0:00 After becoming an astronaut, do you view the world from a different angle?
0:04 >> So, was it my dream to become an astronaut first and foremost?
0:07 No.
0:08 You know, when I was growing up, um,
0:10 and I'm so happy we didn't say what year I was born in my
0:14 introduction,
0:14 but when I was growing up, I remember actually seeing, uh,
0:18 the first men walk on the moon, and I thought to myself,
0:21 now that would be cool.
0:23 That's what I want to do.
0:24 Um, and it didn't become a reality to become an astronaut like I mentioned
0:29 earlier till later when I was a test pilot.
0:32 And part of that reality came true
0:35 because one of the gentlemen
0:36 that was talking,
0:37 his name was John Young.
0:39 And he had actually been to the moon twice.
0:41 Once landed on it, a second time flew around it.
0:44 But he mentioned about practicing in some type of vertical landing craft to be
0:50 able to learn how to land on the moon.
0:51 And I said, "Oh my gosh, I'm a helicopter pilot.
0:53 I already have those skills.
0:54 So, this is really the first time it dawned on me
0:57 that I could potentially do this same type of thing.
1:01 Um, and I I tell you
1:03 that because uh I I didn't think about it for a long time until
1:07 later in life.
1:08 And so, I just trek through my life do trying to find the things
1:12 that I like to do.
1:13 And that I mentioned that earlier and I would reemphasize that again.
1:17 Uh if you're interested in being an astronaut, astronauts,
1:19 we need astronauts from all different fields
1:21 because there's so much we do up there.
1:23 We're uh you know, the plumbers, the electricians, the IT guys,
1:28 we're the you know, the maintainers, we're the toilet fixers, we're the space walkers,
1:32 we're the scientists.
1:33 And so we need people who have all of those skills to do that.
1:36 So, uh if you're thinking about that,
1:39 you I you're right on the right track.
1:41 And of course, yes.
1:42 Um I absolutely view life on this earth.
1:46 I view um being able to do whatever you want a lot differently.
1:50 Uh I was not straight A student in college.
1:54 I had a couple ups and downs in college.
1:56 I had a couple failures as well as a lot of successes.
1:59 And failure is good.
2:00 Um but what being an astronaut has reminded me is
2:04 that you can do anything you want to do
2:05 if you put your mind to it
2:07 and and determine and have determination
2:10 and find a path.
2:11 So yes, for sure I've have different perspective about a lot of things.
2:15 What was your motivation
2:17 as a child or a student
2:19 that inspired you to move on a path not often undertaken by women?
2:25 I think first of all, I didn't think about it that way.
2:27 I just thought of it as uh something fun to do.
2:30 Uh and my path was not always as straight as it may seem.
2:34 My biography maybe makes things look a little bit like they were straight from
2:38 one thing to the next,
2:39 but there were a lot of questions along the way.
2:42 So, you guys are getting ready to think about what you're going to do
2:44 in the future,
2:44 huh?
2:45 Don't feel locked into something is my one piece of advice.
2:48 I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was growing up.
2:51 I thought for sure I was going to be a veterinarian.
2:52 My father is a doctor.
2:54 Uh, biology is a little bit in our family.
2:57 Uh, but I also liked math and physics quite a bit.
2:59 Um, I didn't know what I wanted to do really.
3:01 I just love animals.
3:02 So, I wanted to be a veterinarian.
3:04 I didn't get into my first choices of college.
3:08 Uh, so I had to make a second choice about what I wanted to
3:11 do.
3:11 And the Naval Academy was recommended because, uh,
3:15 my family was pretty athletic
3:16 and we like camping is what my brother told me.
3:18 I think you like the school cuz you like camping.
3:20 I said, okay, sure.
3:22 Uh, and so that was not my first choice.
3:24 When I was at the Naval Academy,
3:26 I thought I wanted to be a diver cuz I was a swimmer.
3:29 That seemed very comfortable.
3:30 Uh, I didn't get that first choice either.
