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STS-107 Astronaut Experience Q & A
Before
the KSC Direct! webcast of the STS-107 launch, space enthusiasts from
all over the world submitted questions for our astronaut, Janice Voss.
The questions were answered during the show. In case you missed the webcast,
or would like to review each of the questions and answers, we have provided
the STS-107 Astronaut Experience Q & A in its entirety below.
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Eric
from Melissa, Carlos from Montevideo, and Louis from Brazil
How can I become an astronaut? |
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There are actually a lot of different things that go into
making a well-qualified astronaut. The ones you can easily think
of are the technical ones. You need at least a Bachelor's Degree
in a technical field and some related work experience. If you're
a pilot, you need to have some high quality aircraft flying:
1,000 hours in jet engines. If you're a mission specialist that
works with experiments, you need to have at least 3 years of
related work experience or an advanced degree. There are a lot
of other things, like being able to speak in public to people
and being to express what NASA's vision and accomplishments
are. You have to be great at working in a team; you really have
to be able to work together, and you have to keep in shape.
That's generally the sorts of things that astronauts need to
have in their background, but of course the details vary enormously.
We have people who are grade school teachers, we have people
who have Bachelor's [Degrees] in English, but they have PhDs
in astronomy, so there's a lot of different mix in the details
but that's the broad spectrum. |
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Gina
from Sao Paulo
When you are a woman astronaut, is it different than it is
for men?
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There are some differences. Physiologically, women
are smaller. There's good and bad. There's smaller, which
means they can get into tighter spaces, they take less food,
they take less weight in clothes, so they're more efficient
in space. But, typically, their reach is less, so if you have
a broad span of something you might someone who's bigger,
on average. Average women respond less stressfully to the
fluid shifts; when you get into orbit, you don't have gravity
pulling all the fluid down into your legs. Women, on the average,
have more fluid in their bodies, they're more used to fluid
shifts, and so they adapt better to the space environment,
on the average, not all the time. So, there are some differences,
both plus and minus, that means the mix of men and women both
have their unique contributions that together make a bigger
piece than the individual pieces.
Host:
Are there any tasks that are assigned specifically to women
versus men?
Expert: No. The kinds of things we do on orbit can
be equally done by men or women.
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Cletus
from Scottsmore
What is the most exciting part of being weightless, and does
it ever get old, like you get homesick for gravity? |
| There
are some things that are easier in weightlessness and there
are some things that are easier in gravity. When you're weightless
you sort of miss some of the things that gravity helps you with,
when you get back to the ground you miss the things that the
weightlessness helps. It's just lovely sleeping in space, because
you just instantly relax. There's no pressure in your shoulders
and hips and it's just lovely. On the other hand, stuff doesn't
stay put. You put something here and get distracted for a second
and it floats away, and so it goes both ways. Iit's my experience
that when you get back to orbit when you haven't been there
for a couple years because it's been two years since your previous
flight, you get back there, and your body goes, "Ooh! This
is fun!" So, there is a little bit that your body remembers
and the environment is so different that you do have a reaction
to the change. |
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Matt
from East Greenwich
What are your emotions as the clock gets within a minute?
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Everyone has a little bit of a different experience. As a mission
specialist, working with the experiments on board, I don't have
the responsibility of being in charge of any problems that happen
during the launch phase, so I can have a little bit of a softer
focus than the commander and the pilot and the flight engineer
are. For me, on the first flight... the training is so thorough
that you're very comfortable and you're familiar with the launch
count, you know what's happening and so that doesn't distract
you.. but for me, on my first flight, we'd had a couple of launch
slips going into the flight, so I was really aware how hard
my friends and relatives had worked to be there for that launch.
They changed their travel plans a couple of times and I was
so pleased that all of those people were actually going to get
to see a launch after all the effort they put in to get there.
Host:
Is there any anticipation in the last couple of seconds?
Expert: Not really for me. I guess it's because you're
so absorbed in listening. There's a lot of communication over
the loops. You don't hear so much when you listen to NASA
Select because you're just hearing the air-to-ground stuff,
but we also get tied in to all the stuff that's going on just
on the ground, so you hear what all the engineers are doing.
There's all these different things on every launch that's
a little bit unusual. You hear them talking and you're like,
"Ooh. That's interesting. I wonder what's going on there."
