111: Astronaut Cady Coleman, Life in Space, and What Astronauts Learn

Welcome and Astronaut Guest Intro

0:00Okay, I have so many questions just from that bit, but I feel like we should just start with yours, Tom, and then we can get through. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to lower my AC a little bit really quick. So many questions. We've got him on the ropes, guys, don't you think? Oh, yeah. Went for the AC. I was gone for one second and you guys are conspiring against me.

0:30Hello and welcome to Let's Learn Everything, the show where we learn anything and everything interesting. Today, we have a very, very special guest that we will be asking many, many questions we have always wanted to ask. My name's Tom and I'll be asking our guest, what odd things does an astronaut have to learn before going into space? Oh, that is good. Fun. Okay. My name's Caroline and I'm going to be asking our guest,

1:02what are sleep flashes and what other oddities are there of living in space? I wonder what kind of person our guest could be today. My name is Ella and I'm going to be asking our guest, why does something as seemingly simple as spacesuit sizes matter so much? Well, my name is Katie Coleman. I'm an astronaut, retired from NASA, but not from answering questions and I am going to answer them today. Yay! Every one of them. Yay!

1:34Katie, we are so, so, so excited to have you on. We have such a love for space and so many space questions and you are a tremendous wealth of knowledge and a tremendous person. I'm going to go through your list of accomplishments, but this is one of the most prestigious ones I've read on this podcast, so please let me know if I missed anything. Katie, you are a chemist, engineer, Air Force colonel, and spent 24 years as an astronaut, which included two space shuttle missions and in 2011, 159 consecutive days in space aboard the ISS.

2:08Wow. Ooh, it's true. My mom likes to say that I got a job in a place I'd been much of my life.

2:19You are a member of the band Bandela, along with Chris Hadfield, Stephen Robinson, and Mickey Petit. You are a terrestrial and space flautist. You are an author of Sharing Space, An Astronaut's Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change. Incredible title. But most importantly and daringly, you are, of course, an up-and-coming improv comedian. Amazing. No, no, wait. Is this from your... Is this how I ran into Katie? Is this because you taught Katie? Yeah. That's right. I forgot about this.

2:50Ooh. We ran into each other at a science creator retreat camp, along with a friend of the show and friend of yours, Sage the Bad Naturalist. Ah, yeah. Who I just saw. I was going to say, she sent a picture of you, and I was like, we're going to have Katie on the podcast. I'm Katie's best friend. And you took an improv class.

3:14How did that go? Is Tom a good teacher, Katie? Oh, it was excellent, actually. I mean, it was really... It was so much fun, Tom. I mean, and I don't know. We're all accomplished people here on this podcast, right? But then when it's like coming to your turn, and you're almost ready, you know, maybe you think of what you're going to say, and maybe you don't. And then somebody says something different, and you're like, can't say that. I mean, it's interesting, that kind of like little nervous. And so I just... And I don't know. It just was really... It was really great for the group, because we all laughed together.

3:45Nobody cried. Oh, that's good. I will always remember, Katie, it's crystallized in my memory that after that class, I remember you came up to me and you were like, yeah, you know, I wish I had said something different for this one response, because I feel like I was like over-relying on like a previous thing. And in my mind, I was just thinking to like two hours earlier where you were like, yeah, I was on one of the most dangerous space missions that didn't end in a fatality. And I was like, how are these the same? So I guess it's nice to know that astronauts are human.

4:17Well, I'm just, you know, it's kind of a job that, I mean, it's not that you never leave it, but I've come to realize that exploration is a mission. And it's not just about going to space. It's about exploring, you know, each other. And that, you know, unless you really keep trying to understand the people around you, there are things about them you will never know. You know, so down on the earth, in a way, when you have a three-day retreat to really honestly talk about what's working in science communication

4:48and what's not, then it seems to me like an imperative kind of deadline. We feel compelled to get to know each other and figure out what we can figure out in these few days. Thank you for saying I'm just as brave as an astronaut. I appreciate that.

5:04Katie, during your talk, I took many, many furious notes, one of which included, it says here, Ella and Caroline will kill me if I'm the only one who gets to ask an astronaut questions. So I'm glad you're here. I'm thrilled to be here with you guys. One of the other reasons I clicked or I was like, I really want you on the podcast was because you said something talking about your astronaut training that really, I think, clicked with the theme of this podcast, which is learning everything. You said,

The First Year of Astronaut Training

5:34when you started as an astronaut, quote, for one year, our only job was to learn things. And that, yeah. I love that. That's nice. I was just like, please tell me more. And also because I feel like this, you know, in a movie, this is the montage, right? You know, you have them flipping upside down and you skip ahead, yada, yada. But I feel like this is so, so, so interesting and sort of like, what do you need to learn? I also wrote down, and maybe I was wrong, is telerobotic surgery, was that part of this?

6:04Or was that something I miswrote down? No, it's true. So we do lots of, so we do lots of training and, I mean, a lot of it happens in a classroom. A lot of it is boring, but some leads to very great pictures and adventures, right? And in that first year, in that first year of being an astronaut, so here we are, adults who have all, you know, accomplished a certain amount in their lives, gotten selected to be astronauts, and the not quite understood, you know, pretty much the way it works,

6:34is that it's not like they're still, once you get there, they're still like, oh, I don't know, let's see if we like her. The intent is that everyone will fly, that that is the intent, and you're like, they're like serious about this, so we show up, and having been like really busy and doing all sorts of, you know, research or whatever your thing was, suddenly our job for the first year was going around to all the different NASA centers and all the different disciplines at NASA, whether it was, you know, airplanes

7:04or synthetic biology or the jet propulsion lab and building rovers, and so we're going and understanding what all these different centers do so that we can understand that just because ours is the only voice that we hear in our head as we're talking on the microphone from space, there is a whole big organization and the mission is exploration and only a part of it is human space flight, so that's why for that year that's all we did, but then we each get jobs in between flights, we always,

7:35we each get jobs and sometimes several jobs and those jobs are meant to teach you new things, especially about yourself, I mean, but also they're just jobs that need to be done. Like barista, grocery, it's a Mr. Miyagi situation, clean the coffee filter, clean the coffee filter and then you're in space and you're like, oh my God, it all paid off. No, no, but I think, I mean,

Underwater Habitat and Telerobotic Surgery

8:03actually you brought up the telerobotic surgery, so we go and one of the things we got to do, many of us, was go to what we call NEMO, N-E-E-M-O, NASA's Extreme Environment and Mission Operation. Yeah. It's a habitat, it looks like a little submarine, but it doesn't fly or anything, it doesn't run around the water, it's sitting on the bottom of the ocean and it's at about, let's see, it's at about 47 feet, it's about 60, so it's,

8:33the bottom is about 20 meters, 60 feet. So it's not that far down for scuba divers, you know, when you're at 40 feet or so, it's not that far down, but the danger is, is once you've been down there for more than an hour and a half or so, you then have to decompress on the way up and once you've been down there for a bunch of hours, you're going to be decompressing for like 16 hours. And so in our habitat, the danger is, is that, is get, is if we're out scuba diving, which we can do now all day long as long as we don't come up,

9:04right, the danger is, is getting lost. But, but I digress. So we, so we are going to do scuba diving kinds of things and we had some things like what if, when we go to the moon, how would we do surveying and what about wearing different kinds of dive suits and dive helmets, sort of doing things like that. But we also had indoor research, which was this tele-robotic surgery. How can we communicate with astronauts who are on a mission and do we always have to have a doctor there? And can someone coach them from far away? And how would that work? And so the,

9:35the expert for this was the, the, up in Canada, McMaster University, a guy named Anvari. Dr. Anvari was coaching from there. And so, and they've done, really, they had done at the time a lot of really complicated surgeries, long distance, but in the testing, you always have like a surgeon right there and the one who's doing robotics from far away. So we did get to, I got to learn how to take out a gallbladder. And it looks like a drumstick, okay? But you're going to like

10:05staple on two sides, like staples, and then you're going to clip right there so there's not this bleeding thing happening, right? So you're going to do that on both sides and then you're going to snip around the drumstick and then you're going to take it out. And my mom was like, oh, you know, I could have asked you to take out my gallbladder.

