Ryan Snow: Mission Day 3: Wednesday, May 23rd, 2001
It’s kind of like when you’re camping out in the wilderness. You start to see more. You might even think you become less intrusive on the “natural” world. The behavior around you seems to make more sense. You eventually reach a point where you think you could live like this indefinitely. That would be nice, but not quite possible. Just when you think all is honky-dory something happens that puts you back in your place.
It doesn’t take much to realize the marvel of your situation when you’re watching a spotted eagle ray fly by your window. Likewise, when an air filter becomes dislodged it makes you take note of your dependence on the life support systems of your underwater home. This is day three of my first Aquarius mission.
Just so people don’t get alarmed, the air filter that got dislodged was a redundant filter to a non-essential air system. At no time did this present a threat to the safety of the crew. It was easily fixed by the expert crew of habitat technicians (that’d be me and Otter). The episode actually was quite exciting. There’s no better way to learn about something than to try to fix it under pressure. Soon after it was fixed the Aquanauts returned to their work on the reef.
Afterward I was able to go out on hookah to trace out some exterior plumbing and perform the ritual scrubbing of valves. Most of the air supplies to the habitat are routed externally and enter at various places on the habitat hull. The best way to get a good picture in your head of the habitat as a system is to manually follow each pipe to see exactly where it goes.
I hope to get a chance to go out on hookah for a night dive at some point. Going outside here is kind of like going out in the winter. You’re excited to go but you look forward to the warmth when you come back inside. Still, I’d stay out there all day if I could.
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