Spaced Out

Phoning outer space is a complicated business. I know. On a July afternoon, I chewed the extraterrestrial fat with astronaut Edward Michael Fincke, who, as part of the two-man, six-month Expedition 9 mission, has been floating around the International Space Station since April. Our 20-minute conversation took weeks to schedule, involved two phone lines, numerous sound checks, and the following exchange:

HOUSTON: Alpha, this is Mission Control Center in Houston. Are you ready for the event?

FINCKE: Houston, International Space Station Alpha here. We're ready.

HOUSTON: Boston Globe, this is Houston. Please call Alpha for a voice check.

ME: Alpha, this is Ken Gordon with The Boston Globe. How do you hear me? (There are 20 uncomfortable seconds of silence.) Alpha, this is Ken Gordon with The Boston Globe. How do you hear me?

FINCKE: Hello, Ken, from International Space Station. This is Mike Fincke. I hear you nice and clear. We could turn up the volume just a little bit, and then that would be perfect.

ME: OK. Mike --

FINCKE: Good afternoon, Ken. I guess it's just maybe turning to be noontime there in Boston, and I hope everything's going well there for you.

This sort of upbeat comment was characteristic of the 37-year-old Fincke, an earnest 1989 MIT grad and Air Force lieutenant colonel whose dramatic adventures in space have been widely reported. At the end of June, Fincke attempted his first-ever EVA -- extravehicular activity -- and Mission Control said, "You need to return. Something is not right."

Not the words you want to hear while floating in space.

"I kind of inched my way outside," he says. "I remember looking down at the planet -- it was just starting to be a sunrise, and it was cold outside -- and Mission Control Center in Moscow said, 'Hey, take a look at your oxygen gauge.' " The oxygen level was dropping rapidly. Fincke soon understood what Moscow was thinking: Get back inside the space station. ASAP. The entire trip lasted 14 minutes. A few days later, Fincke and his cosmonaut companion, Russian commander Gennady Padalka, were able to make a successful spacewalk and replaced the space station's faulty gyroscope with a working model. But Fincke's mission involves more than interstellar home repairs. As the science officer of Expedition 9, he has engaged in some interesting experiments. For instance, Fincke and Padalka are the first astronauts to use ultrasound to monitor the physiological changes caused by long-term residence in outer space. And lest you think this is a big waste of taxpayer dollars, he adds that "we're learning how to do some remote medicine that would apply to underprivileged areas of the planet."

Fincke really warms to the subject of science, but not quite as much as he does to the subject of his alma mater. "If anybody says, 'Where did you grow up? 'I almost want to say, well, not Pittsburgh. That's my hometown, and I love it as such, but I really grew up at MIT."

The school has a lot to offer potential astronauts. According to MIT's Laurence Young, who was an alternate payload specialist for the October 1993 Columbia mission, the school designed the Apollo guidance system, has seen a number of alumni walk on the moon, and boasts an impressive man-vehicle lab.

The astronomically enthusiastic Fincke then launches into the subject of Boston: "I can't wait to get a chance to come visit my brothers and my sister, who live in Boston, and to go back to MIT." Every time the space station passes overhead, he says, "I have a special wave for Boston and the Bostonians."

And while, as an earthbound New Englander, I appreciate his wave, my real Boston-based question is this: Does he eat the freeze-dried astronaut ice cream sold at the Museum of Science? "Ah, freeze-dried ice cream," he says. "Boy, that's one of the myths [about space travel]. Fortunately, I knew the answer ahead of time, before the mission, because if I had expected freeze-dried ice cream and found out that we really don't have any, then I'd be disappointed for six months."