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 What's It Like To BE...
What's It Like To Be An Astronaut?
It was 225 years ago, when the Montgolfier brothers first experimented with filling paper bags with hot air and created the hot-air balloon. This invention lead to man's first flight, and spurred the science of aviation. This month, I was very lucky to talk to someone that takes flying to a whole new level. He has actually been to space! John Danny Olivas is a an astronaut with NASA and was a mission specialist on a flight to the International Space Station in June. There's a lot to say about space, so we couldn't include the entire interview in our print edition, but can read the full interview here. And for more information about NASA and space, visit www.NASA.gov or www.spaceplace.nasa.gov.
 Truman: What does it take to become an astronaut?
The minimum requirements are a bachelors degree in a technical discipline, such as engineering, science, geology or chemistry. Medical doctors are also brought in to the office. If you are going to be an astronaut pilot, you typically are someone who comes out of the military with extensive flying experience with high-performance aircraft "Top Gun"-type people. In the case of mission specialists, they can include anyone from people with a military background, such as flight engineers and radar integration officers, all the way to people such as myself, civilians who have a science background. After that bachelor's degree, they require two to four years of practical experience, and then there's a trade off. If you have a master's degree, you can have less practical experience, and with a PHD, even less practical experience. For the most part, people who are in the office have advanced degrees; most of them have a master's degree, and many of them have PhDs. Virtually everyone usually comes in at the top of his or her field. They are doing a lot of important work. Those are the kind of technical requirements just to apply and have your application reviewed.
After that consideration, many qualities associated with being an astronaut make some people more fit to be an astronaut than others. For instance, if you are someone who is claustrophobic, you probably wouldn't make a good astronaut. If you are a person who is afraid to fly, you probably wouldn't make a good astronaut. But if you are a person who likes adventure, works very hard, works well with others and is a team player, then those are qualities that would make a good astronaut.
Truman: When, and why, did you first become interested in this profession?
I first wanted to work in the space program around the age of seven. We were on a family vacation here in Houston, and as we finished going through the museum and seeing all the various exhibits that they had, we were getting ready to leave, and my father was standing in front of a big rocket engine. And he began explaining to me some of the different parts that he had the opportunity to make as a journeyman, as a machinist, many, many years ago. I looked at that rocket, and as he was explaining to me what he had done, I guess I saw in that rocket engine, not so much just parts, but people moms, and dads who made all the components that went into that engine. And it really made me realize that my father had a part in making what I just witnessed in the museum a part of reality. It was at that time that I was bitten by the space exploration bug, and I realized I wanted to have a role in something as significant as space exploration. Regardless of how big or how small there are no big or small pieces here at NASA everybody has a role to play. Everybody is critical and vital. It is through every ones contributions that we are as successful as we are.
Truman: Is there anything that you learned in elementary school that helps you in your work now?
It was in second grade when I first appreciated the joy of science through science fairs. My teachers encouraged me. I was an average student, nothing special. I didn't cause a lot of problems, but I struggled in school just like every other kid does. For me, it was the love of science and starting to see the world in a slightly different way. And I continued that through grade school. When I hit college, my perspective on things changed when I took a physics class. I've always been a person who enjoyed working with machines, and when I was in high school, I would work with my father on car engines. We would rebuild engines and work on all sorts of things mechanical. In college, with that physics class, I began to see how the math, which had confounded me for years, all of a sudden made sense. Now the same machines and mechanisms that I had been working on and that I loved, had numbers associated with them, and vectors and forces. And I saw the thing that I loved in a completely different way. It was at that point that I realized that I wanted to become an engineer. So, I think early on I was bitten and appreciated the fact that there was so much to gain in school, and in hindsight, I didn't realize it until afterwards how much it really meant to me. And its through those exposures, those experiences. You never know what's going to cause the flames of a child to grow. Through these constant exposures of different kinds of events, eventually you find something that clicks with them, and it may not be right away. It may be years in the future. But they'll fall back on that, and say, "Oh yeah, I remember back when I was in grade school, I really did enjoy the science fairs, and I really enjoyed exploring things and conducting experiments and collecting data, and trying to understand it. And here I am as an adult, and I still do that today."
Truman: I read that you started at NASA in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that you actually applied to the astronaut program nine times. So you didn't start out as an astronaut?
Actually, I didn't. My first experience in the workforce was working for Dow Chemical in Freeport, Texas. When I graduated from U-Tech, actually the semester before I graduated, was when I first submitted my application to come to NASA either as an engineer or preferably as an astronaut. And NASA was on a hiring freeze at the time, so I thought to myself after I received a job offer from Dow Chemical, if I move to Houston, I'll be working with a great company, and I'll have an opportunity to keep my fingers on the pulse of the space industry because JSC (Johnson Space Center) is in Houston, Texas. After a year and a half I decided to go back to school and get my masters degree. Reading the biographies of the astronauts, I realized that having just a Bachelor of Science degree was probably not going to be sufficient, and I also wanted to learn more.