You're so absorbed in listening to all of this stuff, and
you listen to your pilot commander up there, because I was
down on the mid-deck, and you can't see the pilot commander,
you can just hear him over the communication links, and you
hear the voices come on and you're like, "Ooh! My buddy."
It's sort of like watching a movie. You're a little bit removed.
At least on the mid-deck, it's different if you're on the
flight deck and you're involved in the launch count, but when
you're down on the mid-deck like me, there's just enough distance
that it was fascinating, almost surreal.
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Jim
from Aberdeen
An EVA can be very dangerous if your suit gets punctured. What
precautions do you take? |
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They
design the suit with that very objective in mind. There's
two things the suit will do for you: one is to protect you
from the vacuum and the temperature changes. And the other..
well, three, really.. the second is to keep your air inside
so you have something to breathe. The third is to protect
you from meteorite hits. So, they have different layers that
accomplish a different task. In particular, for debris hits,
all you want to do it slow it down enough that it doesn't
penetrate. You don't have to stop it, you don't have to push
it away, you just have to make sure it doesn't do any damage
to the person inside. So they have the layers actually separated,
so it goes through one layer enough to slow it down so it's
hard to penetrate the next layer. That's the way they keep
the debris from injuring the crew member. On the Space Station,
for example, to protect the hardware, they have these bumpers
that are basically aluminum foil; they're really, really thin,
because all you have to do is slow it down enough so it won't
penetrate.
Host:
What about mobility? Do you have fair mobility in an EVA suit?
Expert:
Fair is a good description. It's a little bit like the dough
boy - the Pillsbury dough boy because it pressurizes up. But,
we have joints. At each of your major joints, there's a joint
in your suit that gives you ability to move. One of the biggest
restrictions is you have this big helmet on that allows the
air to stay inside your head and you have vision here (holding
hands around front of face), but the helmet doesn't turn with
you, so if you go like this (turns head to side), you're looking
at the side of your helmet, so you have to turn your whole
body, and you're just not used to doing that. It's a very
slow motion to have to do when you want to look at something.
Host:
It takes a little bit of adjustment. And I guess, the same
thing with your gloves. The lack of touch...
Expert:
It's like ski gloves, you know? You don't want to be picking
up pennies. That's why if you look at the space walk hardware,
it's very big and bulky, because you have big and bulky gloves
on when you're using it and you can't have very fine adjustments.
You just don't have the dexterity to do that.
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Dave
from Manchester, UK
What holds the orbiter, SRBs, and external tank in place at
the launch pad? |
| There
are eight huge bolts that are about this big around (gesturing
with hands) and they have inside them, explosive cores. Very
shortly, like microseconds, milliseconds before launch, those
explosive cores fire and the bolts shatter. Right after they
shatter, the solids light and it lifts you off the pad. One
of the fun things, Kennedy Space Center has done a very nice
thing is they mount these bolts on bookends for us. So, I have
five sets of launch bolts for my five missions. I give them
away to schools and things because they're kind of special.
When you get them back, your first thought is, "Wow, those
are huge bolts!" and your second thought is, "There's
only eight of those things holding the whole stack?"
Host:
And it's a huge vehicle.
Expert: A huge stack. On my first flight, they actually
told me, you can see it in the bolt, that one of those explosive
cores fired just a hair late and it actually stripped a little
bit. It wasn't quite separated when the launch went and you
can see a little bit of wear where it pulled through the bolts.
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Jenny from Las Vegas
You must get some spectacular views from orbit. Can you see
the stars also? |
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You can see the stars. They really are very similar to dark
places on Earth. If you go out to a national park or forest
where it's very dark, and you look up at the night sky, you'll
see an enormous number of stars. That's the same you'll see
from orbit. There really isn't much difference in terms of the
stars you can see. Technically there are probably a few more
orders of magnitude you can see in space, but there are so many
stars that you just don't notice the difference. The big difference
that you notice is that they don't twinkle. It's like somebody
took a picture of the sky because they're completely static
and you're used to the sky being a little bit dynamic because
the stars are always twinkling and it's not like that. |
Eric
from Jacksonville
Can you see the Great Wall of China from space? |
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In theory, you could to some extent, but the problem with
the Great Wall is that it's built from local materials so it's
the same color as the surrounding terrain, so there isn't enough
contrast for your eye to pick it out. It also isn't very high.
