Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Of Space Stations 20150829

Be an astronaut. I made it down there to work as an engineer for a few years. In 1990, i got selected by nasa to be an astronaut. Omissions,our space i was on spatial colombia three times and spatial tout discovery wants. Space, iose 44 days in got to go around the earth is 692 times. I can confidently tell you, i have seen your hometown, wherever you are from. I have seen it. We have a program tonight on space stations, a little bit about the history of space stations. I told you i flew on four Space Shuttle missions. I was actually assigned to four Space Shuttle missions, on one of the space station missions. On the sixth crew, number six going up to the space stations. Back in 2002. I trained for 2. 5 years, and two months before launch, one of the nasa doctors pulled me for medical reasons. I never made it to the space station but i trained extensively on it. I spent two years in russia in preparation for that. I also worked for three years as a space Station Program scientist. In that role i was responsible for planning and coordinating all of the science activities done on the International Space station. I know little bit about the space Station Program. I hope you will enjoy this program here tonight. With that, we will go ahead and get started. I have a website if you would theres antact me, place there you can contact me if you ever need any more information. Were going to talk about the history of space stations. Im going to start off by talking about something never flew. In there a lot of them early 1940s and 1950s, Science Fiction, a lot of space stations back then. Programs, a few other the air force, u. S. Air force had a space station the never flew. We will talk about some of the early ones. And then we will talk about the Russian Space station from the soviet union. The first space station ever. We will talk about the series of missions and then we will talk about skylab, americas first space station launched in 1973. We have a great example of that we will point out some of the exhibits, so for your next mission your next visit, you can a look at these things. And then we will talk about the reston space station the , andan space station mir the International Space station. And that i will talk about future space stations. What comes after the International Space station. We will talk about space stations that never flew. Constantinecture of , one of the fathers of cosmetics. Cosmo asthma not nautics. Is a pioneer. In germany, they think these are the fathers of the Space Programs. He did a lot of studies on going into space and in 1932, he published a book on going to the stars. You start to see some of his space Station Design here. To comet the first want up with a space Station Design. The first idea came from the gentleman i just mentioned. The problems of reaching the stars, you can see a little sketch in the opening cover of his book on the title page of an early space station. Design of theous space station was in 1928, right there. Nordion was a writer into the engineering work, working on this design. The name meant the living wheel, designed to be 164 feet in diameter. It had three main parts, to solar power dishes to collect solar energy to power the thing. Habitation ring in the outer layer, and a freefloating machine module, this was just an area that would take advantage of the electricity generated and do whatever you do, whatever experiments or work you are doing would be done in the machine module there. This is one of the first real designs. Its intended to spend and create artificial gravity. He will talk a little bit more about that. This is from one of the Science Fiction magazines in the early 1920s and 30s. Its a good one of his design. You see the solar power generating stations here. The machine module, im not sure what the machine module is doing, but it has a lot of electrical cables running to it. Somethings happening in the machine module there. This is the living area again for the astronauts. Must be occupants, people coming up to visit the space station. With special thick glasses, like a nuclear test. Braun workeder von on some designs. It was one of the german rocket scientists that we brought to the United States following world war ii. He developed the beach you rockets, a great example of the air and space museum, you can see one of the beach you rockets were brought to the country after world war ii. Design he did for the u. S. Army in 1946. You had 150 foot diameter space station here. , communication and tennis, probably some solar collectors as well. Around, was to spin creating artificial gravity. There are a couple of people in the cutaway. Early on, we didnt know zero gravity was good or bad. Most of the early space stations are designed to spin it to create artificial gravity because thats for the human body. Our International Space station today, you will notice, does not spin. We dont want it spinning, we dont want to create gravity we are using more like a Science Laboratory. We want to do experiments and zero gravity. But early on, most of these spin. 1952, warner von braun refined his proposal, it looks a little slicker, more modern. It became known as the wheel. This is the classic 1950s era space station. You will see the same picture in the shuttle gallery at the air and space. Had ana rotating, he elevator hub you can go to the central section that had zero gravity there. Or you could take an elevator down to the outer ring. You would artificial gravity created there. There were different segments here for communication, for power systems. It was separated by function all around the ring. Just showing you, theres controls, they had Scientific Activities going on. They had spy capabilities, monitoring the earth. In photographic screen control there. In 1955, working with walt disney, warner von braun came up with this space Station Design, called the s1. Ofs was from a series programs the walt disney put together, a series of three of these man in space, going to the moon. Been going beyond, talking about trips to mars. Back in this time, the idea of the space station, it would be in orbit around the earth. The space station was away points, waystation for going to the moon. Going to planets. If you were going to travel to the moon, you would launch off the earth, go to the space station, get your supplies. From there you would head out to go to the moon or mars. As a wayways viewed station, a waypoint in space. Refuel your rockets there. Early on in the 1950s, the space stations were integral with rockets going up and down. That was the idea with the Space Shuttle. It was going to be going up and down to the space station. Von braun had the idea of combining those two. Spacee shuttle without a station wasnt very useful. In the space station without a shuttle wasnt very useful. The whole idea was to have both of these in concert. It didnt exactly work out like that. We use the spatial open to the point where we completed terminatednd then we the spatial program. Now we are not shoveling up and down, we are russian rockets today. We will talk about that in a little bit. Let me see. Its not advancing, hold on. Ok. Between 1955 in 1960, walt disney developed a ride at disneyland, i think in tomorrowland called space station next one. X1. It was a ride where you would pass over a model of the United States and get to see what the earth would look like from 50 miles up. These programs in the 1950s with von braun and walt disney did a lot to popularize space travel. They made it very understandable board. T everybody got on they thought that was those exciting stuff at the time. You could look into the future and see america from outer space. These are some pictures, theres a number of childrens books, you can find these still lovely markets, old books on the early space Station Design. And all look like wheels discs. They have little mini shuttles going back and forth with astronauts in them. , butoks like flower petals they are docking ports and air locks for the crew to go in and out on. Pictures with construction, this guy has hooks , like captain hook. To hold onto things. Would are standing likely , this could be a skyscraper in manhattan that