For me, when I was going to school and working at the same time, and when I graduated in 1993 from the University of Houston, was when I made the decision about what I wanted to do afterwards. It meant either staying and working or possibly going back and getting my PhD. So I made a decision to get my PhD, and after I graduated from Rice, we ended up moving to the West Coast, to California, and I started working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory then. So, my background is not aerospace. I come out of the best chemical industry also.
Truman: What do you do? Describe a typical day on the job.
There are more earth days than there are space days. Astronauts typically spend a small fraction of their entire time here at NASA in space. Myself, I've been here for going on nine years, and my total time in space has been 14 days. However, a lot of the work we do on a day-to-day basis can change dramatically. On one day you might be flying T-38s all day long. We use the T-38; it's an aircraft, a two-person trainer jet for supersonic, and it goes really fast. We train in that because it's a high-stress environment, and you have to be cognizant about what you are doing and a proficient operator. The consequences of not being proficient are dire. So there's definitely a factor there to keep it real. And then there are other days when it will be a training day. For example, we might be in the laboratory practicing one of our space walks. There are high-fidelity mark ups of the cockpit, and we'll do multiple launchings and landings. That simulator can be reset several times, so we'll spend the whole day there. And on other days, like today, I spend most of my time attending engineering and operational meetings, where we are collecting information for our office, sometimes for a specific flight, or sometimes just general design changes. We're doing some future work, working on a next-generation vehicle. We're doing some real-time work, such as council communicator, which means we're talking to the space station on a continuous basis. There's a wide range of things; there's enough to keep you pretty busy all day long.
Truman: Whats the hardest part of your job?
Trying to get it all done with in the 24-hour time period that God has given to me. There's a lot more that needs to be done, and a big challenge is trying to manage your day and trying to figure out how much time to spend in each area, as well as stay proficient. The proficiency of all the astronauts is pretty much left up to the astronauts to maintain. So if I don't fly a jet for a long time, when I do get back into the jet again, everything is going to be a little different, and that's not good. So it's up to me to stay proficient in flying jets, and the same thing with a lot of our other training. It's not as hard as it is challenging. But people who are in this office love challenges, and we love to challenge one another and challenge ourselves. So it's nothing that can't be overcome with hard work and diligence.
Truman: How many times have you been to space?
I took one trip in June for 14 days.
Truman: What is it like in space? What do you see when you are in space?
It is very, very cool. Everything that you see in the movies with the astronauts floating and spinning around and having a great time is true; you do that continuously. There's not a second that goes by that you don't think to yourself, wow, I'm in space. You play with your food. You play with your tools. It is a very dangerous environment, so you can't play too much, but it's such a unique experience that you feel like a kid in a candy store.
The mission objective you train for those anywhere from a year to a year and a half or so before the flight. So you know those objectives; you know what you are supposed to do, when you are supposed to do it and what it is supposed to look like when it's done. And you've trained for that. When you get to space, you execute your portion of the mission as competently as you can. That's one of the reasons that we train as hard as we do. You get one opportunity to do it right. If you are outside doing a space walk, you have to be very safe. The hardware is very expensive, so you have to be very sure about what you are doing. Training takes care of you on a lot of that. The NASA training program is very effective in making sure that the astronauts know what they need to do when they go up. But the greatest part about being in space is playing around, looking at the earth, seeing it from a couple different vantage points. Looking at the stars, looking at the clouds at night, looking at the moon you can see the Milky Way up there. You can see galaxies up there. It's just a very awesome experience.
Truman: What did you do in space? What was your portion of the mission?
I had two space walks. My first was space walk was to help configure the starboard 3 and starboard 4 truss segment, which we brought up with us and we attached to the space station. Part of that configuration meant that we had to extend out some solar rays, which we did, as well as extend out several radiators. The other thing that we did was to bring in a solar ray that was up there. We had to put it back inside its box. It didn't want to go back in, but we worked at it, and things worked out really well. Also, our mission was the one where the thermal blanket peeled back a little bit, so we had to go and do a repair on that. That was something that was never planned for, and something that we never trained to do, but it all worked out well.
Truman: Well, speaking of that unexpected problem, is it scary going into space?
