Hey what a great crowd.

Great to see so many young future
Georgia Tech students there.

Awesome.

So glad you guys can make it as you
mentioned I'm back in Atlanta for

a few days doing what we call
hometown hero campaign and

it's just been really thrilling to get
to share my story a little bit with some

folks at Fernbank last night and some T.V.
stations this morning.

And now here with you.

So I hope you'll learn a few
things about space travel.

I'm going to share just briefly with you
a short video from our mission back in

November and hopefully you'll
maybe want to do this one day or

be inspired to do something
else that you maybe thought you

couldn't do because heck I never
thought I could be an astronaut.

But here I am talking to you and shows you
with some hard work in a good school and

you can pretty much do
about anything you want.

So hopefully you kids out there can can
take something away from that you see

a bunch of pictures on a phone up behind
me and I'll talk to some of those later

but we had about a sixteen day mission
up in space back in November we were

touted as the Extreme Home Makeover
mission for the space station because what

we were doing was taking a bunch and
new equipment up to pretty much.

Re outfit the station we had new bedrooms
we had a new gym we had a new bathroom.

We had new exercise equipment so
as you can tell we're kind of

redoing the inside of the space station
as part of our mission and we also got

a pretty busy on the outside fixing
a lot of things that were broken and

put in a lot of new
equipment on the outside.

So I think you'll see that the title of
extreme home make it was pretty fitting

for what we did so it kind of join me
now I'll show a little video here and

talk through it as we get go and maybe
you can share in the experience with me.

So we launched on November fourteenth that

was the night launch it was the last night
launch scheduled for the shuttle program.

So maybe we'll have another one.

But right now it's there on
any schedule night launches.

These little T. thirty eight jets you see
that are kind of neat we get to fly those

around the country and that's how we get
down the launch great way to travel on

a supersonic aerobatic jet.

Here's our commander
Chris Ferguson let me in a ditch.

Our crew that's Eric fellow Georgia Tech
graduate and he's from Atlanta as well.

Don Pettit here he's a I
think triple Ph D. type

there's Sandy Magnus she just was with
us for a short while we kicked her out.

Once we got to the space station and

she lived up there for
four months you recognize that person.

Heidi was just before me.

They're our lead spacewalker and that's
Steve Bowen who is a Navy captain and

a submarine officer actually in
the Navy so pretty unique crew mix and

we had five military which is pretty
unusual have met many military

folks on a flight that
was a real picture there.

Launch night with the the full moon rose
up over the launch pad was pretty neat.

You know the old way there.

We get out there about three
hours before the launch and

we're you know we get strapped in probably
two and a half hours before the launch

sit on our backs and it's obvious they're
ready to go when the count happens.

He turned it up a little bit.

It's

about seven million pounds of
thrust is about the light off here.

So it's pretty nice right.

What

just as we go through the clouds here.

You can cut the sound.

Now if you want but this is about two
minutes into the flight the white solid

rocket boosters on the outside of
the vehicle fall off here as you see him

tumbling down and
they fall back in the Atlantic Ocean and

we actually pick them up with boats and
use them again on another shuttle flight.

And then after those fall off the ride

gets really smooth years
Excel orating super fast.

That was really amazing.

I couldn't believe the acceleration we're
feeling this is about eight minutes into

the flight the orange tank our
external fuel tank falls off and

we're in space in eight minutes so
to go from zero to seventeen thousand five

hundred miles an hour eight minutes
you can imagine how fast your Excel or

any right to get there and you feel it.

All right through your chest.

I was grin and

laughing like a little kid you know on
a rollercoaster it was so much fun.

And I would get up there.

We don't have time to say this is really
cool actually start working so you see

Eric and Chris Ferguson up there they're
actually far the Jets in the back of

the shuttle there to get a set up for the
rendezvous which would be about a day and

a half later with
the International Space Station.

This is the second day of our flight ared
Bo and myself we pulled out the robotic

arm as you see there and what we do now on
the second day of our flight is inspect

the entire space shuttle vehicle to make
sure that we didn't have any damage on

the take off so we did that it takes
about six to seven hours to do it.

So it's a pretty full day on the robotic
arm now we didn't have any damage on our

vehicle which was nice.

