On February 25, 2003, OMSI was proud to participate in a very special event. Students from Silverton, Oregon - the hometown of NASA ISS Science Officer Dr. Donald Pettit - had the chance to talk with ISS Expedition Six Commander Ken Bowersox, Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin, and Dr. Pettit live via satellite uplink from the International Space Station. The Astronauts answered questions about space science and life aboard the space station. Even Dr. Pettit's 9th grade science teacher was there, and had the chance to speak with his former student.
NASA: | Oregon Museum of Science, this is Houston Mission Control. Please call alpha for a voice check. |
OMSI: | Alpha, this is Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. How do you hear me? |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | Got you loud and clear. |
OMSI: | Excellent, allright. Well, we have some special guests here. This is almost like "This Is Your Life". I wanted to introduce those guests right now. Our first guest, I think that Dr. Don Pettit will perhaps recognize.
Hi Don, I'm Congresswoman Darlene Hooley, and it is so nice to have you, all of you, joining the students, not only from the junior high but the high school. Thank you for taking the time to do this. I know everyone has a lot of questions. I'm going to start out by asking the first question. My question to you, Don, is: what do you have to say to these students if they want to follow in your footsteps? |
DR. PETTIT: | Well, it's a pleasure for us to be here, and I would not miss the opportunity to talk with some students. Here's what I like to tell students if they want to follow in my footsteps. And that's, schooling is the key to doing everything cool in life. So, study hard in school, and follow what your heart really tells you to do, and you will do well and go far, maybe even into space. |
CONGRESS
WOMAN HOOLEY: | Dr. Pettit, I have one other little surprise for you. And that is, we have with us today one of your former teachers, from junior high school. We have Bob Dedrick here this morning. These are his students. |
DR. PETTIT: | It's good to have you here, Mr. Dedrik. I've always called you Mr. Dedrik. I've never really gotten used to calling you Bob, so I'm still going to call you Mr. Dedrik, 'cause you're still my science teacher, whether you like it or not. |
MR. DEDRICK: | It's kind of nice to have a Ph.D. call me "Mister". Don, we talked off and on many times about your view of the universe and all of that kind of thing. Now that you're up where you are, how has your view of the universe changed compared to what you thought about when you went into the training? |
DR. PETTIT: | Well, the view of the universe up here is just amazing. Whether you're looking at the stars and the planet, or whether you're looking back at Earth it's just simply amazing, and you can see things that are not possible to see when you are standing on the surface of Earth. So, those technical arguments and technical observations are things that can tickle your imagination. In terms of personal growth, you learn about who you are and your place in the universe when you come up here. It's simply amazing to look back at Earth and reflect about how there are people down there, there are cities, there's billions of folks going about their business. You don't see any borders between countries; you don't see different colors marking out the different countries like you do in an atlas. And the view up here, it's just one big planet. |
OMSI: | Well, gentlemen, thank you very much. We want to welcome you to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. And now we have some questions from the students of Silverton, so I'm going to turn the microphone over to them.
This is for Dr. Pettit: What is the routine day on the Space Station? |
DR. PETTIT: | A routine day on the space station is a most amazing day! You do have to do certain things that need to be done just because you're a human being. You need to sleep and you need to eat and you need to do some exercise and things like that. But the thing that makes this an amazing place is the weightless environment that's given to you when you are orbiting Earth. And this weightless environment allows you to make all kinds of observations and do all kinds of experiments that are not possible when you're on Earth. And then, the situation of being in orbit allows you to make observations from this viewpoint that you can't make when you're on the surface of the Earth. So that's what makes a routine day on the space station one of the most amazing things you've ever experienced. |
OMSI: | This question is for Cosmonaut Budarin: How many countries are contributing to the building of the Space Station? |
COSMONAUT BUDARIN: | The partners of the International Space Station project are the United States, Russia, Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency, and Japanese Space Agency. |
OMSI: | For Commander Bowersox: How long does it take to become an astronaut? |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | The amount of time it takes to become an astronaut varies, depending on which track you decide to take, or whether you want to be a pilot astronaut or a science astronaut, or perhaps an education mission specialist. But it's sort of standard that it takes about seven years of higher education or experience, followed by three years of some sort of advanced experience in your field. Perhaps as a test pilot if you're a pilot or working in a hospital if you're a doctor. And then, after that, it takes a year to go through astronaut candidate training, and another three to maybe eight years while you're waiting for your flight assignment, and then a year for flight-specific training, before you actually get to fly. |
OMSI: | This question's for Commander Bowersox. What exactly does space travel do to the human body? |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | The biggest thing we think about space travel that affects the human body is the weightless environment that we experience here. Of course, we're still studying that. We don't know that for sure. There may be other factors that cause some of the things that we see. But astronauts tend to lose calcium from their bones, and they also tend to lose conditioning of their muscles and their heart. There are some other changes in the vestibular system that we notice. And so we can learn a lot about the human body by studying those changes in astronauts. The good thing is most of those effects tend to be temporary, and you eventually return to a sort of a normal ground state once you get back on the planet. |
OMSI: | This is for Dr. Pettit. What kinds of experiments are you working on up there? |
DR. PETTIT: | We have experiments that fall into two basic categories. We have life science experiments that we do on ourselves. So we are like guinea pigs that we're doing experiments on. And there are experiments that look at human physiology and the effects of long-term weightlessness.