Yes, but you want it to be scary. If you were comfortable, you wouldn't think a lot about it. If you understand and respect that the space environment, it is something to be scared of. If something happens to your suit, all your oxygen is going to leak out, and you are going to die, which would be a bad day. If you let go of the space station and you are not properly tethered to it, you could fly away from it, and that would be a bad day. If you do something wrong inside the space shuttle and push the wrong button or make something bad happen to a piece of mechanical equipment and cause an explosion, that's not only a bad day for you, but also a bad day for everybody else. You must understand and respect that your environment has a lot of danger to it and that you have to be very cautious about it. You cant take it for granted. If you use that respect that you have for the environment to be cautious and be very diligent about what you do, when you execute your procedures and the steps of your mission, you do so with an understanding of the environment and ultimately that leads to the success of whatever your mission objectives are.
Truman: Where is the International Space Station can you see it from Earth?
Oh, absolutely. The International Space Station has been floating high above since 1998. We've had a crew there since about 2000. If you look into the night sky, it's actually the second brightest thing besides the moon. It's even brighter than Venus now. It measures about two football fields across, and if you get on the NASA Website at www.NASA.gov, and you type in the search box "ISS sightings," you can actually put in your hometown, and it will tell you when the space station is coming overhead. It will tell you to go outside at a specific time of the evening, or early morning, and look up towards the direction from which the ISS is coming, and you can actually see the ISS go screaming across the sky on a clear night. It's really beautiful. It's very cool.
Truman: In this photo you are wearing a Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuit. What is that? What does it feel like inside of it? Is it heavy to wear?
On earth it weighs about 250 to 350 pounds. That's pretty heavy. In space you can't feel that because you don't have gravity pulling the mass down, so you float inside of it. It is the suit that you need to be able to live outside the space station or the space shuttle. If you want to be outside in space, it's just as when you go outside in the sun; you wear a hat to keep the sun out of your eyes. It's kind of the same thing. The suit allows you to go outside, to breath oxygen, to control the temperature of your body. There are some cooling systems that it has. It allows you to work in space. You can kind of think of the spacesuit as being our work clothes.
The spacesuit has three major components. The first portion includes the pants, the upper torso, gloves the soft stuff. The second portion is the computer system that sits right on the chest of the torso. On the back of your upper torso (like a hard shirt) is a backpack and your primary life support system. It has things like your primary and secondary oxygen supply, water, various pumps, ventilation fans and a sublimator that is used to get rid of heat. So all of your gear basically is on your backpack. And that's what you use to get around in space. If you didn't have any of that stuff, then you wouldn't be able to go outside. You can't hold your breath.
Truman: Do astronauts still drink Tang? What kinds of foods do you eat in space?
I didn't see any Tang packets up there. You eat food that looks very similar to the food you eat on the ground. It tastes quite a bit different. There are different types of food that you have. You have natural foods, things like nuts, candies. You have partially dehydrated foods like dried pears and peaches, very similar to what you have here on the ground. There's what they refer to as double stabilizer foods; they are foods which are prepackaged and vacuum packed inside of a bag and all you do is heat these up. They are kind of similar to what you would find if you were in the army. They're referred to as MREs, meals ready to eat. The last kind of food is called re-hydratable foods. These can be anything from beef stroganoff, to shrimp cocktail, to teriyaki chicken. It is food that has had all the moisture removed from it, and it's also vacuum packed. The reason you remove the moisture from it is because, one, you can keep it a lot longer, and two, you don't have to carry all that water weight with you. When you get up in orbit and you want some shrimp cocktail, you put some water in the little bag and follow the directions and wait the amount of time it says. Then you open up the bag and pop it in your mouth. It tastes pretty good.
Truman: What is the best part of your job?
The very best part of my job? You know, I don't have a best part. I think my job is great all the time, from helping the people here on earth come up with a new design, to flying into space which is also very cool to flying a jet, to talking to kids at schools about space exploration and showing them pictures of your flight, or showing them pictures of the stars and talking to them about stars. There are so many really neat aspects of this job, there's not one that's really any better than the other ones. I enjoy what I do. I'm very happy and very lucky to have this opportunity. I consider it a privilege that the tax-payer allows me to fly in their rocket ship and go into space.
Truman: What advice would you give to kids who are interested in becoming an astronaut one day?
I'd say if you want to become an astronaut, that's great; however, I would recommend that they find what they are really passionate about and spend less time trying to become an astronaut and more time trying to feed that passion that they have inside them. For me, it was engineering, and I'm an engineer before I'm an astronaut. And so, when I think of what it took me to get here, I don't think I ever said, "What are all the classes I need to take to become an astronaut?" I said, "What are all the things I need to do to become a better engineer?" And I got lucky and was one of the ones who was selected to become an astronaut.
Truman: Do you think we'll ever find life on other planets or send people to live on other planets?
I hope so.
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