Erika: Well hello. Welcome to the Johnson Space Center. My name is Erika Guillory.

Sherri: And I'm Sherri Jurls, and we would like to welcome you today to this live broadcast. We are going to be talking about the international space station and want to tell you a little bit about NASA. Now this program is being brought to you today by Johnson Space Center and Distance Learning Outpost and Ames, NASA Ames Quest Program and we're delighted that you have joined us.

We do want to remind you that all throughout the program today we will gladly be accepting your questions into the chat room where we will be taking those and answering them for you.

Well, for those of you who have never had the opportunity to visit us here at Johnson Space Center, we have about 1,620 acres.

It looks like a large college campus. It's very beautiful. We have hundreds of buildings, about 26,000 employees who work here as a part of the team that supports the human space flight program.

And for those of you who can see the bluish area in the background of your screen there, that's the Gulf of Mexico. So we're located in Houston, Texas. We're home of the space shuttle program. We're home of the astronaut corps and we're also home of the international space station program, which is what we're going to talk a little bit about today. But first, Erika, why don't you tell us a little bit about NASA.

Erika: Well, it's kind of interesting.

NASA actually started back, way back in the late '50s and early '60s and since then we've come a long way. We've had several programs. Now when I'm talking about programs, I'm actually talking about the different space vehicles that we have used to explore space.

Now, a lot of you are familiar with the space shuttle program. As a matter of fact, we're planning on launching the shuttle within the next 24 hours. A lot of us are familiar with the launches out in Florida. But let's take a quick look at some of the other programs that we've had.

It'd be interesting to see if maybe you could remember them all. First of all, we wanted to talk a little bit about the very first program and the very first program was the Mercury Program. During the Mercury Program we actually sent one man into space safely, and what happened during this time, it was the beginning of space exploration for the United States.

Interestingly enough, right after that came the Gemini program.

During the Gemini program, we actually were able to send two men into space safely, then we latched onto the Apollo program right after that. Now a lot of people remember Apollo. First of all, we made great steps in space because we sent men to the Moon.

Okay, then we started working on the Sky Lab Program. Believe it or not, this was actually our very first space station. We started working with Russia on the Apollo-Soyuz program. And again here we are today. And in case you didn’t know, this is actually a reusable rocket.

The International Space Station of course is where we’re going in the future.

And in case you didn’t know, we already have the Space Station on orbit and we’re proud to say that we’re on Expedition 4, so we have our fourth crew staying on board Space Station for a total of four months.

Sherri: Okay, thanks, Erika. Well again NASA is one of 10-, Johnson Space Center is one of 10 NASA centers from across the United States that each has a special focus. And as Erika went over the various programs with you, we can see that there is a theme there. Those are all manned space-flight programs. So that is Johnson Space Center’s specific focus out of all the NASA centers. It’s the Human Space Flight Program.

And also as she mentioned, the Space Station is already on orbit and the Space Shuttle has been taking crews up and was scheduled for launch today. But we hope that it will launch in the next 24 hours, and you can of course keep most up to date with that by visiting the spaceflight.nasa.gov Web site, where it has all the latest information on launch windows, launch times, and all of that, as last-minute changes might occur.

But the crews have been living on board the Space Station. We launched the first crew, the Expedition 1 crew in

October of 2000 and since that time, we’ve had multiple crews living on board the station. But you can see here, the station is going to be very large at the point that we have finished building it. We have only started building it. The Zaria module we launched in November of 1998. And look at all of these pieces. We have about five more years and 44 more trips on the space shuttle of carrying all of these pieces up onto orbit where the astronauts will be putting all of these pieces together like a giant construction project, up in the sky.

And these-, when the Space Station is finished being built, it will have approximate volume of a three-bedroom family home, a standard-sized home. Right now three astronauts live onboard the station and the Expedition 4 crew is up right now,

and they will be staying on board the station for an average of about five months, and you can see here the three that are onboard right now, getting to experience the wonders of living up in space for extended periods of time.

But before they go up there, they have to train, and we have a really neat facility here with mock ups and trainers. And I’m going to ask Erika to take us on a tour of that. I find it very interesting and I know you will too.

Erika: Absolutely. Out of all the buildings that we have here, we actually affectionately call this building the [Lee 9] because all of our buildings at the Johnson Space Center are numbered but it’s actually a mock-up facility. A facility where we keep all the life-sized models of what we plan on putting on the International Space Station.

Each of these models operates, most of what we call high-fidelity, meaning that they actually have working parts, just like the Space Station does, and this is exactly where the astronauts will be training.

Well one of the reasons why we want to train our astronauts so much is because they’re going to be working in a different environment. You’ve got to put your thinking caps on and remember that the one big difference between here on Earth and working in space, is that in space you’re in a microgravity environment.

Now to talk a little bit about microgravity, microgravity is actually a constant state of free-fall. We actually have astronauts that are getting used to what that feels like in space. And the constant state of free-fall is actually caused by two forces working together. You have the constant pull of Earth’s gravity and also the speed of the space shuttle or the International Space Station.

The Space Station is traveling at 17,500 miles per hour. So when those two forces equal out, all of a sudden, you have continuous free-fall around the Earth. It’s kind of a simple thing to remember, but at the same time. So a lot of times when you see astronauts floating in the cabin, what they’re actually doing is they’re falling around the Earth.