they are building. Its not exactly the way we do it today. People standing on the space station like it is has gravity instead of floating around. In the Science Fiction literature, space stations were really big in 1950s. This is one from 1957. Another one from december of that year. Beautiful artwork showing the use space station wheels. These disk type space stations. Always spinning. They were firing rockets out to other destinations. Book by one of the early german rocket pioneers. He worked with foreign braun a little bit. This is one of the classic wheel designs for 1958. They get a little more slick, a little more streamlined. This is a picture from the same book, 1958. It looked like these little tadpole pods that are assembling your space station for you. They have mechanical arms, they are putting the metal sheeting on your station as they construct it. At thisthey figured time, construction wouldnt be as hard as it turned out to be. We wouldnt do anything like this, we are not taking up each individual piece and malia together up there. For the current kneeling it together up there. Current model, we put them together like tinker toys. Withgeneration is familiar Science Fiction movies that came out in 1968, Stanley Kubricks 2001, space odyssey. It featured a beautiful space station the see right here. It had a rotating wheel, again, to create artificial gravity. Von brauns on early designs. If you other space stations that didnt fly, that were under design goodyear had an inflatable wheel design. They worked on that from 1961 to 1962. This one was a 30 foot diameter research model. I will show you a picture. The other one was going to be i think 100 50 feet across. It was designed for three to 10 astronauts. Was the diameter proposal and they were going to fly. They would launch it in a rocket, with a got to space it would inflate, boom. I love step 6 and is ready. Just like that. [laughter] greatomas this is a design, but he didnt fly. This is the workers working on that small prototype. Im not sure if this is in akron, ohio. They are working on a rubber space station. It sounds kind of crazy, but we are about to launch an in theble module up space station. I will talk about that one at the end. This is 45 years later, were going to do something similar. Finally we have u. S. Air force was interested in space stations for obvious reasons. And to have a platform and space to look down at planet earth. Here is one of the early designs from 1960. I love this picture. See florida, there are the keys. You see a hurricane. They are photographing the hurricane. I think whats going on, the eye of the hurricane is right over cuba. 1960s, this is no accident. Is a major platform for spying. You can spy on every country. 2 got shot down, but no ones when to shoot down an orbiting space station. The air force was very interested in having a manned space station. Did create a program called amanda orbiting laboratory program. This was proposed in 1963, and december of 1963 the use of titan rocket, and a gemini capsule we were using at that time to send their first , air and space has a gemini for you can see that refurbished right now. It will be back on display soon. The crews would launch in a gemini capsule and had a feature in the heat shield, they had a hatch when they get over the hatch, crawl right through that, and below was the space station with a lot of cameras, sensors, places down here for developing film, things like that. Any astronauts on this program, but they did do one test launch in november of 1966. They took the gemini to capsule that flew in space, unmanned, just to test out the capabilities of the heat shield and the capsule itself. The air force took that and drove a whole, put a hatch in the heat shield, and launched it and recovered it. They just wanted to know if you drill hole and put a hatch in the heat shield, is that going to damage the spacecraft or heat shield . They successfully flew this mission, it worked out well. Astronauts,ected 17 u. S. Air force astronauts for the mandatory Reading Laboratory program. A member of that team, he was one of my instructor pilots in houston, texas. Hes done at the Kennedy Space center, and there are a number of shuttle astronauts, hank hartsfield, bob obermeyer, bob crippen, a number of these. Not all of the air force astronauts, but a number of them went on to fly on the spatial program. So none of those flu. Weve been talking about Science Fiction and other programs that were proposed. I will develop work, but they never materialized. Lets talk about Everything Else. These are things that flew. This is a series of space stations of the soviet union built. Between 1971 and 1991. Almost 20 years. This is what the space station looked like. It was launched on a proton , it wasall configured one large volume in here. In the back portion against sleeping compartments, dining tables for them. They had a number of control stations for controlling the space station. It had a number of large windows for looking back and earth, taking pictures. The very first version of this, they flew seven different salyut 1 was stations, and salyut launched 44 years ago. It was launched by the soviet union, the soviet union started focusing on space stations kind of when we were landing on the moon. The space race, and they wanted to do some indifferent. They said we were never interested in going to the moon, we wanted to build space stations. They started doing Something Different with the salyut program that the United States was not involved in. We were landing astronauts on the moon, they were developing space stations. They flew a total of seven of these, as i told you. 1 was the first one. The first crew to go up was the salyut 10 crew. It are unable to dock, so they rendezvoused and came back to earth. They had a second crew try to go up and dock, the salyut 11. They were successfully able to dock, they lived up there for 23 days. At the end of the mission they came back, and when they landed in comics down, they found all three astronauts were dead. Unfortunately, a valve opened up prematurely as the casuals reentering nanosphere, all the air got sucked out. The cosmonauts were not wearing spacesuits. It was a very small capsule, and to save room they didnt wear spacesuits. All three of them perished. When it first happened, they werent sure, was this because they stayed in space so long . Before this mission, the longest anyone have been in space was 14 days. On the gemini program. Here they stayed at their 23 days. But they soon realized a valve had open, they lost their comment perished. They went on to fly to whether other salyuts. It was part of a military program to have a military space station command orbiting laboratory at the air force was interested in. They had problems right after launch. It was going out of control, lost pressurization. Within a few days, he reentered the atmosphere. They were never able to send cosmonauts salyut to salyut2. 3, one crewyut successfully docked. 4, that launched salyut was from 1974 to 1977, 3 years. They had one crew, they spent 29 days up there. 18 crew spent 18 days 623 days. 5 with a military one, crews andwo successfully docked. Resume,o to the space they have one of the councils they were using for this program. And they have one of the film return canisters. Era, they couldnt downlink the images they were taking, so they were exposing film with the superpowerful cameras they had, they would put the film in a return canister, it would reenter the atmosphere and they would parachute down and get the film and develop it. And then be able to see secret sites around the world. They had one of the return film 5 onsters from salyut display at air and space. I would encourage you to take a look at that. From 19 57 toup 1972. Five crews were longduration crews, they would spend a considerable amount of time up there. The longest one was 185 days. Six months they were up there. They had 11 short duration visits. These were inner cosmos flights. We will talk about those in the next slide. 