2Testimony of Dan Goldin before the Committee on Science, House of Representatives, February 12, 1997.
3Safety Briefing of Frank Culbertson, April 3, 1997.
4Many of the observations Thagard, Lucid and Blaha are similar to those reported to NASA by Ulf Merbold, a German astronaut who flew on two Space Shuttle spacelab missions and a 30-day Mir mission. (See Appendix G).
5The SFOG is used on Mir as a supplemental source of oxygen in the event the main source of oxygen, the Elektron, fails or electrical power to run the Elektron is unavailable. The SFOG is designed to burn solid fuel cassettes (or candles) of lithium perchlorate. Activation of lithium perchlorate creates an exothermic reaction. The reaction from a cassette can supply enough oxygen for one person per day.
6Soyuz de-orbit plans were not available in hard copy. While the fire was burning, one cosmonaut was at the computer terminal printing out hard copy de-orbit plans. American astronaut Dr. Linenger was unable to get oxygen from the first gas mask he attempted to use. The next mask found provided sufficient oxygen. At that point, all crew members needed gas masks to breath. Clamps designed to keep the fire extinguishers in place during initial launch were not removed after Mir was operational. During the fire, the crew had to get tools to remove these clamps before they could attempt to extinguish the fire. Furthermore, one of the fire extinguishers used did not work properly. When the smoke appeared to dissipate and the gas masks ran out of oxygen, there was not capability on board Mir to determine if the air was actually safe to breathe. As a safety measure, the crew used surgical type masks for several days.
7Astronaut Linenger, in his post flight debrief of June 11, 1997, also commented on CO2 levels, After the fire, the worst things were the lingering problems that existed. Systems were breaking, CO2 was rising, and we were not able to exercise. The temperature was 96 degrees for months, and we had to clear out Kvant by moving the garbage and staff to where we worked, so we had to smell garbage for five weeks.
8Dr. Linenger in his debriefing, stated as the Mir's systems degenerated, the Mir's Commander role changed to where he was providing more and more mechanical assistance to the Cosmonaut Flight Engineer I. Linenger attempted to assist where and when he could. However, his assistance was limited. For example, during cooling loop repairs, he mechanically sawed support beams and offered tools to be used.
9Ibid
10Dr. Lucid, in her debriefing, commented that: Science training was hampered because of difficulties of trying to conduct the training in Star City, shipping equipment to Russia, accessing the equipment when it finally arrived in Star City, and lack of procedures. When I launched, I had not the opportunity to assemble hardware end-to-end for any given experiment, had not seen and worked any of the flight procedures, and was not even certain what was manifested!
11Dr. Linenger in his COSS debrief of June 18, 1997,
commented that, Russian PI training is not effective.
12At the time of the fire, Mir did not have communication with the ground. The first communication pass over a ground station (Wallops Island, Virginia) occurred about 1 hour after the fire. Admittedly, communication with the ground may not have helped in a fire fighting situation - decisions needed to be made immediately by crew members on the Mir. However, the U.S. contingent at the MCC in Moscow (MCC-M) did not find out about the fire until 12 hours after it happened. The team left the MCC-M at about 10:00 p.m., as it was standard practice to leave when activities on Mir were done for the day. The fire happened at about 10:45 p.m. and was initially reported to the ground about 1 hour later. Although the Americans had provided their telephone numbers to the Russians, the Russians did not contact the American team. American telephone and beeper numbers have been supplied again to ensure contact on any future incident. Another communication lapse occurred when a report on the fire prepared by Linenger was not delivered to the American team until 5 days after the report was transmitted to ground control in Moscow. The Russians initially claimed they could not find the report.
13Dr. Linenger, during a debriefing, stated, The only other thing - Perceptions on the ground, I think, are way different in general throughout the whole flight because it s a bad communications thing. Terrible communica-tions, in general. Information not going through in many cases. One I heard, for example, the flight support group was worried about Vasily and myself and our interactions. And how we were getting along. And one of us pushed the other one off for something, because we were having these wars, when in fact, Vasily and I had no arguments for 4 « months. So, and what triggered that was Vasily saying things like, Jerry s on the treadmill, why don t we run on the treadmill? When, in fact, what he s trying to say is, Why are the Americans doing it? We should be doing it, too. And kind of going through me to try to get something for them. Why are we being treated differently? We should be getting the same treatment and things like that. Anyway, the interpretation of things like that on the ground became that Vasily and I were just butting heads. when I heard that, I was, Where in the world did you get an idea that we were butting heads? because we got along just fine the whole time.
14The crew had experienced some upper airway irritation.
15Mir-18 Operations/Vehicle Debrief of Dr. Norman Thagard, August 28, 1995.