10:24But did you do this on an actual human person? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Maybe threatened, but I did say robotic surgery on each other. But no, we had very sophisticated, but probably not sophisticated enough simulators. And they're, you know, they're made out of plastic or whatever, but it would, it's nice if everything is exactly like it would be if you were really doing that to a human. But that's where you learn about what, you know, what is it that I have to remember is not being simulated well? Maybe how hard I need

10:55to press with the scalpel or, you know, how it is to peel things back or whatever. And so you're always wanting that perspective. So that's a long explanation about that thing. But my point is that when we're each doing different, different kinds of things and there's six, there are four of us that are astronauts and two that are hab techs, in other words, technicians that know all about living underwater and they are our people that keep us safe and really know everything about the habitat and whatever they say. Can I, sorry, and I needed to place this. You weren't doing the telerobotic surgery

11:26underwater, were you? We were in the habitat and the habitat was underwater. Okay, so, so, so yes. I swear to God, Katie, some of these notes, I looked back on them like to refresh and I was like, that can't be right.

11:41So was there a lot of training in this, I guess, simulated environment underwater? Yeah, we trained both for the things we were going to do so that the time you're down there isn't wasted, right? That you really already or know what you're supposed to do and it's not a test of can you do it. It's all about how does this work and in fact, you know, talking to, what happens is with like laparoscopic surgery, there's like, you know, a camera and then there's like a thing that's going to hold things and then there's another insta third thing that's going to like pull or snip or cauterize or whatever and by being able to show things

12:14on the camera, it means that you could teach people visually. So it was really interesting to me and actually, our little guy had some surgery when he was really tiny and he had some surgery and it basically, I found out that the way people, the way surgeons stay up to date is new people come in and teach the people who haven't seen the new things and so, and it's really like this person to person or group to group model but then if,

12:44I think the university where Dr. Anvari was said to him, well, you know, if we show everyone how to do this then we might not be the best in the world and he goes, you are missing the point. The point is to show everyone how to do this so that we can do surgeries in places that are really hard to get to here on Earth and in space. So, if you're done doing whatever you're supposed to do then you should look around and see if any of your crewmates need help and if nobody needs help then you should take a picture of somebody doing something and then you should take a video and they should be

13:15good ones because bad ones won't be compelling and they won't communicate the story and if you're done with all of that then you should caption those things and send them up to the surface and this was before the days of social media. Wow. Yeah, I was going to say so you were already an influencer. You were learning how to be an influencer when you were learning how to be an astronaut.

13:37I think it's really fascinating you're saying I think it just clicked with me now is just the like it is simultaneously learning and teaching and documenting all at the same time as sort of the best way to both learn and help other people learn which is really really fascinating. I just want to make sure that Ella and Caroline hear this stat because I got the spoiler because you mentioned being underwater for a handful of hours being troublesome. What is the longest time that you spent underwater there?

14:08Well, 11 days. Yeah. Wow. How long do you have to decompress when you come back up then? It's about 16 hours or so. Oh my god. And so we come in for the day and so the habitat is this, you know, it looks like a big yellow bus almost underwater. Yellow so nobody hits it or something. And the door is actually in the bottom of the habitat and there's an umbilical coming from the surface that supplies our communication, our air and the pressure

14:39and everything like that and they keep it at a certain pressure and whenever the pressure builds up it kind of burps out through the door and so the way to go out is actually down and so when we're done and we're going to finish the mission they actually close that hatch on the bottom and now they can control the atmosphere and bring more and more oxygen and flush the nitrogen out of our blood because we've been basically at depth for 10, 11 days and it's a great research place because then somebody who's studying plants or coral growth or whatever

15:10can be down all day and go out the next day and the next day and go further and they even have like a network of gas stations so to speak to fill up your tanks and they're almost like these little it looks like little umbrellas over a platform in those places there's air that is then when we get to those places to fill up our tanks we can actually stand on the little stand or under the umbrella and the air is keeping the water down so I'm actually able to breathe take off my mask and breathe and fill up my tank

15:41so that makes sense because we're using the fact that air pressure air will displace water and it's a shape that there's always basically a air there and of course we always have our regulators so we can just put it back in and so it's really interesting my dad was a deep sea diver and he was actually part of the sea lab program and so living underwater is something that started for me to be normal my whole life but I do have to say that it never occurred I mean living and doing research like that the fact that I could be one of those people

16:11all the people that I met that did that were much taller bigger and had names like Goliath and Black Bart and JJ and they're wonderful people but I just never saw pictures of people that look like me so it's really kind of coming full circle for me and for my dad actually do astronauts still do that kind of training do deep sea kind of lab stuff it goes in phases and part of the

16:41point is to like it depends on actually the workings of the habitat and the habitat is actually transitioning to a new habitat I mean a different company is building a habitat that is then modernized and can be used in different ways so it sort of depends on what equipment and things are available they've been doing part of the point of these things is to be together and not I mean you can always if there's an emergency you can always come to the surface well in that case no right well

17:12and I mean maybe for different things you know they would actually just get you you know come with a ship that had a decompression chamber and you know be really fast kind of thing and with doctors inside but let's see I was talking about something being together in oh being together so they've been doing some things like going caving where you know it's an environment everybody reacts to it differently differently than they think they might these are where you learn some things about yourself and I went to

17:44Antarctica I was a last minute replacement for someone and I was so happy and my husband was so I got a phone call like can you go in like three weeks to Antarctica for two and a half months and my husband was so excited and I finally just go sweetie do you realize I am not going to bring the baby with me I do know about the I think Hanasa had a high seas it was a one in Hawaii yes exactly habitat in Hawaii

18:15which was like supposed to simulate Mars moon kind of terrain but I don't know much about that although I think people spent quite a long time there and it was quite small inside many many months and I think that the data is so valuable they are it's no question a service so to speak and I mean just that it is completely service to exploration to be away from your family have limited communication and you know and it's just you've left your life behind and I think

18:47it's really generous of them to do we also have there's people that do bed rest studies I don't know if you've ever heard of those trying to understand oh Ella's excited what is this I got excited

Bed Rest Studies and Physiological Tests

18:58I got excited

Bed Rest Studies and Physiological Tests

18:59so when I was doing my PhD I was adjacent to the aerospace engineering department aerospace health department and they did bed rest studies for to look at you know basically like muscle strength atrophy that's a muscle atrophy over time and people would literally spend like a month in bed or more I was gonna say is this like can somebody explain what a bed rest study is is it literally somebody staying in bed but you can't move

19:29right wow that sounds so grueling and really challenging but in the we're trying to simulate I mean it's hard and it's just logistically difficult we can't send enough people to space and I'm hoping I mean we are spending more and more and when we do medical studies I mean the n the number I mean Ella and Carolyn you're familiar with this in your studies n is very small and then when you think about how many women are in the study

20:00you know it gets even smaller and so we have things that we really need to find out before we start sending people to Mars and so it's valuable to be able to find some of them out on the ground yeah and you know I think it's you know I think you guys can imagine what is challenging about it but they do actually some creative things like they have to be they have to be horizontal but then they actually figure out a treadmill that supports them enough that they can still like run on a treadmill or ride a stationary bike that's still

20:30not be upright not be putting like pressure on their feet so their legs yeah that's so interesting yeah I mean it's yeah you mentioning like even fewer the n for women is even smaller obviously like there's the classic Sally Ride story about the hundred tampons although that is slightly miscommunicated I've heard that's semi-apocalyptic Kelly Wiener-Smith actually it was another woman a doctor who came up with that but the real problem was that they didn't know what would happen

21:01to like menstrual fluid in space and because there were so few women who had been up to that point so they just didn't exactly and it's like you need to do these things you try and do them as best you can on earth before you go up exactly and you have to have candid conversations and I think we get we've gotten better at that of realizing that you know and also the need as a crew member that if you're not well in whatever way you really you know owe it to your team and the mission to be candid about that so that other people I mean so that you're not a vulnerability