7,n they launched salyut from 1982 to 1991. They had 10 different crews. ,ix were longduration typically six month at a time. The t 15,light was of which ferried equipment over to mir. It was the one and only time when crews went from one space station to another one. You see the movie gravity, and George Clooney did that with ease. He went from the irrational space vision over to the Chinese Space station. But this is the first and only time its ever been done in the real world. 7 with dior printed in february of 1991. Even though you were in the vacuum of space, there is still residual atmosphere 200 miles up. It slowly provides drag, decreases the orbit. Whatever you put in low earth orbit like that will slowly fall back to earth. The space stations all come back down and burn up at some point. This one was dior in 1991. Most of it burned up over the pacific ocean. There are a few pieces that survived. I have a small sample of some insulation from salyut 7. It landed in argentina. Told her they had the short duration missions, like a week or so. It was part of a program called inner cosmos. The soviet union would take citizens from some of the soviet bloc countries and give them an opportunity to fly them in space. It was a great political move on their part. You see the countrys ear, checklist logic, poland, east germany, bulgaria, hungary, vietnam, cuba. Mongolia, romania, france. They would give all these soviet bloc countries the opportunity to send a cosmonaut, one of their citizens up into space. A really successful program. Heres the first cuban in space, the first east german. And i think the first mongolian. Lets talk about skylab. Spaces the United States station, from 1973 to 1979. Theas originally called Apollo Applications Program before they had the name skylab, and the idea here was they have a lot of hardware left over from the apollo Lunar Landing missions that they would try to utilize that for other purposes. Partat they did was take of a saturn five rocket that we did not use to go the moon, they took the third stage of the saturn five rocket and converted it into a space station, which we called skylab. Thats the skylab right here. If you go over to air and space, we have a skylab station, its a little different than the one the one that really flew, it has two doors. You can go inside it and walk through it and exit. We didnt have that the real one. The one on display was flight ready. We build to abuse, in case the first one didnt reach orbit, we had another one ready to go. When you go over there, you can see it. Its a flight ready one except for the holes in the doors. Thats what it looks like. They big volume here for the astronauts, is quite roomy. If you walk through that one, you can see a lot of the equipment there. When you go inside of it, take a minute to look straight up. You can see a huge volume at one end of the station. ,t also had a telescope mount great telescopes up there. We had solar telescopes as well to get some of the great images of the sun. Solar panels for generating electricity. This is how it looked. This was the design, built from the third stage of the saturn five rocket. Saturn five is built of big fuel tanks. This is liquid hydrogen right here, the bottom one is like oxygen. What they did was take the liquid hydrogen tank, which was bigger, and made this in the space station. The liquid oxygen tank became the garbage pits. It was a little hatch in the floor they can open up and throw garbage, and all the garbage was in this huge, huge volume of. They could never fill it up. They utilized the excess space. I wish we had Something Like that on the Space Shuttle, all of our garbage to stay there with us. When we landed i would ask people, when you open the hatch, does it smell . They would say no, but one day, someone confessed it really stinks. We have all the garbage and that would bring home with us. Skyline had a maid, they just threw the garbage in the oxygen tank. At air and space, you can see these two components. Oflaunched skylab in may 1973. This is one of the decals showing you some of the purposes, you have one person looking out towards the stars, and the other one looking back at her. That was the main purpose. Skylab was a scientific laboratory. We were going to do a lot of research. We were going to study the earth, study the stars, study the sun and do research on life science, what happens to the human body in space, and how to grow plants, what happens with animals . We did a lot of Great Research during the Skylab Program. We had three Different Missions that flu. The first was for 28 days, the recordbreaking flight at the time. The second crew stayed up for 56 days. Then we had a third crew of three astronauts that spent a total of 84 days. Launched the skylab, during lunch at some point, there was a problem. Some of the micro meteorite from the peeled away station during launch. It ripped off a second solar panel. They should have been another one, but that got ripped off. Because we had in the section right here, we lost a lot of our thermal shielding, as soon as the station got to orbit, it started overheating. It didnt have all the thermal protection. In the sunlight of space, normal temperature outside is about 250 degrees fahrenheit. Benight time he gets to 200. So the station was exposed to a lot of heat and started getting too hot for humans. Before they sent the first crew to go up there, they had to figure out a way to patch this and bring the temperatures down. Decided right off the bat, were going to build a little sale of reflective material l of reflective material to reflect the heat and cool down the station. They use the same hardware for the skylab mission, they didnt need the big saturn five rocket, they used a smaller saturn one b. Samewanted to use the launchpad. So this rocket is considerably shorter than the saturn five area so they built a platform and called it the milk stool. It looks like the thing for milking a cow. They put the rocket on top of that so the astronauts, when they enter the capsule, it was all the same level. Like we have been doing for years with Lunar Landing missions. This is on pad 39 b at the Kennedy Space center. Theres the launch of the first crew going up into the space station. Their main mission was to open the thing up and see if they can repair it. And get functioning. Is the space station. They put this big shade, they had little airlock inside, almost like an umbrella. They posted through the hole and opened the shade up. That provided enough cover and shade to cool down the space station. Within a day or so, it was cool enough for the astronauts to go inside. And begin their mission. They had pretty good accommodations, its a big volume there, almost as big as the auditorium here. Areas,ve nice dining much better food than we had during the mercury, gemini, or apollo programs. This is a win enjoying a nice meal. They had heated trays they can put food containers and there, he them up. It looked more like a meal at home, not quite, or that then squeezing the food out of tubes like we did with john glenn early on. Can up withb, they the idea, we need a shower in space. You can see this when he walked through the skylab module. It was a collapsible cylinder,hey would attach it to the top the astra would go inside and pull up the cylinder and you had one hose with water, you could spray yourself, lather yourself up and then spray some more water, rinse yourself off. The problem with this is with all that water, doesnt drain to the floor like a dozen or shower at home. So the water just floating all over. Inside the shower, that was a little vacuum cleaner nozzle. After they would shower, they would take this vacuum and suck up all the water. Then they could put it away. It became too cumbersome to do this. I think they tried it out for a day or two and said this is no good. The astronauts improvised in just use it as kind of a container, like a giant bathtub. Typically what you do now on the Space Shuttle with the space station, we do a sponge bath. Soap, youme ruthless have hot water and you can mix up a bag of hot soapy water and put it on a washcloth. You can give yourself a sponge bath. For washing your hair we have special shampoo called no rinse shampoo. It doesnt need any water, you just scored it in your hair, work up a ladder, take a towel, and pat it dry. A long, given procedure and skylab, we said we dont need that. I think when we send astronauts to mars, they are not