On Tuesday morning we met with the public affairs folks at JSC. They were preparing a article on the one year anniversary of our selection. They wanted to talk about our impressions of the last year. Has it been a year already? Wow - time really flies. After that we had a lecture on a variety of popular topics - black holes, aliens, and killer asteroids, to name a few. This lecture was to give us some background material to help us in the future on fielding questions on all these type of topics. Astronauts can and do get all kinds of questions when they give talks to the public. And, the public expects us to be up to date on everything space related. So, it is good to have this information. No, we do not expect to be eaten up by a black hole. And, no, we have no evidence that aliens have visited our planet - in spite of the "documentaries" that you might see on TV. But, that does not mean that there is not life out there somewhere else.

My afternoon consisted of an instrument ground school class. Each year everyone has to take a refresher class as part of our T-38 training. After that, I had a T-38 flight. Turns out that we were flying in the same plane that I flew in last week with the landing gear problem. The maintenance folks had fixed the gear door switch and plane had to have an operational check before it was declared good to go. No problems with the gear on this flight. We flew over to Beaumont and did a zillion approaches. I think we did every approach possible. It was a good workout. On the way over to Beaumont, we linked up with a Lear Jet and flew in formation. The pilot that I was flying was one of the instructor pilots at Ellington. He has occasionally flown this Lear jet and knew the pilots quite well. Since we were both heading in the same general direction and since the air traffic controllers were not too busy, we flew in formation so that the passengers of the jet could take some pictures. It was fun watching them watch us.

I ended up only having one class on Wednesday. It was in the morning and was on malfunctions in the mechanical systems. So, with the rest of the day free, I spent my time studying. It was good to have a chance to review some of the material that we have been learning. The next text is just around the corner. . .

Thursday, after my usual morning trip to the gym, I had an evaluated single systems trainer class on malfunctions in the main engines. Needless to say, there is a lot that can go wrong and you better do the right thing at the right time or the results can be catastrophic. It was a challenging class, but we went through everything methodically which really helped to cement the information in my brain. In the afternoon we had a class on malfunctions in the jets which are used for maneuvers on-orbit. Having just come from the main engine malfunctions sim session, it was easy to see the similarities in problems that may occur in the on-orbit engines.

Friday morning I first went offsite to one of the contractor facilities for another fit check on the launch and entry suits. I tried on a lot of suits and harnesses in order to eliminate the fit problems I had in the past. I think we have finally gotten a better fit. But, I will not know for sure until I have another suited simulation session. I do not know when my next suited run is - I will probably have one in the next month or so.

My last activity of the week was a simulation session in the full up motion simulator. This class was a hands-on class on the entry digital auto pilot material we learned last week. The class was geared towards us getting a feel for how the Shuttle responds to manual inputs. The flight controls are pretty sluggish when you are just coming into the atmosphere since there is not much air to make big forces on the Shuttle. Because of that, you really have to think about when you need to make a change in the inputs you are making, since they will take a while to take effect. For most of the runs, we did not go to a full landing, but the few times I did land the Shuttle, I am happy to report that I did not strafe any buildings. . .