PROGRAM

Renée Favand-See: First Flight

Text: Eileen Collins

Kamala Sankaram: The First View

Text: Kalpana Chawla

Elaine Lachica: It’s hard to explain

Text: Kathryn Sullivan

Bora Yoon: SPACEWALK

mixed and sound-scaped by Bora Yoon

Text: Christina Koch, Jessica Meir

Hai-Ting Chinn: How Many Tampons

Text: Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan

Jennifer Jolley: her speed left the winds behind

Text: Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper

RaShonda Reeves: A Day With Mae

Text: Mae Jemison

Jane Sheldon: against the very very blackness of space

Text: Shannon Lucid, Sunita Williams, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Wendy Lawrence

Hai-Ting Chinn: Orbital Outhouse

Text: Sunita Williams

Gilda Lyons: to know about space

Text: Judith Resnick, Christa McAuliffe, Dottie Metcalf-Lindenberger, Eileen Collins, Ellen Ochoa, Anne McClain, Stephanie Wilson, Sally Ride

Renée Favand-See: We Need Earth

Text: Mae Jemison

Complete Text

Renée Favand-See, First Flight

Text: Eileen Collins

It’s been a hundred years since the first flight of an airplane, and look how far we’ve come. Where are we going to be in a hundred years from now?

Kamala Sankaram, The First View

Text: Kalpana Chawla

PROGRAM NOTE

This text is adapted from a 1998 India Today interview with astronaut Kalpana Chawla. The year before, she was a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia, becoming the first Indian woman in space. In 2003, Kalpana Chawla died in the Columbia disaster.

The first view of the earth is magical.
The earth is so small.
The atmosphere looks like a ribbon with different colours hugging the earth.
In such a small planet, with such a small ribbon of life, so much goes on.
The earth is not just a bluish hue. You see all the colours.
When the Sahara comes into view, the ocean near it is an emerald green.
The Sahara itself looks golden brown.
Then you cross the Nile; it looks like a deep, dark green ribbon
It is almost as if everything is in fast forward.
It is totally dark.Then dark to violet, to orange and red and then it's sunrise.
At the sunset, there was a moon—its crescent was razor sharp and the colour was dusty silvery.
Then the moon raced away from us and was lost in the glow of the earth.
Almost like a story book that you read as a child....
pollution? I did see it.
We saw fires...We saw smog layers...We saw smokestacks.
So many people are arguing or fighting.
It’s like being in the whirlpools which are always present behind a little rock near a river.
We seem to be living in these little whirlpools and forget that there is a whole river.
The picture is much bigger.
We should take time to look at the big picture.

Elaine Lachica, It’s hard to explain

Text: Kathryn Sullivan

It’s hard to explain how amazing and magical this experience is. First of all, there is the astounding beauty and diversity of the planet itself, scrolling across your view at what appears to be a smooth and stately pace. I’m happy to report that no amount of prior study or training can fully prepare anybody for the awe and wonder this inspires.

Bora Yoon, SPACEWALK

Text: Christina Koch, Jessica Meir

NOTE: Pre-recorded sound-scape, includes the voices of Koch, Meir, and CAPCOM Stephanie Wilson during the historical first all female spacewalk on October 19, 2019, and drone sounds made from recordings of plasma waves by instruments about spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.

KOCH: I think it's important because of the historical nature of what we're doing, and that, in the past, women haven't always been at the table. 

It’s wonderful to be contributing to human spaceflight at a time when all contributions are being accepted—when everyone has a role—and that can lead, in turn, to increased chance for success. There are a lot of people that derive motivation from inspiring stories from people that look like them—and I think it's an important aspect of the story to tell.

MEIR: What we're doing now shows all the work that went in for the decades prior, all of the women that worked to get us where we are today. I think the nice thing for us is we don't even really think about it on a daily basis,
 it's just normal.