going to have a fancy shower. We will be doing Something Like this as well. This is joe kerwin, medical doctor on the first skylab mission. Hes getting ready for bed. Small sleep compartments, everyone had a little bit of privacy. This doesnt look very comfortable, but he is doing some sleep studies and they have those sensors just a measures brain waves there as he is sleeping. On each of the skylab crews they had a medical doctor because one of the Important Reasons for the skylab pros and program was to do medical experiments on astronauts to see what happens to the human body in space. This is probably joker when giving heed conrad, the third man to walk on the room walk on the moon, and examination. This is getting a haircut in space. To worryn did have about getting a haircut. He was up there for foreign half hours. On my missions, was up there for two weeks. You dont have to worry about that. When you were up in space for six months, four months, you have to worry about a haircut. Came up withthey during skylab. The russians do the same thing. Even during the early salyut program. One Person Holding a vacuum cleaner, he just told it like that. The other astronaut with a pair thecissors, cuts the hair, ideas it all gets sucked into the vacuum cleaner and doesnt float around and get into anybodys eyes and you dont read that in. We do the same thing today on the International Space station. Had to do a lot of exercise. The longer you are in space, the more exercise you need to do. We lose muscle strength and bone density up there. This is conrad, the commander on the first mission. He had an exercise bike. You can see this when he walked through the module. Part of thertant skylab space station was just looking at the air. During the apollo program, we studied the moon. They say we went to the moon we discovered the earth. Some of those first pictures of the earth is a blue ball in space. It really motivated us to study the earth more. After the astronauts brought back those pictures, then we started earth day here. There was a great earth focus on the skylab missions. We also did a lot of experiments studying the sun. It had great solar telescopes looking at solar flares. They are still analyzing some of that data. They just collected so much, so many images of the sun on this mission it was quite unique. Lot of the animals and plants up there. This was a student experiments, one of the students proposed we fly so spiders to seek and spiders build a nest in zero gravity. This is a spider called arabella , a spidernaut. The first time a tried building a nest was ugly and disorganized. Within a few days, it adapted and started approaching what it would do here on earth. On one of my missions, i flew with some rats in a small container. The first day i opened up the container in these rats were plastered on the edge like what happened . Three days later, these rats were floating around, you almost Stevie Little smiles on their faces. Athink everything takes period to adapt. Astronauts take a few days to adapt a zero gravity like rats were spiders. There were amazing feats of strength. Have a lot of fun. Im going to show you a video clip to elaborate in a second. The skylab three crew, like this, when they went to come back to earth, they left this alien looking figure on the bicycle. They didnt tell the other crew. Whoever was first going through the hatch must have. Double take. Pranksre some of the that get played the dont hear a lot about. Theyre kind of funny. 8, 1974, the final crew returned from skylab. Cap sewall, again, thats an air and space in the apollo gallery. Its mounted under the ceiling. I encourage you to take a look at it. Its a great one. This brought the Skylab Program to an end. Nasa had plans to try and salvage the skylab space station. We had three crews go up, it was still in good shape so we didnt have any more castles away to get up there. Nasa was hoping to get the Space Shuttle flying and maybe we can utilize it again. Develop a reboot capability, slowly, space stations fall back to earth. Skylab was slowly coming back down. It was a race against time, if they could get the Space Shuttle flying with a reboost module, they could boost it up to a higher orbit. Unfortunately, the shuttle was delayed a little bit, they had problems developing the main engines and other issues with tiles sticking. During this time, we had really high solar activity. When you have high solar activity, it interacts with our atmosphere and expands the atmosphere little bit. There was more drag on skylab. Eventually, he came down before we could get a Space Shuttle up to it. On julyback to earth 11, 1979. We had no control over this. It was going to come down wherever wanted. It passed over like 60 of the planet. You have no control. It could hit washington, d. C. , it could hit moscow. You didnt know where this thing was going to land. The highest probability was hitting in the ocean, but we didnt know. I love some of the advertisements there. Skylab is coming down, and so are our prices. Everyone took advantage of this. I bet many of you are member when it came down. This is something ive seen. Someone came up with a protective helmet for skylab. Poster onrdboard, a the backside they have the helmet. You could cut it up and put it together. It had some great features. One of them was a special skylab Early Warning spite on top of it. It says here if a chunk of skylab hits you, it will provide you with. 00193 nanoseconds of warning. Its coming down. [laughter] it landed inost of the South Pacific ocean. A few big chunks landed in the outback and australia. This is one of the huge i think its an oxygen tank the limited, currently on display at the u. S. Space and Rocket Center in huntsville, alabama. A big tank, six feet across or so. If this thing hit in a popular did area, you could do a lot of damage. After skylab got people thinking, we built space stations, we have to plan for a way to control them coming back to earth. A summary for you, launched in july 11,73, reentered 1979. It spent 2249 days in orbit. Occupied bys were these three crews. The efficiency of the space station was pretty low. It was up there a long time, we didnt utilize it that much. Milesveled 890 million and completed almost 35,000 orbits of the earth during that time. Really incredible. Ok. That was skylab. Look at the Russian Space launched in 1986, and was up there until 2001. Was launched february 19 by the soviet union, and consists of a core module, the baseball. This is the same module, almost spacecal, to the salyut station. The russians dont change things very often. Station utilize the module, the International Space station utilizes that same module. Call it the base block. If the service module. We have different names for it with different stations. But it is very similar, that same configuration you see here. Solar panels, they had a different science laboratories. The thing grew and expanded over time. Core of thebasic mir space station, just like the with other modules. Powered by solar panels, visited by crews launching in the spacecraft. It would launch from kazakhstan, typically through a tube. It was a two day trip to get to the mir space station. Thats the casual. You can see a great model of the said aaron space with the apollo g sawyers. Module, ae orbital toilet, some Water Systems of their first meeting, which is meant to survive and keep you alive and comfortable for the two day trip takes to get to the space station. At the end of the mission, the astronauts come back inside the casual and instead of splashing down in the ocean like we do in the United States, they land in kazakhstan and do a hard landing. They have little thrusters ago offered before you hit to slow it down, cushion and a little bit. Space station. It looks like one of your kids or grandkids had tinker toys and put them together. Its not slick, its not vontiful, its not like the braun wheel design, but it was very functional. It doesnt need to be aerodynamic or slick. It worked extremely well up there. And they could keep adding onto it, putting new modules is in needed them as they had the budget to do that another big part of the program was the Space Shuttle docking to the mir space station. We did these from 1990 five to 