Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Staying in Shape in Space With Astronaut Clay Anderson

Episode Date: August 1, 2011

Staying in Shape in Space With Astronaut Clay AndersonLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A look back at staying in shape in space, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Every once in a very long while, Planetary Radio needs to take a break. This is one of those weeks. Don't get me wrong, we've got brand new visits with Emily Lakdawalla, Bill Nye, and Bruce Betts, but I decided to go back three and a half years for this week's main interview segment. That's when I talked to astronaut Clay Anderson.

He had just spent five months floating around the International Space Station. Here's your chance to hear that particularly enjoyable conversation once again. Next week, we'll be back with a brand new visit to the Vesta Fiesta, something Bill will tell you more about after we talk with Emily Lakdawalla, the Planetary Society's Science and Technology Coordinator. So Emily, I'd like to start, if we can, with opportunities, steady progress toward that big crater Endeavor. You know what it reminds me of is Luke Skywalker's pilot colleague

approaching that spot on the Death Star, and he says, almost there, almost there. It's hard to believe that we really are almost there. And, you know, the hills on Endeavor's Rim have stayed stubbornly below the horizon for a really long time. But all of a sudden in the last month, they have been popping up and the views are just getting

more and more spectacular every day. I don't, it's been such a long time since I have been checking Opportunity's images every day, sometimes twice a day, to see if new pictures have come down from Mars and if that vista has just gotten taller. Well, I think people should definitely take a look at this wonderful, not really a video, it's a series of stills in your July 31st entry called Mountains Rising for Opportunity,

because you can see this progress toward those hills. It's really dramatic, and the fact that we're approaching those hills really signifies the start of what's essentially a brand new mission on Mars. Opportunity landed in a totally different kind of landscape than this. And we're getting a whole other mission out of the Mars Exploration Rovers. All right, very quickly now, because it is the beginning of yet another month, you have your regular feature, What's Up in the Solar System, in August 2011. We won't be able to cover everything here, but how about a couple of highlights? Well, a couple of highlights is that we're getting very close to the launch of Juno, which is supposed to happen on Friday this

week. And that's the first of four major launches that are going to be happening in the fall. Of course, Grail to the Moon follows it in September, and then MSL, the Curiosity rover, as well as Phobos, Grunt, and Yinghuo-1 will also be launching in November. So it's a busy launch season coming up. Pretty busy end of the year. I guess we can just leave it at that, actually, Emily, unless you have anything else you want to add. The only thing is Dawn's almost at its science orbit at Vesta, so we should be seeing a lot more pictures as soon as it gets there in a week or two. Great, and we're just about to talk to Bill Nye. He's going to mention Vesta Fiesta, where other folks can get involved. They can also, of course, get involved on the blog at the Planetary Society

website. That's maintained by our guest, Emily Lakdawalla. She is the science and technology coordinator for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. So now Bill Nye joins us on the Skype line. He is Bill Nye, the planetary guy, or a lot of you probably remember him better as, what was it, the science guy? He's the executive director of the Planetary Society, joining us this time talking about something very, very far away and very, very long ago, but apparently full of water. Yeah, there's a quasar, which are these glowing clouds of gas around massive black holes, which are stars that have so much gravity

that even light doesn't get out of them. This glowing cloud of gas that gives off a lot of light and energy and x-rays and energy. This black hole is also surrounded by water, an enormous cloud of water worth 140 trillion Earth oceans. That's a lot of water. And so you would say, where did that water come from? I don't know if you're into this, everybody, but water has H2O. It's got hydrogen, which is all over the place. But oxygen has eight protons. The only way we know of to get oxygen in your universe is to have a star form and explode. And alpha particles, these helium nuclei, smash together to make heavier, especially even- even numbered elements. And so oxygen must have been formed way earlier than most astronomers, I think, expected.