We’re part of the team. We're doing this work as an efficient team working together with everybody else, so it's really nice to see how far that we've come. 

It's really interesting for us. This is just us doing our job. We've been training for six years, so it's coming up here and doing our job. 

At the same time, we recognize that it is a historic achievement 
and we want to give credit to the women who came before us. We have followed in their footsteps to get where we are today.

Hai-Ting Chinn, How Many Tampons

Text: Sally Ride and Kathryn Sullivan

Excerpted from interviews transcribed in the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project

How many tampons should fly as part of a one-week flight kit?
SALLY RIDE: I remember the engineers at NASA, in their infinite wisdom,
trying to decide how many tampons should fly on a one-week flight. 
KATHY: ...in that famous NASA in-flight pink plastic packaging.
Sally opens it up and looks in:
“You have got to be kidding me!”
She reaches in and picks up this band of pink plastic, 
and I can see tampon, tampon, tampon, tampon...
She reaches the bottom and pulls again,
this endless unfurling of Lord only knows how many tampons...
They had never asked us. They just put them in there.
These flights are going to be four to seven days long. 
We got some really smart math and engineering people here—
we could do a probability calculation.
What’s the probability that any flight day goes
right on the centroid of the period, and
what do you think is a plausible number of tampons anybody needs in a day? 
“Is 100 the right number?” 
“No. That would not be the right number.”
They said, “Well, we want to be safe.”
I said, “Well, you can cut that in half with no problem at all.”
(Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah)
How many tampons should fly on a one week flight in space?

Jennifer Jolley, her speed left the winds behind
Text: Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper

We came out on a night pass and soon the Earth came up.
We had a lot of things to get done and I went about my tasks.
An hour in, I was ahead, and so I thought, 
“OK, I can take a breather here.”
We were pointed at the Earth. 
It was just spectacular to look at:
“Wow! This is pretty cool to be out here, and to be looking around.” 
You could see the Earth and you looked at it going by—“OK, where am I?”
I realized I’m not as good in geography as I thought—
when you look at a map, they always have lines, borders—easy to tell where you are. 
A whole continent, that’s easy. 
But now, you study other features like lakes and rivers and mountains. 
You look at the Earth and it’s going by: “Wow! That really is a beautiful sight.” 
You look off and see the horizon, the end of the Earth, the atmosphere and then beyond—
just pitch black space—
and you think, “Wow! That’s home. That’s our planet.”

RaShonda Reeves, A Day With Mae
Text: Mae Jemison

From Good Morning America: Girls ask Dr. Mae Jemison about space https://youtu.be/JZoDnBoTTxQ

I want you to do something for me.
I want you to go outside and look up.
You’re looking at space, and infinity.
When you’re up above the Earth’s atmosphere,
you see the stars more abundantly. 
But remember, right now we’re on a spaceship—
When I was in space, I felt connected with the entire universe, 
and I feel that connection now.

Jane Sheldon, against the very very blackness of space
Text assembled by the composer, from statements made by Shannon Lucid, Sunita Williams, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Wendy Lawrence

Time sort of runs together
without any atmosphere, the universe is crystal clear it doesn’t look like a black sheet, it just goes on and on likewise stars are crystal clear
Time sort of runs together
in 24 hours we go around the Earth 16 times so you’ll see 16 sunrises and sunsets.
on a spacewalk you can really feel the difference—
before the sun even shines on you, you can feel the heat start to generate around your body.
free-floating metal pieces would impact each other creating clear metallic tones like cathedral bells There were big thunderstorms in the Atlantic, with a brilliant display of lightning
and there was the Progress like a bright morning star
To me, it looked like some alien insect headed straight toward us.
you could look off and see the horizon, the end of the Earth,
the atmosphere, and then beyond it, just pitch black, just black space
the modules are white,
and with the sun shining on them, they absolutely glisten, set against the very, very blackness of space.