So we put that away and then third day
this is the third day of our flight

we're actually coming up to the space
station this video is taken by

the space station crew members of us and
they're kind of doing the same thing

they're looking at our vehicle to
make sure they don't see anything or

any damage that we had from the take off.

This is a view that we had
out of the back of the space

shuttle as the space station's kind
of rising above the tail there.

I couldn't believe how huge
the space station was in

the you know we obviously build this
thing for about ten years now and

it was truly amazing what we
as humans have put together.

Up in space.

So as we come into dock and
we come in very slowly.

It's very choreographed so
to speak but the command.

In the pilot are extremely busy making
sure that we do this thing correctly and

we come in very slow.

We actually duck down here

to the bottom of your screen with
to that little circle thing.

And once we get connected it takes an hour
or so to equalize the pressures and

then we open up the hatches and we float
on over to the space station which after

being cooped up in the space
shuttle space station.

Seems like as big as this room.

There's a ton of room to float around
in here you see is floating over there.

Now there's no up or down and that's why
that camera picture was upside down and

it's not goofy to be upside down
of the person you're talking to

which is kind of the way it is so it's.

You can fly so when we got up there there
were three people living on the space

station one of them was extremely happy
to see it because he'd been there for

six months and we were bringing him home.

So as you can imagine he was there
he was almost in tears because he

knew it was just a couple couple
weeks away from seeing his family and

his vehicle had arrived to bring him home.

This big silver Can you
see in the back of our

space shuttle was called
the Leonardo is the resupply module.

So it wasn't one that we actually left
on the space station we pulled it out.

Don Pettit myself pulled it out with
the robotic arm as you see here we attach

it to the space station and then we
offloaded about seventeen thousand pounds

of supplies and new experiments and
equipment over to the space station and

Don was in charge of he was the load
master in charge of making sure

we got everything in the right
spot on the space station so

that was a huge part of our mission
there you see Don trying to organize

in his paperwork in his thoughts as he
got ready to transfer all this equipment.

These things you see him pulling
out here we call more rock.

We had three major racks that we sent
over to the space station this first

one here and you see it weighs
about a thousand pounds but

you see they're just moving
around with their fingertips so

you feel pretty strong up there
because nothing weighs anything but

this is an important piece is the new
bathroom for the space station.

Saber has taken good care of this thing
as we moved it across the hatch and

we connected it in the U.S. laboratory
now there's a bathroom on the U.S.

side that used to only be on
the Russian side but now we have one.

Now we had another rack
that you see him put in.

Right next to that bathroom which
is called the urine processor so

most you can figure out what that does and
that's connected to the bathroom and

if you can ask your counselors in
the Explain that see you later.

So I don't have to get into that but

really the most important
part is the third one.

We put which is right next to the urine
processor and that's our new kitchen.

OK and they're all connected.

So you can your brains are probably
working now and figure out what's going on

but we really this is a great
technology that we now have and it

sounds kind of gross when you're thinking
about it but the water that comes out of

the machine is better than any bottled
water that you might drink here on Earth.

So it's really amazing what we've done
with technology and you're asking why do

we need this capability Well we need it if
we want to get out of lower earth orbit

which is what you know we want to do we
want to go to the moon and eventually to

Mars down the road and you know we can't
pack enough drinking water on a vehicle.

If you want to get off the launch pad for
a human to survive to go out that far.

So we have to have a capability like this
that we're trying out here in the space

station to be able to
recycle every bit of liquid.

Possible to make sure that
we have been drinking water.

So that's why we're doing it and
I think it's going to be a real nice.

Hated seven take up now.

It breaks every down and
we get a fix and so

we're still trying to work out all the
bugs but it can be a nice thing to have

you start to see some of our space
walking pictures here we had four

spacewalks on our mission and I got
the chance to do spacewalks two and four.

So it was quite a thrill for

me when I wasn't outside I was kind of
running the show on the inside by reading

the procedures of the two
folks that were outside.

We go outside for about seven hours at
a time so it's a really long day and

you can think about what may or
may get tired while you're out there.

You're mentally fatigued is
your concentration so hard.