Some things like the Great Pyramids in Egypt, even though they're
also the same color as the surrounding terrain because they're
made from the same sand, you can see them because they cast
shadows. When the sun angle is fairly low, you can see the shadows,
even though you can't see the Pyramids. The Great Wall is relatively
low so the shadow it would cast is very low also. It's also
surrounding by trees, so you wouldn't see the shadow and you
can't see the wall. It's like seeing a hair that's lying on
the floor. Even though the Wall is too skinny to see if it were
just a square, it's so long that your eye would be able to pick
it out if it were bright orange or something. Your eye and your
brain together can see patterns like that. They see a pixel
here and pixel there and a pixel there and they draw a line
just like they do for hair on the ground but it's not bright
orange and you can't see it with the naked eye in any way. But,
you can see it with a lens. I just confirmed this with Jim Voss
who was on Expedition 2 because I get this question fairly often
and I don't want to tell people something that's not true. He
confirmed that he could not see it with the naked eye, but with
a 200-millimeter lens on a camera you can pick it out. |
Brian
from New York
How is oxygen and water recycled while on orbit? |
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We don't yet have a closed recycling system. We do partial
recycling. Oxygen on the shuttle and the station is not recycled;
you have to bring it up with you. Water is partially recycled
on shuttle. We recycle it as waste water because we don't have
any reclamation process. We do take it out of the air and use
it for waste water dumps that we use for attitude control and
things. On the Station, they actually do have a little bit of
reclamation ability, and so some of that water gets recycled
back into their drinking and use water. But, we don't have a
completely closed system. Every Shuttle mission brings water
up to the Station and helps re-supply their water.
Host:
Does
the Station use a similar system to Shuttle?
Expert: No, not really, for two reasons. One is, the
earliest piece of hardware that came up was Russian built,
and of course their system is completely different. Conceptually
it's the same, but the details are very different.
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Helena
from Oxford
What is the most nerve-wracking part of space flight? Is it
the launch, landing or something else? |
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The nerve-wracking part is going to depend on the individual
and what their tasks are. In my case, as a mission specialist
in charge of experiments, my big responsibility is on orbit,
so that was the part where I was most nervous. There were a
couple of things that happened on orbit that give you an example
of things that you can get caught with in a system that we work
very hard to make things very safe. It is an experimental vehicle
and there are always things that are unanticipated. That's why
we go into orbit, to learn more about the environment. On my
first flight, we had a research module on the back. Very similar
to the one on this flight. Only, that was a single Spacehab
module and it's a double on this flight. We had had some problems
in the launch flow, actually, a previous vehicle had a problem
that required them to steal our engines. They ended up putting
our engines in a different place in the launch process and we
think because of that the structure had just adjusted a little
bit differently. We got up into orbit and about 2 days after
launch, there were four of us up there on the flight deck and
we hear this big "Wham!" It's like somebody taking
a big sledgehammer and hit the side of the Shuttle and the whole
thing just rang and we're all looking at each other going, "You
guys hear that?" You listen for the pressure leaks. "You
hear any pressure leaks? No... Any alarms going off? No alarms,
no pressure drops, no smell of fire.." So, your heartbeat
comes back down and the commander picks up the mic and calls
the ground and says, "Did you see anything unusual in the
telemetry?"... "No.. is there some reason we should
have?" Post flight they told us that there are a lot of
thermal changes that happen in the launch phase and there is
some structural adjustment to that, and because of our different
type of launch flow there's probably a little bit more than
average and at some point the whole thing just kind of settles,
and that's probably what happened. We heard the whole structure
settling into its orbital temperature, its natural state. So
that was one. Another one that happened, same flight, there's
a circuit breaker that they had to pull out to de-power things
after the launch phase and change things around and it was a
little bit sticky. They wanted to make sure it was working properly
so they decided to run a test with some equipment out in the
payload bay, but they didn't get the test set up quite properly,
because there's not a normal procedure. There were some motors,
they have three phases on them, and you run the phases this
direction (gesturing clockwise) and the motors run open, they
run in this direction (gesturing counter-clockwise) and the
motors run closed. And they ran them open, and ran them closed,
but they didn't get it configured quite properly and they shorted
two of the phases together and it knocked out a circuit breaker.
