Mark Kelly preps for space launch

HOUSTON — At NASA, the master alarm is blaring — insistent every few seconds —and commander Mark Kelly is thinking abort.

"I have no idea where we're going," he says to his crew. Maybe they'll have to make an emergency landing in Europe. Maybe they'll make it to space.

On the flight deck, Kelly punches certain buttons and plots strategy with Mission Control, but the stakes are lower today. This isn't the real thing. It's practice.

Fully,15 things go wrong on this simulated flight to space -- one of the crew's last tests before the space shuttle Endeavour launches Friday. The simulations are supposed to be difficult: At NASA, it's someone's job to create problems, to "break" various things and force the crew members and Mission Control to get scrappy, save that day's mission and protect their lives.

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For the astronauts, this faux flight is one of thousands. Always, they hope to make it to space.

There's an extra seat in the simulator, just behind Kelly's command post. Sometimes, he invites visitors to ride along. His rules: Strap in. Be quiet. Wear closed-toe shoes. And don't drink too much water beforehand.

"There's a lot of shaking," says Kelly, husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.

The simulator is a large metal box that sits high on a lift inside NASA's Johnson Space Center. Inside, it looks just like the shuttle cockpit: seats for Kelly and pilot Gregory Johnson on the forward flight deck, seats for two of the crew members behind Johnson.

Banks of buttons and switches are overhead. A rough count: about 350 buttons, at least. Light blue Velcro is everywhere: adhesive-backed squares decorate the walls and the seat backs, holding Velcro-adorned pencils, notebooks, flight manuals, clips. Think zero gravity. This is how they hold things down.

In the simulator and in the shuttle, the astronauts communicate with each other and with Mission Control using headsets with microphones attached. Even though they're sitting next to one another, the volume inside the shuttle requires it. Seat belts must keep the astronauts in their seats at any angle, and there are four straps: each shoulder, each leg. They meet in the middle. Four clicks, and "you're good to go," says astronaut Roberto Vittori, a flight specialist from Italy.

A simulated mission begins like this:

"All right," says Kelly, reviewing the rules. "All the standard stuff. Let's try to do this without any mistakes. And no talking when the ground talks."

Before their simulated flights, they place bets: Maybe this time NASA will take away communication and Engine 2. No, Johnson says, this time they're going to have to land in Russia. Loser buys the other one a beer.

"Are you ready for motion?" the ground control asks.

They are.

The simulator starts to sway a little.

"Engines are moving, and that's why we're moving," Kelly says to the visitor.

"Just like the real thing," pilot Johnson adds.

Crew member Michael Fincke is counting down.

"T minus nine," he says. Take-off in nine minutes.

Kelly adjusts his headset.

"Good morning, Houston," he says to Mission Control.

The crew runs checks: power boilers, controllers. Astronauts train for years and talk in their own code, impossible to translate if one doesn't speak NASA. One-dash-11, OTC copies, FU tanks.

Kelly asks the ground crew about the pitch. The astronauts tighten their harnesses. The simulator tilts back, far back. It's hard to tell if one's head is slightly above or slightly below one's toes. Kelly wads up a piece of paper, holds out his hand and drops it to demonstrate the reclined angle. It seems like it should fall toward his feet, but instead it falls backward, into the lap of the visitor sitting behind him.

The simulator is tilted back 80 degrees, he explains.

"Three minutes," Fincke says.

A beat, as Kelly remembers what day this is.

Flight STS-134 is the Endeavour's last, and the crew's last, and NASA's second-to-last shuttle flight. The final flight is scheduled for June, on the shuttle Atlantis.

"How many thousands and thousands of hours have we spent in this thing over the years?" Kelly says to his crew.

"Thousands and thousands," pilot Johnson replies.

"And this is it," Kelly says. "Kind of bittersweet, isn't it?"

No one needs to reply.

"One minute," Fincke says.

At that, Johnson slides his hand back toward Fincke and Vittori. His palm up, he wriggles his fingers, asking, and they respond with fist-bumps in his palm. None from Kelly; he doesn't fist-bump unless it's the real thing.

Thirty seconds.

The crew members are grinning, anticipating the rush.

Thirteen seconds.

Seven.

At six seconds, the main engines start and the simulator begins to shake.

Takeoff.

The shaking intensifies violently as the solid rocket boosters ignite. The astronauts' bodies move like water globes being all stirred up. This is what it feels like to leave Earth's atmosphere. Sort of.

What NASA can't simulate, Johnson says, is the force of ascent, which feels "like sitting at a stoplight and getting hit by a truck." That kind of pressure, he says, combined with shaking even stronger than this -- the whole way up.

The crew's voices vibrate through the headsets. It's hard to read the screens, Johnson says.

And this ascent is not going well.

"Dudes, we're not gonna make it uphill, I think," pilot Johnson says.

Mission Control sounds in: "Endeavour, standby for manual throttle."

The helium tanks are giving them problems, the joysticks are giving them problems. Soon, they are talking about bailout, landing in Europe. The master alarm button blinks and wails near Kelly. He punches it every few seconds to shut it up.

"We are dumping," someone tells Mission Control.

And yet, they are calm. They are experienced. There are plans, and there are backup plans, and there is multilayered problem-solving. They consult their manuals. They listen to Mission Control. They listen to each other. "OK, guys, we're trying to save the mission here," Johnson says, and then he does, manually flying the shuttle up into space. When they leave the atmosphere, it feels a bit like a dive into water: so much inertia, and then weightless calm.

That feels more distinct in space, too, they say.

They run through the whole routine. It's time to take pictures of the planet they just left, and Fincke tells the crew he's stepping out of his seat for photo duty and will be unavailable.

And then the drama returns. "There's a cryo leak on the H2 side," someone says. They go to tail-only control. They lose communication with the ground. They lose the lights.

"We went to the dark side of the planet," Fincke jokes.

They have to shut down Fuel Cell 2. They worry about inertial rates and secondary gimbals. They need Fincke, and he has to remind them that he's busy taking photos and not in his seat.

"We're one failure away from going hot," someone says.

The astronauts train this way because of the risks. Two shuttles have exploded, and NASA says they have a one-in-57 chance of dying over the course of their mission. So, they spend endless hours in the simulator, learning everything that could go wrong and how they can fix it and stay alive. Sometimes in the simulator, they don't.

A few minutes later, communication comes back, nothing seems to go hot, and the astronauts want to know: Do they keep going? Head on to the space station? Would it be safe? Is it worth the risk?

They wait for Mission Control to decide, joke about how long it takes, discuss the rum cake that is waiting in the break room. Their orders come through: Go to the station. And with that, the simulation ends.

They unbuckle their belts, take deep breaths.

Fincke hands Kelly a note on a piece of paper -- a question he wants to ask Mission Control during the debriefing after.

It reads: "boundary calls?"

He is asking for answers on whether it would have been worth it, after all that trouble, to keep going to the station.

Johnson is worried, too, and wants to know what would have been done "to keep us alive."

Fifteen malfunctions, he says. That's a lot. In an actual shuttle mission, Kelly says, maybe there would be one or two.

Johnson points out that whatever happened, today they earned their NASA business cards, the ones that say "astronaut."

Also: They lived.