astronaut training experience review

[ silence ] >> my name is clair,i live in tacoma. how many jobs are thereon the mission control? >> in mission control, thereare a lot of different jobs. there are -- rightnow, there are probably about 30 people hereat mission control. they -- their team is led bya flight director and then that flight director is incharge of the entire team and then each of these folks hasa specific area that they work

in whether it's space walking, or whether it's environmentalcontrol systems or communication systems. and that whole team workstogether here and then in addition there are backrooms, as we call them, where they have additionalspecialists that may have a particularpart of that system that they're really expert at. and then those folks allwork together to bring

that into the fullteam and make sure that we make the right decisionsfor the astronauts on orbit. and then of course,we're also connecting with mission controlcenters around the world since we have five differentspace agencies working on the internationalspace station, representing 15 differentcountries. and so these folks here in mission control havesimilar counterparts in munich

and moscow, in scuba, japan,in [inaudible] canada, and also in otherareas of the country that helps supporttheir work here, areas like marshall space flightcenter in huntsville, alabama, where they help coordinateall the research on the space stations. a really big team, i couldn'tgive you an exact number but here in missioncontrol right now, there's about 30 people.

>> my name is emma. i live in seattle, andmy question is, "do -- do you always workat the same job and do the same thingin mission control?" >> you know, i'm going to bringmark in on this a little bit. most people work in a particulararea and focus on that area at least for a portion oftheir time in mission control. however, a lot of people movearound into different areas because you've got basicallyengineers and scientists

for the most part thatwork in mission control, and they have a broad backgroundin whatever area they're in. and so they sometimescan translate those over in different areasand they like to do that to expand theircareers because a lot of these folks would like toin addition to just working in mission control,they'd like someday maybe to be a flight directorand be in charge. and so in order to getexperience in different areas,

they do that kind of thing. we also have people likemark who work with the crews and help prepare themand maybe you can talk about all the othersupport work. >> well, yeah, i mean i --i've been here about 20 years. i started off, i worked in the exercise physiology labdoing research for about four or five years and i'vebeen currently in my job that i have now as the strength

and conditioning coachfor about 16 years. >> okay. does thatanswer your question? >> yeah. >> hello. my name isnatia [assumed spelling]. i live in burnham, b.c.and my question is, "what kind of educationdo you need to work in mission control?" >> well, again, mostof the folks that work in mission control arescientists or engineers.

there are a lot of differentengineering backgrounds. there's electrical engineering,there's mechanical engineering. there is aeronauticalengineering. there's physics, math,essentially for education, you want to get a broadeducation in science, technology, and engineering. but what's really key is to findsomething that you love to do, because whenever you aretrying to improve yourself and get ready for a career, it'simportant to be doing something

that you like to dobecause that's going to help you do it better andit's going to help you focus on learning whatyou need to know. and then continuing asyou get older and maturer, to learn more all the timeand it's going to inspire in you the idea of continuingto learn throughout your life which everybody herein this room is -- is definitely focused on doing that because every timewe do something in space,

on the space station,or on a space craft, we learn something new. yesterday, we had aproblem on the space walk and we had a brand new problemthat we'd never had before. we had a bunch of watercollected inside luca parmitano's helmet and they had to come home earlyon the space walk. that's a new thing. we're learning from that.

we're trying to figure out now,what exactly happened and it's that kind of learning attitudethat you need to develop as much as anything as you're studyingto try to get to work here. >> my name is jeanieand i live in seattle. this is my question,"can people who work in mission control becomeastronauts and vice versa?" >> as a matter of fact, yes. there are a number ofastronauts who started out as -- as flight controllers.

mark, you've workedwith some of them. maybe you can remembersomebody who did that. >> you know, i -- off the top of my head i can't rememberactually somebody although i know [crosstalk]. >> i know that shannon walker... >> oh yeah. >> ...one of the houston nativeand mark's a houston native too. she started out as a flightcontroller and worked a variety

of different jobs here beforeshe became an astronaut. i'm trying to think of others-- off the top of my head -- but there are -- have been five or six differentastronauts at least. >> you also have inhere at mission control, you have flight surgeons, and there's been a few flightsurgeons that have also moved from being a flight surgeoninto the astronaut office. >> mike barrett was aflight surgeon and he moved

into the [inaudible], spent sixmonths on the space station. tom... >> tom... >> ...marshburn who just gotback from a six month stay on the space station,is a doctor, and was also a flight surgeon. so yes, definitely a lot ofpeople work in mission control and then become astronauts. and then once you'rean astronaut,

you work in mission controloften because you serve as a space craft communicator,talking with the team on orbit and in a way becominga translator. since you're an astronaut, you understand how anastronaut thinks and the kind of questions an astronautmight have and how best to present the information thatneeds to go to the astronaut. and so we utilize them a lotto help relay information back and forth to the crews.