Whatever your task is and
not letting go and

you know all the important things that you
don't want to do you don't want to go.

Obviously when you're outside so you want
to make sure you're attached and for

seven hours your brain
is working really hard.

So you're mentally fatigued your hands
get super fancy while you're out

there because everything
you do is with your hands.

You don't we call it space walking but

there's nothing done
with your feet per se.

It was all done with your hands and
you're fighting.

Sure of your space space suit the whole
time when you open and close your hand.

So that's why your Hey get so tired.

While you're out there.

You see the pictures here what we're
working on the main thing we worked out on

the outside was this thing called
the Solar Alpha Rotary Joint or Sarge that

we called it and it's what makes
the solar arrays actually spin around and

track the sun as we go around the earth.

So without this joint working which
it wasn't working on the starboard

of the right side of the space station.

Which is kind of fixed there and
it had been broken for

about a year before we got there.

So our task was to go take this whole
mechanism apart it's about a ten foot

diameter ring you know about as big as
this stage here and it had bearings all

throughout it we had to take every
cover off every bearing off and

clean all this debris that we found some
metal shavings were all over the place so

the mechanism was binding
up you know we never

suspected this would happen up there but
it did so we cleaned it all up.

But new bearings in it but the covers back
on and just hope that it work because

we had really no feedback there and so
we pulled away and saw the the solar

rays actually tracking the sun and
we knew obviously to work at that point so

that was pretty neat for us to to be able
to help out the space station a little bit

get a little more life and the main
thing is to be able to produce the power

that the space station was designed to
do I look at this little picture here.

This is Steve on one of my buddies outside
he's he's doing a very simple task

of putting a glove into this bag here and

you can to see what happens
if he's trying to to do this.

It doesn't behave very well it
kind of just pops back out.

So I like to say the coolest thing about
space is everything floats in the worst

thing about space is that everything
floats and it's very challenging and

very frustrating at first when you're
outside trying to figure out how much to

really need to push this item or
whatever it is to make it stay and

usually you push a little too hard.

Everything on the other end
of the back comes out and

you're left with a mess to
try to get back together but.

Challenges that we have to fight
through it takes a couple hours for

the new space walkers to figure out how to
move around correctly and efficiently and

you know be able to handle things
in your bags that you have and

we took out lots of tools a lot of new
tools that never been taken out to.

This task that we had of fixing
the sarge that I mentioned earlier.

This is me here I was actually
working on the end of the robotic

arm I got the chance.

Obviously to fly it to attach
the logistics module and I got a chance

to ride on the end of it when they flew me
around when I was outside I was a pretty

cool ride and then finally got a chance
to work on the end of it which

was it was just showing some fatigue
from being up there about eight years so

I had a chance to leave the end of it and
put the cables back into the grooves where

they were supposed to be and
it seems to be working pretty well now.

These are kind of a small picture of
the solar arrays that you see here you see

things are huge one hundred twenty five
feet on each side so two hundred fifty

feet total I said I couldn't believe how
massive they were when we got up there and

I'd always heard about how big they
were until you see it for real.

I don't think you get
a full appreciation for it.

This is this is how we come back in after
a spacewalk Steve Bowen on the left that's

myself on the right of your screen and our
pants kind of detach as you saw there and

then you kind of just you kind of
sink through Steve Bowen get stuck in

a suit because there's not
gravity pulling you down.

We're kind of laughing at that our
commander had to push his head through

just to get him out but
I was after a long day one of those.

Spiders you know we took a few little
critters or pets up there with us.

Where they were actually doing some
experiments with these guys to see if

they could actually spend
a symmetric web in space and

it took them a couple days but after that
they figured out they could do that.

And this is for you.

Grown ups as an arc of cells or a pill
that Don Pettit was just playing around

one day you put in some water
just to see what would happen.

And just start creating
a ton of energy and

Don was he's like our you know the science
guy he has all these the experiments he's

doing every day just on his own
he's flipping this thing here

shown intermediate moments of inertia and
how things react.

Maybe differently than we
expected him to on Earth.

This is Greg Chamitoff the six month space
station crew member and of course we

joked that it took him six months in space
to learn how to juggle He was great and

this is this at this point the space
station is No two they were actually.

