Spacewalker Savoring Opportunity of Lifetime

Dec. 16, 2006 — -- Navy Commander Sunita Williams is a tall, willowy brunette -- and smart, very smart. She flew helicopters in the Navy, and has logged over 2,700 hours in 30 different aircraft.

She is also the eighth American woman to walk in space.

Kathryn Sullivan was the first, when she flew on Challenger in 1984. Others include Kathryn Thornton, Linda Godwin, Susan Helms, Tamara Jernigan, Peggy Whitsun and Heide Stefanyshyn Piper, who helped install the huge truss on the space station earlier this summer.

Williams danced to Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" when the crew on the space station played it down to Mission Control as she was getting ready to get into her spacesuit. She lets her hair float free, and it is so long you wonder how she gets it all stuffed into the helmet of her spacesuit.

Why haven't more women walked in space? There are several reasons. There aren't that many women in the astronaut corps, though their numbers have increased. There haven't been that many flights in recent years because of the Columbia accident, and the spacesuits aren't one size fits all.

NASA has 12 spacesuits with interchangeable parts, and each spacesuit comes with a price tag of $12 million. The arms and the legs are interchangeable and can be sized to some extent for small, medium and large. But the hard torsos of the spacesuit don't have much range in size.

Williams said the suit is, in essence, a mini spacecraft.

"It's a great suit," she said. "It's protecting you. You have a beautiful view outside of your visor. The double-paned visor that is protecting you is your personal view on the Earth and the space station once you get out the door, as we call it. But the suit is very big and very heavy and hard to work in."

Other astronauts have told her that first step out can be a little intimidating. After all, the Earth is whipping by at five miles a second.

"Nothing is below you," she said. "You won't see any of the space station below you. You will just see the Earth below you, so I think that is just going to be breathtaking. On the way out, I think it is going to be sort of comforting, particularly on my first spacewalk to go out feet first, so I will have a view of things I am comfortable with -- the airlock, the handrails, as I get right outside of the hatch -- and then be able to look around and see the space station around me. So I won't feel, I hope I won't feel, like I am falling at that point in time. I think it will take me some time to get a little bit acclimated to be working around on the space station."