It was a different circuit breaker, which happened to be the
same circuit breaker controlling the equipment back in the Spacehab
module, where I was. So I'm back there, working away, and everything
goes quiet. You know something bad has happened, and your heart
goes up. But the training is so good, your mind runs through
the same things: "Any pressure changes? No, okay. So it's
not immediately catastrophic. "Any alarms?" Well,
there were some alarms I could hear up on the flight deck. There
weren't any alarms in the Spacehab module. "Well that's
good. Any smell of fire? No smell of fire." Those are the
big ones. Fire and pressure. "Okay, what happened? Why
do I think it sounds so quiet?" You look around. "Okay,
the lights are on, we still have electricity. The experiments
are still running. "The fans are off. Circulation fans.
Okay, maybe I can't breathe back here very long." So, I
flew up to the flight deck to find out what was going on, and
we identified the circuit breaker. There are moments like that
that catch you off guard and your heart rate goes up. But, the
training is so good. We prepare for off-nominal stuff. You have
this automatic pattern: "Can I breathe? Do I smell any
smoke? And then, if you can't, you've got time.
Host:
Training
is essential and it reduces stress, is really the key here.
Expert: Absolutely.
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Emily
from Olympia
How long do you sleep each day and how many of the crew are
awake at any one time? |
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How many of the crew are awake depends on the mission.
This flight, for instance, STS-107, is a dual shift mission.
Three of my five flights were dual shift. That's where you have
so much science on board that you have 24-hour operations. You
have crew members split in half: half the crew is asleep while
the other half is awake and you run it around the clock. In
that case, somebody's awake all the time, but on different schedules.
On most missions, all the ones we fly to the Space Station,
for example, you're on a single shift ops, where the whole crew
is awake and sleeps at the same time. They arrange things a
little bit differently; if you have a 24-hour crew you have
to have sleep stations, where people have a quiet and dark place
to sleep while the other crew is working. On average, you have
about the same amount of sleep on orbit, about 8 hours, if you're
8 hours on the ground, 6 hours if you're 6 hours on the ground.
It's pretty much the same. Some people get more excited, and
the excited people sleep more like 2 hours, until they get so
tired that they go back to the six. |
HansSpace from Harlem, Holland
Do the astronauts have internet on board and can they watch
TV in space? |
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We have equivalents; there is an e-mail system, but of
course we don't have any real links. You're up in orbit, so
there's only a radio link. You type it in, just like you type
in your regular e-mail, and it gets saved to a file and sent
down to the ground over a radio link, and that gets dumped into
a server on the ground which gets back into the e-mail system
so it looks like e-mail and it looks like internet access, but
it's not true access that way, it's just sort of simulated.
It's a great way to keep in touch with family and friends on
the private links. On the public links, it's a good way to have
discussions about issues that allow you to have a longer discussion
by e-mail than it's convenient to over the air-to-ground link.
TV is the same way, we don't have actual TV, but they can load
files into the e-mail just like you get streaming video files
that you can click on in your regular e-mail and they send those
up, and you can click on them and watch the video. |
Andrea
from Switzerland
During your trip in space, do you ever feel bad? Not physically,
but psychologically? If so, was there a certain reason like
missing your family, and what did you do to get over it? |
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Psychology is a big challenge, it's something we work
very hard on, especially on long duration station crews that
are up there for six months or so at a time. It's amazing how
important it is, and of course people who have been in submarine
have learned that lesson, people who go off to war, and are
in a foreign country; letters from home just make an enormous
difference. I was actually caught off guard my first flight.
It was only an 8-day flight, and I had told my family and friends
that we had this e-mail system, that they could send me messages,
and it would be great to hear from them. It was only 8 days;
many times, I don't talk to my parents for 8 days, it's not
a big deal. I get up there on Flight Day 1, everything's busy,
you go to bed. First thing, you get up in the morning and check
your mail the next day, and I had misunderstood the way they
had the folder structure, and thought it would be at the top
level for each person under their name. Well, there's a folder
with my name on it and it says the volume in the folder is zero
megabytes. Well, okay, no one sent me anything today. I was
absolutely amazed at how disappointed I was. It had only been
24 hours since I'd seen all those people at the launch and already
I'm missing the fact that I don't have mail from them because
I was so excited, so much had happened, I wanted to tell them
how great it had been, and all the things that had happened
to me. "Ok, fine, they just didn't get around to it, it's
only been a day, they haven't really had time." So, day
two comes, and still zero megabytes. I'm like, "Oh man!