3:33 So I ended up going to be a pilot. when I was a pilot,
3:36 I wanted to fly jets because Top Gun just came out.
3:38 So, I thought that was cool.
3:40 Uh, and I became a helicopter pilot.
3:42 So, the path was not quite straight.
3:44 And it wasn't even until later
3:46 when I was in my mid20s
3:47 and I had gone to test pilot school,
3:49 uh, first time I had met an astronaut
3:51 and knew what astronauts did
3:53 that I thought,
3:54 wow, you know, I have some of the same things,
3:57 same qualifications that these these people have.
3:59 So, maybe this is a path that I can take.
4:02 So my my point in all of that was my path was not predetermined,
4:06 was not straight.
4:08 But that's okay.
4:08 I think that's normal for everybody.
4:11 And one of the things
4:11 that I would leave you with is find something
4:14 that you like.
4:15 It might take one
4:15 or two or three tries to figure out what you like.
4:19 But if you find something that you like, you'll do it well.
4:22 And that's most important.
4:23 And I think all of the people who are astronauts,
4:26 not all of them are test pilots.
4:27 We have doctors.
4:28 We actually have a veterinarian.
4:29 We have engineers. we have scientists,
4:32 but they're all pretty good at what they what their fields are
4:34 because they really enjoy them
4:36 and then they apply to be astronauts.
4:38 So, um I I would say I never thought about having a career
4:41 that was uh maybe male dominated
4:45 and that was maybe even more
4:47 so in the military um
4:48 because they were they were my teammates
4:50 and we work together
4:51 and I think that's more important uh than singling out somebody for one thing
4:56 or another.
4:57 So, thank you for your question.
4:59 Ma'am, what are the major problems
5:00 that you face when you come back to Earth
5:02 and how long does it take to regain all your physical abilities?
5:06 >> We have um some what do you want to say?
5:09 Mitigating uh methods up in space to make sure
5:12 that people are coming back to Earth
5:14 as normal as possible.
5:16 There's some things that we can't really uh totally protect from.
5:20 Uh one of those things is some radiation.
5:22 You know, we are above the atmosphere,
5:24 so we are getting an amount of radiation,
5:27 which is a little bit more than folks get here on Earth.
5:29 We have protective covering on the spacecraft,
5:31 so we do as much as we can while we're out there.
5:33 We have protective covering on our spac suits, so again,
5:36 we do as much as we can, but you do get some radiation,
5:39 and you never can change that.
5:41 Um, but the things that do change is um your physiology changes,
5:46 which is it's sort of fun actually to watch your body change. you know,
5:50 things happen like the calluses on your feet start to go away
5:52 because you don't walk.
5:54 Uh, you know, while you're up there, um,
5:56 my fingernails seem to grow a lot.
5:58 My hair grew a lot while I was up there.
6:00 So, it's sort of fun to watch all that happening.
6:02 No, gravity is not taking a toll on you.
6:05 I think some of the little wrinkles in your face go away for a
6:08 couple reasons.
6:10 One, because there's a fluid shift, so the fluid comes up to your head.
6:13 Um, but, uh, that's just sort of temporary.
6:16 Your spine also expands uh because of the vertebrae.
6:20 The cartilage between the vertebrae is not having any pressure on it.
6:24 The so it makes you a little bit taller while you're up in space.
6:26 Um but that all some of those things change when you come back home.
6:30 As soon as you get you can't escape gravity.
6:31 Once you're here, you're here.
6:33 So you shrink a little bit,
6:34 your back hurts a little bit because you're shrunk back.
6:37 Um unfortunately some of the wrinkles come back.
6:40 But that's okay.
6:41 Uh that's just life.
6:42 But uh some of the things
6:43 that we have to really worry about are bone density
6:46 and muscle mass,
6:47 right?
6:47 Because when you're up in space, your bones start to leech away right away.
6:51 You don't need you have this skeletal structure that we have.
6:55 And so essentially, it's advanced osteoporosis is starts to kick in right away for
6:59 everybody.
