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Like Christmas Eve When You Are Seven

Marc Garneau’s first space shuttle flight came about more quickly than either he or anyone else involved in the Canadian astronaut program had expected. But he had to wait almost twelve years for his second mission. In the interim, Challenger happened, a new group of Canadian astronauts was picked, and Bondar, MacLean, and Hadfield all flew. In the time between his missions to space, Garneau qualified as a Mission Specialist, served as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM) — he was the first non-American to do so — and had been named Deputy Director of our astronaut program. He had also remarried in 1992, five years after the death of his first wife Jacqueline. During those years, he “faced all the complexities of being a single father of teenaged twins while juggling a demanding job that required a great deal of travel.”¹ He succeeded admirably, and when the time came for him to embark on his second mission, in May 1996, he was better prepared, much more familiar with NASA and its code of operation, and eminently more aware of what to expect and how he could contribute, both in training, and on board the shuttle after it left the pad. In short, he was a veteran flier, and it showed.

He was more self confident, more prepared to question poorly thought out procedure, more adept at problem solving, and more realistic in his expectations for himself and for those around him. As one of his former colleagues told me: “Marc was an ideal astronaut, and he was so totally focused, it was unbelievable. He worked damned hard always, and just presumed everyone else should be doing the same.” These traits had always been part of his persona, whether as a student at the Royal Military College in Kingston during the late sixties, or completing his Doctorate in electrical engineering at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. As a naval officer, and then as an astronaut, the man was a leader in the truest sense of the word. He has a keen mind, the ability to synthesize complex and disparate arguments quickly, and his organizational skills are second to none. On a personal level, he responded to my emails with succinctness and dispatch — sometimes inside of an hour. The fact that he was chosen for a second mission surprised no one.

The flight itself was known as STS-77, on the spaceship Endeavour. This was the shuttle that was named following a countrywide contest in the United States, open to all elementary and secondary school students. The idea was to give the shuttle the same name as a ship that had been involved in a research role at some time in the past or, more likely, a vessel that had been famous historically. U.S. President George Bush Sr. announced the winning name in May 1988. “Endeavour was named after a ship chartered to traverse the South Pacific in 1768 and captained by 18th-century British explorer James Cook, an experienced seaman, navigator and amateur astronomer. He commanded a crew of 93 men, including 11 scientists and artists.”² The work done by Cook is well-known, particularly his charting of the waters off Australia and New Zealand, and the naming of many plant and animal species that had been hitherto unknown.

Because Cook’s ship was British, the spelling of the name for the shuttle retained the British variant — Endeavour — with the “u” intact. Some Americans told me they were annoyed by this, and as late as the STS-118 mission in the summer of 2007, were insisting the shuttle should have an “American” name. In fact, just before the August 8 launch, a huge fifty-foot banner “Go Endeavor” was plastered across the high, razor wire no-go barrier at the base of pad 39B at Kennedy, where the Endeavour stood. A day or so later, the Orlando Sentinel ran a photo of the sign with the spaceship in the background. The paper captioned the illustration with the note: “OK, the sign is missing a ‘u,’ but the spirit is there.”³

There was a crew of six on board Endeavour when Garneau flew for his second time; all were male. The shuttle was under the command of American Colonel John Casper, a former Vietnam War combat pilot, and a veteran of three previous missions. With him on the flight deck was Pilot Curtis Brown, who was on his third shuttle trip. There was only one rookie, a Mission Specialist named Andrew Thomas from Adelaide, Australia. Another Mission Specialist, Mario Runco Jr., had been a state trooper in New Jersey before he became an astronaut. The other crewman was Daniel Bursch, who had flown before, and like Garneau, had a navy background.

All were highly trained, and since the Challenger disaster were required to have a particular skill that was deemed less important earlier on. After Challenger, an emergency escape system had been devised for shuttle crewmembers, allowing them to parachute to safety in case of a near-Earth accident. Whether the plan would work was highly debatable, and was never used, but the parachute training became de rigueur nonetheless. In addition to the safety factor, advocates of the move insisted that it was a good way to determine who could handle stress and who could not. It was a matter of record that Canadian astronauts had always advocated the training, even before it became mandatory. In fact, our first team members “managed to persuade CSA officials to allow skydiving as well, arguing that since their job requires them to spend quite a bit of time flying in high performance aircraft, they should know what to do if they had to bail out.”⁴ One of those advocating for the move was Marc Garneau. His reasoning was that “you discover something about yourself in the moment you actually jump and fall out of the sky. It teaches you about your ability to work in potentially stressful situations and how to react quickly and correctly.”⁵ His assessment was sound, and no astronaut interviewed for this book felt otherwise. In fact, they all loved the thrill, and the adrenaline rush. Unsurprisingly, they all loved the excitement of the launches as well.

Despite having flown before, Garneau was just as enthusiastic about this flight as he had been about his first. “It’s like the excitement of Christmas Eve when I was seven years old,” he told a reporter shortly before the mission began.⁶ That certainly seemed to be true; those who worked with him during the final preparations for launch noted that he seemed happier than they had ever seen him. The long wait between flights was finally over. The years of work and preparation were about to pay off, and the ever-present fear of a scrubbed launch was about to ease.

