First Step: Astronauts Rave About Spacewalking

Oct. 26, 2007 — -- Astronauts Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock had quite a view — one that very few people get to see. Earth was the backdrop for the Discovery crewmates as they added a large space module to the International Space Station.

"You guys can go out and play," station commander Peggy Whitson told the two astronauts before they opened the door to the space station hatch and floated out into space.

"We call it work, but you know better," Parazynski told Whitson. "Best job in the universe."

The shuttle Discovery launched from Florida Tuesday morning and arrived at the International Space Station Thursday. Today's was just one of five spacewalks (a record) planned before the shuttle's scheduled return to Earth Nov. 6.

Job No. 1 today was to help attach a new bus-size section, nicknamed Harmony, to the space station. It is the first addition to the station's living space in several years.

It will be used principally as a corridor. New laboratories, built by the Japanese and European space agencies, are to be attached to it.

So the astronauts had a long to-do list when they began their spacewalk today. Parazynski raved about the sunrise as he floated outside.

"You just can't re-create that shade of blue on Earth," he said.

Parazynski said he could hardly believe his good luck getting assigned to this shuttle mission.

"I am just so thrilled. This mission from a personal perspective is just beyond my wildest imagination," he told ABC News before Discovery launched. "I looked at this flight several years ago, and I said, out of all the flights I would like to be associated with, this flight is the most dramatic, complex thing I could possibly imagine. I did not have any glimmer of a hope that I would one day be assigned to it."

Parazynski's partner, first-time spacewalker Wheelock, had wondered whether he would be overwhelmed by the first step out into space and whether he should rehearse something memorable to say.

"Scott and I have sort of joked about famous first words of people when the wow factor hits them, and it hits them visually and perceptively," Wheelock said. "I have heard people talk a little bit about … not a sense of falling, but when you are on a curved surface, your brain tends to think, 'It is a big planet down there — lots of space between me and it, curved surface. I am falling.'"

"So you tend to hold on a little tighter at first," he said. "That is one thing I am very anxious to see — how my body reacts to that type of perceptive cues, what my eyes are telling me and what my body is telling me, if they are two different things."

The fear of falling is very real, and even though Parazynski has walked in space four times on previous flights, he said this one would be different.

"This will be my first time out of the space station airlock and, in contrast with the shuttle airlock, where I have [left] before in the payload bay — you see the liner [the walls of cargo bay]. It is very comforting. It is very familiar," he said. "On the space station you drop open the thermal cover and there it is. You are traveling over the world at 17,500 miles an hour and it is a huge glass bottom boat, and people have described at as a real eye-opening experience."

Wheelock also talked about riding on the space station's robotic arm, something he had practiced in the underwater training facility at the Johnson Space Center.

Experienced spacewalkers had told him it's a little different on orbit.

"In space, you are floating up out of your foot restraint, and the soles of your feet aren't touching the bottom of your boots so your cues are pointing you to deep space and there is no structure around you," he said. "There is a sensation of just floating free, and that is something you don't want to do when you are on the arm."

Parazynski said that he is well aware spacewalking is probably the best job one could have — he says the view is unforgettable. He is also pleased to contribute to the construction of the International Space Station.

"This is the single most complex vehicle ever built by human beings, and it is being built off the planet at 17,500 miles an hour in vacuum, with huge temperature extremes, pieces of hardware coming together for the very first time in space," he said.

"They have never had fit checks or checkouts on Earth, these very complex systems that are analogous to things we will need on the moon, on Mars, for interplanetary travel. So this is a very vital and important test bed for the things we plan to do in the future."