Five different elements attached so it's
a really busy intersection think of it

like that and we're going to show you
how you fly through this intersection.

Just like Atlanta we can
have traffic sometimes

we're all going to do work there
we were having fun and all.

OK That's Eric Boe there fellow Tech
grad he was just spinning around.

Showing the angular momentum works the
same up there as it does here on Earth.

So there's a little exercise bike we
had in the shuttle I tried to hop

on that about every day and
I saw a space walking.

And I think you heard mentioned earlier
we had Thanksgiving up in space.

So this is our Thanksgiving
family picture here.

I'm sure it's just like the one you
had There's our lovely dinner turkey

on the top stuffing on the bottom
there we had green beans and

actually had sweet tea
which was really amazing.

So it didn't taste quite as good as your
Thanksgiving but it was pretty neat if you

had to be away from family that
was a good place to be I guess.

Don Petit here on the left invented
this coffee cup while we were up there.

He had a spare five minutes or so and
figured out a way to make this cup

that has the perfect shape where you can
actually sip it like you would here on

Earth which has never been done before and
you know all the people at NASA was going

crazy over this idea after
he said some video down.

So he's he's just an amazing guy a great
person to have on the crew because he's

the brain is always going and
he's a different level than the rest

of us I think I'm on thinking that these
are some great views of the earth.

If I ever had a spare moment
which I didn't have many but

do you find my my head stuck in a window
just looking back at our beautiful planet.

This is a view taken out of the Russian
windows the Russians really have some nice

Windows on their side of the space station
and we don't have so many nice ones I

don't know why that is but we didn't we
didn't think of the window view I guess is

as much as they did this is
obviously sped up quite a bit but

you'll see the solar arrays on the right
side your screen as they track through

these are two of the Japanese modules that
we have on the space station now truly

is an international space station with
the European module two Japanese modules

Russian and U.S. modules up there
now we have six people living there.

There's five different.

Entries represented on
the six different people.

So pretty amazing deal.

So this was a this is a bittersweet
day this is day we say goodbye

to the space station folks and
we have to start heading home.

This is the thirteenth day of our flight.

Sandy here on the left.

We had to make sure she was on the correct
side and Greg had no trouble getting Greg

on our side of the space
shuttle to come home but.

And then at that.

This day air this kind of those big day.

He's the pilot on our flight and
he's the one who actually detaches us and

flies us away from the space station and
you see us moving out here and

he pulled us out to about six hundred
feet away from the space station and

then we actually did a complete circle
a complete fly around of the space station

which is really fantastic because we have
some incredible pictures that you'll see

a few of those here.

You probably noticed it doesn't look
symmetric there's only one solar

array on this side there's two over
there in the mission right after us.

But the other one on the left
side of your screen there.

So now it's all symmetric and we're drawn
the maximum power from the sun that we can

discuss and really spectacular views and
you're seeing some of them here.

This is a neat kind of a neat shot it
looks like the station the space station

crew members are shined a big flashlight
at us but really that's the sun that's

setting behind the space station so that
was kind of a unique view that we saw as

it passes each element on the space
station is kind of weak in action.

That's what it's given at that effect.

So that was pretty neat.

I'm going to launch a satellite
here this is part of our mission

right after we undock So
you know it was really quick.

We launched it out there was a pico sat
they called it was a military satellite

that I can't tell you much about because
they don't tell me much about it but

it's out there doing something or
it was I think it died already but

it was doing something.

This is landing day so

this is the day we have to kind of convert
our spaceship into into an airplane.

We have to get our seats get in
our spacesuits to come home and

just get ready to land and
we always like to land in Florida and

the people in Mission Control There
are dying to get us to Florida.

I can see that's where they
process the vehicle and for us.

That's where our families are waiting
on a so we were happy to see them but

the weather was horrible that day so
we missed Florida.

A little bit went to California and

landed out you see that black runway there
were landing on a runway that the shuttle

had never landed on before as
a temporary runway out there because

the main runway was closed at
Edwards Air Force Base that day.

So here we come in we're
coming in pretty fast.

Now just think about this the commander at
the time he's flying the space shuttle now

is never flown this vehicle before right.

