Ross-Nazzal: What type of tests are you doing on the suit?

McDougle: We have to do an unpressurized and pressurized leak check before they go make sure nothing happened on the way to the pad. We check to make sure that it’s going to pressurize and hold pressure when it needs to. That’s when the suit gets hard and stiff, but they can still move their fingers. The test also makes sure the helmet, gloves, or anything is not leaking and that the crew member is getting oxygen flow before they leave the building. The helmets and other equipment are taken out to the van, then they’ll walk out just with their suit and boots on.

Ross-Nazzal: How long does the test take?

McDougle: The whole thing, maybe five minutes, because it takes this long to put the suit on. They walk in wearing their underwear, then they have a seat, don their gear, and the test is real quick. It doesn’t take long at all. With her it was a little bit longer because they were doing some scientific experiment. I have a little checklist of what I had to do. I had to wear this checklist around my arm to make sure I did all these special things. That’s their undies there [shows photo], and all her crew worn items on the table that she would have in her suit pockets.

Ross-Nazzal: Wow! That looks like a lot of items.

McDougle: It is. That’s only a little corner. It’s a whole table full of stuff.

McDougle: You have basic stuff like the emesis bag, hankie, light sticks, pens and pencils, and survival packs go in their lower bottom legs: A pack and B pack. The B pack has their survival radio and motion sickness pills. The A pack has flares, a strobe light—it’s a day-and-night flare—chemical light sticks and a pen gun flare set to shoot up for when they’re waiting to be rescued.

Ross-Nazzal: I didn’t know all that stuff was in there. That’s pretty heavy. How heavy is the suit once you put it on?

McDougle: Including the parachute, which they never walk around in, would be approximately 75 pounds or so. But they’re not walking around wearing all that stuff. The parachute is already lying out in the Shuttle. The harness, the helmet, gloves and the CCA [Communications Carrier Assembly, "Snoopy cap"] they take up to the top side. All they walk up with is the suit and their boots on, so they’re not walking around with all that heavy gear on. The skullcap they put on to keep from pulling their hair when they go through the neck of the suit, so they would take that off and put on their communications cap. That’s the testers that we’re hooked up to when we’re testing, these big gray things back here.That’s when I went to the landing.

They give you a permit to put in your car. I kept that. This is a newspaper article one of the ladies at the reception gave me. Mae made the front of Ebony magazine, which is a big magazine in the African-American community. Of course I cut the cover out and put a picture of Mae and I on the cover.[Continues to flip through scrapbook and points out article.] That was in an aerospace newspaper, I think it was a Boeing paper. I was so excited when I saw her in the paper. This is the actual morning of launch when they walked out. They’d just left our room on the third floor, they walked out, and they got into the Astrovan. That’s us waiting for the launch, the whole team You see we went from white to orange uniforms now, which I like the best because it was the color of our suit.