Hai-Ting Chinn, Orbital Outhouse
Text: Sunita Williams, from her tour of the ISS

Come on in! Here we are at the throne. You might have noticed the little moon outside—this is our orbital outhouse. And of course it serves two functions: number two right here—I’ll show you. You see it’s pretty small so you have to have good aim...let things go the right direction...and it smells a bit so I’m closing it up! and that’s for number two. And this guy right here is for number one—so there’s two slightly separate functions, but you can do both by hanging on here and doing number one and number two. I might add it’s color coded so you really don’t get mixed up—this is yellow for number one. 

And also, there’s a selection of paper! People alway ask: What do you do...what kind of toilet paper do you have? 
We have gloves—sometimes it does get messy—
We have some Russian wipes, which are a little bit coarse—
We have tissues, if you like soft toilet paper,

We have Huggies, for clean-up...you know we were all babies once! If things get really out of control, we have disinfectant wipes to clean up...Just like the water I showed you, the number one stuff can sort of go all over the place if you don’t aim correctly.

And did I mention, both have a bit of suction so they should keep things going in the right direction, but sometimes things get out of control, if you are out of control yourself, flying around, so we have lots of protective stuff.

And of course you do have your privacy: there’s a little door, so people know you’re in there.

Gilda Lyons, to know about space
texts assembled and adapted by the composer

launch countdown timings and some words of Judith Resnick from the transcript of crew comments from the operational recorded during the Challenger disaster.

T minus 2 minutes 5 seconds Mission Specialist 2

JUDITH RESNICK:

Would you give that back to me?
...it does not enter any of our minds that we're doing something dangerous.

T minus 1 minute 33 seconds Mission Specialist 2

RESNICK:
Got your harnesses locked?
No. I’m not scared. We train so heavily for all
the contingencies... we’re so familiar with all the procedures... we can almost do them in our sleep.

T minus 52 seconds Mission Specialist 2

RESNICK: Cabin Pressure is probably going to give us an alarm.

CHRISTA MCAULIFFE: I don’t think any teacher has ever been more ready to have two lessons…

DOTTIE METCALF-LINDENBURGER:
In space, we don’t have atmosphere.
It is dark, dark black... and from our vantage point, it is beautiful to look on Earth’s atmosphere.

T minus 6: Mission Specialist 2

RESNICK: All right. Aaall riiight.

MCAULIFFE:...it’s everybody’s business to know about space.

EILEEN COLLINS: I am a huge believer in human exploration.

ELLEN OCHOA: everyone...shares the desire—the desire to participate in a voyage of discovery.

CADY COLEMAN: ...you think about the early explorers...and here we are... we all have some things in common and there are jobs that we have to do far from home.

T plus 15 seconds Mission Specialist 2

RESNICK: [expletive] hot.

ANNE MCCLAIN: And there is nothing
There are no words
all of everything...you’ve ever known
every person... your entire life in one glimpse.

RESNICK: No. I’m not scared.

MCAULIFFE: I touch the future.

COLLINS: I want to carry on their work.

STEPHANIE WILSON: I believe it’s important to our future, and that makes it worth the risk.

SALLY RIDE: Looking back, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t accomplish anything I wanted to. There’s a lot of credit due my parents—and teachers…

RESNICK: No. I’m not scared.

MCAULIFFE: I touch the future. I teach.
...and that’s going to go with me.

Renée Favand-See, We Need Earth
Text: Mae Jemison, from an interview on France24

I do not believe space is a plan B. 
We get very cavalier about Earth, 
but this planet is part of us.
We could not survive without it.
We have to accept and realize that we’re all Earthlings first.
The reality is, this planet is our home,
so we have to figure things out.
When I was in space, I recognized as I looked down—
the planet is gorgeous; it iridescent from within—
and I recognized: the moon, the stars, they’re gonna be here,
the Earth is gonna be here, but we might not be.
We get this all confused—
the Earth doesn’t need us;
we need Earth.