You can't just take the shuttle out and

practice your landings around
the traffic pattern so it's

a pretty intense time the commander Chris
Ferguson for us to sit in amazing job.

Our simulators are very good in
training them how to do this but

it's just not like the real vehicle.

Air got the gear down which was
real nice it's always helpful and

we're coming and
really fast lane about two hundred

knots which is much faster
than the airliner would land.

So the challenge for
us now is we've got to get this

two hundred thousand pound vehicle
stop before the runway runs out.

All right so we threw out
a parachute to help us do that and

we have some breaks that
also help us do that.

So the commander and pilot are working the
brakes and trying not to overheat them but

this runway was shorter than we were used
to and we actually used about all that we

had about five hundred feet left
on the end when we stop it.

That's good enough because
we had run off the end.

So that was it was an amazing day out.

It was a Sunday afternoon which was
also good because there weren't too many

hands to shake and you're not feeling
one hundred percent when you get home so

it was it was kind of good.

They gave us an extra half a day to
recover before we got back to our families

in the general public.

So hopefully guys enjoy that.

Thank you.

I will just let these slide scroll behind
me in I'll be happy to answer questions

until someone tells me we need to go do
something else and I have any questions.

How does floating feel in space.

It's the coolest thing and I wish
everybody in here can experience it.

What's really needed.

I mean you can if we
were in this room here.

You know half of you would be
on the ceiling have to be on

the wire help people on the wall.

All over the place and
it's not weird or anything and.

You know I'd be upside down talking to you
or I could be sleeping next to you and

I'm upside down the way you are.

And the need is kind of push off you want
to go over there use push off you're going

to go over there and so
you hit something over there and

then you'll bounce off if
you don't grab something and

go somewhere else and it was really
neat learning how to fly around

the space station's pretty neat is kind
of a long tube like a long hallway.

And you get really good.

You know by the end
where all this is up and

through there and
just having a great time flying around.

So it's pretty neat.

When the back of it yeah.

It's floating like swimming but once you
get out like if you push off of something

and you actually move your arm like
this it doesn't help you at all.

So it's you know by doing this or by doing
a swim stroke it's not helping you get

into there's actually a space in
the Japanese module the space station that

it's so big over there that you can get
out of the middle of it and you get stuck.

So it's not that you don't get
good good style points for that.

So if someone gets stuck in the middle of
course it was like hey C'mere looks Shane

stuck in the middle and
you're like hey push me please and

course nobody helps you out there but
that's probably the only spot you can

get actually stuck Otherwise you can
actually probably reach either side.

If you get you know in
the middle of another module.

The Japanese module is so big that.

You can stall out in the middle.

They're pretty funny.

Yes.

We all have many many jobs the kind
of the big ones I was in I was

a space walker said that was a big part of
my training really most of my training was

probably in the space walk business
as well as I flew both the robotic

arms the space shuttles and the space
stations which are very different.

So that took up a lot of
my training as well and

we all had a little test like I launch
that satellite out to some training time.

And we all kind of got cross trained on
other people's duties as well in case they

weren't feeling well one day or
in case they were doing something else and

you had to pick up their test so
we kind of were Jack's of all trades so

to speak but everybody had two or three
main things like I mentioned robotics for

me and space walking for me or
kind of the two biggies.

Right yes.

Yes To Do you know the difference
in the sound when we were break

an into the atmosphere out of
the atmosphere and we can tell

that we're in a pressurized vehicle and
our communications really were great.

We have so many satellites up there in it
to make sure we have communications during

critical phases like the launch or the
entry that we rarely have lost a com But

there's a spot on the About halfway around
the the earth that sometimes we don't

bring that satellite up if
it's not a critical time.

Like if a space walks not going on or
something.

They will have that up.

So there's a couple minutes every time we
go around that spot where we don't talk to

the ground but as we went in and out of
the atmosphere I didn't I didn't hear or

notice anything different.

Yeah.

What I like better being in space or
on the ground.

That's an easy one being in space.

It was awesome.

It was so good I guess I was smiling so

much that every time I called home to my
wife she was like Would you stop smiling.

So I was just grinning from ear to ear.

