The reason we run through these tasks so many times on the ground is not simply to learn how to do the job right but to find out everything that might go wrong. Depending on the complexity of the space walk, so many potential problems can occur. The last thing you want is to encounter a problem you didn’t think of or hadn’t prepared a solution for. But you inevitably do. Drew and I would talk about this in terms of cars. “There’s always something wrong with your car,” he’d say. “You just don’t know what it is yet.” Is there a belt that’s about to go bad? A weakness in the front left tire
...more