1998. The first one occurred in june of 1995, spatial and lantus atlantis went up and docked to the mir space station. When an american astronaut who launched to mir, and Space Shuttle atlantis brought him home and brought a new american to go up there. And these three years, we have a total of seven different astronauts go up. Seven went on board. Here is shannon, who grew up in oklahoma. She loved reading and took up a lot of books. Years, mir was falling apart. We got very congested. This is one of the astronauts writing an exercise bike. And with this picture in there to show you, it starts to look like your attic. Or maybe your garage at home. Its easy to take things out, harder to get things back down. You dont want to throw anything away that you may think you need in the future. Like a packrat mentality. It starts to fill up. Ashad some problems on mir well, 19 97 was a bad year. One of our american astronauts was on the station for for five months, they had a serious fire. They were lighting a candle, they have the special candles they give off oxygen. They supplement the normal chemically its produced. They ignited one of these and i caught fire and burned out of control and filled the whole space station. Filled with thick smoke. They had it on oxygen masks, it was questionable as to whether they were going to be able to stay up there. If you months later there was a spacecraft collision. One of the cargo ships was coming up to the survey station to bring new supplies and it collided with one of the modules called spectra. If you do solar panels, bounced around, and we had an astronaut hole up there that time. Where the collision occurred, that happened to be the area with a science module, and thats where they had set up an area to live, that was his little area. Whole, they the lost all the oxygen, they had to close the hatch and sealed at off area everything that mike took with him on that flight was kind of lost and could never retrieve any of that. I launched the next month on my last mission, i was up in space on spatial shuttle columbia in july of 1997. We passed about 30 miles from the mir space station. Mission control said if you look at your window at this time, you can see it go by. We are 35 miles away, it just zip to buy. Arab thinking about mike, even his toothbrush was stuck on the other side of that hatch. Here on the Space Shuttle, i had to toothbrushes. I took up too in case i lost one. Here was a colleague of their really roughing it, had no access to that. Ins is a cool picture i put solarir, show you a eclipse, what it looks like from space. The shadow of the moon backed on the surface there. Thats pretty cool. Only from the space station can you get this perspective. The mir in all of its glory, all of the components there. Just a summary, it was up there for 15 years or so. 5519 days in orbit. 4592 days occupied. A lot more efficient than skylab. They had occupied almost the whole time. It traveled 86,000 orbits, 2 billion miles this thing went around the earth. Visited by 28 longduration crews, the records stay on the mir station is a record that still stands, 437 days. Had 104 different people from 12 Different Countries visited. It was truly International Space station. It was very heavily utilized. Russia did not want to deal with this thing. It only to throw anything away that was still useful. Leaking, there was all kinds of freon floating in the cabin. It would open panels and there would be big pools of this caustic material floating. There was a lot of mold forming, a lot of moisture. It was really time to deorbit it, but they didnt want to do that. Nasa put a lot of pressure on them. They wanted to get the International Space station going. Russia was having some economic difficulties there. Dealingnt want them with two space stations. The International Space station and mir, so nasa put a lot of pressure on russia to do your bit and move on to the next space station, which is what they did. It reentered march 23, 2001. It broke up, most of it burned up in the atmosphere. A few heavy pieces landed. Most of it landed in the South Pacific. Lets finish up with the International Space station. It was launched in 1998, it still up there today. Of ideas at nasa for when the space station should look like over the years. This is a design from 1964. Heres one from 1969. Using an apollo capsule design. Tee,one looks like a golf its called the spider space station concept from 1976. It uses an external tank from the Space Shuttle as the core module there. Is a roofed space Station Design. Nasa worked on a number of designs throughout the 70s and 80s. And finally came up with one called space station freedom. President reagan at the time back in 1984 finally blessed this program. He called it the next logical step, if were going to move off planet earth and start living in space on the space station. Yearswly evolved over the into the International Space station. We never flew space station freedom, which was totally United States project. We brought in a number of international partners, the russians, canadians, japanese many Different Countries. This kind of morphed into the International Space station. Was calledodule sunrise. This is the promotion model. It was launched by the russians back in november of 1998. The United States, nasa paid for this module. We paid for it, the russians launched it. In space,had him up then we launched the next component on the Space Shuttle, called the unity module. This is the unity module, connecting the russian half of the station with the american european, japanese half of the station as well. Again, month after we launched this, we got the unity of their. It grew pretty quickly. This is a configuration in september of 2000, we got the unity module, this is the propulsion module. This is the service module, that the samek from salyut, configuration on the mir. Once we have the Service Modules there that had a living accommodations, oxygen systems, power systems, we sent up the first crew. The expedition one crew, exhibition 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Dig october 31, in a few days later on november 2, they opened the hatch to the National Space station. 2000, weveer 2, of had continued human presence on board the International Space station. With crews of 2, 3, to six and sometimes more than that. Not one moment have we had that space station not manned. Buildinghey started the trust were, adding solar panels. 2007, we got Canadian Arms right here. Added in 2008, 3 of the science laboratories. This is the real purpose of the International Space station. We have United States Science Laboratory called unity im sorry, called destiny. In the european science lab called columbus. In the japanese science lab called keep all. This has a robotic arm in addition to the canadian army. Arm. Nadian they have experiment platforms, they can put experiment outside the space station and expose material to the vacuum of space, to macromedia rights. Micro meteorites. In 2011, in the end of the shuttle program, we finished construction of it and declared it done. And as the way looks today, about the size of a football field. Its huge, its easy to see from earth. If you times every month it passes overhead. I have some sheets overhead, its going to pass overhead in little after 11 00 tonight, it will be visible for about a minute. Over the next 10 days, there are a number of opportunities where its visible from washington. I would encourage you afterwards to come up and get a sheet of paper and go out and look at the space station. Its pretty amazing. It looks like a bright star like venus passing overhead. This picture to show you some of the components. Im going to give you a feeling for who has built a space station. The red components were built by russia, the yellow components by the United States. We have the japanese module, science module here. The european module, and then italy provided a storage locker there. The canadian, the robotic arm on the station like we had on the Space Shuttle, the candidate arm. In 16 Different Countries, what amazed me most of the construction, we had europeans billing module, japanese building one, russia is modules, the United States, they all fit together. And they all