Historical! Steve MacLean First Gymnast To Walk In Space!
Canada Gymnastics / FIG Office, September 19, 2006:
Steve MacLean has always said how his gymnastics background
has been invaluable to him as an astronaut. When he became
the first gymnast to walk in space on Wednesday, September
13th , Steve's talent for performing under stress while upside
down was on display for a worldwide audience. For nearly seven
hours Steve, a member of the Canadian men's gymnastics team
in the late seventies, worked outside the space station on
a crucial mission to prepare a truss structure for the deployment
of giant solar panels. The main job involved releasing covers
and bolts used to securely pack the panels on the space shuttle
Atlantis which carried Steve into orbit on September 10th.
Despite a few anxious moments when a crucial bolt jammed and
a second bolt drifted away that could have caused damage to
the solar panel structure, Steve and his space walk partner
Dan Burbank got the job done. His reward: double helpings
of pea soup, turkey tetrazzini, tomatoes and egg plant topped
off by a brownie for dessert and two cups of lemon tea.
Food in space may not compare to a night out in a restaurant,
but according to Steve in a recent interview, dinner conversations
in space are simply out of this world. "When you fly
in space, number one, you are so relaxed because you're in
zero G [gravity]," he says. "Every single muscle
in your body goes into this relaxed state, which on it's own
is worth the trip to space. Second, you're a happy camper
because you're doing something you love. Third, I think people
feel smarter, or they feel more intellectually engaged, perhaps,
and it just makes the dinner conversation around the table
fascinating."
One of the original six Canadian astronauts selected in 1983,
Steve maintained his ties with gymnastics over the years and,
in 2005, was made an Honourary Life Member of Gymnastics Canada.
Among the personal items Steve carried into space on this
flight is a Gymnastics Canada / FIG pennant. On his first
shuttle flight in 1993 he also took a Gymnastics Canada badge
into space, a treasured memento now on display at the national
office in Ottawa. A laser physicist known to the crew as "the
professor," Steve is the second Canadian to walk in space,
following in the footsteps of Chris Hadfield, who completed
the feat in 2001. One of the first six Canadian astronauts
in 1983, Steve made his first space flight in 1992 on board
the shuttle Columbia.
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