The whole time I guess I didn't notice
it but I was having a really good time.

So let's see.

Yeah.

How to

feel fixin this how you talking about
the joint on the solar array thing.

It was really hard work actually took us
about twenty hours to actually fix this

thing with three of us on three
different spacewalks working on this.

It was very tedious.

It was very hard work because it was you
doing a lot of things with your hands and

your hands got super tired and you had to
be real careful we had a lot of grease

that we were spreading out as well which
we hadn't sprayed grease out before so

we didn't know how it was
going to react in space and

it was really messy unfortunately so
we came back and

like looking like Jiffy Lube people
with grease all over our spacesuits and.

But it was fun.

It was a good time and it works.

That's the main thing.

Yeah but before you leave what's up.

That's true but I.

Also floats away from if
you don't hold onto it.

There's a downside to get it back.

Can you say the latter.

I miss the last how long as what.

I was a day that would work and
it's usually a sixteen hour work day

up there and they schedule eight
hours of sleep every day for us.

I'm going to see if you wake up.

They have pretty much your daytime
lined out down to the minute for

a space shuttle crew member.

So it's a pretty much a two week sprint to
get everything done at the space station

crew members it's a little more relaxed
you can imagine you can't operate on

a pace like that for six months or
even three months for that matter so

their schedules are a little more drawn
out if you don't get to something

today as a space station crew member guess
what use do it tomorrow or the next day.

If you don't if we don't get to something
as a space shuttle crew member.

It may affect the next mission.

So yes a little more you know important
that we get our work done on time so

that other missions aren't affected or
delayed.

Yeah.

Is it uncomfortable to sleep I found
sleeping really nice up there.

The cool thing is you don't have any
pressure on your joints you're going to

hang in there floating but you have
a sleeping bag that you attach to the wall

somewhere and a final spot attached to
the wall and you kind of float into it and

then you put your arms like this and
put a strap over it so

that they're not waking you up
all night like floating around.

So that's important.

It also kind of provides some pressure
I found and it makes you feel like

you're in a bed a little bit just by
having some pressure on your body and

then we have a pillow that we
strapped to our head to our forehead.

It looks goofy but it works really well.

Also provides pressure there and you may.

There it is there is there.

There it is sleeping outfits.

That's how we slept and and we had
seven people and it's really small area

maybe an area about this big seven
people sleeping across in diagonal and

upside down the everybody else but.

So I ended up sleeping about seven
hours out of eight hour period a day.

So yes.

When we were there.

There was only a Russian on board all
the other folks were American and

the Russian was awesome.

I never met this guy never
trained with them at all and

he was very hospitable he had
a sober to his side of the world for

dinner a couple times and had Russian
food and is very hospitable and

very nice he would show us what
are we want to see over there.

Typically during the day all of our
work was on the U.S. side all his

work was on the Russian side so you almost
don't see each other unless you make

an effort to actually go over there and so
any time I had a free moment I go there.

It's very different on that side
just the way they design things and

build things is much different than us but

it's cool it's needs more homey kind of
like going in your grandma's house you

know it's always like carpet on the walls
everywhere and felt very homey.

Whereas ours is very sterile
like a hospital almost So

it was kind of neat going on there.

So I just see in the differences.

Yes.

How do we manage oxygen and C O two levels
and we have a great air conditioning

system think of it like that the recycling
it's all this stuff and just spits

out the proper mixture ratio we have tanks
on the outside that store auction and

nitrogen and they just you know that
the machine gets the right amounts

obviously monitors it very closely and
if they need to put some more

into whatever then they can do that
from the ground with computer commands.

The C O two is a big deal because.

C O two pockets kind of form
sometimes behind a bag or

behind a rock or something.

If you're working down there and
your head heads in there a bit.

And that's an issue because
their biggest headaches and

didn't feel well for a little while.

So now on the space shuttle we have these
little ducks now that just make them cut

like air conditioned tubes and
you can kind of move around so

if you're going to be working somewhere
you can actually force that duct to point

you to help with the air circulation.

But they do a really nice.

I didn't have any issues with it.

Personally.

So I think they've done a real nice job.

Over time figured that out yet.

Inside the space station.

You talked about or what.

