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"  The Space Shuttle Endeavor blasted off last night in a textbook example of a perfect launch. And while mission astronauts may be the stars of every successful liftoff, they certainly don&amp;#039;t make it happen alone. One of the key roles on the ground\u2014and one of the last lines of defense\u2014belongs to astronaut support persons (ASPs). They make sure the inside of the Shuttle is fit for astronauts prior to launch, help them get situated and send them that final wave goodbye from Earth. Rick Sturckow, an active astronaut and former ASP, told Popular Mechanics what it&amp;#039;s like to work in the Shuttle during those crucial 24 hours before the clock hits zero. \u2014Nick Mokey What&amp;#039;s the atmosphere like in the cockpit? Is it tense? It&amp;#039;s not tense, although we&amp;#039;re under a timeline. You know how the Cape works: We&amp;#039;re watched with a clock working backwards and all that. There&amp;#039;s slop built into that timeline so that if there&amp;#039;s something that&amp;#039;s discovered that&amp;#039;s out of configuration or a piece of communications equipment isn&amp;#039;t working, there&amp;#039;s time to change that out. What&amp;#039;s your timeline like on a typical launch? The ASPs begin setting up the cockpit with the communication activation, where they check all the comm equipment\u2014the headsets for each crewmember. That starts at about L-minus 24 hours. We usually try to take about five ASPs out there; we can do it with as little as three, but it&amp;#039;s nice to have one guy on every headset with one guy doing a couple headsets. The next thing that happens is we set all the switches in there. I&amp;#039;ve never counted them, but I&amp;#039;ll bet there&amp;#039;s at least 1,000 switches in that Space Shuttle\u2014you go over every switch and make sure it&amp;#039;s in the right position. At about L-minus 7 [hours], we have what&amp;#039;s called a prime ASP who goes out to the vehicle, and that&amp;#039;s the one who will actually strap the crew in. So the prime ASP will be the very last person aboard? Well, with the rest of the closeout crew. There&amp;#039;s a couple of suit techs in there\u2014actually seven people. Then the ASP usually exits the vehicle about an hour before the launch. Sometimes a little earlier than that, but that&amp;#039;s usually about it. It depends on when they get the hatch closed. What kind of equipment do you carry into the shuttle? There&amp;#039;s platforms that go in there that are there just for the launch. They&amp;#039;re for both the ASPs and the crew to walk on, so that they can climb into the vehicle and then up onto their seats. The vehicle is in a vertical position, so where you&amp;#039;re walking is usually on the aft bulkhead, on the aft wall. So you have these platforms in there, because you would be stepping on glass windows, for example. They look out into the payload bad. So you&amp;#039;ve got these platforms, and there are protective covers for switches that you wouldn&amp;#039;t want to bump, there&amp;#039;s extra communication equipment in there for ground-only operation. What&amp;#039;s inside the support van you drive to the launch pad? There&amp;#039;s some spare equipment in there, although the spare equipment is really in bags, and it&amp;#039;s hauled up to what they call the &amp;quot;white room,&amp;quot; which is right outside [the Shuttle]. That&amp;#039;s where all that spare equipment is; there&amp;#039;s just various things that have been known to cause problems during the launch countdown, so they carry some extra ones up there. What kinds of things do astronauts ask for when they&amp;#039;re all suited up? Not too much. One thing is, there will be a buckle that may be a little uncomfortable, and you can help a guy by reaching in there and moving that buckle out of the way, or something like that. There are some oxygen lines that run across their back\u2014you can reposition those. Sometimes their cue cards\u2014they have procedures on them\u2014may not be exactly where they want them. All that kind of stuff, you&amp;#039;re just there to kind of get the cockpit situated. When the crew is in the orange launch-and-entry suit, it&amp;#039;s a little bulky. Do astronauts ever carry a memento or something important to them on launch? They&amp;#039;re not supposed to really have something with them on launch. There&amp;#039;s a special place on the Shuttle where you get to carry things like a ball cap for your university\u2014or, I&amp;#039;m in the Marine Corps, so I carried a Marine Corps ball cap. But that&amp;#039;s in a locker downstairs. I don&amp;#039;t think they&amp;#039;re supposed to have a lucky rabbit&amp;#039;s foot or anything weird like that. What&amp;#039;s the strangest thing you&amp;#039;ve had to do in your role as an ASP? The only thing that&amp;#039;s really strange is when you scrub for weather or a vehicle problem, and then you go right back out and do the same thing again. For instance, if it&amp;#039;s just for weather, and they&amp;#039;re going to try again in 24 hours, we&amp;#039;ll babysit the vehicle all night. We&amp;#039;ll always have an ASP in there. Sometimes they&amp;#039;ve kept doing the same thing a couple nights in a row and it&amp;#039;s kind of like Groundhog Day\u2014you keep doing the same thing over and over. How did you end up with this role? I&amp;#039;d flown a couple times, and then I was waiting to be assigned to my most recent mission. Everybody&amp;#039;s gotta have a job, and that&amp;#039;s the job they assigned me to do. The chief of the astronaut office decided to put me in that job, [but] there&amp;#039;s all kinds of ground jobs that involve astronauts. There&amp;#039;s astronauts that monitor what the shuttle program is doing, there&amp;#039;s astronauts that work on the new vehicle\u2014the CEV that&amp;#039;s coming along. There&amp;#039;s a lot of jobs here in the astronaut office besides training to go fly your missions. What&amp;#039;s the most difficult part of your role as an ASP? Making sure that you&amp;#039;ve got everything just right, that you haven&amp;#039;t missed something. Like I said, besides setting all the switches and putting all the checklists and stuff up, there are all kinds of other things that you&amp;#039;re setting up. You just want to make sure it&amp;#039;s all done right. That&amp;#039;s the challenge and the excitement of doing it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a2012/4220220/>