For seven hours and nineteen minutes on November 3, two astronauts’ lives hung in the balance. Like a scene from a nail-biting episode of Star Trek, rookie spacewalker Doug Wheelock and seasoned astronaut Scott Parazynski faced possible electrocution and other dangers in order to boldly go where no man had gone before and repair a damaged solar array at the end of the port side of the International Space Station.
On the previous spacewalk, the two astronauts had installed a truss with its two folded solar wings in its new location, but one of the solar arrays snagged on a wire and tore while being deployed. Stopping the procedure, the crew spent the next three days working on a solution. With ingenious MacGyver-like skill, they used strips of aluminum foil, a hole punch, a bolt connector, and sixty-six feet of wire to make homemade stabilizers known as “cufflinks” that would take pressure off the damaged hinges on the solar array.
Slowly Doug and Scott rode to the damage site on the end of a robotic arm far from the safety of the airlock. Scott installed the cufflinks on the array and clipped a “hairball” of frayed wire while Doug watched from the freezing shadows of the truss. Balanced at the end of the extended robotic arm, Scott used a makeshift hockey stick to push away the array blanket and avoid electrical shock. When the repairs were complete, the crew cheered as the arrays were successfully deployed. “They worked like a charm,” says Doug’s older brother Dave. “It was awesome.”
Dave thought back to the NASA bus ride he and about 50 close friends and family members took to the observation site on the day of the space shuttle Discovery launch on October 23. He and his brother Dale had taken the microphone and prayed for each crew member by name, as well as the support staff on the ground. “As it turns out, they had to do some really dangerous and hairy things on that mission, which really took a lot of teamwork, so that’s what we prayed for—that this whole thing would be a testimony to God’s grace.”
God’s grace was apparent to many who witnessed the spacewalk on TV. “Things got pretty tense for a while, but we kept praying,” said Doug’s mother, Margaret, who watched NASA TV on cable with her husband Olin. (The cable company quickly installed it for them when they heard the Wheelock’s son was one of the astronauts.)
NASA’s deputy administrator Shana Dale called it “a truly astonishing performance” with “stunning ingenuity” at the Transforming Space Conference on November 8. Without the array repairs, continued space station assembly would have come to a halt and set back the schedule. The successful mission was a fitting prelude to NASA’s fiftieth anniversary in 2008.
Doug was so excited throughout the trip that he called his mom from space four times, she said. When the crew safely landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 7 (after traveling 6.25 million miles on 238 orbits of the Earth), Doug called home again. “Now just get ready, Mom. Prepare yourself. I’m going again,” he told her. Doug hopes to be the commander of the International Space Station for an extended stay within the next two years.
Nicknamed “Wheels” and considered the “happy guy” of Discovery’s STS-120 crew by shuttle commander Pamela Melroy, Doug Wheelock, 47, is “grateful and humbled” by the opportunity to work as an astronaut. “I feel very honored and very blessed to be part of the program,” he said in a recent NASA interview. For Doug, it’s been a logical progression; he’s worked in Mission Control in both Texas and Florida and as director of operations in the Russian Space Agency. He’s been setting goals and preparing for life as an astronaut for years.
From Sputnik to Space
Born three years after Sputnik was launched, Doug grew up in Windsor, New York, describing the small town as a community of hard-working people who love their country, the military, and the space program. Windsor is “an exit off the highway, without even one traffic light,” adds a neighbor of the Wheelocks.
Doug’s parents, who kept foster children and adopted one in addition to their three boys, encouraged a strong work ethic and instilled in Doug a desire to set goals and to live out his Christian faith and God-given gifts. Raised in West Windsor Baptist Church, Doug went through the AWANA program, earning the Citation Award. “He’s got a good solid background in terms of the basis of his belief,” says senior pastor Rex Baker, who’s been at West Windsor for 22 years. “The award represents a lot of Scripture memorization”—in fact more than 700 Bible verses.
Although Doug didn’t necessarily dream of becoming an astronaut as a child, he was fascinated by the space race between the United States and Russia. (He was nine when the American astronauts walked on the moon.) He also had a tremendous love for flying. “I just wanted to fly,” he said in a NASA interview.