work. When we started building this, i thought for sure there will be two or three modules were going to bring home. Because they didnt fit when you get them out there. We never had a chance to do with that check. Never had a chance to do a fit check. She wore on her second trip to the International Space station. This is their dining table in the russian module. They send up supplies. Fruit is the big item up there. Ship ever there is a cargo going up, the last thing they pack is the fruits and vegetables so when the crew open the hatch they can smell that. This is a picture on the mr space station. In the russian module they have a closet area and you take a sleeping bag, put it on the wall, they have a little window where they can look out at the earth before they go to bed. Is nikolai, one of the russian astronauts in his sleeping compartment, probably sending messages home. This is the space station toilet. People frequently ask a you go to the bathroom in space. They have a good model of this next to the space telescope. Underneath, there are giant fans and through the sound draft of air, the waste material is collected in the bottom instead of floating all over the base. There is a funnel on one and thing. That is where you there is a funnel on one end. That is where you pee into. There is a garbage can and the waste goes into the atmosphere and burns up. The urine we recycle. Our astronauts are drinking recycled urine right now. They have a urine. Fire. It sounds really disgusting they have a urine recycler. It sounds really disgusting, but if you have to leave earth you have to recycle almost everything. They take out all the bad parts of that and they end up with clean water that we can reuse. Exercise is really important on the space station. You lose your muscle strength and bone density. They have a treadmill you run on. They have these weights that put you down onto the treadmill so you can put force on your muscles. She wanted to run the Boston Marathon when she was on the internationals a station. Her official time was four hours, 23 minutes, 10 seconds. Her top speed beats everybody, about 18,003 miles per hour. [laughter] we have a bicycle ride called the odometer. They have one in the shuttle gallery. Pedal away. This is good aerobic activity. They have a series of weights. In the skylab we saw one astronaut lifting 500 pounds. We cant use free weights because they are weightless. We have a barbell with a series of springs and munchies you can get resistance bungies to get resistance. The one thing that stimulates bone growth weightlifting. This is really important exercise. We started flying 10 years ago and astronauts come back to earth in much better shape. They are still losing muscle and some bone but we are headed in the right direction. You can do squats. We put on shoulderpads. That is good for your lower back and hip area where you lose a lot of bone density up there. This is peggy whitson. She is growing some plants, doing science on board the International Space station. This is lettuce that they are growing. I used to love this. This is from bbc news. They have the headline, iss astronaut biting into spacegrown lettuce. Is that exciting or what . It is really noteworthy. If youre going to go beyond mars you have to be able to grow euro and food up there. We have done many experiments in the class. No one has grown this and been able to consume it. They let a lot of astronauts eat it. Theyre going to bring it back to earth. It is hard to grow plants in space because you do not have the volume that we have on earth. We dont have the lighting, the moisture. The fact they are able to grow lettuce is pretty cool. Im not sure about the headline. Its is not earthshattering but it is big news for future exploration. This is the crew up their right now, called expedition 44. The first crew was called expedition one. We have two russians and a japanese astronaut up there, so it is a True International crew. Sometimes there are canadians, germans. Scott kelly and mikael coleco. They are doing a oneyear mission. Its actually 342 days. It is not quite one year but i will give them the benefit of the doubt. Scott has an identical twin brother, mark kelly, who is married to gabrielle gifford. They are doing a twin study. Scott is in space for a year and they will look at changes in their dna and have a wonderful 11 direct comparison. The iss is funded by nasa or 2024. Nasas commitment by nasa through 2024. Nasas commitment runs out then. The russians arent going to throw a space station away. If nasa abandons it, i can see them jumping in and say, we will run it. What is next after the International Space station after 2024 . This is from one of the astronauts, greg. He is a friend of my and was on the space station in 2008 and sent me an email back one day and i want to read this to you. Up on the space station it seems so easy to go further. The station has such solid footing appeared that on this perspective it is hard to imagine that spaceflight wont become common practice in our time. It just does not seem like a big leap. On the ground it felt like Science Fiction. I hope it wont feel that way. Gain once i get back once you are up there, it is can do it. We i told you about the goodyear inflatable space station. They are developing inflatable habitats. We want to keep them up as a mini space station that is going to have tourists back can go up for a week or two. They are under contract. They are launching a model of is eight or and it 10 feet across. When it launches it will launch on one of the spacex commercial rocket launchers. Same thing happens with the space station as i showed you with mir. This will allow storage area this will allow you to see storage area. This will like to see the inflatable modules. We are probably thinking, inflatable module . I dont know if you want to be on that. That will give you confidence. This is a version putting a couple together, maybe commercial destination. We build little mini space stations and do special science activities. The chinese. We have not mentioned them all night. They have a space station of their called heavenly palace. Up there called heavenly palace. They had two cruz the first was 13 days and the second was 15. They had one of the first female chinese astronauts to go up. They had one female on each of the flights. Y similar toks ver the mirbased core module that the russians built for the International Space station. The chinese got a lot of the technology from russia. The capsules they used are similar to the soyuz. I have not seen the inside of this, but it looks similar to me from the basic module of russia and the soviet union. China hopes to build a larger space station around the year 2020. Call the large Modular Space station. It will have a core block like the mir space station and they will add different science laboratories on it to add different components. If we are looking further out and talking about icing space, there were ideas colonizing space. There were ideas for this. One of the professors and ,erospace named jared oneill wrote a book called the high frontier. It is about colonizing space. I like this one. They are having a wine and cheese party here. [laughter] someone on a hang glider. Nice rivers. They are spinning, creating artificial gravity. These ideas are not totally new. This is in a book from 1959 called the know was arc of space. They have lakes and rivers the noahs ark of space. They have lakes and rivers here. This is a quote from nasa administrator mike griffin from 2005. He said in the long run, a single planet species will not survive. If we humans want to survive for millions of years we must ultimately populate other planets. I know that humans will colonize the solar system and one day go beyond. If we are going to do that, all the work we are doing today on the space station, what we learn with growing plants up there and having lifesupport systems supporting us, that will all help us in our efforts to colonize space one day. Sooner or later, we will need to be lannett earth. That is a little about the history of space stations from sciencefiction days to current International Space station and looking ahead to future colonization. Why dont we open it up for questions to see theres