International Space Station commander Mike Fossum, a NASA astronaut, took a series of wide ranging questions from middle school students on Tuesday. The students are participants in the Hispanic Engineering, Science and Technical Conference at the University of Texas – Pan America in Edinburgh, Texas.
Fossum, who grew up in McAllen, Tex., and took classes at the Edinburgh school, launched on June 7. He is scheduled to return to Earth in late November with Russian and Japanese crewmates. They launched and will descend aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Prior to serving as the station’s commander, Fossum was a flight engineer.
What experiments are you currently working on?
Mike: We are currently working on a lot of experiments. We have difference furnace type experiments, where we try melting things and then re-growing the crystals without the forces of gravity. We are doing plant growth experiments. We are doing combustions experiments.
And I’m a guinea pig in a number of experiments on the effects of zero gravity and how to minimize the bone loss and muscle loss during long duration.
What is the mission or goal of your current spaceflight?
Mike: Right now our job is to take care of the space station. Keep it running and to conduct the different science experiments on board. It has been a great challenge for me. It’s been the experience of a life time to be here.
The first university I attended wasPanAmericanUniversitywhere you are right now. While I was walking to night classes at Pan Am I would look up at the stars and dream about being up here someday and I can’t believe I really am here.
With this being your longest mission to space, how are you adjusting to microgravity?
Mike: That is a great question. I thought after two weeks on a shuttle mission I was adjusted to microgravity. But i have found here after one month and even two months I’m still continuing to learn and my body continues to adjust a little bit. I feel I’m very much stabilized where things are not changing.
But the fluid shift is the first thing. Your head gets full — kind of like you have a cold. There is pressure in your head because your body has a lot of fluid in it. Without the gravity pulling that fluid down to the lower torso in your legs, it kind of makes your head full and gives you a headache. So your body adjusts in those ways.
You learn how to move up here. That is a cool thing. Instead of kind of stumbling around and bumping into things a whole lot. You learn how to move I think of it moving kind of like a cat, or maybe like Spiderman.
You are going through the station and you are grabbing things and flying along. That is part of the adaptation and part of it is just learning how to work up here.
Working with stuff is actually hard.
Things don’t stay on a work bench like they do at home. You start to take something apart. Here, you have to tack down each piece as you are working on it. Each tool while you are not using it.
You have to make sure it’s tacked down or in a bag or secured with Velcro. When you lose stuff up here, it does not fall to your feet. It can fall to the ceiling or to the walls or it can bounce and just keep going. That takes a lot of getting used to controlling your stuff and learning how to find it when you do loose it.
It happens all the time unfortunately.
What does it feel like to float?
Mike: It feels kind of like you are a superhero — where you are moving and you are floating and you are not touching anything. You can get stuck, too. You can’t swim in the air. You really need to hold on to things.
When you get back from space does your body have to adjust to being back on Earth?
Mike: It sure does. Because up here you are in zero gravity our spines stretch. The little disks between the bones in our back stretch some. They get relaxed. I have grown about an inch to an inch and a half up here. Unfortunately, when I get back to Earth, I’m going to scrunch back down and that will be part of the adjustment. Part of the adjustment will be learning to walk again.
Right now, I use my feet but I use them in a different way. I have them hooked under handrails, and I’m holding on with my toes.
I talked about the fluid shift when i came to space — when the fluids are no longer held down in the legs come up. Back in gravity, it’s pulling your blood and other fluids down. So, you have to re-hydrate — drink a lot more fluids — to get your body back up to normal.
There’s an adjustment for most people. You get a lot of change in the first few days — 3-4-5 days. But it really takes about a month or two months before you are close to feeling normal.
What are the differences in responsibility between a flight commander and a flight engineer?
Mike: We are all crew members up here. But we have our different assigned responsibilities. As the commander, I’m the guy kind of in charge. We are all working for Mission Control and really mission control centers inHouston,Moscow, Huntsville,Ala.,Japanand inGermany.