“It is a challenge to have your launch date slip continuously,” he once remarked. Now though, there was no slippage — the Endeavour would go on schedule.

The flight was an important one in several respects, but particularly to NASA for reasons that were not fully exploratory. In fact, the organization was then, as it often seemed to be, short of the funds it needed to continue the programs they felt to be necessary for the future. Government cutbacks were always feared, and became an ever-present factor in how many missions were flown, and what the purpose of each would be. In earlier years, the U.S.–Soviet competition, and the race for the moon, meant a well-funded NASA. Now, thirty years on, the potholes in the roads and the other needs of their districts meant that members of Congress were more inclined to look after their own, rather than doling out ever-decreasing resources for a space program that, to some, was a bottomless pit. Even though some Congress members fully supported what NASA was doing, there were others who looked upon the launching of rockets as a colossal waste of money. That was why, whenever possible, the public relations types at NASA went to great lengths to stress the commercial aspects of the missions, and to point out to the taxpaying public just how many benefits would come from what was being done.

In fact, “in an era of government spending cutback, space program supporters, more than ever, are emphasizing the practical benefits of costly ventures beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Of course, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — a media darling of the sixties heyday — has always put a premium on public relations, and it has continued its hard-sell approach as its glow and its funding have faded. NASA has billed its latest mission as the opening of ‘the commercial space frontier.’”⁷

That was why, on STS-77, in addition to the science that was being done, purely commercial objectives were also a factor. The most blatant example was a project involving the Coca-Cola Company and its attempts to spread the dogma about their product. In an earlier, highly-publicized advertising scheme, Pepsi-Cola had sponsored a pitch for their drink: Russian cosmonauts extolled its goodness while they were on board the space station Mir. Now it was Coke’s turn to make their pitch, but in a true spirit of orbital one-upmanship, they were also attempting to perfect a kind of soft drink dispenser that would operate in microgravity. Those most familiar with space operations were not surprised to learn that NASA even had a pretentious, and rather silly, name for the machine: a “Fluid Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus.” However, once the thing was in space, it wouldn’t work.

As might be expected, there was a measure of criticism about such blatant advertising, so the reasoning for it had to be defended. That rather thankless task fell to a man named Ed Garbis, the then director of space processing for NASA. He explained the rationale: “Coca-Cola is a premier U.S. capitalistic company which is seeking to improve their competitive advantage. Part of our charter is to extend the interest of commercial firms in space.”⁸ Whether the explanation satisfied many is debatable, particularly because NASA was providing over three million dollars to underwrite the scheme.

Another objective of the mission was the deployment of a Spartan experimental satellite with a Mylar antenna attached to it. The antenna would be folded up initially, but would expand to the size of a tennis court once it and the satellite were removed from the shuttle cargo bay. If the antenna worked, the theory was that it would help reduce the cost of solid structure antennae on the still-to-be-built International Space Station. At the end of the experiment, the Spartan would be retrieved and the antenna released to burn up as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

Also on this mission, a module called Spacehab was positioned in the cargo bay, where the astronauts would be able to enter and leave it through the tunnel connected to the crew quarters. Spacehab was where several other life science experiments would be conducted. Having the lab with them meant that the astronauts had a much larger area in which to work and live.

Among the less publicized studies conducted on the mission were two with obvious medical ramifications. The first was an investigation of whether an insulin-like growth factor would help reduce bone loss in space. The second was an attempt to produce a crystalline form of a new type of insulin. There were also embryonic starfish, mussels, and tiny sea urchins in an on-board aquarium. These miniscule life forms would be studied to try and gain more information on birth defects and osteoporosis in humans. In essence, despite most of the publicity, criticism, and justification centering around the temperamental performance of the soft drink machine, there were important studies being done on the mission. No wonder Canadian-directed work on computer chips received less attention.

Right up to launch time, those around Marc Garneau noticed how enthusiastic he was for what was about to transpire. A reporter asked him to compare the mission with the one he went on earlier.

“The first time I didn’t know what lay ahead of me,” he explained. “This time I do. Because I know what it’s like, because it’s so wonderful, I’m really excited about it.”⁹ He went on to mention how lucky he had been on his first flight, because the shuttle had passed over Canada several times. Now, however, the inclination of the mission differed, and the path followed around the Earth would be more to the south; south of the Great Lakes. But even so, he added, “when I look out the window, I will see some of Canada, but I will not see the west, it’s too far north. I will however, be able to see Toronto in the distance.”¹⁰

The launch of Endeavour for the STS-77 mission took place at 6:30 a.m. and, according to those who were there, was essentially flawless. Included among the usual thousands of spectators were family members of those on board, senior NASA officials, politicians, and representatives of the local, national, and international media. Marc Garneau’s wife, Pamela, had her thirty-sixth birthday the day before the launch, and she made particular note of the occasion, explaining that the safe launch was indeed a special present she would never forget.