There’s a lot of things we have to remember when astronauts are inside a space station. First of all, you would think that it might look a little bit small in there. But remember, they’re using the entire volume of that module, because there really isn’t a top or bottom. As a matter of fact, the really only way that you can tell what’s top or bottom is by where the lights are located. And of course where the vents are down at the bottom of the module, there in blue.

Some of the things that we also help our astronauts with is moving around in microgravity. What do you think we use to help our astronauts stay in place? They’ve got a lot of work to do while they’re on Space Station, so I think that I’m going to toss it to Sherri, and let her share with you some of the great things in tools that NASA’s come up with to help our astronauts out.

Sherri: Okay. Well, Kimberly Ann, we received your question. Thank you for submitting that. You want to know how many crews have lived on board the station so far. We are currently on the Expedition 4 crew. So, since October of 2000, we’ve had four different crews living on board the Station. Thanks for submitting that.

Well all of the rest of you, please take this time and submit your question to our chat room so we can answer that for you. Well, as Erika stated earlier, we are in a very unique training facility out here and we want to show you some of the trainers and mock-ups that we’ve got.

One of them is we have a full-sized mockup of the space shuttle.

And the astronauts will actually get inside this space shuttle. You can see the stairs that go right up to the cockpit area. And they will train in various simulations, doing launch and landing-type procedures. As she said, it’s high-fidelity, and the only thing different you might notice about this shuttle, is there are no wings. Well we don’t need the wings on this space shuttle, nor does it have the landing gear.

But everything else about it is exactly the same as a space shuttle so that when they actually launch,

and when they climb inside and work in the cockpit, look at all of those knobs and switches and screens. They have hundreds of different procedures that they have to go through during launches and landings.

So you can see the seat on your left-hand side is where the commander would sit, and on the right-hand side there, is where the pilot would sit. So this is an inside view of the cockpit of the space shuttle.

Well we also have modules of the Space Station in this building as well,

and let’s look at the overhead view and as we look at these, and I want you to notice, the color’s all similar, but they also all happen to be a cylindrical shape. They’re all round.

Now I want you to think for a moment, why do you think we build them round? How come they’re not square or rectangular? Well let me tell you why.

When we saw the space shuttle earlier, we know that the space shuttle is the vehicle that takes these modules up in space.

Look at the payload bay. The payload bay doors are open. That’s the trunk, if you will of the space shuttle. It is rounded out.

Well the reason we build those Station modules round is because they have to fit inside this payload bay. And to do that, they have to be rounded out, so that is the main reason that we build the modules of the Space Station round.

Often times we think it’s because it would be more aerodynamic, or it would be a stronger architectural build. All sorts of those things, so maybe those were some of the things that you were thinking about. But the main reason is because it is round.

Now as Erika was mentioning earlier, microgravity is

a huge force that impacts everything the astronauts do on board the Space Station. And it’s the biggest difference between a laboratory like we have here on Earth and a laboratory like the Space Station orbiting the Earth. And she’s going to talk with us about some of the tools and helpful items that the astronauts use in trying to work and live in this microgravity environment.

Erika: It’s really kind of interesting because some of the things that you think about that you won’t have to use here on Earth are very important for us to be able to get our jobs done in space. First of all, the astronauts’ schedules are very tight. They have a certain amount of work they’re supposed to do within certain times of their day. And that includes of course their free time and their sleep time.

But during that time, they have to make the most efficient-, make their time as efficient as possible, so some of these items-, one of the items are called foot restraints. And the foot restraints are basically they’re metal plates with Velcro straps.

And the astronaut can easily fit into these plates to stay in place.

Okay, just for example, you’re seeing this astronaut, she’s able to float into the foot restraints and all of a sudden now she stays in place to do an important experiment or maybe to fix something. These foot restraints actually will lock into what’s called a seat track.

A seat track is the same type of device that you use to keep airline seats hooked into the floor of an airliner. So these are the types of things we use. The astronaut has the ability to move foot restraints wherever he or she may need them.

We have foot restraints on different areas of the wall, so of course remember there is no top or bottom, so they literally could look like they’re working on the side wall or on a ceiling or just anything like that.

Another item you’re seeing in this picture is called a hand hold. Hand holds come in different sizes.

Sherri: It looks like a monkey bar to me, Erika.

Erika: Well that’s exactly how it works. It works like a monkey bar Sherri. You actually grab on to one and you grab onto another and you pull yourself wherever you need to go on board. The one you saw in the picture was a lot longer, but of course this is a smaller one, and again, just like the foot restraints, they are able to be put easily screwed into the seat tracks and placed wherever the astronaut needs them for work.

There’s a hand hold on this picture right there that’s really, really helpful to this astronaut moving around.

Now something else right here, actually is what we call a tether. A lot of you probably recognize it though as a bungee cord. And that’s exactly what it is, the material is very, very stretchy and it’s covered with Teflar, which is a protective material. We use tethers on space walks, basically to keep the astronaut attached to the space craft and also to keep their tools attached to them and things like that.

But we’ve also come up with ways to use this a little bit more and one of those ways is on the inside of the space craft. You can clamp one side of the tether onto a location or a wall and the other side to another, and actually the astronaut can pull themselves along an area to be able to move as well. Kind of like you would use rope for rappelling down the side of a mountain, and it’s used in that same fashion.

And here’s a great way to just move around the International Space Station.

It’s interesting because we’ve been using these bungee cords or tethers a long time, way before people started using them for string sports.

Sherri: Well Erika, I know one thing that probably many people are interested in learning about is why do we even want to build a space station in the first place? The United States and its partners are all working together on this giant project, it’s the largest project we’ve ever endeavored upon, and yet there are some great reasons why we want to build this Space Station.