thank you. >> hi. my name is eula. i live on british island. can you eat or drink or napinside the mission control? >> yes, you can. not so much napping butpeople do have to eat and drink throughout theirday and a lot of times when you see the pictures ofus here at mission control on nasa television, you'llsee folks that have cookies

up on the back deckof their consoles or they'll be eatingtheir lunch and it's kind of a catch-as-catch-cankind of a think. everybody used to -- missioncontrol teams generally work about a 10-hour shift. they've got eight hours worth ofwork that they do in the middle of the shift wherethey're the main person but then they've got anhour before and an hour after when they are handingoff from their off-coming

and ongoing team membersbecause this is a 24/7 operation over here and you have to beable to share what happened on the previous shiftso that you're ready to begin your next shift. and then when you gooff, you got to make sure that your relief has allthe information they need to do their jobs. and so we all bringour lunches here and we usually eatthem on console.

we have very briefbreaks here and there where we can leavethe control room, but most of the time wehave good communication with the space station. and so it's only --you only get about five or 10 minutes per orbit. it takes 90 minutesfor the space station to go around the world. and so about five or 10 minutes

of that each orbitis your chance to go take a restroom breakor grab something to drink. so you do have to kindof measure what you -- what you consume because youdon't want to have to run to the bathroom a lot. >> thank you. >> i'm sam and i live inseattle and my question is, "what has been the most excitingevent that you have had to deal with while in mission control?"

>> wow. i have been working inmission control myself for more than 20 years and i've -- i've been involved in alot of different events, some interesting space walks. you know, yesterday'sspace walk, they got cut short was thesecond shortest space walk ever. it was an hour and32 minutes long. i actually was here doing thevoice of mission control work when mike fincke did theshortest space walk ever.

that was actually arussian space walk. it was on expedition 9 a numberof years ago, and he got outside and his life support systemwas not properly connected and so he had to comeback in after only about 10 minutes outside. that has to be oneof the most exciting and interesting times i hadhere in mission control. >> my name is brianlender [assumed spelling]. i live in covington, washington.

my question is, "is therea common language that -- that all the spaceagency's use -- like do the russiancosmonauts talk to the russian mission controlin russian or do they talk to the mission control inenglish and vice versa? is everything on the spacestation written in english or is some of it stillwritten in russian?" >> the -- the common languagewe use aboard the space station for everybody is english and formission control, we always deal

in english when we go back andforth in terms of conversations. each control center, though,from around the world, in -- in japan, and russia, andeurope, and canada, of course, they speak their own nativelanguage when they're talking to the crews through theircommunication systems. and so there's some of that butwhen we all need to get together and work on an issue, wegenerally work it in english. the majority of thingsthat are printed on board the space stationare printed in english

or on the computerscreens in english. but there's a lot of[inaudible] as well in -- in russian because it's atotally different alphabet. there are also thingsthat go up in japanese which has another differentalphabet and there's things, for example, for canadianastronauts that go up bi-lingual in both english and french. and we try to help eachof the crew members from their countries have alittle bit of their home flavor

in whatever we doand we allow their -- their control centersto talk with them in whatever language is naturalfor them as well as in english. >> hello. my name is nickmallett [assumed spelling]. i'm from olympia, washington,and hypothetically speaking, if a team of 16 is sent to mars, how large of a supportgroup would be needed to -- needed to be providedback on earth at mission controlto support them?"

>> boy, that would be apretty big team to go to mars. 16, that's a lot of mass to getinto orbit and to get to mars. one thing you need to rememberabout going there is it's going to take about six months andif you can stop and think about how much food, water,air, electricity we'd need to generate to do a missionthat long, you're probably going to be looking at smallercrews especially early on -- on a trip to mars. we're working all the time hereto minimize the number of people

that we have in missioncontrol because it -- it -- having an efficient team worktogether doesn't always mean you have more people. we want to be able to access alot of people who are experts in the different fields that arenecessary to support the thing but you don't necessarilywant to have them on duty 24-seven all the time. so i would say probably, you'dhave a team similar to this kind of size that we havehere in mission control,