anything you would like to ask . [applause] thank you very much. Thank you all. Questions, if you will come over to the microphone, dont be shy, come on down and ask your question. You mentioned having spent two years in russia. To the extent it is possible to generalize, can you compare and contrast and the soviet Russian Space programs . Design philosophies, tolerance for risk, and Research Emphasis . Mr. Thomas i was amazed. I did spend two years being trained in the russian soyuz craft and on the russian components of the space station and the design is so similar. Where we have a valve, they have a valve. Where we have a redundant valve, they have that. Over pressurization. The systems were so similar that it needed it easy for me to learn their system. It is very similar to what we have done in the shuttle. Using lithium hydroxide pull out Carbon Dioxide there were so many similarities. The russians tend to build something, they keep it simple, they make it jerry buss they make it very robust, and they dont tend to change it. With minor modifications, they are still flying that today on the International Space station. The United States, we are big into new and different and always making it more modern. We Push Technology when we do that. It is not all bad or that is the difference in philosophy. The soyuz capsule they use today is not much different than when they first launched it in 1967. Since 1967 we have gone through apollo, skylab, spatial. Soviet Space Shuttle. The soviet union or russia, they find something that works, they dont mess with it. They keep using it over and over again. We read about them finding an earthlike planet. The you think life could be on that planet . Mr. Thomas we have discovered over 2000 planets around other stars systems, which is amazing. We think lannetts are very common planets are very common. We saw some that we think are earthlike. One is bigger than the earth. They are the right size and difference distance from their star. It is not too cold, it is not too hot. It is called the goldilocks zone, where it is just right. We have seen some, but we think there are millions and billions of these. The Hubble Telescope zoomed in on a spot of the sky about a marvel. They took a long picture. In that one small part of the sky they found 10,000 galaxies. Each galaxy has maybe 10 billion stars. Each star has multiple planets. We think the galaxies are evenly distributed. There is nothing special about that one spot. You look at any area like that, you will find 10,0is nothing spt that one spot. You look at any area like that, you will find 10,000 galaxies or so. I think your has to be other light other life out there. There are number of planets. I think somewhere out there there will be other life were earthlike planets. We will not get to them with a superfast rocketship or wormhole. We need to build colonies that set out toward a star like that. If you head out towards that system, you probably arent going to make it there. It will be her kids kids kids kids. That is how we will colonize the local galaxy and maybe other galaxies in the universe. Many years down the road. Thank you for an interesting lecture. The present International Space station looks totally different from those early 1950s, 1960s concepts. What you think was really what do you think was really wrong with those concepts that the present one is so vastly different . Mr. Thomas the present station is different from the wheel design and it is driven by the function. The International Space station was designed to be a Scientific Research station. We can look at gravity, how plants grow, how the human body reacts. It is designed to study zero gravity affects. The early space stations were waypoints. You go to earth, youll launch, you go to the space station, you and from there you head out to the moon and mars. Because the function is different from a way station to a research laboratory, that has driven the configuration. It has a totally different purpose. If we go out to mars, we will build a different ship. We will spin it around to create artificial gravity. We have not solved that problem yet. We are Getting Better at it, but imagine you will have a centrifuge. You will need to spin things before we get gravity for astronauts. In terms of experiments that are going on right now, which ones do you think have the greatest promise and has the greatest potential in terms of being used on earth . In terms of the logistics of the controlork with mission when something comes up and someone has to answer something down here in logistics, is it a committee . Is it in houston, in moscow, or what . Mr. Thomas it is supposed to be run out the Johnson Space center. When we designed the program with all of the agreements, the houston, the that Johnson Space center control, the use will control International Space station and english with a language. We have two control centers. We have the Moscow Center and houston still controls the canadian and european components. We ended up with two different control centers. There are two different languages. If you are on the russian portion, you speak russian. If you were on the u. S. Canadian side, he speak english you speak english over there. Everything is into language. For american astronauts, they have to learn russian. Russians have to learn english. I was going to fly up with a crew of three with another american and a russian and i worked hard to learn russian. I wanted to make sure i could talk and communicate with my crew member. He did not speak much english so when we communicated it was in my bad russian. You have to be able to interact to get to know one another. Learning each others language and culture is very important. Station,on the space we do almost every field you can think of. We look at how flames burn. There are no convective forces. Flames dont come to a point like they do on earth. In space a flame will burn perfectly round. Science has studied things like this. They are trying to study the basic rings of combustion. How do pollutants and incomplete combustion, how does that happen . Maybe we can improve our Burning Properties on earth for power plants, automobiles, things like that. Astronauts lose their bone density in space. We are trying to figure out how keep it from happening. This has great applications here for Senior Citizens with osteoporosis. Also, muscle loss. Same thing for the elderly. Space,ou come back from you are a little dizzy and disoriented. We have a lot of vestibular problems when we come back. When i landed after being in space, simply tilting my head up made me dizzy like someone had spun the room when advertised rate of bones, radiation, spun the room 100 times. Bones, radiation, that will have application on earth. We had experience with fish. See how they behave. How they disturb and how they determine which is up. How does that affect us . It doesnt. Around the world, the idea that this is basic research and in the future we can learn something and get some application from that. All the Research Results have to be shared by all the parties, correct . Mr. Thomas not all the research has to be shared by all parties. There are a noble of commercial parties that are flying experiments. They have exclusive agreements. They pay nasa to fly it to the space station but the results are proprietary. Some of the research we have done, the researcher gets to publish it, but then it is supposed to be open you. A lot of the experiments they did on me are open for people to go back and analyze it again or use it as part of other studies. Thank you. Mr. Thomas youre welcome. Great questions. Thank you for the fascinating talk. It is incredibly gripping. Passese space station overhead i have never known to look upward. To see there is a manned station passing overhead, it is unbelievable. I have more than just rambling. I do have a question or you. I did not realize how big the station was on to you said it was the size of a football feel. Football field. How much is there a danger from micro meteorites or space debris . The larger the station gets, doesnt that raise the risk of something going wrong . Mr. Thomas yeah. Anything bigger than my fist, norad tracks it in colorado. And if any of those pieces get within