Inside is it cold up there inside.

It's really whatever the commander
of the space station

wants to keep the temperature at so
we like to have a thermostat and

that person is in charge of making make it
colder I was very comfortable I thought

I think is about seventy degrees
when we were there on the inside.

So very comfortable in the back.

It's a good question.

We poll we only pull
about three G.'s which is

not a not not a lot compared like
a fighter jet that pulls eight or nine.

So we're way and

you know three G.'s means you weigh about
three times what you weigh on earth.

So if you weigh hundred pounds you
feel like you weigh three hundred and

the G.'s on our launch everything goes
right through your chest which you can

really take a lot more G.'s
through your chest and

you can't do other parts of your body so
that was nice and this three G.

effect is kind of off and on throughout
the eight minute launch sequence or

they'd minutes from launch the space and
it kind of throttles up to three G.

and it comes back a little bit as
the engines are throttling back and

then you as you accelerate after
the the rocket boosters fall off.

You have about two or three minutes at
least of continuous three G.'s which

is it's hard to move your hands up and
down or trying to reach

a switch it would be pretty challenging in
there in those times but you can do it.

It's just tougher but
it's still fun I was having a blast and

the speed that we get to is seven seventy
thousand five hundred miles an hour.

Another way I think of
that's five miles a second.

So we're traveling over the earth
about five miles every second.

So we're moving moving pretty good so
I think next to you.

Somebody had a question about their.

Yeah.

The name of the joint that.

That it's called
the Solar Alpha Rotary Joint.

We have a lot of acronyms so
we call it the Sarge as a R.J..

Yeah.

So every country share
what one space station

every country in that in the world is
not involved in the space business but

the ones that are we all
share the same space station.

It's mainly
Europeans Japanese Russians and

Americans and
we do have we've had a Brazilian astronaut

in a few other countries throughout
the program but right now the ones I

mentioned before are kind of the main
players in the in this space business.

You had an orange shirt.

We as a space shuttle crew members didn't
really have any any part to do with

as it was the space station crew members
actually Sandy Magnus who we dropped off.

It was her job to look at his caterpillars
I don't know what you do with

the caterpillars but she told us
about the spiders a little bit and

you know she had plenty of
other stuff to do as well but

those are just the spiders
didn't last very long.

I think they were they didn't make it
time we left they would they had already

passed away so.

You know I but

they I guess they got whatever they
needed to out of the experiment.

So yeah.

So how

is it moving around the space station on
the outside is very similar to the way we

train we train in this giant pool here on
earth that they they stake a seat in our

big white spacesuits that you've
seen pictures up and we move around.

It's similar but it's also very different.

We don't have the water drag that
we're used to in the pool so

if you're moving in the pool
on the space station.

And you stop in the pool you really
stop open space when you're moving

along the stock is what you're momentum
and your inertia keeps going that way.

So then you're like Woo.

And so you move try to move really slowly
so you don't have those effects but you

know first time space walkers like myself
in a couple other guys in our flight

the first hour you're outside you're just
you know obviously extremely pumped up and

excited and you're over control and
everything in your your semes out there.

You're all over the place so

you figure it out pretty quick
as you get tired in the first.

Hour you're like wow I'm already worn out.

I've got six more hours to go.

So you try to get a lot
more efficient in and

it's pretty easy to we have around
us got to control yourself and

what we say is slower is faster so
the slower you move the better off.

You're going to be in the long run.

So we try to.

You know everybody tells you that but
until you actually go experience that you

don't really know what
they're talking about.

So yeah.

We

had space shuttle program supposed
to end next year in two thousand and

ten and
as of now we have eight launches left.

So you know.

It's pretty while they were thinking
they were going to be done here and

in a year or so a little over a year and
with the space.

Well it's been an amazing
vehicle it is getting old.

Obviously it's been around for
about thirty years now technology on it.

You folks would be amazed.

It's.

For those of you that are a little older
like myself in the room think flies on

about a two eighty six computer capable
computer of young kids probably never

even heard of what two eighty six is but
it's a very old computer and

it still flies great on these thinks
the technology on it is pretty old.

The new mission now is
to go to the moon and

Mars the space shuttle cannot get there.

