This is STS-37 , and they always signed pictures to us. That’s me working my first flight. I was just a baby. I took these with my own camera before all the digital stuff came out. This was us hanging out after a hard day. They have envelopes that you can send back to yourself as a memento of the mission. They’ll mark it with the launch date and time. I was so excited. These are some of the other people hanging out up here that we worked with. He’s actually my manager now, Mark [M.] Greeley. At the time he was an engineer. This is actually on the back-up bus for the Astrovan. We wore white uniforms then. Now the suit techs wear a tan color uniform and the insertion techs wear white uniforms.
McDougle: When you’re suiting the crew up and flying on the STAs [Shuttle training aircraft].
Ross-Nazzal: Is there a reason that you wear those type of suits?
McDougle: Yes, Nomex. When we fly on the STAs we wear Nomex in the uniform in case of a fire. It’s not fireproof, it’s fire-retardant for sparks. And it also looks sharp for the team to be dressed alike.
McDougle: Yes, and sometimes a suit tech will have two crew members. You can be assigned two crew members because they come in at different times to suit up for launch. Commander, pilot, and MS2 [mission specialist 2, the flight engineer] come in last because they’re attending the weather briefing. The other crew members will come in prior to them, about ten minutes or so, and they would get suited up and tested and be done when the other crew members come in. Then the suit tech can suit up their other crew member. I had two people most of the time.
McDougle: Approximately five minutes, it doesn’t take long. This was when they were practicing their tank driving. If they had to slide down, they would have to drive the tank. This is out at the STAs. This was my first time flying on the Shuttle training aircraft. We’re all just posing there. We weren’t actually on the plane yet. Of course you can see I was a complete tourist. While we were driving up I was taking pictures, I was all excited.That’s the whole crew , and there’s the Astrovan that takes them from the O&C [Operations and Checkout] Building out to the launchpad. Then it comes back from the pad right before launch. There’s some of the crew members standing around. That was during their tank driving too, standing around waiting for their turn. They took this cool picture in space of the suits floating around —my maiden name is Caples.These are a few photos from my Air Force days. Our beautiful little fatigue uniforms. Don’t miss that! That was at an air show. We had white uniforms also because we were part of the medical field, because of the hypobaric and hyperbaric chambers. That was a four-star general that came and flew. Look at that hair, isn’t that beautiful? You can tell that was in the ’80s
Ross-Nazzal: I was going to say big hair in the ’80s.
McDougle: [Continues showing images] That’s my first boot camp picture. I was so young, 18. That was my first flight. Of course STS-47, that would be my most memorable; the one I cherish the most, with Dr. Mae C. Jemison. That’s a picture there from the last function she held in Chicago [Illinois]. It was the Women of Color in Flight.
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