. I prefer to think my way through things and do them because they make sense, not just because someone tells me that something has always been done that way.”

Nevertheless, Tryggvason still wanted to become a pilot, but he also intended to go to university, in case a career in flying didn’t pan out.

“So, one day,” he explains, “before I decided to go to university, I was sitting at the kitchen table at home, talking to my mother and my brother, and she asked me what I was going to do. I told her I wanted to be a pilot. So she said, well, you better get going then. That was it. We finished our coffee; I got in the car, and started knocking on doors, asking how one went about becoming a pilot. I ended up at Langley, [B.C.] and told them what I wanted to do. I said I wanted to become a commercial pilot, but they told me I had to become a private pilot first. So I said okay. Then they asked me when I wanted to start. I said, right now. I soloed one week later, largely because having been in the reserve I knew how a plane worked, where the instruments were and so on.

“At the time, you had to have about thirty-five hours to get your licence, but one day, when I had about twenty, the instructor said to me: ‘We don’t know what to do with you. You have completed everything, but we can’t give you a licence because you are fifteen hours short of the time required.’ So I asked if I could go and learn to fly float planes in order to get the rest of the hours. So I did. I got the float plane experience, and the hours as part of the private licence. I also went on to get my commercial and did a lot of float plane work, along with aerobatic stuff. Then I thought I had better get to university.”

Bjarni Tryggvason went to the University of British Columbia where he earned a degree in engineering physics. He was involved in postgraduate studies at the University of Western Ontario when he was offered a job at the National Research Council, in Ottawa. When the first advertisements for astronauts came out, he was in the Capital. By that time, he was flying those T-33 jets.

“When I first looked at the advertisements for astronauts,” he says, “I thought to myself: ‘My job has come about.’ When I applied, they had really no idea what they were looking for, and nor did I. But I got through the first selection gate, along with 1,800 others. Then they sent out more information, and when I looked at it, I decided I was going to make the next round. Sixty-eight of us were picked. That was when I really started to figure out what they seemed to want, and I became determined to get there. Finally, they put nineteen of us on a short list, brought us all to Ottawa, and we met each other, as well as the selection people. At that point, I decided there were no problems here. I looked over the group and picked five of the final six. I was one of them.”

For everyone except for Marc Garneau, the period between the selection of the first astronauts and the time of their flight was both long and complicated. NASA was plagued with everything from money problems, to uncertainty, to the terrible loss of Challenger and its entire crew. In Canada there was much speculation as to how many Canadians would even be assigned a mission. Initially, there was supposed to be only two. However, because of the extensive buildup to the astronaut selection, and the resultant publicity, informed observers thought there would have to be more than that. In time, a third place opened up, and the six hopefuls from Canada looked upon three flying and three backup. In that way, all would be involved. Ultimately, however, as we all know, five of the first six flew, Tryggvason among them.

Thirteen months passed between STS-78, with Bob Thirsk on board, and STS-85, Tryggvason’s mission. During that time, and earlier, he and several other Canadian scientists scrambled to assemble suitable experiments for the flight. When his time came, Tryggvason went as a Payload Specialist; his primary role was performing fluid science experiments in space. This work was vital in the examination of various liquids and their sensitivity to spacecraft vibration. Ultimately, his work contributed to the understanding of the effect that vibrations have on experiments being performed today on board the International Space Station. The background of what is being done now has a large Canadian component, and men such as Tryggvason helped bring that about.

The weeks leading up to the Tryggvason flight became a whirlwind of activity for him. Final preparation for the experiments he would do took time. So did crew training in Houston, the requirements to maintain a high level of physical fitness, and the never-ending, incessant media requests for stories that they were developing. Rather expectedly, Tryggvason’s background became a factor. He had been a Canadian citizen for years, but his Icelandic heritage generated a great deal of interest in the land of his birth. The press there ran pieces about him; everyone on the island knew his name, his picture was circulated widely, and school children called him their hero. There were even rumours that Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson might go to Florida for the launch. Then the rumours became fact: President Grimsson did go to the Cape for the big day, and he brought about fifty of his countrymen with him — among them, some of Tryggvason’s relatives. Other family members came from Canada, of course, many of them from British Columbia. Unfortunately, Bjarni Tryggvason’s mother had passed away by that time, and his father was too frail to be present.

