I spent an afternoon in the home of Drs. Valery and Nelly Polyakov, hearing stories of how they coped with the 18 months he spent on Mir. Nelly told me that she worried the whole time her husband was away. The Soviet Union was in turmoil, and she carried the entire responsibility of family and home. Her daughter and grandchildren were in a neighborhood where violence broke out as Yeltsin struggled to gain control. Valery and Nelly worried there would be no one at Mission Control to bring him back.
They went on to tell me how Nelly could only communicate with Valery briefly, when Mir passed over a tracking station.
Valery spoke of changes during his time in space. When he left, the rubles his contract paid were valuable. When he returned, the rubles were worthless. Life had gone on without him. Many friends had left the space industry. The community he had known was gone. “It took me three years to find a place in life again,” he said.
“Looking down on Earth for all those months, I could see where battles were fought and how we were killing the land and polluting the air. It all seemed so foolish. Being in space, it changes the way you feel about this planet.”
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Other than dealing with obstructive bureaucracies I would be hard put to describe any experience on this assignment as “the worst.” There was a moment, however, when it looked as though I would lose a much hoped-for subject. For months research scientist Clint Rubin and I had been discussing photographing him with one of his research subjects—a turkey. First, it was my travel schedule, then his, which caused us to delay the “turkey shoot.” The next delay came when a batch of turkeys failed to arrive at his lab. My deadline for finishing the project was fast approaching when Clint and I finally agreed on a date.
When I arrived at the impressive facility of the Center for Biotechnology at State University of New York at Stony Brook, Clint met me at the curb with good news: The turkeys had arrived. And bad news: All but one bird had molted. Together we visited the feather-strewn turkey pen. Thirty large pink turkeys were strutting about completely naked but for pinfeathers. Luckily one turkey had chosen to stay dressed for the occasion. He became our star.
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Of the materials scientists suggest that might shield astronauts from radiation, water was the one I could most readily get. NASA was thinking about building an outer wall on the ship to hold water that would protect the inhabitants and provide various uses in the craft. I just needed to show a human wrapped in water. I remembered a contraption my wife uses to protect tomato plants on cold days. It’s made of plastic sheeting that traps water in long flexible cylinders. I found the company name, Wallowater, and I phoned Gary “Corky” Corkins, the owner, in Salt Lake City. It took some convincing, but Corky took the challenge.
Now I needed an astrophysicist game enough to wear whatever it was the Corkins team was dreaming up. I called scientist Janet Barth at NASA Goddard and, surprisingly, she agreed to meet me in Salt Lake City.
It took nearly an hour to put the thing on.
We got the picture, but in the end, it was scrapped. Oh, well. Janet got an unusual photo. The Corkins could think about marketing Wallowater armor. And, clad in Wallowater suits, my wife’s tomatoes did the best they’ve ever done.
See the photo.
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