A few landscape paintings or scenic panoramas wouldnt be a bad idea, either.
"I know that previous expeditions to places like the Arctic have recommended strongly that you provide things like that from home to remind people of scenes of mountains or meadows things that make you think that youre at home," said astronaut Jim Voss.
But station construction engineers have yet to show much flare as interior decorators.
Said Helms: "I dont know that weve thought quite into that kind of detail this far ahead."
Helms, Voss and crew-mate Yuri Usachev have a vested interest in station aesthetics. The trio will comprise the second full-time resident crew at the station, so the outpost will be their home-away-from-home for three to six months next year.
Working side-by-side with four other astronauts, the threesome spent the better part of last week cooped up inside the station, which now is a 7-story tower that features a cluttered Russian space tug and a rather antiseptic U.S. docking module.
And in the midst of their highly successful maintenance mission, it was hard not to notice that the station now lacks a room with a view.
That apparent deficiency, however, will be remedied before Helms, Voss and Usachev make a return trip to the outpost aboard shuttle Discovery in February or March 2000.
By that time, the growing station will double in size and include:
- A long-delayed Russian command and control center that also will serve as crew living quarters. The so-called service module dubbed "Zvezda," or "Star," by the Russians -- is slated for launch in mid July.
- A bus-sized U.S. laboratory that will serve as the stations main hub for scientific research. Named "Destiny," the lab is to be launched on Atlantis in mid-January.
Both of the new station rooms will feature windows on the world below.
The U.S. lab will have a single large porthole, but the view will be blocked at least in part by window-mounted Earth-observing experiments.
The Russian service module, consequently, likely will be the astronauts favorite off-duty hangout. An upgraded copy of the Mir space stations core lab, Zvezda will feature six windows, including a huge porthole that measures a full yard (meter) across.
Thats good news when it comes to the crews mental and emotional health.
"I think if you were to live in a closed room without windows or very limited viewing out of a window it wouldnt seem comfortable to a lot of people here on Earth, and I think the station is the same," Helms said.
"It would just be nice to have more opportunities to photograph the Earth not only for science reasons [but] for psychological reasons," she said. "Itd be great to see, because [the planet] is probably the most beautiful thing you can look at from that vantage point."
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