One of them is because we can study the universe from the Space Station. We have all sorts of neat things that we can learn about. Things that are happening way out there that we’re very interested in finding out about.

Erika: Right.

Sherri: Additionally, we can learn, turn back around and study our Earth.

Erika: Absolutely.

Sherri: We can take pictures of our geography.

Erika: That’s right, and we can also take a look at what’s happening at [cities...] over time, looking at things that have to do with weather and what’s happening and the effects of weather on planetary surface. A lot of meteorologists use our information for things that have to do with forecasting and things like that.

Sherri: Great. Well I know we can also do research in a microgravity environment. We haven’t been able to simulate microgravity here on Earth, so space is the closest place that we can do that kind of research. And the kinds of things that we learn from doing research in a microgravity environment, has lots of benefits to us here on Earth, and we’ll talk about some of those a little bit later.

Erika: Well you know, Sherri, what’s really interesting too, we want to make sure that students remember that the International Space Station is really a research laboratory. We’re looking at finishing building the International Space Station by the year 2006, and once it’s completely built, we plan on working on the Space Station at least 15 years.

In case you guys didn’t know, we actually are working with 16 countries total working together. And every single country has its own part that it’s contributing to the Space Station.

So the United States and Russia are the primary partners, along with Japan, Italy, Canada and Brazil, and of course we’re working with other agencies in the European Space Agency.

For example, we have a lot of the modules on Space Station, the United States does. Where Canada is actually supplying us with the robotic arm right now that’s helping us put these pieces together piece by piece.

So as a research laboratory, some of the research that we’ll be doing is very, very important. So Sherri and I would like to share some of that with you guys.

Sherri: Well some of the main types of research that they’re doing onboard the Space Station right now, I want you to take a moment and think and see if you can think of any of the types of experiments you think they’re working on and we’ll see if that’s indeed what they’re studying.

One of them is called combustion science. And in terms of combustion science, we want to know, does a flame behave the same way in microgravity environment as it does here on Earth? Like a candle flame? Well we know that it doesn’t. The flame here on Earth typically looks like a teardrop shape and it has the orange at the top. Well in microgravity, the flame is squashed, it remains very close to the candle, the wick, and it’s only a blue flame, and it forms a sphere around, so it’s not that typical teardrop shape that we would see here on Earth.

Erika: Very neat.

Sherri: So, combustion science has a lot of implications and great things for us to learn.

Erika: Absolutely. It’s really interesting because a lot of people believe that actually when you think about NASA research, you think about oh, they want to find cures for diseases and things like that. Well of course, medical research is very important for us, but one of the other things we’re looking at is biomedical research, which we’re looking at the astronauts and then helping them to live in space for longer periods of time.

Lots of things happen to our bodies. We lose a lot of muscle mass and bone density loss there, and some other things happen. And for us to be able to explore the universe more in the future, Sherri, of course we’re going to have to figure out ways to help our bodies be able to last longer living in space. That’s why the Space Station is so important, where you normally have shuttle missions that average about 12 days or on Space Station, they’re a lot longer.

Sherri: Well speaking of which, Erika, Howard wrote in and wants to know if the ISS is going to be a stepping stone to Mars or other planets? Well, Howard, you bring up a great question. Yes, it is.

If we are studying to learn about the effects of space on the human body while we’re living on the Space Station, that’s going to help us when we do decide and are able to go to other planets like Mars or whatever else strikes our fancy at the time.

So the effects of space on the human body is another important area of research that we’re doing.

What about living organisms Erika? Do you think we’ve ever taken any living things up on board the station?

Erika: Well I know for a fact that we do. I guess we kind of have an inside track on that. And the answer is yes.

Actually over the years, the space program has been able to send up different animals to take a look at how they react to the microgravity environment. So we will be taking up some. We have to remember that we’re looking to potentially have a total of six research laboratories, including one from Japan and potentially one from Russia.

But the US is also looking at aquatic research, and that has a lot to do with just looking at how fish react in a microgravity environment.

As you can see on here, the fish are a little bit disoriented. They’re actually in their water, but they’re not quite sure which way are they supposed to be floating? So that’s kind of interesting. We can kind of look at that and do a lot of research and figure out what the fish are going through, maybe apply that to the science of what happens to humans as well.

Sherri: Well Erika, speaking of an aquatic habitat, I can’t imagine that fluids behave the same way in space as they do here on Earth. And actually we know that they don’t. I want you guys to imagine if you had a glass of water, and it wasn’t covered in space, and the water came out, whether you think it would stay in a blob or go into a bunch of droplets.

But not only is water a fluid, but there are many, many other fluids that we use onboard the Space Station up in space, and we need to learn how those different fluids will react in a microgravity environment.

Now did you think about it? Here it is. This is a glass of water without the glass. It stays in a blob. It does not spread into a bunch of droplets.

As a matter of fact, if we left this alone, it would eventually form a perfect sphere. The astronauts are just having a little bit of fun here. Going to drink up that little glass of water.

Erika: There you go.

Sherri: Well there are other kinds of research that they’re doing onboard the Space Station, and we’ve talked about some of them. Another one is growing plants. Now if we want to travel to other planets, Howard, like we were talking about Mars, obviously plants are not going to grow the same way in a microgravity environment that they do here on Earth.

If I was to take my watering can and try to water my plants up in space, the water’s going to float all over the place. We just saw that. So we need to overcome all those types of obstacles in learning how to grow plants.

