Jan Davis walks among us as a commoner, yet this woman is a member of one of the most elite leagues on the planet. Only about 500 human beings have flown in Earth’s orbit. Davis was the first female Tech grad to do so. And she’s done it three times.
More than 10 years after her last shuttle mission, aboard Discovery in August 1997, Davis, ABiol 75, still is asked to speak to awestruck schoolchildren and adults to tell what it’s like to look down on Earth.
A Davis presentation, complete with photos and statistics, also holds the rapt attention of members of the North Alabama/Huntsville Georgia Tech Club, largely made up of current and former employees of NASA and its contractors. Davis is retired from NASA now but still maintains close ties to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville as the vice president and deputy general manager of contractor Jacobs Technology.
Named an astronaut in 1987, a year after the Challenger explosion, Davis logged more than 650 hours in space. Davis’ first flight was aboard Endeavour in September 1992.
“My first flight was a Spacelab flight. It was just a wonderful laboratory for science,” Davis said. “We did a lot of life science experiments to try and understand why astronauts get sick. I didn’t get sick, just so you know.”
Davis showed a picture of herself in the orange partial-pressure suit, adopted by NASA after the Challenger accident. “The suit is attached to a parachute, and there are oxygen bottles inside the parachute in case you have to jump out of the shuttle. They’re very uncomfortable when you’re strapped in,” she said.
“The orbiter is cantilevered at the center of gravity so when the engines fire the whole shuttle tilts over about a foot. Then when it becomes vertical you take off,” Davis said. “People ask me what that’s like. You’re on your back. It’s like you’re in a chair and you’re just shaking like crazy … and then you get a big kick in the pants that sends you on your way.”
Eight and a half minutes later, Davis and her fellow crew members were in space, traveling 17,500 miles per hour.
Davis’ favorite things to see out a shuttle window were the sunrises and sunsets, “just beautiful, beautiful colors” splashing against the darkness for just a few seconds, she said. “You go around the Earth every hour and a half, so you see 45 minutes of darkness, 45 minutes of daylight.”
Davis was the ultimate storm chaser.
“On every one of my flights I saw a hurricane or some kind of super typhoon,” Davis said. “I liked looking at water and clouds as much as anything. Most of my crew members would look at the land and as soon as we got to the ocean they’d go do something else, but I thought the cloud formations were really interesting. If you catch it right, islands and clouds form wakes, like boats. You see these wakes in the clouds. There are just phenomenal features in the clouds.”
When it was time to return to Earth, the crew put on the orange suits again.
“You’ve been in space for a week or two, so everything as you’re coming into the Earth’s atmosphere feels really, really heavy,” Davis said.
“You feel heavy, everything you’re holding feels heavy because you’re not used to being in gravity. Your balance is a little off without the effect of gravity, and you haven’t been using the fluid in your ears for equilibrium. You’ll be a little off balance when you land,” Davis said.
The landing itself is at “about a 17-degree slope, and you touch down about twice as fast as a commercial jetliner,” she explained.
Davis also provided a true insider’s look at a stay aboard the shuttle. She showed the North Alabama Georgia Tech Club a photo of an astronaut shaving with a razor that sucks in the bristles of hair and another photo of the shuttle toilet.
“I’m only showing this because I know you all want to know. The kids ask me. The adults don’t ask, but they want to know. It’s basically like a toilet, but when you sit on the pot you have these bars that you put across your legs so you don’t float off. Here’s a urinal cup,” Davis said, pointing to the picture and drawing snickers from her mature audience.
“That’s probably all you need to know,” she said.
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