Maine spacewalker deserves accolades
Whatever disagreements some voters and taxpayers might have with Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the two U.S. senators from Maine teamed up on a July 24 legislative measure that no one could argue with: They introduced a resolution recognizing astronaut Chris Cassidy's contributions to the Endeavour space shuttle mission.
Lt. Cmdr. Cassidy, a Navy SEAL before signing up for space travel, was born in Salem, Mass., but calls York, Maine, his hometown. He attended York High School before enrolling in the Naval Academy Prep School at Newport, R.I., and he's a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"I join the people of Maine in congratulating Lt. Cmdr. Cassidy on this momentous occasion," Collins said when the senators introduced their resolution. "It is truly inspiring how he is showing the children of Maine that they can literally reach for the stars, and with hard work and dedication, that dreams can come true."
Cassidy participated in several spacewalks during Endeavour's 16-day mission, which ended Friday when the shuttle landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
One of the spacewalks lasted 7.5 hours as Cassidy and crewmate Tom Marshburn replaced batteries in the solar power system of the International Space Station.
An earlier walk had to be cut short when carbon dioxide produced by the astronaut's breathing started to build up in Cassidy's spacesuit.
Carbon dioxide is removed from astronauts' sealed spacesuits by a canister containing a chemical called lithium hydroxide, and mission spokesmen said they believed that Cassidy's "enthusiastic and strenuous start" to his spacewalk led to a failure of the canister.
They said the spacewalk was called off before the carbon dioxide levels became dangerous.
Space station flight director Holly Ridings explained: "There's a feature with how the (lithium hydroxide) works where if you go out and have a very high metabolic rate at the very beginning, then the canister doesn't work as well for the duration."
"Chris is a Navy SEAL," Ridings said. "He's in great shape and so we really just needed to tell him, 'Hey, we know you can do this really well and really fast, but we need the (canister) to work right, so just slow down a little and take your time.' He took that with good humor."
We'll give Snowe the last word: "As our nation celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and the first man on the moon, Lt. Cmdr. Cassidy's journey to space marks a new era, with Chris becoming the 500th person to venture beyond earth's gravity," she said. "I commend Chris for his heroic contributions and commitment to advancing science and human understanding."
On second thought, we'll have the last word: Ditto.
