77 DAY IN THE LIFE: THE MAKING OF A MISSION CHAPTER 4 trained everyone with additional review and simulations. A key part of the training was having the crew practice the spacewalks. The crew and EVA team, as well as the lead station flight director, conducted many dives in the NBL to practice the timelines. Although EVAs are always tricky, the ammonia lines were, once again, the biggest challenge (Figure 12). The crew needed to extensively practice the installation in the NBL because the ammonia lines were long, stiff, and covered by bulky insulation (Figure 13). The team also tried to figure out how best to carry such long lines out to the worksite, and then unpack and install them. Imagine carrying four stiff 8-m (25-ft) long rubber garden hoses from the garage. Then imagine doing it in weightlessness. A new bag was designed to hold the hoses. The crew practiced, in the water, how best to position and open the bag, and remove and install the lines without getting a big tangled hydra on orbit. Due to the presence of gravity in the NBL, the hoses tended to come springing out of the bag like a crazed jack-in-the-box— or even something more disturbing, like in a scene from the movie Alien—once the crew opened the bag on the bottom of the mock-up. Figure 13. The billowy white insulation surrounding the ammonia lines at the NBL mock-up. This insulation drove the decision earlier on how to move PMA3 so as to not interfere with the PMM. Note that when the bag that held the ammonia lines was opened in the pool, the lines would shoot out toward the bottom like a crazed jack-in-the-box due to the orientation of the mock-ups in the water. Due to the problems with ammonia lines, as described, the final flight units were not ready for the mission until a few days before the mission. The spacewalking crew members wanted to handle the final items so they would have an idea as to what to expect on orbit. Therefore, the final days before the launch, they flew to Huntsville, Alabama, where the lines were being manufactured. Not only did they handle the ammonia jumpers, they packed the specially designed bag. The packed hoses were then rushed to the launch pad and stored in the orbiter. The crew members flew back to their quarantine facility at Kennedy Space Center.