CHAPTER 16 DAY IN THE LIFE: IN-FLIGHT MAINTENANCE 276 Figure 5. Expedition 11 Commander Sergei Krikalev and STS-114/ISS-LF1 Mission Specialist Wendy Lawrence prepare for opening the MPLM hatch in 2005. Their initial attempts would not be successful. Ultimately, a well-positioned shove would be required to open the hatch. Ground controllers in Houston struggled to come up with another option as all the standard “tricks” were not working. With everything the crew and ground had tried, the hatch should have opened easily at this point. The ground teams talked about the possibility that the MPLM hatch may not open at all, and what the impacts to the mission might be in that scenario. As Mission Control talked to the crew about possible options, the flight control team heard a muffled “ooomph” in the background, followed by a cheer from the crew. The hatch had opened. The trick that worked? One of the taller astronauts stood on the hatch ribs and then crouched while reaching up to an overhead footbridge. He straightened his body and pushed hard against the Node 1 footbridge. Effectively, he put all his weight into the hatch and forced the hatch open. The mission could continue as planned. Later, engineers speculated that the small space between the two hatch seal beads had a lower pressure than the space station cabin—possibly even a vacuum. This lower pressure, due to the large hatch size, was effectively “sucking” the hatch against the MPLM bulkhead until enough force could be put into the hatch to overcome this pressure force. Sometimes, when it comes to getting hardware to work correctly in the extreme environments away from Earth—despite the best designs and pre-laid plans to resolve problems—a good tap, nudge, whack, or shove may ultimately do the trick.