We work for the different directors in the control centers. But up here we need one person who is in charge, and for this period of time — that is me. Mostly, we work things together. and we just decide what we are gong to do. But in a nutshell someone has to be in charge and that is me, for now.
What food do you miss eating the most?
Mike: The two things I miss the most — i would really love a great big pizza right now with a big thick chewy, cheesy crust on it. That would taste really good. Our food is re-hydrated food. We have foods in foil packs. We have bread, but it’s packaged for a shelf life of a year or two. The other thing I really miss the most is a big — a really big mug of hot black coffee.
Instead we have coffee in little foil packages. It’s just not the same as sitting down in the morning with my cup of coffee and my newspaper to get ready for the day. Instead, I sit down with a bag of coffee and my computer screen to read the morning messages before starting to work.
So, I look forward to pizza and a cup of coffee, not necessarily at the same time.
Do you loose or gain weight in space?
Mike: Remember the fluid shift I talked about? Once your body adjusts to zero gravity, it finds out you don’t need as much blood volume. So you will loose some of that liquid. Most of us lose a few pounds and it’s not a big deal.
What inspired you to become an astronaut?
Mike: For me, it was natural progression. I grew up in the early days of the space program. I was born two months after Sputnik the first man made object was launched into orbit (Oct. 4, 4, 1957).
I grew up when going to space was an amazing thing. Like every other red blooded kid in the world I said I wanted to do that someday.
Growing up in McAllen, I thought that was the furthest thing from possible you can ever dream of. There was no way such a thing happen. But that is not true.
Part of me never believed the dream. But part of me never completely gave up.
When I was in school, I tried to do my best. But I was not always at the top of my class.
I was pretty rarely at the top of my class, but I was working hard and dreaming and using that dream to give me a direction and motivation to stay in school and keep working hard. I knew one day that education and the hard work would pay off, and I was really blessed it paid off in this way.
What do you do for entertainment?
Mike: That is an easy one. When we have some free time, we look out the window. There is always something amazing to see. Our planet is incredibly beautiful as it rotates beneath us. Looking out the window — we go five miles a second — so we cover a lot of ground very quickly, but it’s always amazing to see what the world looks like. Looking at the planet at night and seeing the cities where the people are and the lights are on. It’s astonishing to go across theUnited States,Europeand different parts of the world and see what they look like at night. It’s very different.
Then there are the stars, and I love looking at the stars. It’s really amazing. The stars are steady without the twinkle caused by our atmosphere. That can entertain us for hours on end if we only had hours to do it.
How has being on the space station changed your view of the Earth?
Mike: You really get a sense the Earth is one place. When we are on the ground and we watch the news and we go about our business in our little corners of the globe, we think of it all very locally and that is appropriate. Up here, when you go across countries very quickly and continents in minutes, you really get a sense we are one place — spaceship Earth.
You kind of wish we could all just live and work here together in a friendlier way, a more cooperative way because it is one world, one planet. We share so much. We need to learn to be good stewards of this gift we have.
Where do you sleep?
Mike: We sleep in sleeping bags. We don’t really have beds. We have plenty of room for sleeping bags. They don’t have to go on the floor like you might do at the house when you have friends over. We can put them on the walls or the ceiling just as easily.
Each of us has a little crew quarters, like a crew closet — a little bigger really than an old phone booth. That is where we can put some of our personal stuff, a little computer so I can go in and do email and a phone hook up through my computer so i can call my wife and kids.
If you were not an astronaut what would you be?
Mike: That is a really interesting question. I’ve had a lot of part time jobs, summer jobs. I was in the military and did flight test. I loved the flight test business. It was very challenging, very rewarding work to be in the military serving the country in that way. Another that I enjoyed for a period of time was teaching and I could see teaching some day.
I worked as a substitute high school teacher for four to five months in between being on active duty in the Air Force and starting work at NASA.
That was such an amazing thing. Teachers are some of the greatest hardest working people there are. My wife is a teacher and I know how hard she works and how rewarding it is.