They couldn't even write me one letter?" So, I was complaining
to my crew mates, "How come you guys all get letters?"
And they told me, it doesn't actually tell you what's in the
file, you actually have to open the folder and see. At the end
of flight day 2, I opened the folder, and sure enough, there
was a dozen letters, I was so excited. I was really surprised
at how just 24 hours, it made such an enormous difference something
from everyone. |
Jonathan
from Liverpool
How did it feel to be selected as an astronaut, and what has
been your most moving experience during spaceflight? |
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The selection process is pretty standard for a job. You
come down, you do your interview, you send in your application,
you get references, it's all the same kind of stuff that everybody
does. That part, although it's unusual and different, doesn't
make as big an impression. It's a one week interview process
and there's also fun stuff that goes on. Then you wait, and
you wait, because you don't know when they're going to call.
When I got called, I was on a business trip in Arizona, and
I was in the middle of a meeting, we took a break, and I routinely
check my messages. There's a message from the head of the selection
board that said to call, and I was so excited. So we had this
conversation... the first that happened was that, I had this
message, and I knew from having been around long enough that
if the head of the selection board calls, you're in. If somebody
else calls, you're out. I got this message, and I said, "Hey
guys! It's the call! It's the call!" because all my coworkers
are around at this meeting. I call him back, and he says, congratulations,
you've been selected and here's what you need to do, and by
the way, don't tell anybody, because the press release won't
be out until tomorrow. So I told him, "Ok, I won't tell
a soul." And then I go back in the meeting, and I'm thinking,
"But I just got selected as an astronaut? Why doesn't the
world turn pink or something?" I had been trying for so
long and it was so special. It was just weird to go back and
have this regular meeting that's just like everything else,
or every other day.
Host:
How long did it take for it to actually sink in that you had
been selected as an astronaut? Was it immediate? Or did it
take a couple days to go, "Oh my... I'm an astronaut!"
Expert: More like a couple of months, really. There
are some very strong fans of the space program, and I don't
know how they do it because they only have these peoples names.
I had requests for autographs in the mail within a week. That's
when it starts to hit. That's when you start to get the paperwork
from NASA. I do remember the day after that, I was flying
back from my business trip, I had to turn in my rental car.
I was sitting the rental car parking lot, waiting for the
bus to the air terminal. I'm looking up, and there's the moon,
and I'm thinking, "I'm gonna be working with people that
walked on the moon."
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Rich
from Illinois
Even with all the hard work and training involved in being an
astronaut, is it fun being an astronaut? What kind of fun things
do you do on your flights? |
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It's really enormously fun and a large part of the fun
is things like this. It's fun being with people who are having
fun; people who are excited about space. Being part of that
and knowing that what you're doing is making things better for
everybody on this planet, it just puts a whole veil of fun over
everything. The people that you meet are proud of what they
do, they're excited about what they do, the people here at Kennedy
Space Center. You would think, they're down there in the belly
of the orbiter, turning bolts, you'd think they'd be, "Oh
man, can't I just see some daylight?" But you come down
here, and they are so proud of the work that they do, and it's
so special and so much fun to be part of that. Every day is
a joy. On orbit, the fun stuff you do on orbit, of course, it's
very expensive to go to orbit, and we work really hard, but
we also recognize the psychological aspects. You have to have
some relax or recovery time. Your body is just not designed
to go flat out for ten or fifteen days, or six months, even
worse. We do have about an hour a day that's just time for you
to relax. I spend a lot of it writing email to my family and
friends. People look out the window, people do little experiments
with the physics of being in orbit. You can bring letters and
things from your family, tapes from your kids, you can record
music and stories and things for you to listen to on orbit.
Those are the kinds of things we do that are just fun and relaxing,
that help you recover from high stress days.
Host:
What about the exercise piece? Do you do that during that
hour, or is that another time slot?
Expert: No, the exercise is scheduled separately, because
that's part of our job, to stay in shape, so that we can do
well on landing.
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Jonathan
from Cadbury
How does your food stay on the plate? |
|
Food is a challenge, we do have various kinds of food.
We have dehydrated food that everyone's familiar with. We have
food that's supposed to stay dry, like dried fruit. We have
thermostablized food that moist. With all of those, either you
hold it in your hand, like dried fruit, or it's moist. You add
water to it, and then the surface tension causes it to stick
to the container or the utensils. That's really important. |
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