So this affects, once again, the way we imagine how you and I and everything that we know came to be. If water formed much more easily or earlier than people thought, it affects the way heat moves around the universe. It affects the way astronomers think of everything. Are you also, if you'll pardon the expression, as blown away by this just because we're able to now detect such things? Oh, man, this is what I say. You know, these guys are looking into space. This mirror is 10 meters across in Mauna Kea in Hawaii. That's more than 10 yards. That's more than a first down

in U.S. football. That's a big mirror. And they're able to gather so much light, very, very, very faint light, that they can detect water on the other side of the universe. When the universe was only, if I can use the term, 1.6 billion years old. So this is a fantastically distant source of light that has this information in it. Amazing. Now, not to give short shrift to 140 trillion times all the water in the Earth's oceans, but you have a couple of other exciting things to talk about for those who are listening to this show prior to the coming weekend that begins August 5th. Oh, yeah. So Vesta Fiesta is Saturday the 6th. The Dawn spacecraft is in orbit around the once considered a planet asteroid Vesta.

And we got these fantastic pictures of this spherical object that has huge craters on it. And once again, it tells us something about the origin of the solar system, which tells us something about where we all came from. And then Friday the 5th is the first launch opportunity for Juno. Now, a few mythology buffs, Juno was Jupiter's wife, and the Juno spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter, leaving on Friday. I'll be at Cape Canaveral on Thursday and Friday, hoping to get a glimpse, and I'll be doing a talk and meeting some people, and I hope to be part of this mission of discovery, sending a spacecraft out using our intellect and treasure for the betterment of all humankind.

Not a bad thing. And I hope that we can catch you while you're there, maybe, for our next Planetary Radio conversation. Let's do that in the modern world of today. I'll be in Florida, you'll be in California, North America, and we'll connect. I love technology. Gotta fly, Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy we'll connect. I love technology. Gotta fly. Bill Nye, the planetary guy.

Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Bill. He is the planetary guy and the science guy and the executive director of the Planetary Society. We'll talk to him again next week. I'll be right back. Nobody ever said living in space would be easy. Packing is a drag, solar flares can give you a heck of a tan, and then there's the damage it does to your muscle and bone. American astronaut Clay Anderson faced that challenge head-on

as he spent five months aboard the International Space Station, a stay that ended in November of 2007. Clay was 48 when he finally got his time in space. He spent a decade and a half waiting for the call from NASA, and it was almost another decade before he found himself strapped into the shuttle that delivered him to the ISS. It was back in February of 2008 that he and I talked about his experience and how all visitors to the vacuum have to dedicate themselves to a zero-g fitness program if they want to stand on their own two feet back here on Mother Earth.

He's optimistic about our ability to send humans on the long journey to Mars and bring them back in pretty good shape. Clay, welcome to Planetary Radio. Thank you very much for joining us. And also, welcome back to Terra Firma. It's a somewhat belated welcome back from your, what was it, 152 days on the ISS. 151 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes, and some odd seconds, but who's counting? Close enough.

We'll round up. in some odd seconds, but who's counting? Close enough. We'll round up. We all know that microgravity is not terribly friendly to the human body, but I guess you and your colleagues work pretty hard up there to stay in as good a shape as you could. Absolutely. It's very important that in the confines of zero gravity that you try to keep your muscles and bones as strong as possible for that return home, when you hit gravity again, it can be quite a jolt to your body.

And in addition to that, we've found that we lose muscle mass and bone mass while we're in space. And if we're going to really do long-duration stints on the moon and head out to Mars where the travel time is so long, we want to make sure that we're in reasonably good shape when we arrive so that we can actually do things and safely even as small as safely execute getting off the ship in one piece. So exercise is very important. Judging from your bio, you've always been a fairly athletic guy and very physically active. How big a challenge was this as you were up there, as you said, in zero G? Well, we worked out seven days a week, or I worked out seven days a week, 148 of my 152 days in space. And then the other four were spent on two different shuttles. And I

also worked out on those days with the shuttle bicycle. So it wasn't hard to motivate myself because I knew that the gain was that I would be able to rehabilitate much quicker on Earth and get back to normal as fast as possible. And it was also a great stress relief for me on the space station. Weren't you doing up to a couple of hours a day in this strenuous activity? Weren't you doing up to a couple of hours a day in this strenuous activity? Yes. I would do, every other day we did a different form of aerobics by using either the treadmill or the exercise bicycle. So, for example, on Monday I do the bike, on Tuesday the treadmill, Wednesday back to the bike, that sort of thing. Then every single day we worked on what we call the resistive exercise device, which is a pulley machine that