21:32and so that other people you know understand and I'm not I'm not actually at all implying that women are at all unwell or incapable it just happens to be I thought about the fact that sometimes people are afraid to ask you how you are yeah although you know speaking of you know you were speaking of going to habitats and part of that being isolated with a small group of people seeing how you deal with that being away from others that's quite an interesting factor of this is do you have to go through like any psychological assessments

22:03and to make sure you are like mentally fit to go into space for long periods of time to not be able to reach out to other people we do that in the selection we spend a lot of time filling out some of those multiple choice tasks you know where you're like what are you talking about and you have numerous interviews and their goal is to declare you psychologically or psychiatrically healthy and then there's also a test that we do a neurological test that we do up on orbit that when something

22:34when some something big happens you know maybe you're hurt maybe there's something traumatic they want to know if you are you know still as sharp as you were you know are you able to focus and do your job and actually on our mission on expedition 26 when we're up on the station Scott Kelly's sister-in-law Gabby Giffords was shot and which was of course completely tragic and it's hard to be far away when you can't help as much as you'd like

23:05and Scott was actually you know he's a person if you know him he's kind of it can be a quiet guy a person a few words and he was really exemplary in keeping all of us informed about how he was doing how things were on the ground what the progress was just so that we would know and even just saying listen I'm going to be on the phone a lot you and Paolo we were pretty new up there you know you and Paolo have learned everything you know I think you know everything that you can if my door is shut it doesn't matter you can knock on it any time and he also

23:36and he said oh and by the way I took that I took that WINSCAT test just so that they would at least have a baseline for right after and I'm happy to take it any time they want so if anybody's asking you about that you know feel free to talk about what you think of me what test

Simulations and Space Food Realities

23:49is this it was called it had an acronym I don't even remember what the acronym was it was called WINSCAT W-I-N-S-C-A-T and it was a bunch of just like doing you're doing math you're doing pattern matching really annoying things right be like oh the test we hate the test it is cool though to know it's not just about it seems to be partly keeping your cool but also communicating how you are feeling to your team seems to be like a big part of that exactly

24:19I feel like there's some bits here where we could transition into Caroline's question but the last thing I wanted to ask just sort of on the topics of the strange things you learned is there anything you learned that did feel sort of like like a Mr. Miyagi situation where you're like why am I learning to do X Y or Z in your training anything peculiar you learned that you're like why is this relevant well you know I think I'll say that one of the most valuable places to learn things

24:50was we have different kinds of simulations for the shuttle and some of them you're like you know on your back and the simulator is shaking and rocking and rolling and it's launch right but then you'll spend literally days we would have three day simulations for certain kinds of missions I was on a laboratory mission and so we'd spend three days where I mean you'd go home you'd go back to the hotel and sleep at night but but it was more about experiment after experiment and dealing with different people and different kinds of things but whenever we're

25:21doing those kind for the shuttle there's certainly days when you'd spend eight hours in the simulator and often they are simulations for mission control where the issues that we're going to come across are not so complicated for us interesting it's more like hey the payload bay door you know is like not all the way open we notice you know something will go wrong with some circuit that takes out certain amounts of equipment and then the ground has to put together the puzzle and we put it together as well and

25:52then they have to figure out like I mean like for example if it affects the bathroom that's what we want to know right away you know like for them to call up like you know an hour later oh yeah by the way you might want to find out where all the alternative like diapers and everything are because it's going to be a while I mean so we learn about you know what kinds of things to communicate anyways often there's a lot of sitting around kind of time where there's lots of things to study and learn but you learn a lot from the experienced people even just things like they bring

26:23space food to the simulations and actually a bag of wheat thins a bag of carrots and then different space food and we can put water in it and heat it up and all the kinds of things and on my first flight we were five rookies and two experienced people and the experienced people saw us all eating all the space food and they're like hey listen we're going to be up there we're going to be the longest mission to date on the shuttle we're going to be there 16 days space food is going to get old starting on day two

26:54and it's going to be old before you even go if you keep eating it now so try everything once but then save that enthusiasm yeah it's like reverse training it's like that you don't want to get used to it is so funny I mean that makes sense that you do have to train and practice for the like really ordinary like not every day is like and now remove 10 gallbladders from your partner right I mean another

Spacesuit Pro Tips and Launch Training

27:23thing that's like that I'll just say it real quick is we spend a whole day for shuttle training where in the morning we come into a big building with simulators they don't go anywhere but they're very laid out so everything's the right size and distance away and stuff like that we get suited up by the suit techs just like we would on lunch morning they strap us in and then we go three two one launch okay launch is done and then it's how do we take our rocket ship where we shut down everything that wasn't needed and turn on the systems one by one

27:53in the order on the checklist you know the bathroom we want to have on and in but also we're going to get everybody out of their spacesuits and do you disconnect the cooling pump right at the suit at the knee of your suit or do you do it at the pump i mean how are you going to undo people yeah desuit them and then be able to suit them back up and so we somebody's in charge of doing that and so we actually practice all that kind of stuff someone taught me that when we get up to space the first thing to do is take your helmet off and she said

28:24it's going to be you're going to put it in your helmet bag which is a floppy little you know mesh bag and when you try to do that you're going to be chasing that mesh bag try and get that helmet in there and what you should do is get your helmet unlocked all ready to kind of come off your head you take that bag you put it over your helmet and then you take your helmet off no way no flippin way i mean so there's just things that you learn right and then pretty soon the trainers are teaching those lessons too because they hear stories that people tell so we spend the first half of the day doing that

28:55we eat sandwiches and then we practice getting everything stowed and ready and suited back up again and how to get people and how to help them what is help and what is not help and again lots of candid conversations and being just real candid with people about what you need and what you don't need and now all our listeners know the pro tip of how to take off their space helmet it's so practical it seems so uncool to do backwards that's so

29:26funny but actually if it happens slowly i mean we deployed the chandra x-ray observatory seven hours 17 minutes 17 seconds after ascent and so you really have to be fast and practiced and it's just like loading your car if you loaded your car you load your car up for a trip and then it takes a while and everything if you unpacked it and then you packed it again you'd be way faster and probably smarter right i'm not letting you guys talk very much oh don't you are letting us listen

29:57we had a great time but uh speaking of sort of these again oddities of space yeah my question i asked what are sleep flashes and also just like other odd parts of living in space i have a question about feet in a second as well mentally prepping

Earth Views and Sleep Flashes

30:17everybody for that one for listeners katie is pointing at her zoom background which is a picture of earth from space but there are some feet in the shot we can put the link to that photo in the in the show notes those are scott kelly's feet they're very particularly gnarly i'm just gonna say but actually i love you know i um it was actually his girlfriend now wife's suggestion was you know when you want to take a picture and have it speak to people then putting part of yourself in the picture can really help them understand like

30:48a human was there and a human thought oh i need a wide angle lens that will show the whole edge of the earth but also that image is so reminiscent of like me being on holiday and taking a photo of myself at the beach with my feet in the image still it feels so human to see pictures like that i think so too is this from the iss the space station from the iss it's from the space station and it's from might depend where you're from how you would say it the cupola okay british people the cupola how do you spell

31:18it c-u-p like peter c-u-p-o-l-a cupola cupola cupola and it and it's like a series so these windows that you see you see what the six windows in makami and um they are trapezoids so they're i mean so you almost have a dome of windows and so we call it the cupola and we and it's interesting to me we go up to to take pictures or to look around or just to see the earth and because you're up because you

31:49see a view for me i just relate that to being up high but if you think about it if we're seeing the earth then we must actually have our heads towards the earth oh of course yep and in fact you can an interesting thing um if we look at this cupola picture and maybe we can put it on the website yes it'll be in the show notes so if you think of it as kind of a dome around me and i would come up and i would look around and i would see someplace maybe like i you know cape cod where i i live in