When Doug applied to the United States Military Academy at West Point, Jerry Maslar, who lived two doors away from the Wheelocks for years, wrote a recommendation for him. Doug studied engineering and applied science at West Point, then went to graduate school at Georgia Tech for flight training and eventually reached his goal to become a test pilot. “I knew Doug as a child almost as well as I know my own three children,” says Jerry, now retired from IBM. “Doug was always a happy child; very kind and humble, with a lot of character. And he loved coming over for our cinnamon rolls!”
Jerry’s wife, Midge, recalls that Doug was responsible for saving Jerry’s life back in the 1970s. Jerry was in the kitchen choking on a “speidie,” a piece of marinated pork, and Doug did the Heimlich maneuver while Midge stood there. “I had taken the course, but I guess I was frozen, so while I stood there frozen Doug came in and saved his life,” says Midge. “He’s such a good kid; we love him.”
Doug, who lives in Texas with his wife, Cate, and daughter, Ashley, apparently is loved by many people. At a reception on the night before the Discovery launch, Doug was quarantined, but he invited about 400 friends and relatives to the reception and through a video clip thanked them for coming. A life-size cardboard cut out of Doug, affectionately dubbed “Flat Wheels,” was there for picture taking, says his mother. “It looked very real!” At Doug’s request, the former pastor of West Windsor, Pastor “Cal” Jones, sang “How Great Thou Art,” and his daughter, Luann, sang a hymn too.
Doug has been good about keeping his mom up to date. A week before the launch, during a break in the seven-member crew’s countdown rehearsal, Doug called home with a live update. “Hi, Mom; it’s Doug. I’m standing on the launch pad!” As the day of the launch approached, he sent her a note. “It’s getting exciting. Thanks for cheering us on!”
Margaret laughed. “I’m just praying that our excitement overtakes our fear,” she said before the spaceflight. Although Doug has always loved flying, his mother never really dreamed her son would become an astronaut, let alone travel into the heavens with six others for a two-week international space mission. “I can’t get my mind around it; it’s unbelievable,” she says.
On the day of the launch, Doug’s parents watched and cheered from the sidelines, along with a group of at least 20 fans from his hometown church, including his senior and assistant pastors and their wives. “I knew probably 20 years ago that Doug’s goal was to be an astronaut,” says Pastor Baker. “I said at that time that when he goes into space, I’d like to be there. It was really a thrill to make the trek to Florida and be there.”
Jerry Maslar was there too. “Seeing the launch, the fire and flash, hearing the roar, and being as close as we were, was awesome.”
Lurene Hadlick, 84, a children’s church teacher for 30 years, couldn’t make it to the October launch, but she will never forget attending the launch of Columbia on its last successful mission. Fifteen minutes before the launch, Doug, wearing his NASA jumpsuit, walked by the crowd and joined her, Pastor Baker, and a friend to watch the shuttle take off. “We caused a little stir,” she says with a chuckle. “We’re so proud of him.”
Don VanFleet has known Doug since he was three (“His parents are our best friends”), and is impressed by Doug’s “great Christian testimony.” Retired from the U.S. Postal Service and from the Air Force, Don is the self-proclaimed “hugger” at West Windsor Baptist Church. He gave Doug a big hug after Doug spoke at Windsor Central High School’s commencement in 1999. “I just thought it was nice to hug an astronaut in uniform,” he says with a laugh. Don has enjoyed seeing his favorite astronaut on TV too. “His being an astronaut and knowing him personally is exciting enough, but to also see Doug up there taking spacewalks is unbelievable,” says Don.
In Pursuit of Excellence
Many people are greatly inspired by Doug’s life, including his brother Dave, an insurance agent and girls’ basketball coach, who has thought a lot lately about what motivates some people to excel beyond the aspirations of most people. “Why don’t they just remain Joe Mediocre like everyone else?” he asks. “What causes them to want to be in a position where they’re out in space pushing away solar arrays with a makeshift hockey stick so it doesn’t touch them?”
Dave suspects it’s similar to the 212th degree that separates water from steam. “I think it’s that extra bit of urgency to be excellent,” says Dave, who thinks that is a good lesson for Christians. “No matter what you do for God, no matter what you are, whether you’re a pastor, an insurance agent like me, a housewife, or whatever, we all need to go that extra degree to be excellent because that’s what Jesus Christ did.”
Linda Piepenbrink is an editor and creative writer at Regular Baptist Press. Space photos courtesy NASA; childhood photos courtesy Margaret Wheelock.