Now why do we want to grow plants? Well plants provide us lots of things. They provide us drinkable, potable water, they oxygenate the air, and most importantly, they provide us a source of food.

If we were to go to Mars, it would take us six months just to get there if we were to leave today. And as Erika mentioned, we travel in the space shuttle at 17,500 miles an hour. I don’t know about you guys, but that is really hard to imagine. That’s five miles per second. Even that is really hard to grasp. So traveling at that speed, it would still take us six months just to get to Mars. That’s the closest planet to Earth.

We’d have to stay there for a year and a half, before we could-, the planets would realign and we could return home. So we’re talking a minimum of a three-year trip to Mars. Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think the trunk of the Space Station or space shuttle or any aircraft that we have is large enough to hold that many groceries. So we do need to learn how to grow our own food in order to travel to other planets.

So that’s part of the research that they’re doing onboard the Space Station, and maybe we’ll go to Mars. Maybe you’ll be the one to go to Mars next.

Okay, well Erika, what other types of research do you want to talk about? I know they’re doing all kinds of things onboard the station.

Erika: Absolutely. Well one of the things that I think is interesting for everyone to remember is we actually look at something also called commercialization. We have over 30,000 what we call spin-offs and these are actually items that are used in the community now that you guys may not even realize. Things that you’re buying right off of your shelf, that comes from really important research done at NASA.

For example the UV ray protection in your sunglasses that you’re going to be starting to buy for the sunny summer that’s coming in a few months. Also for things like, oh, I don’t know, the things that your doctor uses to check your ears and eyes. The protective gear that we wear during extreme sports. The gear we didn’t come up with at NASA, but the research goes into the materials used to create those types of items.

We’ll be doing those types of research, that type of research onboard Space Station. We’ll be looking at how to come up with new items that you and I can use every day here on Earth to improve our lives and maybe improve the lives of other people that may be stricken with a disease and things like that, to make it easier for our doctors that are working to heal people.

And so we’ll be looking at that. Our research comes from NASA, things that we’ve already been studying, but also from different universities, and companies throughout the world for the next 15 years.

Sherri: Well Jeremy writes in and wants to know how many people are living on board the station now and how many can there be living on it in the future? Well, Jeremy, we mentioned earlier that the Expedition 4 crew living on board now is comprised of three members.

And here they are. In the future we hope to have as many as seven astronauts living on board the Space Station 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year-in and year-out. So eventually, the Space Station will hold up to seven people, so great question.

Erika: Actually, excellent.

Sherri: Yeah. Well Erika’s told us a lot about the different types of experiments. Now I want to talk a little bit about some of the hardware when the astronauts go out on their space walks, how they use different tools to help them out when they are out there. One of those tools is an actual robot. And she mentioned that that robotic arm is called the Canadarm 2.

It’s from Canada, and the robot is attached to the outside of the Space Station.

And that giant robotic arm can help lift these big pieces of the Space Station out of the payload bay of the space shuttle. And this is actually called the handshake. This is the Space Station arm and the International-, space shuttle arm, so the Space Station arm and the space shuttle arm shaking hands. They have both connected and are doing the handshake.

But the giant robotic arm will pull the big pieces of the Space Station out of the payload bay and help attach them to the Space Station itself. And this arm is a robot and it helps out with these tasks. It can also do other tasks. It has joints on each end and the robotic arm can disconnect itself from one end and attach itself somewhere else on the Space Station, in essence acting like an inchworm. It can walk all the way around the Space Station.

But it’s really a neat tool, a neat thing that the astronauts can use, plus it helps reduce the amount of time that our astronauts have to be outside in that microgravity environment, outside the Space Station. So it reduces the amount of danger that they are exposed to.

Now they control that robotic arm from inside the Space Station, and it’s called the tele-robotic station. And this station works very similar to a video game.

If you guys have played video games, this is what it looks like. It’s got monitors that the astronauts watch and so they can see where the robotic arm is located. But it has a joystick-style controller and it’s also got a knob and that is how they control which way it turns, which way it moves, all that sort of thing.

So this is what the station, the tele-robotic station looks like from the inside of the Space Station.

Now Erika, when the astronauts go out on their space walks, they obviously have to train somehow to be able to get a feel for that microgravity environment before they go up into space. Will you tell us how they do that here?

Erika: Actually, sure. There are a couple of ways that they do it. First of all we have what we call the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.

And the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory is one that is the largest pool of its type in the world. Our pool holds about 6.2 million gallons of water and it’s four stores deep. Now if you want to compare that with your community pool, or your backyard pool, those pools normally hold about 25,000 gallons of water. So you’re looking at 6.2 million for these.

Our astronauts train in these pools up to about eight hours every time they train. The training is about 10-to-1. So for every one space walk they do, they train in this pool 10 times for that one space walk. What’s interesting too, is that we can actually fit two crews in this huge pool. So we might have one crew that’s working on one end of the station and practicing on one end, and another crew on the other.

Each astronaut has four divers that works with them during their EBA training in the pool. We have a couple of safety divers, we have one diver that’s a videographer, that works on getting the video back to the test control room, and also we have a utility diver, that helps the astronaut with their tools and everything they need while working.

Now the suit that you’re looking at is about 300 pounds, and that’s here on Earth of course. When you get into a microgravity environment, you don’t have the weight of the suit, but you will have to know how to maneuver in the suit, which again, will be pressurized, even in space.

