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Community => Recreation Commons => Destination: Alpha Centauri => Topic started by: Buster's Uncle on February 21, 2014, 06:21:13 pm

Title: Don Thomas Shares Insider’s Perspective on Astronaut Experience
Post by: Buster's Uncle on February 21, 2014, 06:21:13 pm

Don Thomas Shares Insider’s Perspective on Astronaut Experience
Yahoo Contributor Network
By Carol Bengle Gilbert  22 hours ago


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White Room preparations before boarding Discovery.



Currently the Director of the Willard Hackerman Academy of Mathematics and Science at Towson University where he is responsible for STEM outreach, Don Thomas is a former astronaut who blasted off into space four times during his 19-year tenure with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He is one of 150 luminaries who share their expertise and insights with Washington, D.C., area students through the USA Science and Engineering Festival's Nifty Fifty Program.

The Nifty Fifty program aims to inspire students in the Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology fields. What was your own inspiration for becoming an astronaut?

I know so well that power of inspiration from my own experience. The day before my sixth birthday, I was in kindergarten, that's the day they launched Alan Shepard, the first American into space. In my elementary school, they brought all the students to the gymnasium; I remember sitting on the floor watching a small black and white TV that day, and we watched the launch, and as soon as it was over, I knew. I was hooked. I knew then and there what I wanted to do with my life.

A lot of kids had that same dream, but it's one of those things that I never let go of. The next year John Glenn launched into space. He was from my state of Ohio, and I watched his launch at the same school. Once he got into orbit, we went back to our classroom, and I remember looking out the window the whole morning just hoping to see John Glenn passing over Cleveland, Ohio. Little did I know you couldn't see him, he wasn't even over Cleveland, but my desk was right along the windows and I sat there the whole morning looking out.

And then Neil Armstrong, a few years later, landing on the moon, another Ohio astronaut. So I had these great role models, and it always motivated me to do my best and work hard in school, elementary, middle and high school. I wasn't the smartest kid ever in the class, but I worked really hard because I had this dream that I was chasing down.

Tell me about the education you undertook in hopes of becoming an astronaut.

After high school, then I went on to college and got my degree in physics. That's the minimum degree you need to be an astronaut. But I knew the competition was going to be pretty stiff, so I decided to go on and get my Masters and my Doctorate in Engineering. And then I started applying to NASA to get into the program once I got out of college.

I understand that the path to your admission into astronaut training was a little bumpy. Could you share your experience?

NASA selects new astronauts every two or three years. They pick a group of 10, 15, or 20, depending on their needs. A few years after I got out of college, NASA made that announcement, they're looking for new astronauts. I was all excited. I wrote away, got an application, filled it out, sent it in, and that year I never heard anything back from them. A few months later, I'm reading the New York Times, and there was a little article in there, and the headline was something like, "NASA Selects 15 New Astronauts." I saw that headline, and I thought, "That's kind of strange. They didn't call me."

I thought I was going to get in, and I didn't even get close. And that's when I realized this was going to be a lot harder than I ever thought. I thought by working hard, going to good schools, I was working for AT&T, a great company, I thought I'd be a shoe-in, but that wasn't the case.

After that disappointment, what did you do?

I didn't give up. I decided I'd try again. And two years later, there was another selection. I sent my application in. The second time I got a letter, a little postcard, back from NASA, and it said, "Dear Sir and/or Madam, thank you very much for your interest. We had a lot of good candidates. We didn't select you, but good luck in the future."

I looked at that thing and I said, "You know I'm not even getting close. My grandmother would get the same postcard."

That's when I decided I needed to do more to get noticed. So, I looked into the background of those they did select… and there were some clues there. Most of the civilian astronauts they selected were already working at NASA. Most already knew how to fly a small plane. And most knew how to skydive. So I decided, well, I'm going to learn how to fly a plane, and I got my private pilot's license; I learned to skydive; I learned to scuba dive; I taught a university course; [I did] all the things that NASA seemed to be looking for but weren't requirements.

Did you get in finally?

The next astronaut selection, I sent in my application, and this time they called me down to Houston, invited me down there to spend a week on medical tests and an interview. Out of the thousands of people- and they get five or six thousand applications for these astronaut selections- from all those applicants, they whittle it down to a hundred and then they bring that group to Houston for this week of medical testing and interviews. So I made the final hundred, and I was really excited about that. I passed all the medical stuff. The interview went well. I went back to my job in New Jersey and waited to hear the results.