32:20massachusetts so it's recognizable and you see a place that you love and then and then you can spin around and watch it going in the distance because it all happens pretty quickly right so you get to see things but then if i actually remember that this is up here if i actually kind of like curl up on the window and look out the window then i feel like i'm surfing over the earth of course you there's no there's no sense of up or so so you so when you come up into it you're looking up as

32:50like the earth is above your head but if you get close enough it feels like you're like lying on the window surfing across the earth is that right it's just that it's not as meaningful i mean you forget that it's up because you forget that it actually it's down if you think about it it's down we just it's almost like it we just dispense from those things we just not going to worry about it i'm just going to look at the earth and in places inside the station we tend to use the way we we do simulations and we have modules the size of a school bus without all the seats

33:21in them that's like the u.s lab and then there'll be another one that is the european lab and whatever way they are in the simulator on the earth we tend to kind of treat that like the floor oh okay and it's just that you don't really sit on the floor you know you don't interact but you're always just flying through but it's more normal to fly through that way than to fly sort of like facing the side or upside down but all of them work but talking about that what did you call sleep flashes sleep flashes

33:52so this is another phrase that i wrote down in my notebook that i added to caroline's question because i wanted to make sure that you guys definitely heard this have either of you guys heard this phrase no i haven't heard this phrase before i hadn't heard the phrase tom so i think it was i think it was friend of the show trace dominguez uh phrased it this way that could be uh another word for this is astronaut's eye or light flashes yep but i thought this would uh blow caroline and ella's mind about i've never considered this if you could

34:22describe what this is that when we close our eyes when we're and which is mostly when you're sleeping um you can you actually will see little lights going by and it's because we're we're in space and there's a lot of radiation cosmic radiation oh it's cosmic right yep whoa wait how because it's nothing that people worry about in terms of you know we've we've been studied for many years many years now and everybody's coming back pretty much the same um i will say um on that note that

34:53biologically it's a space is quite interesting things seem to happen differently in space like if something if a gene is upregulated you know a little bit down here with say for example when your skin gets drier and thinner then looking at the same skin cells you might see a larger up regulation of things and i i was like well so if all these things biologically are happening differently how come i didn't come back with two heads or it's because you're a system and so you

35:24know your system adapts oh whereas when you're just studying like cells in a dish they're not uh-huh that same system and so it it allows us actually for for understanding diseases um allows us to understand i mean if if understanding the disease means finding exactly the address in a what we used to call the phone book right many many addresses in a large book it's probably not going to tell you exactly the address but it might tell you like what state it's in you know or what county i mean so you get narrowed down just

35:55because more things can be are just visible they act there's more biological activity and it can be noted with instrumentation and sorry i'm i just got really excited because i remember something so you were you on the iss with scott kelly is that right yeah um who is a twin an identical twin uh his brother's called mark so i've i uh i've learned about this a lot like quite recently they did um so some genetic twin studies because mark never went to space correct and scott did for no no no not that mark never

36:25went but that he didn't go for as long as that's okay there we go that went for a year or almost a year and mark went on several i'm not sure how many shuttle missions maybe three um i know he went on one because this it was on the shuttle that came up when we were there right okay so but just not like it was like a longitude and all kind of the difference between those two um i can't remember exactly a lot of the i mean they were very minor but i think there was an aging difference like scott had aged like slightly less

36:55as they seen in the genetics but like tiny minuscule almost nothing but that was so fascinating the kind of genetic differences that could occur but and that's just a year you know what if we spend you know decades on another planet who knows right well and also i mean it was a lot there's things that happen to us that are a little bit like aging like our hearts our hearts down here on earth are always you know pumping all the way from your feet all the way up to your head right there's this circulation and it takes a lot of work for

37:26your heart to do but now that when we're in space and we're weightless it's not nearly as much work and our heart muscle tends to get smaller up there and our blood volume is actually smaller as well partly because that's measured at these sensors at your neck and eventually your body figures out oh you know like like when you go to bed when you go to bed you know i'll have already like gotten already i brushed my teeth i went to the bathroom i go to bed maybe i'm gonna read for a little while and then i'm like oh before i go

37:57to speak sleep i have to go i have to go pee again and it's because a lot of your fluid sensors are in your neck oh so now you're naturally hydrated state up there is lower blood volume just because the sensors are like we don't want to see all this stuff wow okay first that's blown my mind because i always need to pee after i get back into bed and it's very frustrating it's good to know why isn't it cool that there's a reason but okay so i'm so sorry i have to do this while we're talking

Toilets, Sweat, and Water Recycling

38:24about peeing i did also a couple of years ago learn about the uh the space then the toilet on the iss and i'm obsessed with this thing and like it's like a funnel for women is that right or like you know like a she we maybe you describe it on the on earth and and it has suction i didn't like the shape is different for women and men or do you both use the same shape aperture oh you bring up a very good point that i had forgotten so when we had the shuttle we had a toilet and there were different shaped funnels and though for the women they were a little bit more oblong and for the guys it was

38:54just a simple sort of you know round funnel and there is vacuum for everyone um where i mean when whenever anyone is going to use the bathroom you turn it on it makes practically a jet engine noise which begins to actually be a real cute there's no secret way to take a piss on the on the iss nope you can't cough to try and hide play some music i don't think ron will mind so it really it's

39:25not that everybody on the space station knows because something we should make really clear to people is that um the space shuttle is like being in a upstairs downstairs apartment and on my first mission we actually had a little tunnel to the payload bay which is like the back of the dump truck right there's a little tunnel that goes to another to a module it's like a not a huge sized train car but mini car right and and that is there we can work you know it all over that it's it's and we have science experiments we did 30 different science experiments over 16 days

39:56and the purpose was to figure out what how should we run science up there in a way that is good for the scientists and good for the science and good for the crew anyway so we had extra room there but in general the shuttle is up upstairs is the flight deck so there's commander seat pilot seat that's like the pilot and the co-pilot and then two mission specialists and that takes up pretty much all the room except for a space right here that's like an empty and that's because it's the way to go down it's just an opening and then down below it's enough probably four

40:26people to sit maybe three to sit you know in seats anyways but it's still a small place and sometimes i would be like where's kathy on my first mission and kathy is actually sitting cross legged so her head's down but it's sitting cross legged on the ceiling anyways um so so it's so so the shuttle is small and the space station now you have to think like european soccer field right or i think american football field um mostly because

40:57it has all the numbers and everything but also right in the middle of the 50 yard line so that is where we live that's where all of our our modules like the school bus size 10 of them some of them are up some of them are over down but there's about 10 of them and it goes the length of the 50 yard line whereas the whole field goalpost to goalpost that is where you have all the the truss with the solar arrays all that is outside all that is spacewalk so it the space station itself is the size of a football field but we live in a

41:29place that is the width of the field yeah so but so it's huge and so in the middle is the bathroom and the treadmill and the weightlifting machine and the cupola and we call this node node one is right there and that tends to be a place where we'll share meals and the airlock is there so that's the middle of the station on the other side is what we think of as the russian side of the space station um you don't need a passport or anything and you know and even you know on a serious note even in these serious times um this is a mission that people committed to and

42:00countries committed to and the mission is being carried out by the people who put the mission first and it can really help you you know just keeping your eye on the mission i think is the secret to doing hard work together how do we transition to more pissed questions because i want to make sure i do want to know okay i do want to know about the toilet again but actually while we're on this topic um obviously the the iss is being decommissioned in 2030 i believe um with no current plans for anything that i've heard

42:30at least to to carry on how do you feel about that and like because i think you know the iss is quite a beautiful like antarctica this beautiful kind of international collaboration that we don't see that much of anymore and and and i just wondered how you're feeling about that um progress is progress is hard and then change is hard um i do know that we're not going to decommission that space station until it's actually the right time to do that okay right now the best estimate you know and the one that is sort of within the contracts is 2028 you

43:02know often i mean ever since the station was built they would agree they would talk about okay when's the next time how long is everybody signed up for and in that couple of years that you come up to that deadline it depends what the climate is in different people's country when is the right time to say we're going to continue supporting the space station so even though the numbers are correct i think that they'll be extending as long as they as long as it makes practical sense and at the same time um they're the u.s is