So this is where you train. It’s interesting, if you see the long yellow cord that’s coming out of the back of the astronaut, in a minute you’ll probably get a chance to see it again, but that’s what we call the umbilical cord. And while in this pool, the astronaut gets all their life support through this umbilical cord.

In space, this suite is a spacecraft on its own. The astronaut has everything here she needs to survive for a maximum of nine hours.

Sherri: Are these live video pictures we’re looking at?

Erika: Well we do have that capability. Our astronauts do train in this pool every day and we are able to actually see what they’re doing, just about at any given time. It’s a really neat experience to be able to just kind of go over there and get a sneak peek of what the astronauts are doing at any given time. So it is kind of cool to see what they’re doing, and see the kind of tools that they’re working with and things like that.

Sherri: Okay, great. Well you said the NBL was one way that we train our astronauts. What’s the other way?

Erika: That’s right. You know, for all of you space-savvy people, you may have heard of this one. Well we affectionately call our next one the "Vomit Comet." Does it ring a bell? Well the Vomit Comet is also the KC-135 aircraft.

The reason why we call it the vomit comet is because this airplane does one thing, and it goes up in flight to do parabola moves.

Remember from math, a parabola is kind of like a roller coaster move, so when the plane gets to the top of that hill, ready to go over the top of that hill movement, in the parabola, you have a state of free-fall. Everyone inside the cabin of the plane is able to free-fall for about 25-30 seconds. Just like the students you see there in the bottom corner.

We train our astronauts in this plane as well. Now the plane will do about 40 of these parabolas in one flight. So you can imagine, by the time you get to your 30th, between your 30th and 40th parabola, you might feel a little queasy. So again, we affectionately call it the Vomit Comet. So those are two ways that we train in microgravity.

You know, I hate to tell you this guys, but there isn’t an anti-gravity room here at the Johnson Space Center. As a matter of fact, there isn’t one anywhere around the country. It burst our bubble too when we first found out, but a lot of times we’d think that there’s some scientist somewhere that has a secret room that you can just walk into and start floating or free-falling like they do in microgravity.

Well we haven’t quite figured out how to do that yet. So until something like that happens, we will continue training our astronauts with neutral buoyancy, again with, in the pool and then with the KC-135.

Sherri: Okay. Well William writes in and wants to know if the astronauts get up in space only on the space shuttle. And William, that’s a great question. No they do not, the space shuttle is one of two ways that the astronauts get up onto orbit, to be able to get onto the Space Station. Can you guess the other way?

That’s right, it’s through Russia’s space program on the Progress rockets.

And this is what the rocket looks like. It will-, the Progress rockets will also launch astronauts up onto orbit to be able to get onto the Space Station. So those are the two main ways that the astronauts get up into space.

Now Bridgett is a 9th grader at SISV, so I don’t know what the S is. But she wants to know if they’re working on the crew return vehicle right now. And yes they are. That crew return vehicle is called the X-38 aircraft. And it’s our crew lifeboat. It is currently not attached to the Space Station, because it’s not finished. The way the astronauts would get home right now in case of an emergency is on the Soyuz vehicle. That is a Russian capsule, and it will hold three astronauts, that’s why there are only three astronauts living on board the station right now.

Graphic of Soyuz spacecraft

So in case of some sort of emergency, the astronauts would be able to jump into this Soyuz capsule and return to Earth.

And in the future, the X-38 aircraft, this is what it looks like, will be able to hold seven astronauts. Remember we talked about earlier that up to seven astronauts will eventually live on the Space Station. And they will fit inside of this X-38 aircraft and it will remain attached to the Space Station for a couple of years at a time without needing a tune up or anything else like that. And they will,

the astronauts will be able to jump into that X-38 vehicle, power it up, and be out of there within 2 minutes of time, in case there was a hole breech, or a fire onboard the station of anything else like that.

So Bridgett, I hope that answers your question. The X-38 is the crew return vehicle. Now we also have another question from Jonathan who’s a 5th grader in Mrs. Greer’s class. And Erika I know you can talk about this one, because it’s both of our favorite subject. He wants to know what kinds of food do they eat on the Space Station?

Erika: Okay. Well, I guess that I’m wondering if whether or not you think they eat special food or if they eat normal food. Well I’m not quite sure if that’s the answer to the question. I guess it’s kind of a trick answer, because the answer is both. They eat normal food that we say is actually packaged special. I have some of the food here to show you what it looks like.

This could actually be what you might eat for a snack or actually for lunch. And the food is actually a lot of different things. First of all you’ll find some foods just like the kind of food that you can buy off the shelf at the grocery store. I’m sure all of you recognize this, it’s the pudding that we all love to eat, chocolate pudding. We also have a lot of dehydrated food.

Dehydrated of course means just needing to add the water once we get in space. On the front of all of our foods is directions on how to prepare all of these foods, how much water to add and how long to heat the food. We currently heat our food with convection, so air flowing through our food to get it warm.

There’s a couple reasons why I want you guys to know why we have a lot of dehydrated food in space at the moment. First of all, it costs NASA and you tax payers, about $10,000 per pound of everything that we send into space. So for one of the reasons, water is something always weighs a lot more. So we want to dehydrate some things. It also has a lot to do with storage. How much we can send up and how we’re going to store it.

This is a great view of the table area on the International Space Station. This is actually one that was created specifically for Space Station. The astronauts can actually eat at this table,

they can do a lot of things at the table, they can fold it up and actually use it for work as well. The astronauts have a lot of fun eating their food. They have over 100 menu items to choose from and a lot of tasty items. It’s very normal food that’s just packaged special.