a mile of the space station, we can fire engines to increase that so it is plus or minus a mile, so we can separate that. Anything smaller than my fist, we have no idea where it is up there. Fortunately it is a low probability event. The probability of some object and the space station being at the same spot at the same time is pretty low because they are in these altitude crossing orbits. Fortunately it is a low probability event. It will happen someday. On to my shuttle missions, we got hit in the window by a small piece of debris. One day i was out of the window and i saw a dog on the window. I thought it was some of my tang. I took a napkin and it was not coming off. There was a crater in the window. Something had hit us. During sunrise and sunset on the shuttle, when there is a low sun angle, i could see the impact. Whatever hit us vaporized and deposited on the window. It was seven inches across and it really reminds you that there is junk out there. They analyzed it will returned it when we returned to earth and they thought it was probably a flake of hate. Flake of paint. From one of the rocket boosters. Paintd throw a flake of to you and you would not feel it. That paint going 18,000 miles an hour will do serious damage. This will happen someday, but it has to not happen yet. It is a very low probability. We are tracking the bigger pieces of their. Up there. [indiscernible] mr. Thomas mr. Thomas people pop when theyrs land. They do not. If your ears pop in space, that means you have a leak somewhere. For the astronauts on the mir, they got hit by a cargo ship. They could feel that immediately. The training we do this for depressurization. Memorize those two emergency procedures. Everything else, we have a long procedure that we work through. We are trained to do that. They do not really prepare you. Here is what you do if you get hit by a media right. You treat it as a cabin lake. You dont care what kind of cap and leak. You are trying to save yourself cabin leak. You dont care what kind of cabin leak. You are trying to save yourself and the craft. What efforts are therefore cleaning up space junk . Recently there was a shooting down of a satellite by china. Im sure there is tons of concern about that. A lot of space to breathe in the aftermath space debris in the aftermath of that event. Mr. Thomas when we had rockets, gemini program, the upper stage of the rocket stay in orbit. You dont burn up all of your fuel. That fuel would heat up over time and the tank would burst rate everything would takes low. One rocket stage becomes 10,000 small pieces of shrapnel in different orbit that can hit you. For a big piece, you like a big piece because it will fall back to earth. It has more drag and will come down quicker. In the last decade or two, nasa and other countries have agreed that when you have a rocket stage, you vent it so you dont have catastrophic explosions. China did a test similar to the star wars program, shoot down a satellite, and i saw recent plots. The one satellite created 10,000 pieces of debris in orbit around earth. There is not much you can do except wait for that to slowly degrade and come back down to earth. Even at 300 miles above the earth there is residual atmosphere. Not much, but there is drag on all of these particles. Over time they will come back. There is no going out there and cleaning up. That is almost impossible to do. We are working on international ot doements to n that. It will hurt all countries. It will hurt the Chinese Space station as well. It is in their best interest not to do that. We are working in that direction , although you cannot control everybody. My other question was about see. Lets sorry. Mr. Thomas thats ok. If you think about it, come up. [indiscernible] mr. Thomas i use a kind word. I retired from nasa in 2007, but i turned a mated i turned terminated my employment at a maryland state school. They hired me to do an outreach program. I would try to get Young Students interested in math and science careers. My contract ended and today im selfemployed, do public speaking, and i still go to schools. I go to space camp and the Kennedy Space center. When you leave the astronaut program, that is a tough job to leave. How do you top that . I found another passion and it is helping the next generation. We have katie in the audience and she is the perfect age to be one of the astronauts to go to mars. We will send a crew to mars in 30 years. I will be 90. Nasa is not sending me to mars. Katie will beow, the first of her generation to set foot on mars. Even though i cant go, i want us to go to mars. I dedicated the second part of my career to do stem outreach to try to get Young Students excited and inspired to study math and science, because we need them to be the engineers for the missions going to mars at we need them to be the astronauts setting foot on the planet mars as well. Yes, i remembered my question. [laughter] the astronauts that go up, what are their scientific backgrounds . I guess some would be doctors or health scientists. Mr. Thomas astronauts have a wide range of backgrounds. We have a lot of military background. Scott kelly is a navy fighter pilot. We have a lot of our astronauts come out the military pilot pool. Maybe 1 3 of the astronauts are science astronauts, typically with phds. It is not required but most have them. Backgrounds are very we have astronomers, oceanographers, veterinarians, medical doctors. I am a material engineer, metallurgist, biologists. You think of some area of science and we probably have an astronaut with that background. Going to mars, maybe you want some people with geology background. When we went to the moon we looked at astronauts with geology background. They say the backgrounds are so varied and just because i am a materials engineer doesnt mean i will just work on that in space. I am a professional scientist. I am a trained observer. I worked on salamanders and rats and Everything Else while i was up there. I have quite a bit of interest in Space Science and that is why im standing here. Im curious about those who have field that, entering the basically shifting from one to another. From another area mr. Thomas from one to another . Yes, that was one part for me being an astronaut. I work on all kinds of things. I had to give a hormone injection with salamander. I did that with my eyes closed and looking away. I realized why i was in material engineer. I did it. You get exposed to all different areas. Picking brains to see what they are looking for so i can do a better job oup there. Is multidisciplinary and it is all fields of science. Yes . [indiscernible] ou think of the next Space Program . That thes hes asking space station is funded through 2024. What is coming up next . A is looking on researching the next generation of space craft. Space launch system rockets are bigger. 7. 5 Million Pounds of thrust. Nasa istems working on these to go to earth orbit. Possibly go to asteroid and a relatively nearterm destination is going to the planet mars may be orbiting,. Mars. Nding onbiting, maybe la one of the moons. There are plans to go beyond that. This has the capability of breaking earth gravity. The shuttle could not get out of orbit. It is too big, too heavy. The goalmouth to it the goal now is to explore deep space. I want to thank you for joining us tonight. [applause] thank you so much. And make sure you go out one night and see the International Space station pass overhead. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv, 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter at cspan history for information on our program. Recently, American History tv was at the society for historians of American Foreign relations annual meeting in arlington, virginia. We spoke with professors, authors, and graduate students about their research. This interview is about 20 minutes. Maria cristina garcia, a professor of american studies at Cornell University in ithaca, new york. You focus a lot on immigration, postworld war ii, cold war era. What you tell your students at this conference . Maria i tell them that probably everything they know about immigration and refugees is probably wrong. We have quite a bit of mythology about immigrants and our immigrant history. In my courses i try to te