It was not uncommon to lose a signal from Earth out here in space. It happened a couple of times during flight as we moved too fast for the satellites to keep up with us.

But we were stationary, on a brand-new space station, floating in space. It would be much more difficult to lose a signal when we were moving slowly. But we were using the equipment for the first time.

It must be a glitch we’ll have to work out. Just one of those things.

Still it was very eerie to lose contact with home. The Colonel had been a constant during this trip. He was ALWAYS there. He would be furious we were missing his lecture.

We went in the control room seemingly to find the problem. We tried this and that, calling out, “Colonel, can you hear us now?” sounding like an old commercial. We traced circuits and flipped breakers and pushed buttons, to no avail.

We finally concluded it wasn’t us.

We gazed at the Earth. Asia was barely visible through the swirling clouds. Earth wouldn’t console us with a view of North America.