Notes from Sweden

In his latest newsletter, Christer Fuglesang, Sweden’s first astronaut, writes that the launch date for his STS-116 mission on the American shuttle Discovery has now been moved earlier to December 7th (this to get the mission over so ground personnel can have some time off at Christmas). He goes on:

“When we have full day simulations we get space food in the simultator. It’s usually a mix of what ever seems to be left over. So today we rookies were surprised when we discovered that we had received food from our ordered menus, with color-coding and everything. That’s what it’s like to be Prime Crew. The first one I prepared was ‘green beans and mushrooms’…I added hot water to the vacuum-packed plastic bag and let it be absorbed. Much later, when I had time to eat it lukewarm, it wasn’t very good. Although the shrimp cocktail was.

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“Every crew member has a color and all individual things are color-coded: lockers, sleeping bags, and even food. My color is orange…

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“Our official crew photo has come out. We took around 20 pictures and the selection process was drawn-put, but we finally reached agreement on a photo everyone liked. Hope others do too.

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“Finally some space trivia I saw yesterday. Someone has worked out that so far all manned space missions have taken 995 “person-seats”. That is, not the total number of people, since many have flown two, three or more times. But that means that when we start we will have places 996 to 1002, and the most natural way to assign them would be for the captain to have 996, the pilot 997, 998 to Mission Specialist 1, 999 to Mission Specialist 2, etc. Guess who will number 1000? If they have calculated right.”

So maybe the 14 year wait will have been worth it?