And then the other class of experiments that we do are physical science experiments. Things where we grow crystals, like crystals in zeolite or we look at growing protein crystals, or we look at crystallization processes where you have a long cylinder of a crystalline material and you melt it and re-solidify it as you take a molten zone down the length of this long cylinder.
So, we investigate these physical science things, we make observations of Earth, we make measurements of radiation, and then we do the experiments on ourselves. So these are the kinds of experiments that we've been working on. |
OMSI: | This question is for Commander Bowersox. What are some major differences in living in space opposed to living down here? |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | There's two big differences that I see. The first is the environment. We have an enclosed environment here, where we have to recycle our air. We recycle as much water as we can. And our environment is not self-sustaining. We require some sort of supply from the ground in order to keep things running. Down on Earth we have a self-sustaining environment that allows us to keep going and going and going. We don't have that here, and some of the parameters of the environment are a little bit different.
The second thing is weightlessness. You know, down on the ground, if you lose something, the first place you look is on the floor, because it probably dropped, and that's where you'll find it. Up here, it's not the same. You have to look above you, around you. And that different point of view is what's different about being in weightlessness. |
OMSI: | This question is for Cosmonaut Budarin. Having been in space for a while now, are there changes to your body, and if so, do you expect your body to return to normal after you return home? |
COSMONAUT BUDARIN: | I have experienced space flight before, and I can say that my body will return to normal, maybe in one or two months after landing. |
OMSI: | This question is for Dr. Pettit. What is it like to work outside of the space station? |
DR. PETTIT: | We had the opportunity to do that about a month or so ago, and the most amazing thing about being outside the space station in a space suit is the view. While we're inside the space station, we have to look through windows, and these windows are rather small in diameter, and they're thick. They've got anywhere from two to four separate windowpanes, and these windowpanes are separated by a few inches. So you end up with this window that's fairly thick, and when you try to look out, it gives you tunnel vision, so you can't see a large panoramic view. When you go outside in a space suit, you have this helmet on with this curved visor, and you get these panoramic views. That's the most striking thing that I can think of about being outside. It's about the difference of being inside of an airliner, where you're looking out those tiny little windows, and standing outside, looking at a mountain range with the wind blowing in your face. Except, of course, when you're outside in a space suit, you don't have any wind blowing in your face. |
OMSI: | This question is for Captain Bowersox. What inspired the space program to begin building the International Space Station? |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | Two factors there. One reason we want to have a space station is it gives us someplace to explore space that's close to home before we head out to other planets in our solar system. So it's someplace close to learn about the environment.
The second thing, the international part, is it allows us to establish partnerships that help us work better with different countries down there on Earth. So those two parts, the future of being able to move on away from our planet, and the second part, making life better down there on Earth, inspired the International Space Station. |
OMSI: | This question is for Dr. Pettit. What are your living conditions like in space? |
DR. PETTIT: | Well, the living conditions here are really quite pleasant. We have temperature control, so you can keep the temperature at just the right spot where you're comfortable all the time. The air is clean. We've got fans and filtering systems that keep the air clean. And then we have a whole series of little miniature chemical plants that remove and recycle water vapor and carbon dioxide. They remove a lot of the micro-impurities and absorb them in charcoal beds and all of these things end up making really clean, nice air to breathe. And this all makes for a very pleasant environment up here. |
OMSI: | This question is for Commander Bowersox. What kind of everyday work do astronauts do when you're not in space? |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | For most of us astronauts, we spend a very small percentage of our time actually in space. The rest of the time, we do things to either study for our spaceflights and prepare, or to help support other spaceflights. And the kind of work we might do, for example, we would communicate with crews who are in orbit from mission control, working with the ground control team. We'd work with different groups of engineers to come up with new concepts, new materials, new systems to be used on the space station or help develop procedures that would be used by crews in space. And that usually requires sitting in a lot of meetings, going to different classes, writing reports. It's a lot like being in school. |
OMSI: | This question is for Cosmonaut Budarin. From your experience, do you think someone with no training could go up to space? |
COSMONAUT BUDARIN: | From my experience, I think, of course, we couldn't go in space without training, without special training. Such as special physical training, training in the hydro lab, in the microgravity laboratory, and different kinds of systems. |
OMSI: | This one is for Dr. Pettit. How long has it taken to build the space station to where it is today? |
DR. PETTIT: | Well, the first element of the space station was launched in 1998, the end of 1998, right near the end of that year, and we've been building it ever since. Like any major construction project that advances the state of engineering, whether it's building something like the Manhattan bridge, or Boulder Dam, or the Panama Canal, any of these kind of major engineering projects take five to ten years to do and take the efforts of hundreds if not thousands of people to get these things done. So, we're right in the middle of building the space station, and it's a most marvelous piece of engineering. It should be something that all the countries that are participating in should be really proud of. |
