115 DAY IN THE LIFE: “BRAIN TRANSPLANTS” ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION CHAPTER 6 manager, international partners, and operations team review the status of the transition to make sure everyone is ready to begin the process. Loading the New Software The process of loading new software is time consuming. Since the MDMs do not have CD-ROM readers, all the software has to be uplinked. The software is large—representing about 30 MB of data in hundreds of files. Since the S-band link with the ISS (see Chapter 13) can transmit about 72 kbps, it takes about 30 hours to uplink the files to the computers. At the same time, the crew will spend a couple of hours configuring several of the PCS laptops for the new CCS software. Once all the software has been staged on board, the team executes the planned transition. Due to the need to reconfigure ISS systems, the transition will usually take multiple days with one or two MDMs being loaded each day. The ISS crew is kept informed of the progress of the transition, as specific versions of procedure may need to be run depending on which software version matters, this defective chip was estimated to be in only one out of the 10 circuit boards. We were playing orbital roulette. Only two or three spare circuit boards were in existence (still on Earth), and they fortunately checked out. These were manifested to launch with me on Soyuz. But how would we beat the odds of this game of orbital chance? The answer came from the orbital repair and maintenance team, passionately called Operations Support Office, or OSO, working closely with Honeywell, which had manufactured the cards. They found a small electronic widget that converts a laptop computer via the Universal Serial Bus port into a fully featured oscilloscope. The part was actually a Link Instruments’ MSO-19 Oscilloscope, Logic Analyzer, Pattern Generator and Time Domain Reflectometer. As I said, a widget. With this device, it would be possible to power up the circuit boards on orbit and run them for a few hours where errant timing would become obvious. We now had a way to find the “bad boy.” All we had to do was stow this on my Soyuz. Or so we thought. By the time the Mission Control team had this worked out, I was in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, literally halfway around the world from Houston. And I was only days away from launch. To officially have this manifested and tucked away into some tiny nook on the Soyuz was not deemed possible. Some things, seemingly simple, find unbelievable friction when they cause a change in the matrix. Each crew member has an allotment of 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs) of personal items, little knickknacks that help remind them of family and friends over the 6 months they are orbiting Earth. These items are painstakingly weighed on an electronic scale with no allowance for being overweight. I offered some of my personal mass so that the oscilloscope could fly however, the flight unit was still in Houston. NASA worked to expedite the transfer of the flight unit from Houston to Moscow and from Moscow to Baikonur. Within days, the flight unit arrived in my dorm room. I even practiced measuring the signal from the coffee pot in my room. Our team’s mantra for this project was “EPIC or BUST.” My personal allotment was already full, so I started pulling items off the scale until it reached the acceptable mark. My wife’s necklace, gone. My twin boys’ camping spoons, gone. My alma mater’s pennant, gone. Mission patches for family and friends, gone. The scale tipped to the good side and I was set to launch. Dan Burbank was already on orbit, having launched the month before. I launched on December 21, 2011, the same day that comet Lovejoy surprised astronomers when it emerged from behind the sun with a brilliant tail. We unloaded the cards and widget the next day and started in on neural surgery. Dan did the surgery, replacing old brains for new. I set up the oscilloscope and checked out the circuit boards that were already on orbit. Working with all the folks in Mission Control, it took us a week or so to complete the brain transplant. This is teamwork at its best. Nine days later, we loaded the new software (“R11”) on the repaired computers. The new hardware, coupled with the new software, worked as designed. In May, I flew the Canada robotic arm and snagged Dragon D1, thus ushering in the world of commercial space.