Nor would the other witnesses; among them, thirty-six students from Marc Garneau Collegiate in Toronto. Their school, named after Canada’s first astronaut some ten years earlier, had sent the students to the Cape on a field trip that was truly unique. Their enthusiasm showed, and as the shuttle blasted off they could hardly believe what they were seeing. “I was bawling my eyes out,” admitted nineteen-year-old senior, Mike Davies. “All my life, I have dreamed of becoming an astronaut, and this was just a coming together of everything I’ve always dreamed of. This was a mission with a Canadian astronaut …who fulfilled his dream the way I want to.”¹¹

Ashley Waltman, a vice principal at Garneau, was one of those who accompanied the students to Florida. He was just as impressed by the spectacle: “The power, the brightness, the light, the rolling thunder that washed over us — that’s what I can’t get over. We were about five miles away, and none of us can get over the way the sound came at us, building, building until your internal organs were vibrating. It was very moving and very powerful.”

Because Marc Garneau had visited their school and some students had met him, they had an increased interest in what they were seeing. One was a grade ten student who said that because he had talked to Garneau, he could not help but think of the astronaut as the shuttle roared into the distant sky. “It’s something to see a shuttle launch,” enthused grade ten student San Gennidakis, “but it’s something else entirely to think that you actually know someone who’s aboard.

“You think about what he’s accomplished in his life, and it makes you look at the shuttle launch in a whole new perspective. Some of us are beginning to realize ‘Hey! Maybe that’s something I want to do,’ and it encourages you to start learning and focusing your abilities.”¹²

Even before Gennidakis made those comments, Endeavour was already in space and the crewmembers were busy going about the things that needed to be done. First off, according to the bulletin issued by NASA, was the “work activating the Spacelab module systems in the cargo bay laboratory and the ship’s robot arm.”¹³ It was the robot arm, or to Garneau, the Canadarm, that he would operate during the flight. However, the arm was not used that Sunday, the first day in space, because by the time the crew had familiarized themselves with their new environment, had stowed their launch equipment, and had completed all the necessary primary tasks, their work day had come to a close. After all, they had been up since the middle of the night in Florida, and despite their excitement, badly needed rest. Their first eight-hour sleep period began at 4:30 in the afternoon, Central Time — the time at Mission Control in Houston.

As had been planned, the deployment of the Spartan was one of the first operations on the first full day on orbit. The large, box-like, gold-coated satellite and the folded antenna were lifted from the cargo bay by American Mission Specialist Mario Runco. Several tests were done and then it was released. The operation went well, and once released the giant inflatable antenna expanded to its full size — over thirty feet in diameter. The following day, Marc Garneau used the Canadarm, retrieved the Spartan, and gently lowered it back into the cargo bay of the shuttle. Operating the Canadarm was gratifying for him, and afterwards he said it was “almost an extension of your body. It is a real pleasure to use.”¹⁴

As the mission continued, so did the experiments in Spacehab. Some of them involved Canadian-designed elements, and even projects initiated by elementary and high school groups in various locales. One, proposed by youngsters at College Park Elementary in Saskatoon, looked at the way liquids diffused in microgravity. Another, suggested by students from Toronto, studied the way a human could throw objects in space. Needless to say, the originators of the schemes were highly interested in them.

And then there was the Coke machine….

Despite various attempts to make the thing work, all of the initial efforts failed. The theory behind it dealt with the mixing of fluid and gas in weightlessness, but the practicality was questionable. Finally, attempts to get the machine to operate began to pay off. Midway through their fifth day in space, the two navy men on the shuttle, Dan Bursch and Marc Garneau, took matters into their own hands. After lots of troubleshooting, delay, and annoyance, they saw some improvement. There was much tinkering, colourful comments from both, and lots of joshing from their colleagues. Then, whether because of, or in spite of, all the good-natured teasing and less-than insightful suggestions, the two achieved success. Down in Houston, Mission Control announced the good news as part of the daily status report. In the bulletin for the day, Houston even elaborated: “The dispenser was then tested by the crew and currently [it] is working well and filling drink containers.”¹⁵ The operative word there was “currently,” and no further mention of the machine was made for the balance of the trip.

On the final day of the mission, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien called Marc Garneau on Endeavour. The two chatted for a few minutes, and Mr. Chrétien congratulated the astronaut on a successful mission. The prime minister also expressed his pride in all the experiments that were carried out. South Australian Premier Dean Brown offered similar sentiments to Adelaide astronaut Andrew Thomas. Then, their conversations with the politicians complete, both fliers resumed their work in wrapping up the science projects and began securing the crew quarters for the return to Earth.

At the time, there were four possible landing opportunities: two different times in Florida and two others at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The preferred site was on the East Coast, where an early morning return to KSC was acceptable, prior to the arrival of showers that were predicted to move over the Cape as the day progressed.

In due course, STS-77 came to an end. Endeavour’s breaking rockets were fired at 5:09 Central Time, “to enable the shuttle to drop out of orbit for its hour-long slide back to earth. Endeavour streaked across the Pacific, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf Coast before crossing over into Florida to align itself with KSC’s Shuttle Landing Facility.”¹⁶ The touchdown was without incident.

While it had not been announced at the time, Marc Garneau would soon begin preparations for a return to space. Again, it would be the shuttle Endeavour that would take him there. It would be his final mission.