We’ve come a long way since the earlier programs where we had toothpaste tubed-like foods and cubed foods.

So it has come a long way. So yes, the astronauts actually do eat really good food. Now Sherri, I know that we have another question that has actually come in from one of our students, and I’m going to go ahead and ask you that question, and it kind of plays off the same food theme.

And Ruby, she’s a 6th grader right here in Houston, Texas, and she wants to know will we grow our own food on the station?

Sherri: Okay, Ruby. We talked about that a little bit earlier, when we were talking about some of the research that they’re doing onboard the Space Station. And one of the research areas that they’re doing is learning how to grow plants up in space.

So yes, they are trying to learn how to grow their own food up on the Space Station and that is one of the experiment areas that they are currently working on.

Now Ruby, as you can imagine, trying eat in a microgravity environment might be a little challenging. Your food would be trying to float away from you, you’d be trying to chase it down. Well the astronauts have had a little bit of fun with this fact. They have videotaped themselves on some short video clips, kind of playing with their food. And it’s a pretty funny clip and we would like to share it with you.

Sherri: Okay, well I think we have another question in from Michael, and he wants to know, Erika do they take showers on the Space Station?

Erika: Well, absolutely. They do have that opportunity on the Space Station. I’ve just got to tell you a little bit about the history behind it though. First of all, they can either take the shower, the new type of shower that we’ve created, or they don’t have to at all. We actually use waterless shampoo and body bath. It’s just like the same stuff that you can take camping here on Earth.

You basically just smear it onto your skin and just kind of towel yourself off, and no water is needed. But we actually have come up with a new way to shower in space. Now let met tell you, it’s not like taking a shower at home, where you’re used to taking maybe a 10-minute quick shower, may now take you about an hour and 10 minutes.

hat we have developed is an enclosed area that works like a carpet shampooer. So what’s happening is that simultaneously, you’re getting soap and water straight onto your skin, it’s being sucked up at the same time. So imagine carpet shampooing yourself. Okay, plus by the time that you’ve finished working with this, you’d have to make sure that all the water molecules are off the side of the shower before you open up and you’re ready to get yourself dressed for the day.

So it’s kind of a long process, but it’s something new that our astronauts are able to take advantage of.

Sherri: For those of you just joining us, we are broadcasting live from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, , International Space Station. So if you have any questions at all that you would like for us to answer, please submit them into the chat room. They will come right here to our laptop computer and we will be able to answer those questions for you.

Well talking about other types of personal hygiene, we’ve seen lots of questions from you on how they take a shower. What else do they do in terms of personal hygiene?

Well, they have to brush their teeth. They don’t get out of that, just like you and I do here on Earth.

They’ve got to keep those teeth clean. When they’re up there for four and five months at a time, they don’t want to get cavities or just not take care of their body, so yeah, they brush their teeth. They have to-, they shave.

The men will shave and take care of that personal hygiene item. You can see here an astronaut using a very small mirror to help guide him along shaving.

They can use electric razors and some of them also use a regular normal razor.

Another big question, Erika that I’ve seen a lot come in, is how do they use the restroom in space?

Erika: How do they use the restroom in space? Well I tell you, very carefully, Sherri. A couple of ways.

First of all, when you’re thinking about a space walk, the one thing that they do is they actually use what we call a MAG. Okay a lot of you probably think oh, that’s just an adult-sized diaper. Well actually it is what we call a Maximum Absorption Garment.

Because the scientists or the technical people here, engineers, have actually added extra absorbency in these. Because remember, I told you the life of the space suit is up to nine hours of life support.

Well you’re going to have an astronaut doing a space walk, so they’re not going to actually knock on the spacecraft and say, "Let me in, I’ve got to go to the bathroom," so this actually comes in handy. So we actually use a MAG, a Maximum Absorption Garment for that.

Now for the International Space Station, the shuttle, we actually have a toilet that has been accommodated for those vehicles. This is the shuttle toilet. Both the shuttle and the space station toilets run with a vacuum type system. Both male and female astronauts stand up to remove liquid waste through a tubing that has a really strong vacuum suction. And then solid waste, so they make sure that they strap themselves down, solid waste is freeze-dried and removed and disposed of when it gets returned to Earth.

Now this is the Space Station toilet. It does look very small. I know a lot of you are saying, "Wow, it looks small," but the astronauts actually go through training to use this. And I know you’re thinking, "Wow, but just imagine, I would think that would be the one thing I wanted to make sure I had training in," just to make sure that everything stayed clean and everything went where it was supposed to go in a microgravity environment.

And so just a little bit that you guys need to know, we do a lot of recycling in space. If we think about travel in space, moving on to other planets, we have to figure out how to recycle what we have, so the air is recycled, but so is the liquid. All of our liquid waste is recycled into drinking water.

Sherri: Well Zelda, I know you’re a 6th grade student out there. I hope that answered your question.

Well how about sleeping? The astronauts have to go to sleep every night, but they don’t have a bed like you and I have. If they had a mattress and tried to lay down on it, they would just hover over it. So they have to have special sleeping arrangements made for them. And this is one of the things that they use.

It looks like a giant sleeping bag. You can see the head there where the astronaut would put there and zip themselves in. There’s a zipper down the side.

And you can see that there are hooks and Velcro all around and they would climb in and they would just attach this to the walls and empty space inside the station. And then they would just float around inside that sleeping bag, it would keep them from floating around and bumping their heads while they were asleep. So that’s one of the ways that they accommodate sleeping in space.