The Tryggvasons themselves had split up about five years earlier, but his ex-wife Lilyanna Zmijak, and their son Michael and daughter Lauren were both there. Tryggvason thought of them as his shuttle Discovery sat on the pad just before the launch.

“I always remember saying to myself: ‘let’s get this countdown done, so they can press the button and we can go. Don’t give me any of those last minute holds.’ I also hoped the people who were watching had a good show to watch — but not a spectacular one. When you are sitting on the pad, you have only two possibilities: you are either going into space, or you’re going to blow up.”

Tryggvason, who recently flew a replica of the legendary Silver Dart, also flies World War II Harvard aircraft, compares a shuttle launch to the formation flying he loves to do whenever he can. “Formation flying demands your undivided attention,” he explains, “you do it right, and everything’s okay. But if you misjudge by a second and you hit somebody else, you wipe out. If you blow up in the shuttle, or wipe out in formation flying, those are the risks you take.”³

Then Tryggvason talks about the spectators at a launch: “Those people down there who are watching — especially your family members — they didn’t make this decision that you take this risk. They are just there, supporting, watching, and hoping everything’s going to be okay. I talked about the risk with my family, and they knew of the risk as well. My kids were about nine and eleven at the time, and they understood the risk too. And even though they were not old enough to remember the Challenger accident when it happened, they had seen it replayed on television so often that they knew.

“My kids asked me: ‘Why are you doing this? You might blow up and die.’ I told them I was willing to take the risk, because it was something I had to do — so they were very supportive. But after I had flown, they told me: ‘Okay, you did it once. You don’t have to do it again.’ And I didn’t, although I likely would have had the opportunity. I made the decision not to go again because I wanted to try to be of more help to my kids. I completed the Mission Specialist training, but if I had begun the training for another mission, I would not have been able to see them for far too long.” As Bjarni Tryggvason says this, you sense the depth of his intention. He is extremely proud of his son and daughter, and shows pictures of them. Lauren attends Wellesley College, in Boston, and plans on becoming a veterinarian. Michael will soon have his engineering degree — from Western, where his father teaches — and like his father, flies both float planes and other commercial aircraft.

Discovery blasted off on time, and newspapers around the world covered the story. One of them described the launch in this way:

Bjarni Tryggvason rode a fiery trail of smoke through the Florida sky into the deep-freeze of space yesterday morning, ending a 14-year wait on the ground. Thousands of spectators, including 400 Canadians who traveled to Florida for his launch, cheered as the shock waves raced across the ground after ignition. But the roar of engines drowned out the cheering, firing out 7 million pounds of thrust and lifting Discovery through haze and light cloud.⁴

The paper went on to explain that the fourteen year reference was how long Tryggvason waited to fly, and that he was the last of the original six Canadian astronauts to do so.

As the crowd on the ground watched what Tryggvason later learned was “a good show,” they screamed themselves hoarse, expressed amazement at the Gatling gun retort of the shuttle engines, and expressed both relief and disappointment that the drama ended so soon. Discovery raced out over the Atlantic, was still gaining altitude as it swept past Iceland, and ultimately entered orbit two hundred miles above the Indian Ocean. There, the pull of gravity disappeared, and anything not secured on board began to drift around the decks. Once that happened, the six astronauts on board — five Americans and one Canadian — set about preparing for the work that awaited them.

By the time the spectators at the Cape stopped looking to the heavens, the smoke from the shuttle engines had wafted away, and the reporters present were gathering reactions for the stories they would file. One of the first to comment was Icelandic President Grimsson. He expressed amazement at what he had just seen, and immediately claimed Bjarni Tryggvason as Iceland’s “first space voyager.” Not far away, friends, family, and countrymen of the crew were equally enthusiastic. NASA said that STS-85 had been “a perfect launch.”