I got more excited like a week or so after I got back from NASA. I had a lot of friends calling me up from around the country letting me know that the FBI had been calling them about me, that NASA was doing a security background check on me. And I thought this was great. I didn't imagine NASA could be doing that to all 100 people that they had interviewed. I thought they must have selected their final candidates, and this was the final check to make sure they're ok, good to go. So I was pretty excited, and it was with great anticipation I got a phone call about a month and a half later from NASA. They told me right out that they had a lot of good candidates, they didn't select me, but they wished me good luck in the future. And I hung up that phone, and I was like in shell shock. I thought I was in that year, and here they had turned me down.

And this is getting turned down three times. That third time, they even got to know me, interviewed me, and still they said no. I was so dejected from that. I was, I think, 32 years old at the time, and kinda decided I gotta give up on this silly dream of mine to become an astronaut. That's never going to happen. I probably should get another career…

I went to bed, and got up the next morning, and the first thought that popped into my head was, "I still want to be an astronaut."

A lot of people probably would have thought the writing was on the wall after all that effort and still being rejected, but I take it you persevered?

I asked myself again are there any more of these little things that I could do that might increase my chances for that next selection. By looking at the numbers, it was clear most of the people they were selecting were already working at one of the NASA centers. And most of them were at the Johnson Space Center. So I decided, I gotta get down there. I quit the great job that I had at Bell Labs in Princeton, New Jersey, went down to Houston and got a job as an engineer working on the space shuttle program. I started off working with Lockheed Martin, one of the contractors for NASA. I did that for three years, and then there was another astronaut selection, and I sent my application in. I got called up for the medical tests and the interviews, and this time when I got the phone call, they said, "Hey Don, are you still interested in being an astronaut? Cuz we'd like to offer you the job."

I stuttered and stammered and finally got out the word, "yes," and I hung up the phone and I was jumping up and down screaming and yelling. I knew I made it at that point, and I knew I was going to be going into space. I didn't know when that would happen, 5 years or ten years, but I knew I'm in line. I'm in the queue to go to space. And I was 35 years old when I got that call and started a four year training program for my first mission…


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Chillin' in zero gravity.


So part of my message is to encourage kids, just don't give up on that dream… don't give up, recognize that it takes a lot of time, and a lot of hard work…

Does everyone who gets into the astronaut program get to go to space?

Most of the people, it's not one hundred percent but close to it. If you get selected into the program, you're going to fly in space. The only reason you would wash out is if you had an accident, got injured or killed, or if you had some medical condition that would pop up that would prohibit it, or if in the training you showed that you were incompetent and didn't have the skill set… but the vast majority, if you get selected, you're in line.

What went through your mind the first time you were on the launch pad, preparing for take-off?

The first time on the launch pad, I'm 39 years old, and strapped into my seat, and I had to remind myself a few times that this was the real shuttle. It's just like the training that we do, it's just like the simulators, but in reality where I was sitting at that point, there's a huge fuel tank five feet away from me filled with half a million gallons of explosive fuel. At times you're sitting in there and it's such a comfortable environment, and you are very familiar with it, but then you realize, "Oh, this is the real thing."

When I first felt the engines light- cuz the three engines light and then about six seconds later, two side rockets light, and that's when the moment of lift-off is- when I felt that push in my back, I knew we were lifting off, and I knew there was no turning back at that point, you can't shut the engines down. Once we light the side rockets and you feel that push, you're on your way, and you're going somewhere. I had my helmet on, visor down, and I was literally screaming inside my helmet like, "Yahoo, let's go!" Such an exciting moment. Nobody could hear me cuz I wasn't pushing the communication button so I'm screaming to myself in the helmet, but it was so exciting.

There's a streak of terror; I say I'm a little bit afraid during launch morning, about 25 percent scared and 75 percent excited. I say that if any astronaut tells you they're not scared, they're either lying or they're stupid, cuz I think you should be a little bit scared just in recognition of the risk that you're taking.

It was such an incredible moment, an adrenaline rush and then eight and a half minutes later the engines shut down and I knew I was safe and sound. I made it to space, I'm up there, I'm a real astronaut. It was an incredible moment.

What was it like once you were up in space?

Then we gotta get to work. You don't have much time to reflect on where you're at or what you're doing. But a few times during the mission, like one time I had a four hour block of time where nothing was scheduled for me, they give you a little half a day off as a break. I was at the window just watching sunrise to sunset to sunrise. I had a moment to reflect and it dawned on me where I was and what I was doing. The message that I got was "Don, you made it! You did this."