Erika: It’s kind of interesting, we have this little story that we got from one of the astronauts, it’s very neat working here at Johnson Space Center and getting to interact with the astronauts and the trainers and everyone. And one of the rookie astronauts that went into space shared with us that the first time that he woke up from having his first night’s sleep in space, he all of a sudden saw these arms floating out in front of him. And it made him-, he didn’t remember that he was in space. You know when we first wake up, you’re kind of trying to figure out where you are. And he saw these arms floating in front of him, and it scared him a whole bunch. So from now on, he always makes sure that his hands are secured like this across his body when he goes to sleep.

So a lot of the astronauts choose to do this and also they can choose to strap their heads down. It gives them the sense of staying in one place. [inaudible].

Sherri: Okay, we’ve got another question from Scott and Scott you want to know how long will the ISS last? That’s a great question. It’s going to take us about another five years before we finish the completion of the Space Station, but then in addition to that, it will be operational for another 15 years. That’s at least what the minimum of what we’re planning on. It could be even longer than that.

But another 15 years after the five more years that it’s going to take us to complete the Space Station. So you guys, by the time, Scott, you have finished with school and are interested in working on the Space Station, you could be very easily one of the astronauts who will go live

on board the Space Station and do the research and go on these different space walks and all this sort of thing. I hope that’s something that you might be interested in.

Go ahead and take this opportunity guys to submit your questions. We are, that’s what we’re here for, to answer your questions about the International Space Station.

Erika: You know, it’s interesting Sherri, we’re getting a few questions in and one extra question along with the shower question that we both answered a minute ago. It says are the showers as big as a bedroom? Well I guess if they had a bedroom, maybe it would be. But they don’t have a bedroom. They actually don’t have their own individual quarters per se, they actually share the different areas that they’re in. They don’t have-, but no the showers are not that large.

The whole accommodation area or place where they’re actually staying is very small. They have to learn to work and live together, which I guess is one of the interesting things, Sherri. I wonder how do people that work with 16 different countries work together to build the International Space Station? You have the language barriers and things like that. Are they going to be talking different languages? Do all the astronauts know all the different languages?

Sherri: That’s a great question, Erika. With 16 different countries, there is a bit of a challenge there. We’ve got 16 different languages. 16 different cultures,

16 different views of work styles and work ethics, different religious views. So the team, they have to really work hard together as a part of a team, to work on this project and achieve their goals.

And one of the things that they had to decide on is which language will be the primary language spoken on board the Space Station? And that language is English. Now that doesn’t mean that English is the only language you will ever hear spoken on board the Space Station, because many of our astronauts are multi-lingual. They know more than one language and some of our instrumentation and instructions and labels and identifiers are not only written in English, but they’re also written in Russian.

And we can see different panels and things inside the Space Station that the Russian astronauts, the "cosmonauts" is what they’re called, will be able to read those instructions and labels just as easily. But English is the primary language spoken. So Erika that’s a great point. They did have to decide on one language and that way there’s at least one medium for all of those 16 different countries to be able to communicate with one another.

Erika: Right. Some of the other things that Sherri and I could potentially think about that are the same would be for example the astronauts, a lot of them are multi-lingual, meaning they know more than two languages. And the same with the Russians. They actually are able to speak. These people work together. We work with teams of people from different countries way before we have to live together in space. We actually do a lot of training and training our astronauts between here and Russia. So those two languages are definitely something that’s very common here. You walk around JSC especially, you see a lot of people that know both Russian and English.

Something else to share with you are the other cultural things. If you were from Russia, and you actually had to prepare your breakfast, lunch and dinner, you may not be choosing, or used to choosing the things that people from America are used to choosing for their meals. Well we’re working very closely with the food techs there in Russian, and we actually have some Russian items that are also available for our astronauts and cosmonauts to select on their flights.

Something really interesting too, Sherri mentioned this, the little labels that we have on our food.

This just happens to be M&Ms, but they actually have labels that have English and Cyrillic on there that are in both languages. And it’s something else we want to let you know is that even the food is real-time research. Everything about Space Station is research.

We have bar codes on our foods here so that we can get real-time data about what each astronaut is actually consuming. They each have their own bar code readers so they scan in what they eat as they eat it, so scientists can use that as looking at ways maybe to let us live in space a lot longer.

Sherri: Okay, well Beth is a 5th grade student in Mrs. Greer’s class. We want to thank you Mrs. Greer for your class attending this Web cast today. We’re delighted to be receiving your questions. But Beth is wanting to know what does sound sound like in space? Like if you were going to listen to a radio or when you’re talking?

Well, Beth, it’s sounds very similar to the way it does here on Earth. The sound waves don’t necessarily do anything different up in space in a microgravity environment than they do here on Earth.

As a matter of fact, our astronauts enjoy some other activities when they have some off time, and speaking of sound, here’s one of those activities. The astronauts participating in hobbies of theirs, playing musical instruments. So they’re enjoying the sound that they create from their musical instruments.

Now Erika, not only do they play musical instruments, but can you tell us what other kinds of things the astronauts do in their free time?

Erika: Absolutely. The astronauts really do have a lot of free time. And what’s interesting is is that they can choose to do a lot of different things, and they do. If you can imagine going on a camping trip for four months, gosh that is one long camping trip. I don’t know that I’ve ever been on one that long. But if I had to go on one, I’d make sure that I had a lot of fun things to do, during the time that I wasn’t setting up my tent or maybe hunting or fishing for the things that I was going to eat that evening.