During the almost twelve days that followed, the perfect launch became a highly successful flight. Commander Curtis L. Brown, Jr. guided his craft and crew in a professional and businesslike manner. The mission was his fourth, and in ensuing years he flew two others, one of which was also on Discovery when astronaut pioneer John Glenn returned to space at the age of seventy-seven.

As STS-85 progressed, so did the work being done by Tryggvason. He was praised for his contribution and for his unwavering attention to the experiments he had been entrusted to do. He brought with him a briefcase-sized instrument called a Microgravity Isolation Mount (MIM) and worked slowly through several math formulas in search of the perfect balance in testing it. The fluid science experiments designed to examine sensitivity to spacecraft vibrations were, as mentioned above, vital in his role.

There were also several other aspects to the mission. One of those involved the release and then retrieval of a small satellite, which gathered data on the Earth’s ozone layer. Another involved the testing of the prototype for a new Japanese robot arm. The device was about five feet long and had three fingers. Unfortunately, its performance was somewhat disappointing, but the retrieved satellite captured enough priceless data to keep scientists occupied for months. The crew also observed the Hale-Bopp comet as they sped through space.

The shuttle landed back at Cape Canaveral, where the touchdown was smooth. In the words of a news agency report: “A full moon shone as Discovery swooped through a pale sky and rolled down the runway minutes after sunrise yesterday.”⁵ The landing date was August 19, 1997.

Soon after Discovery came to a stop, and the crew on board had been checked by NASA physicians, they posed for group photos, and told the assembled press people how great it was to be home. They were all enthusiastic about the 4.7 million miles they had traveled, and all professed a willingness to do it again if circumstances warranted. But, as indicated before, the Discovery mission was Bjarni Tryggvason’s first and final flight into space. He continued to be associated with NASA until September 2005, when he was seconded from the Canadian Space Agency to the University of Western Ontario. There, as the school alumni magazine reported, he established “a research facility at Western Engineering, collaborating with faculty members and graduate students in his field, and sharing his phenomenal experiences with our undergraduate students.”⁶ Today, Tryggvason says he is happy at Western, and remains enthusiastic about his work.

I asked him if his time in space changed him.

“No, I don’t think so,” he replied, “but it did have one effect that has been lasting. It made me realize what a mess we are making of this world. I remember years ago, when I first came here and was flying planes, you could take off from London, and if you climbed high enough, you could see the CN Tower in Toronto. Not any more. On the clearest days there is haze. I remember flying across the prairies years ago, and the sky was crystal clear. You don’t get that now.

Doctor Bjarni Tryggvason is now a professor in the Department of Materials and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Western Ontario. He also flies WWII vintage Harvard aircraft.

“So many of the pictures we have all seen of the earth from space show the earth as being clear and beautiful. But take pictures of China, India, Borneo, Indonesia, Africa, and South America, and they are not clear. From space, you see the smog, the smoke, the dust, the haze, the burning of forests, and so on. I remember coming over Borneo, and I was trying to take a picture of it. Well, you could hardly see it. There was all this muddy stuff around the islands, because the soil is being washed into the ocean.

“In many of the talks I have given since my flight, I tend to talk about those things rather than the gee whiz of the flying. We have learned what we are doing to the planet because we have seen the results from space. Talking about that and trying to do something about it is more important to me than talking about the gee whiz part. You know, that talk that our friend Al Gore received the Nobel Prize for was the same talk, using some of the same slides that I have been doing since 1998. I guess it helps if you’ve been a Vice President.”

On that note I said goodbye to the Professor, and as I drove away from the Western campus, thought of all the summer smog alerts in Southern Ontario. Perhaps it is time we really listened to Al Gore — and to Bjarni Tryggvason as well.