20 or 30 people, when there'sa lot of activity going on and the crew's awake. but then on weekends andwhen the crew's sleeping, just like we do here for theinternational space station, we staff down and there'sjust two or three people, a flight director and a coupleof people that monitor a lot of different systems so thatwe can minimize the support requirements both becauseyou don't need them and also because it's expensive tohave people working 24-seven

for a long period. >> hi. my name is amandachalfont [assumed spelling] and i'm from issaquah,washington. my question is, "spacetravel is inherently risky and how do you cope withthose risks and assess what is or is not necessary for theultimate goal of the mission?" >> the main thing i wouldsay is there -- what we -- we talk a lot aboutmitigating risk. we know that there is riskthat as you say is inherent

in space flight andall the activities that are required to do that. there's -- there's risk in --in launching people on the talk of the rockets, there's thisrisk in having people live in a pressurized environmentthat could be damaged by orbital debrisor a meteorite. there's risk in havingpeople depend on systems to recycle theirwater and their air and to generate theirelectricity and there's risk

in -- in doing maintenanceactivities, when you have to go outside the spacestation like we saw yesterday. things don't always work right. the key word is mitigating and what we do is wehave a very complex and mathematically-based systemfor establishing probabilities of risk and we try to manage andmake sure that the probability of a problem that it is a dangerto the safety and well-being of the crew and tothe accomplishment

of the mission are managedat a level where we think that we can take care ofanything that might come up out of the ordinary that wedon't expect because we know that those risks arethere and we also know that no matter howmuch you train, no matter how much you prepare,there's always something that you haven't thoughtof that is going to come up and you're going to need tobe ready to deal with it. and for that, we dotraining of the team here

in mission control, of theastronauts that are on orbit, and you know, mark --i'm going to bring you in because physicaltraining is a part of that too, for the astronauts. you want to keep them healthy. maybe you could talka little bit about that, since you're here. >> well, one of the thingsthat we look at is that we look at worst-case scenarios a lot.

so we're looking atemergency egress situations, emergency eva situations,things like that. so we always have to have themin a state of preparedness from the physicalfitness standpoint or a functional standpointto be able to do their job for whatever -- whateverthat may be. even on landing -- you know,if they land off course four or five hours -- you know, offcourse and they have to get out of the capsule and -- ontheir own without help and set

up a camp to get the beaconset up so they can find out where they are -- anythinglike that, i mean they have to be physically ableto do those things. so part of my job is to makesure they can do those things. >> okay. and so essentially,it's -- it's kind of likebeing in the scouts. the preparedness is -- is themain thing and you want to train for -- for any potential thingthat could go wrong and -- and then, you know, youprepare for the worst and hope

for the best and try to managethat risk as best you can. >> hi. my name is adrianwing [assumed spelling], i'm from belleview, washington. my question is, "can youshare more information about the recent helmet leak and how mission controlresponded to the emergency?" >> you know, that'sa really good example of how this team comes together when there is anunexpected problem.

yesterday, everythingwas going just exactly as we had expected it and thepreparations for the space walk, chris cassidy and lucaparmitano had checked out their space suits and -- because they had just donea space walk a week ago and it all went fine. they accomplished all theobjectives and then some. so the team here had alreadybeen doing a lot of work to replan for this space walkthat was planned yesterday,

because they had taken care ofso many of the get-ahead tasks that they were ableto add some new tasks into what was plannedfor yesterday. and then when theystepped out the door, everything seemedto be going fine. and then luca mentioned thathe had some water inside of his helmet and -- thathe didn't think it was going to be a problem. they finished their firstjob, both chris and luca did.

and then -- because yourbuddy system, kind of like when you're diving undersea,chris went over to check on luca because he was reportingthis water problem and he started having someproblems with his ability to communicate and that therewas a sensor that showed -- that tracks carbon dioxidelevels inside the space station. the folks here atmission control saw that that wasn't workingproperly and so chris took a -- took a look inside luca's helmetand he saw a lot more water

than luca even knewwas in there. at that point, they reportedthat to mission control and the eva team told the flightdirector, dave korth that, "hey, we think this is a problemthat we're not going to be able to continue doingthe space walk. and so we recommend that youguys bring them in early." and dave korth said,"yeah, you're right. let's go ahead and getthem in before this gets to be a serious problem."

and so they did that and theyhad trained well in procedures to get them in quickly. they had luca come right into the airlock immediatelyand get him started. they had chris do acouple of clean-up tasks because you can't put twopeople through the door that small at the same time. and so he did the cleanup andlashed things down temporarily, and then he came backin so he could help luca

and they could close thehatch and get back inside. and this team worked togetherthrough established procedures, a plan that had been discussedat length and practiced both by the crew and by the teamhere in mission control. and so they're all working fromthe same page and the same book, and were able to getthose guys back in. and here's some video ofthe team working together. you've got karen nybergand fyodor yurchikhin, also helping alexandermisurkin and pavel vinogradov,

all joined in to help getluca out of his space suit and they kind of got inthe way of the camera. you can't really seehim too well right here, but in just a second, i thinkyou're going to see luca's face and you're going to see himable to wipe that water off of his face and thatwas the success. that's why that was asuccessful space walk because even though we hada problem, we were able to get luca and chris back insafely and here you can start

to see luca there,having to wipe -- he was getting a lot of water. he had water in hisears, water in his nose. and that's one of thethings about water. it tends to coalesceinto a globule because -- because of the way water actsin space through surface tension and it can collect in areas that you wouldn'twant it to collect in. it would be a serious problem.

