Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory

So actually, I don't describe this in the book, but because I ran out of space, basically, but Um, uh, the, the manuscript I initially submitted to my editor was like twice as long as I had, uh, uh, you know, initially promised.

So we had to cut some things, but I did get to actually go and watch some astronauts training in the neutral buoyancy lab.

This is this giant swimming pool inside of which they have like a mock-up of the international space station and they can, uh, do all different types of things.

And the day that I visited, they were doing a simulated, uh, moon landing and moon, uh, mission.

So they're going, they're filing for bankruptcy, chapter 11, that will protect them, allow them to restructure and maybe make an ongoing business with what they do have, which is your satellites and geostationary orbit that some people still need, but they don't need for domestic internet services anymore.

Axiom, they posted a bunch of cool photos from the Neutral Buoyancy Lab showing lunar training in their suits, so we are obviously paying a lot of attention to these lunar suits, which will be required for Artemis IV, and hopefully we'll have something flying before then.

But it's not astronauts in these suits apparently.

It's a bunch of people at NASA working on the human factors of lunar exploration.

They're basically testing the prototype geology tools in a mock lunar payload setting with the whole low angle illumination in the neutral buoyancy lab.

This is really interesting to look at the way that they're having to work inside the Neutral Buoyancy Lab for lunar surface at the South Pole, where they have to model the illumination as well as the gravity, right? Okay, what else? Rocketdyne.

Yeah, remember Aerojet Rocketdyne? They were the biggest thing in rockets until SpaceX came along.

Well, Rocketdyne has now returned as an independent company.

Um, we have a gigantic pool.

It's called the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, and in this pool, it's 40 feet deep, 100 feet by 200 feet, and it's has an entire mockup of the International Space Station exterior in it, high fidelity, and we literally practice these things over and over and over in that pool.

You know, one of the things that is kind of a part of our training overall I would, I would categorize as stress inoculation and this idea of when you first encounter a situation that seems, whether im- whether it's impossible or dangerous or risky or just challenging, uh, on multiple levels, you have learned how to approach that with calm and focus so that you can be successful.

And I know I, I learned that being off route leading tr- trad climbs.

Mm-hmm

... down to the minute, we figured it out through a series of a couple video calls with the team on the ground.

It was practiced one time in the neutral buoyancy lab, and they made, you know, some changes 'cause it didn't necessarily work out well.

And it was, the, as we were out there, we were just talking through things.

Just reading about it makes you slightly nauseous.

And she details the sheer physical exhaustion of operating inside a pressurized spacesuit underwater in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

Speaking of her research and historical choices, there's a big question I had while reading about all this.

What's that?