It was almost overwhelming. I had tears in my eyes. It was an emotional moment for me. It was a time for me to pat myself on the back and say, "Don, good job. You did it." I don't do that often- and I hadn't done it earlier in my life, I was always chasing a bigger dream. You know climbing that mountain and you finally get to the top of it, and it's pretty amazing and that's what I hope kids shoot for and achieve, to have that feeling, you have the dream, you set these goals, you accomplish 'em, and oh, it's such an incredible rush… you know like our Olympic skiers and all of our Olympians when they stand up there and get that gold medal. They accomplished it. It's really an incredible moment in life.

I know you got a lot of training before being sent up on a shuttle mission. Was there anything surprising about the experience of actually going into space, anything training couldn't adequately convey or failed to anticipate?

The training is really thorough. It covers almost everything. The idea of the training is let's expose them to everything that could ever happen so they're never scared, they've seen this before.

There was only one thing that really surprised me: when our two side rockets burn out- at about two minutes into the flight they drop off the shuttle and then we have our big fuel tank and three main engines that take us the rest of the way- when those two solid rocket boosters drop off, when I was strapped into my seat, all of a sudden I felt like the thrust was tapering off, that push I was feeling in my back was getting weaker and weaker and I almost felt like we were falling backwards, and I thought, "Something's wrong here. I'm not feeling that acceleration that I was a few minutes ago. It's really much weaker."

They're designed to do that, but I didn't know that. And so I was just sitting there with alarm until we got the call from Mission Control. They said everything was nominal the first stage, those engines had done their job. And that was one of the only things that really surprised me… I was scared for a minute.

The other thing is the first time you look out at the Earth. Even though I had seen all the pictures and beautiful IMAX movies of our planet, when you see it with your own eyes you just gasp. They can't prepare you for that because the color variations, the clarity of what you're seeing, it's just so amazing up there that you literally gasp and there's some form of exclamation like "My God! How beautiful!" There's no training that they can do to prepare you for that emotional impact of looking at the Earth.

What's it like living in space? What kind of challenges do you face?

In the space shuttle, it's very crowded. We've got seven people in a small volume maybe the size of the average kitchen at home, and you're always bumping into somebody. There's always somebody right there. You never have a moment to go walk around the block or get away. When I needed to get a little quiet time, I would just put my face up against the window, put in some music, listen to that with some headphones, and then I was in my own little world.

On the space shuttle, the missions were very busy. Everything is scheduled and there's almost no time to look out the window. You can kinda do it as you eat breakfast or eat lunch or eat dinner, the rest of the time you're too busy.

The other emotion: I would say I felt very detached from the Earth. Even though we're only 200 miles above the planet, I felt like I was a million miles away from it. We would pass over Houston, Texas, where I lived, and you know I could see my neighborhood down there, but I couldn't see my family, I couldn't touch 'em, I couldn't talk to them, and I just felt very removed from the planet emotionally.

Is the feeling of having no gravity a surprise, even after your training?

Yeah, the first time we get up there, eight and a half minutes, the engines shut down, and I unstrapped out of my seat, my first task was to get a camera and take some pictures of our big fuel tank as we separated from it. Then I'm done, and I had nothing to do for maybe half an hour, so I'm just standing by floating until they tell us we're good to stay up there for the mission. They're evaluating our orbit and the status of the engines and everything.

The initial reaction to zero gravity? I felt like I was levitating upward. It's similar to when I was a little boy and I broke my arm and I had a heavy plaster cast on it. For like two months I had that cast, and I remember when they cut that cast off, my arm felt like it floated up into the air. Just to have this weight pulling down, weight pulling down, weight pulling down, you take that away and that gave you the sensation of soaring upward. So for the first couple of hours I was pulling myself down near the floor and I felt like I was floating upward. It wasn't really happening. That was just a sensation by getting rid of gravity there.

I was a little clumsy at first. We call it baby moose in the china shop. Kicking your legs up there, you don't need your feet, it's not like a swimming pool that you can kick and control yourself at all. So you'll see people kicking with their feet just bouncing around into other people, a little bit out of control. But slowly over a couple of days, you get pretty good and you can just float through the air in a nice straight line and zip around.

How many missions did you go on?

I was on four shuttle missions.

Were you associated with any "firsts"?