7:00 And so to mitigate that, we run on the treadmill,
7:03 which you've seen probably pictures of with a harness, which holds you down.
7:06 We also do weightlifting
7:08 which uh really helps particularly in the hip area
7:11 and the feet area
7:12 because we do squat type of exercises with the bar on our back
7:16 as well as deadlifts
7:18 and that all uh helps to regenerate the bone density
7:22 and then also the cardiovascular with the running on the treadmill
7:25 and the muscle mass
7:26 and with the bicycle.
7:28 So all of those things help when we get back.
7:30 So answer the long answer to your short question is all of
7:33 that new uh technology with all of those machines allowed all of most all
7:39 of us now to come back in pretty good shape.
7:41 So takes the fluid shift maybe 24 hours
7:45 or 48 hours or
7:46 so to get back to normal.
7:48 Uh so that you are your blood volume is back to normal
7:52 so you can actually do more physical fitness physical exercises.
7:57 Uh, but my bone density, muscle mass were essentially the same.
8:01 And we were able to test that about a week after getting home.
8:03 And you could sort of you can see people are the same
8:06 as when they left
8:06 because we work out
8:07 so rigorously while we're up in space.
8:10 There's also new um diets
8:11 that we're trying while we're up there
8:13 because there's definitely some things
8:15 that are in the diet
8:16 that will cause bone density issues.
8:19 So, we we test ourselves right away.
8:22 The first moment we get back, about 10 days after we get back,
8:26 two weeks after we get back, a month,
8:28 and then I'm going to have another test at about 6 months,
8:30 but uh should be pretty much back to normal within within two weeks
8:34 or so,
8:36 generally back to normal.
8:37 The astronauts lose consciousness during takeoff since it's against gravity
8:42 and high speed makes you feel dizzy.
8:45 Did you feel someone has taken you by your shoulders?
8:48 Liftoff is a little bit in a spacecraft.
8:50 The way they have us seated
8:52 and the way that the the the gravity force,
8:55 the G kicks in, that's what we call a G factor, right?
8:58 How much G like right now we have one G of gravity pushing on
9:02 us.
9:03 Uh it's a little bit different um than in an airplane
9:06 that people think about loss of consciousness in an airplane.
9:09 If somebody what they call pulls too many G's sometimes you have loss of
9:13 consciousness and the reason for
9:14 that is the blood is draining from your head
9:16 and that will make you lose consciousness in a spacecraft the way we are
9:21 seated and the way
9:22 that the G kicks in is like I mentioned it pushes down here on
9:25 your chest so it makes it a little bit harder to breathe
9:29 because it's pushing your lungs down
9:31 but it doesn't pull the blood out of your head
9:33 so no none of us lost consciousness on on takeoff off
9:38 or even landing for
9:40 that matter.
9:41 Um you can have a uh abnormal landing.
9:45 We call it ballistic landing
9:47 which is a down mode from the normal type of landing.
9:50 And in that case uh the G level can get up to about eight
9:54 or nine.
9:55 So that's pretty extreme.
9:57 Um and we've had a couple people who have had that experience.
10:00 It's not it's not a bad u mode of the spacecraft the Soyos.
10:05 It's just a down modeing.
10:07 It doesn't just not acting normally, but it's not anything bad.
10:11 It's just it's how it's designed.
10:12 It's aerodynamically designed to do that and it's fully survivable.
10:16 But in that case, that was a little bit excessive pressure.
10:19 If you can imagine, eight times gravity's pushing down on you.
10:23 It's pretty huge, but it's not for a long period of time.
10:26 And we test this out.
10:28 So, we all know what
10:28 that feels like by riding in a centrifuge uh in Star City outside of
10:34 Moscow where we do the training.
10:35 We're in a centrifuge
10:36 and we go through the whole landing profile with
10:38 that that number of G's
10:40 so you can feel what it's like.
10:41 So no loss of conscious under a normal uh launch or landing.
10:46 A ballistic might have some some impacts.
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