Well first of all, the astronauts actually have a VCR available. They’re able to watch movies. They can bring their own CD players and listen to their favorite songs and bring their own CDs. They actually have time to look at how beautiful the Earth looks. One of the most interesting things they do in their free time is looking at how beautiful the Earth is from Space.

A lot of times the astronauts have shared with us that they could see the stars below them when they’re doing a space walk. So that’s kind of interesting. And there’s an array of other things. They get on their own personal laptops, each of them have their own personal computer, and a lot of them have stored, believe it or not, video games and even get an opportunity to email their families and things like that.

Sherri: We had another question come in Erika, wanting to know if the general public is ever going to be able to go up onboard the Space Station.

Well actually, the members of the general public already have gone up onboard the Space Station. We’ve had a couple of different civilians go up and express interest and start training. Going through some different programs but getting the permission of all of the partners on board the Space Station. And they pay a large sum of money to have that opportunity. But they have done that.

Now I’m assuming you’re asking that because you’re wanting to know if you will have the opportunity to be able to go up to the Space Station and long-term plans, who knows? We’ve already started doing it. We’ve already had people going up there and a lot of people starting to express interest in doing that. Right now we’re not in the business of doing tourism where you just get to do a tour of the Space Station, because it is a working facility. Everything that’s going on inside the Space Station, Erika, is research that’s going on nonstop.

There’s lots of sensitive equipment and experiments and all sorts of things up there. So it’s not necessarily a playground, not like a hotel or a resort that you would necessarily want to go visit. But there are some folks who have their hearts set on doing that, so who knows what the opportunities for you might be long term. That’s a great question. Thanks for writing in.

We do have about four minutes, three or four minutes left. If you want to seize this last-minute opportunity to ask that last question that we still haven’t answered yet, submit that into the chat room, we will be happy to try to answer it in the time we have left.

Erika: Right. We have a great question that’s come in, Sherri, and I know that-, and one of those questions is, is how much is the Space Station worth? And maybe how much will it be worth in 15 years? Well I can tell you right now that we look at the Space Station costing the average American taxpayer about the size of one large pizza per year. That’s not a lot. So that’s about $13 a year, and wow, look at just that little amount for one pizza, be able to get that research done. So that averages about that much.

As far as how much it’ll cost in 15 years? Gee, I don’t know. With technology moving as fast as it is, we may be able to cut down some of the costs that we expect to maybe get doing the research. We plan on finishing building the Space Station by 2006. And then we’ll just have ongoing upkeep and then the research behind it. So that type of forecast is not really easy for us to predict right now.

Sherri: Ann, you’re a 6th grade student from HISD and you’re wanting to know what will happen if there was an emergency on board the station, what would the astronauts do? And we talked about that a little bit earlier with the X-38 crew return lifeboat. If you want to go back and revisit, in case you missed it earlier, any of you will be able to come back to this Web site, this Web cast will be archived, so you could replay it at any time on your computer.

Obviously you won’t be able to ask live questions at that point in time, but you can go back and take more detailed notes if you are working on a class project and you want to go back and review some of the things that we talked about earlier. But you will be able to watch this again. So Ann, take that opportunity to go back and watch the whole section where we’re talking about the X-38 crew return lifeboat. That’s what the astronauts would use in an emergency situation.

All right, well let’s have one or two more questions. We have very little time left. We do want to thank you for the time that you have spent with us so far here.

Erika and I are just very delighted to have this opportunity to be able to answer your questions and spend this time with you sharing information that we have here at NASA, especially about the topic of the International Space Station.

Erika: That’s right. You know what, Sherri? We want to make sure that the students know that they can log onto spaceflight.nasa.gov and it has a really cool tracking map on this site. And that means that you can find out where the Space Station is at any time.

Sherri: Anywhere in the world?

Erika: Anywhere in the world at any time you can see exactly where the Space Station is going to be. And didn’t you tell me that you had seen it pass over your back yard one day?

Sherri: Yes I did. As a matter of fact, with regard to that tracking map, this is what it would look like if you logged onto the Web site.

And I want you to look closely over Europe, there’s a red circle with a little cartoon image of the Space Station there. That’s how we can see that the station is over Europe right now, and traveling as quickly as it does, it goes around the Earth every hour and a half.

And so there’s a good opportunity that at different times of the week and different times of the month, that it may be passing over your area.

So you can find out if there’s a sighting opportunity for you on the spaceflight.nasa.gov Web site.

Erika: Absolutely.

Sherri: Well we are, unfortunately out of time today. It has been a joy talking with you. If you have follow-up questions or you want to ask questions of the astronauts on board the station right now, you can go to our learningoutpost.jsc.nasa.gov Web site, that’s also linked from the Quest Web site: Learningoutpost.jsc.nasa.gov. Please note, there’s no www in front of that and there is a link where you can ask questions of the folks in Mission Control, and the folks on the space shuttle, when they are up, and the folks on the Space Station, the astronaut crew. You can also ask follow-up questions of us if we do not have the opportunity to answer your question today.

Erika, do you have any final words for our viewers today?

Erika: Oh, always excited to work with students, and we want to make sure that you focus on keeping interested in the math and sciences. We need more engineers and scientists to help keep the space program alive, and it’s going to be your generation that takes us on our next step, maybe even on to Mars.

Sherri: Okay. Well thank you. I ditto that. And we hope that you have a wonderful afternoon. So long from Johnson Space Center.