43:32doing everything in the european sorry um japanese canadians in the russians as well i think trying to make sure that people are able to build new space stations and so it isn't that they don't want it to happen it's that they're trying to have this is the time to discover what is really worth doing in space and then get on with doing it in a more efficient manner yeah well i'm i'm always in support of the esa uh getting in there more get get europe up there more get some brits more brits absolutely no question

44:04oh and you guys have such wonderful wonderful brits helen charman i love him oh tim tim's so wonderful we work national treasure yeah yeah great communicator and wonderful guy and wonderful family and helen is a friend and always just so um interesting to speak with i was going to sort of really set the tone here with this question which is okay um it's something that i saw online for astronauts after a short period of time being in

44:35space the calluses of your foot start peeling off is what i have heard online and i was wondering if that was true and if there are any other parts of being on the space station that are this sort of not glamorous part of being an astronaut like having to deal with being on the toilet and things like that that you would like to share with us well first uh like go to the if you go and look for don pettit's interview where he actually takes his socks off in the module is dark and he's

45:06using a uv light what and this is when you see all the fuzzy callous foot stuff it's true you have more stuff in oh it's totally true it's totally true oh no oh that's so easy you know and in fact um i would say that you know often we'll take our we'll you know change like if we could put a new pair of pants or whatever that you're going to like do that next to a vent because all this stuff gets sucked onto the screen and then you can vacuum it and clean it up right wow but you know sometimes it i i would

45:37i always take my socks off next to the vent you know because then so why is can i why is this happening what why is your why your foot becoming feet becoming disgusting well they're not disgusting actually after they're after they're i mean they become baby feet oh of course oh wow everything comes out right yep yep um i think it's because you don't walk on them and so you don't build them anymore and that's why they shed i will say one of the most challenging things to do on the space station

46:08or in in a zero gravity environment is to cut your toenails why because gravity like when you want to do that you put your foot up on something right but gravity is helping you keep it there or you're you kneel down and you're gonna look at your toes and do that and paulo and i had kind of like a system you know where i'd be like hey paulo you want to give me a hand and so i would go and i would be have my foot against the vent and he would just have his like elbow or whatever he just kind of grace me so that so you know i'm i'm doing this and

46:38paulo's just kind of holding me a little bit towards the end so that i have the pressure so i can clip my toenails this is the this is the stuff we want katie yeah the reality yeah the reality i think um the fact that everything floats around up there is part of um it's part of the charm right and for people i think about flying or it is magical and just every time you

47:09give yourself a little push and it just you fly all through this you know you fly until you run into something else and you get better in the beginning we kind of are like superman like you know you have to put your hands out and feet and be like what but really you could be in any posture and give yourself that little push and you get very good at sort of controlling your what we call attitude are you this way are you that way are you giving yourself a little bit of a twist so you can go that way and and but also sometimes

47:40sometimes you just you end up you run into something and bounce off and we're and we're always catching each other if you if needed and and it doesn't matter what you have to grab you i mean safety first because really if they knew how much fun it was up there to fly everywhere they would make us wear helmets all that i know of i mean nobody nobody ever cracked their head up there but but you really it's just like and actually the demo i've i have it online called splitting hairs and um in gravity i could take a hair from my head and i can push it against a railing just like against the railing gently if i go

48:12fast it'll break gently and it'll it will push me wow across the whole space whoa wow and actually and you see karen nyberg demonstrate you don't see me do it karen nyberg did it for me and she has like a link she's like a mane of really beautiful hair and and also because you're just pushing with one particular point like right out of here um it actually makes you just rotate oh my gosh so that's how little force it takes to move and so and you can i can tell when people have been up there a long time or when they've just gotten there

48:43your space legs yeah exactly sergey krikalov is a russian guy that spent like really more than two years total oh my god and it's just like watching a liquid person oh wow you learn to move over time do you think then like i do i think because i think you really learn to relax and has sort of have you don't you're only using the muscles you need to use and and you and it is it's just you learn to live in three in three dimensions you think we do down here but and and i show people like if you look you show

49:13people a picture of something and then it's like you're looking at it sideways it just doesn't look right and it's hard to figure out what it is and i i lost a screwdriver that was like it's probably this long really long and i had just poked it in right at the intersection of some cabinets so that i could find it the next day you know and i put a piece of tape on it and then i could not find it i'm like looking and looking but we're so used to looking for things in in one gee i had i looked in every direction oh my god yeah i finally used

49:46another one for a little bit and i i find i found it like the next day i'm like there it is has it been there the whole time the idea of having to look for your keys while you're constantly rotating is sounds like a nightmare yeah yeah perspective wise exactly and and stuff like i mean i lose things i'm i am somebody we didn't even really have a tv before and um but i could lose a remote like you know twice in one night easily in my my wallet and all those things and so i actually had to be

50:17really careful that i didn't lose things up there and i think because i'm so prone to it down here um i was pretty careful up there and actually by on my first or second mission my crewmate said you know i was thinking that on the place where the airflow brings a lot of things onto a screen that's where we can find you know post-it notes and pens and scrunchies and things like that he said i expected to find all your stuff and i found all mine and he he tells the story usually so just

50:48there's a there's like something sucking uh all the little bits in the air in on this is that right yes that's correct so something's you know it's sucking but then it's pushing you know it's like oh it's a fan we have fans right within the ventilation system and so and it in the and it is designed in a way to circulate the air because we really can like when you when you have um say the shuttle crew visiting and there's um visiting they're working right but then then there's six seven of them six of us 13 people within

51:20about 10-15 minutes if we're all gathered to take a picture together we're starting to get headaches and have co2 build up because the airflow is disrupted right but you know but we know how it works and so we can find stuff i also wonder about like it's good to learn this because i was thinking like you know lots of people have been up there for a long time and you know there's dust you know stuff coming off your skin you're maybe sweating like and i assume i mean i don't know do you guys clean at all or is it just like oh yes

51:50well it kind of depends who you're with right i was the new gym clothes police i'm like boys it's that special day everybody gets new gym clothes we have a we have a we don't have very we have a lot of gym clothes a lot of really nice cotton t-shirts and shorts and um and so working or tights or whatever we want to work out in um so we have a lot of that and we and we work out at least i would say five days a week probably six and maybe seven it takes about almost two hours hour and a half to work out and some time

52:22to clean up um usually an hour of weight lifting so to speak and a 30 minutes of cardio but it might be different for you um and we don't drip but we certainly do sweat up there and we also don't want one crew um they decided they would start just instead of letting their shorts and everything dry out um that they would just they had so many provisions up there that they told them to get rid of some and so they'd wear stuff and put it right in the in the laundry bag and what

52:54the ground found was that there wasn't as much humidity in the space station and we collect all that humidity and turn it into water oh my god and so it upset that by by taking their soppy gym clothes and stuffing them in a laundry bag and not letting them dry yes it upset the water balance which was really interesting i thought so you're drinking everyone's sweat recycled sweat it's true and and that's not everything i so we

53:26have to we have to talk about the bathroom right yeah let's go back you talked about the fans are things being sucked are they being pushed and so it depends which direction you want to be more sure about and so the bathroom has a fan that sucks things in and so we'll start with peeing and there's a hose and then there's a funnel on the end and actually everybody and despite the shuttle everybody uses the same funnel and just wipes it out with a

53:57cloth afterwards because no and i mean unless i mean if somebody had a special need um that might be right but pretty much there's a standard funnel and everybody uses it so nobody has to on the shuttle you have all these different ones but now it's just you wipe it out and there it is and so there's just a little it's not like a vacuum like oh it's just a gentle breeze that makes sure everything goes down into the tank it goes through filters and then it comes out uh the place where we drink the water great right i mean yes waste not want not

54:29yeah my friend don pennant likes to say we're just drinking yesterday's coffee today hey that's good oh i love this someday you have to interview don on your show because i guarantee you as much things as many things we've talked about he will have different answers he is a different guy and he's a fascinating guy but he's the one who designed the zero gravity coffee cup i mean it's but it's really about physics it's about it's about the fact that physics control where how liquids behave up