I'm the first person to take pizza into space. The firsts are kinda minimal here. We've had so many Ohio astronauts, you know. At one point we had the record after my first shuttle mission, it was the longest shuttle mission of the program, it was 15 days long and at that time it was the fourth longest space flight from the United States. We've far surpassed that now with the space station, but for maybe six months or a year, we held the record.

You mentioned during your recent Nifty Fifty talk that you didn't come back to Earth with your body in the same condition as when you left. Can you explain what happened?

When we're in space, we're not using our muscles hardly at all. Everything is weightless. I tell people I could lift a 2,000 pound car over my head in space. So your muscles are a little weakened and atrophied, just like here on earth if you're in a hospital bed or you break your arm, break your leg. Not using those muscles, they're going to shrink and atrophy and that's what happens in space. So we try to exercise up there. On board the shuttle we would exercise about an hour a day, just pedal a little bicycle we had, and it would help get our heart going, work our heart muscle and work our leg muscles, just to try to be in decent shape when we come back. But still you have weakened muscles. You're also very dizzy when you come back. Your vestibular system that you use for balance kinda shuts down when you're in space, and when you come back it's not operating properly, so even the smallest little tilt of the head got the whole room spinning for me. It took about a day or so for the balance to come back and maybe like a week or so to get the muscles back at the end of the mission. You feel like you weigh 2,000 pounds when you get off the shuttle.

I think you also mentioned a change in height?

We grow taller in space. I grew on my first mission. I measured myself up there and I was two inches taller than down here on Earth. I have a twin brother, and he's six inches taller than me; we're fraternal twins. I always wanted to be taller than him, and I thought, "Boy, wouldn't that be great!," but that can't happen. Most astronauts grow one to two inches up there. And when I measured myself again after I returned to Earth, this is maybe two hours after landing, I was back to my normal height. So it doesn't last long. It's just amazing your backbone can expand two inches like that, and compress in two hours, and that isn't a painful event.

Can you share a favorite memory or two from your shuttle missions?

The first time you see the Earth, just seeing the limb of the Earth up there, was just so amazing, you see how thin the atmosphere is, just that first glimpse of the Earth when you gasp, you know, I remember that so well. And on my third mission, we happened to be up there when Comet Hale-Bopp was visible, this bright comet that you could easily see with your naked eye here on Earth. We got up to space and the sun set, and there was the comet. Beautiful. I watched it, and it would get lower and lower and suddenly it just winked out and disappeared, and I'm staring then at the blackness of space and I said, "Wow! I just saw a comet set."

I've seen sunsets, and moonsets, and to be able to see a comet set from space was really cool because I knew it was an experience that you don't get to see every day. And yet up in space, like 90 minutes later, I could see it again and then again, every orbit you could watch it set.

Seeing shooting stars from space was really amazing. On my first flight, I'm looking out the window at city lights, and all of a sudden I see a little zip of light go by. And I'm wondering, "What was that?"

I finally realized ah, that's a shooting star. We're so used to looking up at the stars to see a shooting star. From space we're up above the atmosphere, so you have to look back at the planet to see your shooting stars, and I hadn't thought about that, and to see that first shooting star go by was memorable.

To see thunderstorms at night was really incredible. Here in a bad thunderstorm you may see a couple flashes every second or two. Up in space, you're seeing 10, 20, 30 flashes every second over huge storms that may be 400 miles across. You're just looking at how they light up the tops of the clouds with all that embedded lightning going on. And it is perfectly silent as you pass overhead. To appreciate it, wherever you're flying on the planet, thunderstorms are everywhere. As you orbit the Earth, every orbit you would see there's a mass of thunderstorms, and you realize there's a lot of this going on. You and I, we see thunderstorms every couple of weeks or months, but they're happening around the planet all the time up there.

I saw a massive dust storm coming off the west coast of the Sahara, and it brought this brown cloud nearly all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, kinda fizzled out near the Bahamas, and it's like, "Wow, this isn't the small little dust storm in this one country. It really impacts the entire planet."

I was told later, dust from the Sahara like that that kicks up is a major nutrient for the rainforest down in South America. You see these global events instead of just looking at a regional storm. I think that's the change that most astronauts come back from their mission with, you look at the Earth, and you don't look at it as a series of little cities and states and countries, you see it as one planet, and you see all this activity going on that affects the entire planet, we're all connected with that.


http://news.yahoo.com/don-thomas-shares-insider-perspective-astronaut-experience-191700152.html (http://news.yahoo.com/don-thomas-shares-insider-perspective-astronaut-experience-191700152.html)