OMSI: | This is also for Dr. Pettit. What are the perks of being an astronaut? |
DR. PETTIT: | Well, there are perks associated with any job, and the perks really are how you feel about yourself and the job that you're working on. Those are what the real perks are. Those are the perks that are the most important. So, you could be a backhoe operator and have incredible feeling of working on something that's important and these things are the nontangible feelings that you get from completing your job every day and feeling good about what you're doing. And of course, we have that on the space station as well, but it's not limited to space. Anybody that's enjoying the job that they're doing and finishing the day with a smile - you've got all the perks you'd ever care to have. |
OMSI: | This question is for Commander Bowersox, and my question is, how much fun was the spacewalk? |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | Walking in space is as much fun as riding a skateboard, or snow skiing, or riding a dirt bike, windsurfing, all those neat things that you can do down on planet Earth. A spacewalk is just as much fun as any of those things. But probably the best part is at the end. You feel like you've contributed to something that's important and helped lay a foundation for us to someday leave our planet. |
OMSI: | This is for Cosmonaut Budarin. What influenced you to become an astronaut, and how did you become one? |
COSMONAUT BUDARIN: | The flight of the first Russian Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, influenced me to become a cosmonaut. After education at the Moscow Aviation Institute, I started to work in the rocket space capsule preparation with energy. I tested a lot of different spacecraft, and it really helped me to become a cosmonaut. |
OMSI: | This question is for Ken Bowersox. How many people can fit in the space station? |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | Right now, we've got three people on board. When a space shuttle comes up to visit us, we have ten people on board, and when we have ten people here, that was actually a really nice number. We had a lot of fun, we had a lot of different folks to talk with. So, I think somewhere between three and ten would be a good number to be on board. |
OMSI: | This is for Dr. Pettit. How big are the pieces of the International Space Station that you take up and add on the station? |
DR. PETTIT: | The pieces have to be small enough to fit on an individual rocket booster that the Russian space agencies launch, or in the payload bay of the orbiter. The payload bay of the orbiter is about 60 feet long, but some of that is taken up with our external airlock. Probably about 50 feet long is about the largest section we can take up at about 15 feet in diameter. That is sort of the building block size that we have up here on the space station. |
OMSI: | This question is for Commander Bowersox. What steps did you take to be so successful in life? |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | I don't know if I consider myself all that successful. I think there's a lot of people with more success than me. I think the most important thing in life is to be happy with what you're doing, and to love your family and have the love of your family returned and your friends. That's probably the best way to judge success. But I'll say that there are a lot of people that have helped me in life - a lot of counselors, ministers, teachers who've provided good advice. And my parents, especially. And I think the number one thing I would say to a young person in school right now is listen to those people. They've got lots of great ideas. And they'll help you achieve your dreams. |
OMSI: | This question is for Cosmonaut Budarin. What has been your favorite experience so far up in space? |
COSMONAUT BUDARIN: | My favorite experience is I fear not to work together with different people from different countries. And the main thing of my experience is to understand and to respect each other, and it doesn't matter who you are: Americans, Russians, Japanese, Canadians, Europeans, etcetera. |
OMSI: | This question is for Dr. Pettit. Is life in space like you thought it would be, and do you have normal experiences, like getting hungry? |
DR. PETTIT: | I can attest that we have normal experiences like getting hungry, and right after this interview I think I'm going to go to the galley and eat a little bit. But I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of things that I experienced once I came up here were different than how I thought they were going to be. That's one of the wonderful things about going new places is to experience new things that are different than what your preconceived expectations are. So, yes, there were some wonderful and new experiences after having come up here, and it's part of what makes these explorations all worthwhile. |
OMSI: | Gentlemen, we feel very honored and very privileged for you to spend this valuable time with us this morning. On behalf of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the children here at Silverton, Oregon we want to thank you, and we wish you success and a safe homecoming. |
COMMANDER BOWERSOX: | Thank you very much. It's been great talking with all of you. And it's always wonderful to hear the voices and the questions come up from the ground. And I think Dr. Pettit has a question for you. |
DR. PETTIT: | I can remember going to OMSI when I was just a little kid. Mom would stuff all of us in the car and take us there. One of my favorite things was this big old orange hunk of metal out in the parking lot. I think it was a bathysphere. I was wondering: do you still have that thing sitting out there, and can little kids still climb all around it and wonder what this piece of equipment was originally used for? |
OMSI: | We don't have that piece of equipment per se, but what we do have, we do have a space wing which includes a replica of the Gemini space capsule that students can actually get in and see what space travel was like a long, long time ago. I think you'll probably agree that it's much more comfortable now than it was back in the early 60s, late 60s. |
DR. PETTIT: | I'm happy to hear that there's still cool things for little kids to climb all over and ponder and wonder and inspire new ways of thinking. |
NASA: | Alpha, this is Houston ACR. That concludes the event.
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