Behind the barrier

I arrived in the outback for the meeting expecting again to shadow someone through their daily routine and then head over to the headquarters building to report to you live for our Wednesday Questcast. So much for planing ahead! Just following the meeting, Louis Ostrach told me that he would be leading a tour of NASA VIPs through Hangar L including the area you've heard me call "behind the barrier," and he invited me to go along. I was concerned about geting back in time to talk with you, but I knew you would be interested in this part of the procedure here, so I decided to go.

As we entered the hangar, once again we had to replace our badges with the orange visitor passes, past the open hangar door where a turnover was in process (more on that below, to the ominous door marked: Restricted Area Authorized Personnel Only. This door leads to an enclosed large laboratory area which is maintained as a clean room primarily for the care of animals involed in this mission.

	Several routines needed to be accomplished before we could enter: first, we had to fill out an extensive health check list; everything from whether we were alergic to animals to whether or not we had impetago Then we had to don the famous bunny suits you've been hearing about. While the men went into the men's dressing room, Bonny Dalton took the women to the other side, and then showed us the best way to put on the smocks, caps, face masks, gloves and shoe covers. It was really warm under all that, and rather weird breathing back at yourself with the mask in place.
	When we were ready and entered the laboratory facilities, it became very apparent why, beyond the cleanliness issue, this is such a restricted area There were busy people everywhere. You can even see people working in one of the hoods out is what looked like a hallway between rooms. People were difficult, if not impossible to recognize behind their bunny suits and masks, scurrying by, rushing to complete their tasks. The area had a reddish glow, kept that way to accomodate the experiments of Dr. Fuller who is studying the changes in body rhythms in rats exposed to different light cycles. Apparently the rats cannot detect the red light so it's a good way to simulate darkness and still be able to work around them.

We were ushered into several labs, where despite busy schedules, scientists were willing to share with us a bit of what they were doing. We saw rats being trained to follow a particular track, running up one ramp and down another. It was explained that in the beginning they are rewarded with food, and later with stimulus. They have found that the rats prefer the stimulus to the food All the while, the pattern each rat runs is traced on a computer. We were then allowed into a "nursery" where rat dams and their neonates were being watched to determine the time of birth and adaptability for use in the studies to be conducted in Neurolab. In looking at the mother rats with their young, it seemed that rats do not necessarily live up to their bad reputation

By this time I was beginning to look at my watch, because I knew I was now getting close to the time for the live broadcast After removing our clean room attire, we made our way back around past PI labs, again past the control room, but this time there was someone in there It was just another indication that we are getting closer to that point How exciting

Louis was aware that I was getting a little preoccupied by the time, and suggested I run back over to the outback and use his phone. You may have noticed that that Webcast was a little short. Whereas it was kind of fun to chat from the business of that room to maybe convey to you a little of the last minute rush, I was tying up a line shared by several key persons, and when I saw Marilyn having to go to another phone, I realized that we were imposing on an operation that was far more critical than my prolonging the chat.

That evening, I was invited to join the press for another photo opportunity. Unfortunately, I was armed with less than adequate equipment to capture the moment, but let me share what I got and what was going on: When we first arrived the sun was setting giving us a dramatic backdrop for a shot of the shuttle. What you can't see in the picture is that during the process the Rotating Service Structure that had been protecting the shuttle (and hiding it from view as a result) was rolling back and the night shot shows the Columbia exposed for the first time on pad 39B. At that point they began to power up the spot lights and by 10:00 p.m. the shuttle was flooded with light. It was breathtaking! All that was missing from this pageant was the music!