55:02there i mean control they control um with liquids down here it's just without the force of gravity you get to see what the tiny forces want things to do and i mean for example there's like um we end up putting fluid into a shaped container and it helps them understand literally how are we going to build the gas tank from mars where we understand where all the fuel is to measure it right and they figured out that in a certain shape container if they change the angle of the corner one of the corners by just

55:34like three degrees it meant that all the fluid would be in that corner and so it's really valuable for fuel tank from mars but now let's go back to peeing for a minute what if the hose okay had different shapes on the inside of the hose that meant all of the liquid without a motor that might break all the liquid would make its way without gravity down to so good that's great it's really interesting and also that same

56:04for the physics stuff i think it's a good example of sort of the far reaching how we're really doing research about earth but we're up in space every every interface of a solid and a liquid whether it is a covid test or whether it is erosion at a shore or cleaning up oil somewhere um it's all about interfaces between liquids and solids or liquids and liquids and understand it's the tiny tiny forces that surface tension right that controls things and up in space it's the biggest game

56:35in town wow wow wow and and i love the fact that it's probably several people's job to design that funnel so that it did that yeah and that's amazing so actually so on the station it is the funnel i mean it's not so much the funnel it's about the whole hose right has to be that way but in understanding that research better on artemis we have to talk about this on artemis the way it was discussed it was as

57:06if the toilet was not working which you're like oh really right first of all it is really a pain when it doesn't right but really with a problem with artemis was not so much what happened that it wasn't a toilet problem it was a plumbing problem because that liquid would go into the tank and then when it was time to send it out into space it comes out and it freezes it's like a little spray it looks like snow coming out right it was freezing at the valve freezing the valve and

57:36you could not get liquid out of the tank and as you can imagine there's not a lot of space up there yeah and so the toilet itself was working fine but now we're back to you know figuring out when somebody figures out what you can really do with all the angles inside a hose they they had these um contingency urine container i forget there's some cuckoo ccus there's some abbreviation and the reason that those didn't have to be very large was because they took advantage of what they knew about angles to

58:08make sure that all the p went directly into the very bottom they did the p angle math wow wow but we have to talk about everything that's messy right and before we start i'll just tell you that um it is i've been camping in antarctica i've been camping underwater i've been camping camping and i am just not the most i mean i mean that's i never get to the right distance right it's always kind of messy uh-huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i can relate to that

58:39and so i will tell you that peeing in space is so much easier than any other place i have ever had to pee i mean wow okay so easy i mean you turn on the bathroom you have the funnel everybody points their pee in that direction so it's it's really easy now for everything else that's messy um again we're using this suction and it's like a toilet it looks like a our toilet is about like this big and there's it's a russian system it works great you have these plastic bags that have a rubber band like a elastic in the front and you pull them and you stretch them

59:12across the mouth like that there's a little red tab you can pull up when you're ready and these bags have holes in the bottom which sounds totally wrong but you need the holes to make the air flow so that all the stuff goes in the right place all of the things that you read about seeing a sort of candy bar thing like floating not never happened on our flight okay i'm just gonna say everything was fine i did make a video of the toilet and you can find it online i think

59:43it's m&ms getting like and they just kind of go you know they go in there um i did make the first video with chunks of granola bar too much it was too close not gonna not gonna win the oscar i mean there it was i was so close you know you can't get considered the next year you know anyways but everything goes in there and then you pull up on the red tab the mouth goes like and then we push it down through flap flap flap and it goes down we never see it again until it's time it's the can is full this will only

1:00:16happen when you've woken up in the middle of the night and um anyway you put a lid on that we put it in the supply ship now empty that's going to be a trash ship if if it's that happening um we put it into a trash ship and then we never see it again but that will not be true for you or any of your children or grandchildren because they're going to need to fertilize the potatoes just like on the martian of course oh fascinating we'll cross that bridge when we get there

Ranking First in Space by Toe Length

1:00:44there's one last fact that i thought was very fun related to feet uh katie that i remember you told which i believe is how they determine who has entered space first if you could just tell us that so i mean you're you're sitting in on your you're laying on your back in your chair your chair is like this right you're about to take off to space yeah and so it depends whose toes are the like when they figure out you know are you the 332nd person 333rd person well mike la's feet are longer than mine and so he's the

1:01:17332nd person and i am the 333rd person because they go by whose toes are where no way i would be kicking other people but back like isn't that a good number i'd be scrunching my toes in the measurement zone being like no it's just not that jumbo tron jumbo tron jumbo tron jumbo tron we have a jumbo tron this why did you say it like jumbo tron i don't know why i said it like

1:01:48jumbo tron my friend it's like when you say spider spider-man instead of spider-man hi i'm james jumbo tron this is from new hampshire community supported research and they have a call to action it's listen to serious grower podcast wherever you get your podcasts this is a commercial jumbo tron serious grower so their message to us is serious grower podcast for all growers and eaters

1:02:19who are serious about their food join anna entomologist and stone cold nerd as she explores how science can help in this multi-format podcast that brings applied research to small scale farmers backyard gardeners and anyone who is curious about how their food is grown expect some expert guests to drop in and get into the weeds both literally and metaphorically hey nice love love a precise and podcast that sounds so good i did listen to a bit of the podcast uh just to check it out make sure we

1:02:52weren't shilling for you know crypto or something and it's great you'd want to listen to this if you are growing something like it suggests like if you're a small scale farmer or you have a nice garden it sounds like the perfect thing to put on while you're doing some work oh yeah and it's very science backed like they're they're really on it oh yeah thanks very much to new hampshire community supported research for sending in this jumbotron if you would like to send in a jumbotron either commercial or

1:03:23personal go to let's learn everything dot com slash jumbotron um tom what are you doing oh it's tuesday i'm building a tower to heaven oh sorry uh i should have asked did you want to help yeah you're all right it's happened he's finally gone mad uh what are you hoping for ella i was thinking spanish is probably gonna be the first one i'm gonna run to uh but i'd be okay with french oh i see what's happening oh my god he's well and truly

1:03:56lost it no no hold on caroline tom what is this called the tower that we're building oh it's the tower of babel and you're hoping that god will make me speak other languages yeah so did you want it you can just grab those two by fours over there and we can just start moving them because that's been the did someone tell you about babel by any chance yeah i'm coming to europe this summer for the live show so i wanted to get a head start with some european languages make the traveling experience a bit easier and ella was saying you don't have to wait until you land to start learning

1:04:29the languages before you get there just try babel but uh i couldn't find it anywhere so i'm uh building it i i presumed she meant build a tower oh tom no babel is a language learning app not a tower it's built for real life it's built for real life no vocabalists no verb charts real conversation practice and actually useful phrases no divine intervention from god either but they do have interactive dialogue personalized reviews even podcasts all designed to get you speaking quickly

1:05:04and confidently it's a learning app not a tower is one of my favorite sentences that does sound a little bit easier uh i'll admit yeah i'm terrible concrete concrete we're doing concrete tomorrow just keep it spinning keep it ready and if you've got summer travel coming up now's the time to start so that you can actually use what you learn on your trip right now babel is offering listeners up to 60 off go to babel.com slash learn everything that's babel b-a-b-b-e-l dot com slash

1:05:42learn everything for up to 60 off rules and restrictions may apply ella what are you what are you doing we don't need that anymore oh i'm just curious you you'd almost finished it's just just just a little bit higher what did i learn god damn it why did i get english hey what's up ella oh i'm just looking at this photo of caroline and i from my wedding

1:06:15it's so nice but like just hugging each other it's just like such a good memory oh that's such a nice memory wait why are you sad uh it's my new phone um it's too small to see any of the pictures on it is quite a small phone i mean it's lovely but it's tiny it's so small i'm trying to stay off the apps and so yeah uh-huh but you still want to be able to appreciate the pictures you took yeah yeah i mean you don't have

