December 5, 1979
Wakeup call was Sony and Cher
I got you babe.
"Tally ho, the
Liberty. We got it. Man, this thing is huge." Bill Pogue piloted
Hyperion through the last miles before docking. To this point the station core was barely a pale spot over the darkness of space. Soon the spot become a rapidly growing fat cylinder with two wings impaled on its structure – the solar arrays.
As the Helios closed, he detailed the solar arrays, the gleaming structure silhouetted against pale blue Earth. Pogue led the capsule into a close fly around, talking to the ground. The base block was a true monster, the heaviest thing ever launched into orbit. "Believe me, this thing dwarf Skylab. Not even mentioning the Soviet tin cans." He had his head full of Rockwell propaganda.
A hundred and five tons –
maxing Saturn V performance !
Thirty-three feet wide ! The block had reached space without a glitch, unlike Skylab catastrophic start.. He had seen
Liberty and its twin and backup
Destiny on the ground, at Rockwell Palmdale then at Kennedy, but floating in space, it looked even bigger.
Our home in space.
After docking he followed Pogue across Helios cargo block, up to the hatch connected to Liberty. When, after many checkout and controls, the hatch opened, he felt he was entering a cavern.
He exited the small docking tunnel, toward a window illuminated by Earth light. There were box and racks everywhere.
Welcome home.
Two hours later with Bary White
Let the music play as background Pogue helped Sally Ride dragging a bulky IMAX camera outside
Hyperion cargo block, through the hatch leading to
Liberty. The thing was not easy to handle; inertia remained even in zero-G, and the 100 pound camera had plenty of it. But the resulting movie would be worth the pain. Ride had to perform a tour of the immense station core, filming the various decks of the complex. Needless to say, there was living volume aplenty.
Ride commented the tour.
”The tunnel I’m currently standing in is
Liberty true backbone. It carries all the electrical and environmental lines to each deck and provides stowage for food lockers and film vaults. It also acts as a shelter during emergencies, providing more shielding from dangerous solar flares.”
She reached deck 1 through a 1.5m opening hatch
“Let’s start from Deck 1. Here you can see one of four crew quarters. As you notice it’s a true little motel room, with its own bunk, a personal desk and locker facilities. Hello Bill. Have a nice day up there !”
Pogue smiled at the camera, and flopped upside down, enjoying zero-G a lot. He had Chic
Freak Out ! playing on a tape recorder, and enjoyed the moment a lot.
Ride floated outside and continued “in the middle is a multipurpose wardroom similar to Skylab, albeit much larger. It serves as canteen, recreation and exercise area, with provision for conferences with tables and equipment stowed. A suitably screened galley area lies adjacent to the wardroom, with hot and cold water, refrigeration and cooking facilities. A hygiene unit enables the crew to retain individual privacy while washing, showering or using the toilets. Lastly is the control centre, located between the commander's stateroom and the wardroom. And now, let’s go to deck two”.
“Deck 2 is principally dedicated to experiment equipment and support apparatus. In the current configuration a biomedical and bioscience laboratory provides facilities for research on vertebrates, invertebrates, plants and micro-organisms. A dispensary and isolation ward also provide facilities for medical experiments. Deck two is essentially a biomedical laboratory in orbit.
“The general-purpose laboratory located on Deck 3 contains optical electronics, test, isolation and data facilities. A photo laboratory provides facilities for micro-organic studies and the collection of time-phased film records of biological and chemical reactions to weightlessness and varying levels of radiation. An airlock is provided for selected engineering experiments. Access to the unpressurised forward equipment area is gained through the tunnel. The said equipment area houses experiments requiring a high level of station support - fluid physics, cosmic-ray physics, astronomy modules, etc.”
“And now, the last Deck, number four, also know as the Arche. It houses additional experiments more exactly primates, plants and life-cell studies. At the end of this module is the universal docking assembly - UDA – Currently unused, it features five docking ports. One will soon received
Enterprise with its Telescope Mount attached. As of today the whole module we live in is 10m in diameter, 16.5m long. The four deck levels represents a total volume of 930 cubic meters - three times Skylab.” Ride concluded.