so that's an exampleof team work in action and preparation in action. now, mark, do youhave anything to add? >> not -- i don't haveanything to add to that. it was interesting watchingit [laughter], so... >> hi. my name is clay. excuse me. i live in edmondsand my question is, "what do you think [inaudible]opinion was the scariest moment

in mission control?" >> you know, i got to be honest. we don't get scared in missioncontrol much [laughter]. there's -- there's scarythings happen but -- but we train so much, and wepractice so much, and we study so much, all of the systemsthat we work with that -- that fear doesn't enterinto it a whole lot. you have those momentswhen you say, "uh-oh." but then your trainingkicks in and you --

and you start workingthe problem and you focus your effortson figuring out what you need to do, the order youneed to do it in, what other potentialproblems could be associated with what's going on, and howyou keep the entire crew safe, and how you makesure that you are -- try to accomplish themission that you're doing. so i don't think therereally is a whole lot of fear here in mission control.

there's some trepidation and there's some immediate beingstartled when you have a problem like that but -- buttraining kind of kicks in and you don't -- you don'tworry so much about it. you work to get the job done. mark? got anything toadd there as you work with these astronauts intraining all the time? >> yeah, but i'm not in missioncontrol so it's very different for me from you guys, so --

i don't really seeanything in my normal day that -- that startles me. you know, a piece of hardwarebreaks, we just figure out how to fix the hardware and go backto doing what we need to do. so, you know, that's about it. >> okay. sorry, not [chuckles]not a really exciting answer about fear because-- because we kind of train it out of ourselves. >> hello. my name is josh, i'mfrom deep harbor, washington,

and my question is, "we haverecently learned that one of the dangers of the marsmission would be boredom for the astronauts andso what do astronauts on the internationalspace station do to keep themselves busy andentertained when they have like some sort of free time?" >> well, i... >> if they have free time. >> ...the favorite thing whenthey have free time is to look

out the window atthe earth below. there's no doubt about that. we have a specialmodule called the cupola which is basically a360 degree bay window and there are seven differentwindows, a big round one in the middle andthen six round -- six trapezoidal windowsaround it and it gives you a 360degree view of the earth. and any astronauti've ever talked

to says wheneverthey get spare time, the number one thingthey want to go do is -- is go out and look at the earth. now, you got to remember thathalf the time they're going around the planet it'sdark and so if you're over the pacific ocean, theremay not be a lot to look at. and so they do have otherthings they like to do. they can watch movies on --on orbit, they can read books. they have multiple differentways of communicating

with their friends andfamily on the ground. they have an ip, internetprotocol telephone that they can call down and talkto their friends and family. they have email that theycan share messages with. they have a crewsupport internet lan, local area network, that theycan actually access the -- the network here, the internethere on earth somewhat directly and go off and theycan post tweets and -- and facebook things and do that.

it's a little slower than yourregular network is, but -- because of the limitationsof the -- of the downlink capabilityon the space station but it does allow them tohave a lot of interaction with folks on the ground. and they enjoy eachother's company. they enjoy learningabout different cultures because there are so manydifferent cultures involved in the space station, thedifferent crew members

and their backgrounds. and so i would say probablyenjoying each other's company and becoming a team and --and continue to work as a team and looking out the window arethe most interesting things for them. >> hi. i'm hans martin. i'm from yakima, washingtonand where is the iss right now? >> i'm going to lookover my shoulder. right now, the internationalspace station is orbiting

over the gulf of mexico justoff the coast of florida. >> one quick question,"how do you wake the crew up in the morning? is there a specialprotocol for that? is there an alarm clock?" >> you know, differentcrews do that differently. it's kind of a personalpreference thing. in the shuttle days, weused to wake the crews up with morning wake-up music.

but on the space station,we generally don't do that. they have alarms that they canset on board for themselves. but no special notes -- we dohave a daily planning conference that starts the day but that'sabout an hour and a half after the crew wakes up. but that's always something theywant to make sure they're ready for and in talking to differentastronauts, some of them wake up early, some of them wake up just right before thedaily planning conference.

but they've got an hourand a half worth of time where they can have a morningmeal and talk about themselves and -- and amongstthemselves i should say and they do a preliminaryinspection of the different areas of the space station makingsure everything is good. but no -- no main wake-up call. it kind of depends on the crew and how they wantto do it themselves.

all right. so i understand that's allthe time we have for today. i want to thank mark guilliamsfor being here with us today and i want to thank you allfor your great questions. i understand you've gota great exhibit there with the full fuselagetrainer from the space shuttle and destination station, ibelieve is at your museum. i hope you take anopportunity to go see it. thanks again.

bye.