1:06:48to live like this ella with the tiny little screen if you want to relive moments from your wedding you can use an aura frame you can just download the free aura app or text photos straight to your frame yeah one of my favorite pictures on the aura frame and this is 100 true i'll show you guys is um all three of us not that it's a competition to see not that it was weird that yours was just two of you and and mine was all three but i love i love the fact that everyone in my family can add pictures to the aura frame and uh there are pictures i just saw one just now that i never realized my dad

1:07:25had taken it's so it's it's so it's literally just me and my mom at the airport for some reason but uh it does it does make my heart twitch because i was like i didn't even know this existed so uh big fan of of the aura frames and getting to uh lots of memes in here also that i like to throw on your frame that's so funny that's so cute i i got my mom the aura it's spongebob it's spongebob yeah i got my mom the aura frame last year for mother's day and i do have the app and i upload

1:07:59whatever i want that her whatever i want to her frame and it's mostly just pictures of the cats you can add some of me i know that that would matter oh she would love that that's so funny my aura frame is very different to you guys every every birthday i go on my boyfriend takes me to either a zoo or an aquarium and therefore he then uploads photos of the animals and videos of the animals that we've seen onto the frame afterwards it's like a little zoo it's like a little zoo so i can remember my current favorite one is a video of some penguins swimming about it's just

1:08:34delightful it is to your point ella a great way to appreciate photos without it being tied to the torment nexus like other devices are torment nexus is such a good phrase but there's no way to doom scroll on the uh on the water frame which is really nice named number one by wire cutter you can save now by visiting or frames.com for a limited time listeners can get 35 off select frames plus free shipping with code learn that's or frames a u r a frames.com promo code learn support the show by

1:09:04mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions apply we should add each other as like able to share on each other's frames say what's the trivia show where dreams come true it's gotta be go fact yourself legend in the house we quiz celebrity contestants about topics they love then bring out surprise experts to delight and amaze and then finally tell us why you know and love the lyrics

1:09:35to the song knocking boots by candy man joining us tonight is a rapper and producer it's candy man this is among the greatest moments of my life this is one of mine too i love it that's go fact yourself twice a month every month here on maximum fun international waters is back baby do you like fun silly conversations do you like fun silly games we got them both and it's on international waters i am the host dave holmes this is a panel show that

1:10:11pits american and british comics against each other in a lively and hilarious competition what is gentleman's relish who is bagpuss why is the oscar meyer wienermobile so emotionally resonant and why does an american cheese have its own anthem get the answers and be left with numerous questions about that and so much more nonsense and or cod swallow twice a month here on international waters you can catch international waters on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts i could talk about space toilets forever um but i want to get into something close to my heart and

Spacesuit Sizing and Equity

1:10:51maybe more serious and and the question i posed to you at the start was why does something as seemingly simple as space suit sizes matter so much and i know you have a lot of experience with this katie so maybe you could just lay it out for us well i think everybody has you know a different passion of what they want to do what they can do and that changes throughout their life and they need to be able to have the equipment to do it right yeah and you know if you're a surgeon i mean now operating tables move up and down right but they didn't used to you know and for many years

1:11:22you know women and smaller people you know were compensating and the same is definitely true in the in the space industry and i think what's important to understand is that like this it's true i mean this suits are definitely designed for men or they were right and we had extra small small medium large and extra large when we were flying the space shuttle except they never did produce the extra small so we had four sizes of suits and i wore a small and i was a designated space walker on each of my two

1:11:55missions although no space walks were planned unless something dangerous happened and it's not really fair to hope for that yeah you can have a tiny bit for like inconvenient and inexpensive right but like a little antenna that doesn't come in clean the frozen pee off of the off the yeah yeah there we go but it's a lot of resources and it's dangerous yeah it's more dangerous to go outside right um so i didn't get to go outside but i certainly did a lot of time in the pool in a space suit and was considered quite capable and and certainly well above average um in terms of space walking hell yeah

1:12:25i did thank you um but then for the space station they decided that they couldn't afford the logistics of all the sizes of suits so they decided they're only going to have mediums and larges no extra larges and no smalls caroline's face well that decision as you can imagine did not did not last very long because a lot of the bigger guys couldn't fit in the large and so they brought back the extra large so they accommodated you could say and and actually the phrase that i that is really i think just

1:12:58terrible even to repeat is that the chief of the office at the time this was announced in a monday morning meeting and it wasn't a surprise i mean people knew this was coming i knew this was coming and but they said listen but don't worry because we've looked ahead at the manifest meaning all the missions coming up and who's scheduled for them and we have all the spacewalkers that we need and this affected to get rid of the small space suit it affected eight out of the 24 women at the time so that's a third of the women and what it meant was not just that you couldn't go to the

1:13:28space station and be one of the people on the long expeditions there's also space shuttle missions coming up to finish the assembly those are big space walking missions and so probably four of the you're going to have two pairs of spacewalkers so those are not going to be women either right or those eight women they're not going to be those eight women it's like a domino effect that it continues to it really is in essentially one seat there's one seat that would be perhaps able to be your seat you know and so that's really now you know you have to be sure and you have to be good at all these other

1:14:01things and it basically didn't happen and it went until we had a in going up to the space station we were going up with the soyuz so that is three seats that's two spacewalkers and one backup completely necessary right and so there's no position so you really can't go to the space station and plus they had said you have to be space suit qualified to go to the space station and so until the spacecraft going to the space station had one more seat four seats now you can have two spacewalkers a spacewalking backup and you can have a person who does not fit into the

1:14:32equipment that is being provided a woman that i know of they're all women right but i think that something that i hope your listeners will think about is this i am actually the smallest person at least so far to qualify in the medium space suit and i had a lot of um encouragement from from guys from you know from different men in the in the astronaut corps and women as well you know we think you have a good head for spacewalking you've got you know you did great in the small and let's see how we can

1:15:03get the the medium to work for you and in fact kathy thornton from my first mission said when they tell you and it is coming when they tell you that you have to be in a medium you let me know and we are going to figure out how you can train in that medium because the biggest problem these suits weigh 300 pounds the average the space suit that's what it weighs so even without all the stuff you don't need to practice everything the real oxygen tanks or whatever we have umbilicals we we practice in a swimming pool so they weigh you out so you don't sink but you don't float but for somebody who's really

1:15:38small in the suit you just have all this extra volume and it's like you've decided that you it's like you've strapped an exercise ball to your middle but then sometimes it's more down at your hips and sometimes it's over your back and and wherever that exercise ball of air is that is that knows exactly where it needs to go and that is the surface and so it's about the training which is you know to be practical has been in a swimming pool but if you can't train and show that you yourself and your crew that you can do it you're not going to get to go so um i i did uh pass those qualifications and

1:16:14was considered a spacewalker we never did get to go for a spacewalk but what i'm most proud of is that i think i help people understand that they needed to look at people differently i mean even to the i mean people people would just look at me and go you don't fit in a medium do you and i would make little jokes i would be like well first of all i grew up with a different idea of eye level and second do you think that me these would actually fit in a small space suit i would think again about that clearly it's not something you're going to understand anyways a joke around is this

1:16:49still a problem the um the small are they spending smalls up now or is it still and you assumed you have to be trained in a medium to do spacewalks now it's still that you have to be trained in a medium and a large to be doing spacewalks still my understanding is is that the the 2019 the first all-female spacewalk which was it canceled in the end because they didn't have the right sizes because someone had trained in the medium but then when they got there it turned out that that it wasn't appropriate for them in the end i'm not sure the details of that you're on you're almost correct

1:17:22what it is is that ann mclean had trained in the medium and in the large hoping to be able to have that flexibility for you know for which who's doing spacewalks when and how to who's you know who's going to be good at which ones and um and so she was hoping to add that flexibility but she went for her first spacewalk in the medium and it take knowing that you are gonna you know upend the apple cart you know a lot of plans that people had i mean just happened that those people got assigned and it was going to be um jessica and ann right at the time it wasn't that they planned an all-woman spacewalk