It's not designed to go out
to lower earth orbit so

we have to obviously have
a new vehicle to do that.

So if we are going to go to the moon and
Mars.

We have to you know shut the shuttle
program down at some point.

Mainly to get those funds
diverted to the new vehicle so

we can actually build the vehicle and

we got a lot of people working on
the new design of the vehicle right now.

Astronauts and contractors and NASA people
when they're trying to get it done.

They can actually start building it
until we get enough money to do that.

So we can't do that until
we shut shuttle down so

it's going to be
bittersweet kind of thing.

I mean the same thing happened
after the Apollo program.

I'm sure don't realize that but
we had a gap.

While we you know funded up get
all that money funded out of

the shuttle program to get that thing
built so it'll be interesting for

a five year gap hopefully that's all it's
going to be but there in that time we're

still going to have people find in
space live on the space station but

we're relying on
the Russians to get up and.

So we will not have any access to
space which is interesting for

us not to have access to space.

So we'll see how it all plays out
this plan may change when the new

administration figures out
what they want to do with us

which will be here in a few months yet.

What if you like walking on
the earth when I got back.

It was very I was very wobbly very
unstable my brain was kind of dizzy

just spinning around still my head was
supposed to stand in talking to that day

I need to hold on to something
otherwise I'd probably just fall over.

They watch you when you get when you get
home after about an hour and they want you

to go outside walk around the space
shuttle kind of like a big tree lap or

whatever and all the Media Watch
out there to get a picture well.

About half our crew couldn't do that.

So the other half went outside and
did it and I was out there walking and

I was walking like this.

Was like a statue you never.

In most of us were just because you don't
feel great and you're not very stable and

if I would ever say hey look up at
the space I would have done that.

I just would tip on over you know because
you had that your equilibrium in your

inner ear still not quite right in
trying to figure out where it is so

I was pretty weird feeling but
I went out and did it.

And yeah after maybe six seven hours I was
fine but all that kind of went away but

it was it was very weird
your legs felt very heavy.

Because they hadn't been used in a couple
weeks they forgot how to walk so to speak.

Maybe your muscles it forgotten so you
kind of got to retrain them real quick and

how to do that.

So it wasn't so

bad for us think of a six month person
that we brought back that person.

He had a rough time for a while.

Unfortunately and
that's normal just a little in the back.

How do you think we don't have showers.

I'll leave it at that it's
like going on a camping trip.

All right.

Without a stream next to you.

So we do kind of wipe down I guess
every day we have wash costs and

soapy water and stuff and we have this
no ranch shampoo that you can use but

we don't have a shower per se.

Again not.

Too bad for the space shuttle two week.

Think about the six month person.

It's one more question.

All right.
Let's hear about right in the middle.

What happens if you let
go when you're outside.

And we're always tethered what we call or

are connected up with this cable you
may have seen some pictures of that.

So we always had this thing called
a safety tether so see if you come out of

the airlock which is where we come out
when we go outside you immediately connect

your safety tether and ours could go
out to about eighty five feet long.

So if you're going any
further than that and

you had another one that you would hook up
and kind of get on that to go out further.

So you've got to make sure you're
safe tell is always connected so

say I'm out about eighty feet.

And I like go.

I'm not going to go flying off into space
and never come back I would just sing back

to wherever my safety tether eighty feet
down the way would pull me back into it.

That would not be a fun ride
that would be very bad.

Trying not to let go but

if you did you wouldn't float away
you still be safe and once you get to

work site then you actually set up another
tether which we call local tether which

keeps you right in this certain areas
we have a tether that you put on it.

It's really nice and firm it'll hold you.

So you can work with two hands
doing whatever task it is you do so

in that case we have at least two tethers
on while we're at a work site for

safety and for stability at the work site.

If all that we was really bad day and
everything broke and

you floated off the space station.

We have a jet pack on our back where
we could fire selves back on so

they make sure we're triply
redundant there and.

You don't want to be the first person
to have to use that capability that bad

style points but thanks for
your questions and for your interest.

Thanks.

For the camera we really appreciate you
being here and answering your questions.

We'd like to thank you for it's awesome.

And it's all with YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU VERY MUCH.