A full working day today. Got up; Tolya was still asleep. It was 8 AM. I did everything the morning requires — systems check, turned on the water heater; it’s my turn this week, I prepare the food and set the table. Then I installed the absolute pressure sensor.

We started setting up the bath. Assembled the bath, then began preparing for experiments — today is a heavy day. We’re running an experiment, built the orientation, and I see there are only a few minutes left but they gave us an incorrect radiogram with the wrong mode — “Cascade IKV” — but for working with the MKF camera with compensation at a course angle of 0-180, you need to use “Cascade X-axis” mode. I say: “Tolya, something’s not right here — the orientation doesn’t match the photography mode; it should be X-axis, but if we get it wrong, we’ll blow the entire day, waste fuel, time, equipment resources, and most importantly ruin our mood and the impression of the work.” “What does our radiogram say?” he asks. I say: “IKV mode, but we can’t go with that mode, because if the ground made an error, we’ll wreck the whole working day, even though formally it won’t be our fault. All right, I say, I’ll take responsibility. I’m switching to X-axis, understood?”

“Go ahead,” he says. I switched it, and before the comm session my heart started aching — what if I was wrong? You can’t talk your way out of it; they’ll say: “You ruined everything, there’s a radiogram, why did you interfere?” I turned on the equipment, we enter the comm zone, and I ask right away: “Which mode? IKV? Or should it be X-axis? I switched to X-axis.” “Listen, that’s right, correct, well done, thank you.” My mood soared immediately. Character is character — I can’t stand by if I have doubts. There may be a chance of being wrong, but if you’re sure, do what you think is right. We completed the work; it’s interesting. For about 4 hours today we were in orbital orientation, when the Y axis points to the center of the Earth and the station’s longitudinal X axis lies in the plane of the local horizon, directed along the velocity vector. On the floor we also have windows; you stand over them and feel the abyss beneath you and sense the flight as never before.

The Earth passes by, rotating beneath you at an angular velocity of 4 degrees per minute.