1:17:57but oh yeah the fact that they couldn't do one was because ann courageously stood up and said you know for safety i can't be in a large which means i need the medium you know and and that means that we can't have and they didn't have they have two mediums on the station but they weren't both ready and somebody made a remark like oh couldn't know they're out of the dry cleaners but your spacesuit is your spaceship it is your personal spaceship and it is your survival and there's a there's a lot to check out to make sure it's really ready and it really does take a while

1:18:30to do and it's a really busy time up on orbit and it it's a time they didn't think they needed to check out both medium suits okay it's it's unfortunate she had to be put in this situation to make that call i think one of the things i remember so clearly when you i've heard you tell this story before is uh one i remember so clearly when you were like you're like oh yeah and so they got rid of the extra large and the extra small i was like okay and then you were like but then they brought back the extra large and i was like what the and i remember so clearly because uh uh friend of the show simone yetch was also there and she just shouted out when you were talking about the

1:19:04small she was like it's less material it shouldn't be like surely it weighs less actually we lay we weigh less yeah yeah hey exactly but i think that um you know when you if you're gonna you have this small group of astronauts and you need to make sure that people can all do all the things and i mean there's just so much redundancy that's needed but the point i keep forgetting to make is that at the time i mean there's only one line to go to space and i can and that's why in my book it says making

1:19:37change is one of the things that it's an astronaut's guide to making change each of us has our own way and i'm not that much of it like argumentative you picked me you know how big i was where is my spacesuit right and they would be like well we don't have one right now but you know we're we're working on it and they are working on it for future missions that to have a larger variety of sizes but i would still be waiting on that bench i went to the space station in december 2010 the day after my 50th birthday and i was up there till 2011 if i waited until the very first flight where uh it's

Adapting Equipment and Team Champions

1:20:14not the first flight with humans in the spacex capsule and maybe it's not the second i would have waited 11 years to go on a flight if i couldn't be qualified in spacewalking so it had really and then there's some people that are still waiting for their turn wow who fit in that category i believe so you just you lose these you lose people's capabilities such such great capabilities by by just assuming well i guess not everybody's gonna it's not that everybody has to do everything but this is a part of your job it's part of when you think about who the leaders in the

1:20:46office are going to be they're going to be people who who've been leading in all the things right and if you're not one of the leaders then you're i mean how do you make sure these voices are heard when their presence is not missed yeah yeah so it's hard to argue about it i mean first of all it might be and it's not just space that you could be you know in a certain firm where you're working there's kind of one usually just kind of one path to get to the the upper level you know through a certain group of people and my way is not so much to be argumentative but more creative like

1:21:22let's all let's all work on this together and so i went to spacewalking meetings i made sure that people knew that i was there to figure things out and to work on it and that i appreciated every bit of help and you know making it more like a part of the team somebody was very negative to me at one point about um you know katie that was a bad run it was actually extremely bad run and i was just i just couldn't understand why everything was so hard and it turns out that they had actually built my spacesuit incorrectly by a few inches in my arms so i'm like a little tyrannosaurus right and this

1:21:56person was like katie you should never be in the spacesuit again after a run like today i'm like you know i have been doing spacewalking you know in the pool for more than 15 years above average wow i say we look at the big picture here and let's see what happened if something's wrong with the suit or the equipment's changed and i have to figure out how to adapt to that but you know and then i said you know you're clearly a person who understands the importance of how the suit fits and because you are a very experienced facewalker and so i need someone like you or someone that you trust to

1:22:31understand somebody like me needs the best suit fit that i can get given that it's not going to be a great suit fit and so that person became part of my team and a champion so there's different way and you shouldn't have to do that you know you should you shouldn't have to work so hard to be invited to participate and bring your point of view and we're certainly not going to solve the challenges if we don't make sure that people feel at home at the table doesn't mean i didn't love like really working there literally every day except that day of the really bad run yeah i mean seriously i loved working

1:23:05there i love the people that i worked with but it's so easy to not understand who's not being seen but i was going to say that i think all of us can be an example and each of you are an example i mean you i i wish to have been listening to the podcast for longer because i do like to know about things and i like it when people tell me and i just think you have this joyous wonderful podcast where you know each of you come from different directions and you ask such clever interesting questions and you know it's really i mean i just think by being yourselves you make it okay for everybody to ask whatever

1:23:38question they really have and that's so important oh that's going on the website that question katie thank you so so so much we could pick your brain for another hour truly easily i have so many questions still we'll just have to have you back on again one day how terrible i would love to come back on but you just let me know you know who else you need to talk to and i will i will try to convince them bribe them blackmail them or whatever uh we appreciate it tremendously actually you know garrett reesman i want to say is the funniest

Astronauts for America and Signoffs

1:24:17astronaut guy oh let's see how he doesn't improv we'll see could be uh katie do you do you have any um uh plugs or shout outs that you would like to obviously plug your book but any any social media accounts any where where people can follow up with you um most of my handles are under at astro underscore katie spelled weird looks like caddy c-a-d-y um so those are most of my my handles are are under that and i love to hear from folks i'm not

1:24:47the most efficient at answering back but i'm trying to be better because i really do i love to hear what what people think and i would also just say i meant to to tell you guys there's a new group of retired astronauts you might want to interview some of the other ones too we didn't really get to this today but there's about a there's more than a hundred of us that have banded together we are in this uh non-partisan group and we're all standing up for i think what all people need which is our constitution the rule of law and most importantly evidence-based decision making yeah and so we're going on a big college tour this uh this fall to make sure that younger young

1:25:24people college students and other young people understand that whatever their perspective is democracy is not a spectator sport and their voice and their perspective is important wow incredible so we have a tagline we have a tagline which is um going to the polls is a small step for you but a big step for democracy all right it's cheesy but it's good uh-huh it's good it's not pokemon go to the polls but it's something

1:25:59katie did you say the name of that group oh yeah it's called astronauts for america written all out astronauts for america.org and we're we're hoping that people want to hear from us and understand that you know once you leave the planet you look back i mean you realize everybody lives there and that we're all the same and we're hoping that by standing up and in talking about our own perspectives everyone will realize their perspectives are important amazing fantastic editor tom here with one more plug because this is the last episode before the next

1:26:32hour finding show if you're in new york city please join me for the silly science game show that i do which will have such amazing guests as the comedian lucas arnold macy gilliam from morning brew and friend of the show coming down all the way from toronto canada sabrina cruz if you don't know about the show i build increasingly elaborate games based on real scientific studies for our players to play it is a delightfully nerdy time the next show is friday august 21st at 7 p.m you can find all the

1:27:03details at our findings show.com and you can use code lle at checkout for a discount also if you're in new york city the next thursday after that um i will be performing on abolish everything the wonderful nebula comedy debate show uh you can find the details for that at tomlum.com slash abolish so today we learned about the exciting and mundane things you train for to be an astronaut how a week-long bed rest study in hawaii is a lot more stressful than it sounds

1:27:36we learned everyone now loves the pro tip of how to take your helmet off uh we've learned about feet peeing and sweating in space uh how everything's a liquid or a solid or the interface of the two uh we also learned how easy it is to miss who's not being included and also the importance of seeing yourself in spaces and literally in space and you can join us all next time where we will learn about everything let's learn everything is a maximum fun podcast hosted and produced by ella hubber

1:28:16tom lump and caroline roper with editing and music by the wonderful and talented tom lump uh one quick note katie before you leave i think yeah i think one time used uh unless i misheard you i think you one time made a mistake i used to make a lot which is you said caroline oh it's caroline like sweet caroline caroline yeah caroline it's the british way of saying so if i could just get you saying caroline just in case absolutely caroline was caroline might know and caroline's probably

1:28:51even part of that beautiful sorry can we get a quick line of you saying like caroline is so wonderful uh caroline is the best host just like little things like that it's clear that caroline is like way smarter than tom don't you think i'm not saying anything i don't have skin in this game not that bar is so high but oh my god katie is coming here katie gets this katie gets it man

1:29:22um thank you funny i'm never gonna shut up about this moment oh my goodness tom you know i love you right no it's the vibe of the podcast maximum fun a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you you