kind of simulates a weight gym, if you will, and we pull those cables with different resistance, and that acts as our bodybuilding with weights. Could you describe that treadmill? I mean, it takes all I can do to keep myself on an earthbound one for, oh, about a half hour most days of the week. You had some special challenges up there in orbit. Well, first of all, the belt is skinnier than what you would recognize in your normal gym treadmill, which makes it a little more challenging to stay on the center. But we also have a harness that we have to wear that holds our shoulders and our waist

and pulls us down to the treadmill. And the reason we do that is in zero G, obviously, you can't run unless you have something that holds you to the belt. And then we use that to increase the resistance and make it harder and harder or, you know, tougher on our bodies so that we can get in better shape. So it's a little different than what you do in the local fitness club. With all of these different activities, do you manage to pretty much work all of your muscles? No, we kind of focus by just by the way it is. We have to focus on major muscle groups. So I found when I came home that little things, the little muscles around my abdominal region

and that sort of thing that you actually use every day on Earth to help lift your legs and things, those were very weak. And so it took me a few days to get those guys thinking about being in one gravity again. And you can't exercise all of those in space. And so we focus on the big muscles in your legs, the big muscles in your arms, and the big muscles in your rear end and your back. So that's kind of how we attack the problem. Now, in spite of all this effort, and I guess not just because of the muscles you couldn't quite get to, you're going to see some bone density loss.

You're going to see some loss of strength, no matter how hard you work up there. And so you've been on a pretty strenuous program since your return. Yes. First of all, I lost 4% of my bone mass, which typically astronauts lose in the double digits. So I feel that I did pretty well there by virtue of the exercise that I did. And then once you arrive on the ground, actually the day after we landed, I was already on a bicycle pedaling away, which is part of the requirement or part of the program that's prescribed for us. And so I worked out two and a half to three hours each day for about six weeks once I landed. The folks that were training me said I was doing pretty well and that I was

quote unquote releasable on my own recognizance at about the third week. But one of the requirements is we stay and work out with the trainer all the way through six weeks. So I think I did pretty well and recovered quite quickly. How did you feel when you were suddenly back in Earth's gravity well? Well, let's see. Gravity stinks, I guess. You know, when you've been in zero gravity for five months and you're floating around like Superman every day and your body gets used to that, the thump of gravity hits you pretty hard. I felt extremely heavy for the first day, but actually your body's quite amazing and it recovers very quickly. And the second day,

when I woke up that morning, I still felt heavy, but every hour it got progressively better until by the end of the day I was feeling pretty normal. And your program continues today? I mean, are you doing anything now, a few months later, that you weren't doing before this mission was undertaken? Well, I'm kind of back on my own workout program, which is prescribed in conjunction with the trainers that the astronauts have here in Houston. And so I'm working out kind of like I did before I left, and I feel pretty good. I just had a couple weeks in Italy, though, where we ate more pasta probably than we worked out.

So I'm going to have to get back in the gym kind of as my New Year's resolution. More in a minute of my 2008 conversation with International Space Station astronaut Clay Anderson. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Robert Picardo. I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager. Then I joined the Planetary Society to become part of the real adventure of space exploration. The Society fights for missions that unveil the secrets of the solar system. It searches for other intelligences in the universe, and it built the first solar sail. It also shares the wonder through this radio show, its website, and other exciting projects that reach around the globe. I'm proud to be part of this greatest of all voyages, and I hope you'll consider joining us.

You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Our nearly 100,000 members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Early in 2008, I had a conversation with American astronaut Clayton Anderson.

He had just finished five months on the International Space Station as part of Expedition 15. five months on the International Space Station as part of Expedition 15. His unrelenting schedule included three spacewalks and many, many hours of zero-g workouts. It's a good thing exercise benefits your mind almost as much as it does your body because Clay's schedule did not ease up when he got back from low-Earth orbit. Yeah, the post-flight process is not for the faint of heart. from low Earth orbit. Yeah, the post-flight process is not for the faint of heart. Once we land, we're, as a station crew member, we're extremely busy with debriefs and the physical fitness aspect of it for the first four or five weeks. And then at that point, we're supposed to try to take some time off, but it doesn't always work that way because there are a lot of folks that

want to hear about our journey and have us tell some stories and talk to folks on the radio and all that good stuff. So we kind of have to carve out a little section for us to help us relax and reacquaint with our families. But I'll be able to do that in the next couple weeks, I think. The other thing that I wondered about here, and pardon me for bringing this up, you are closer in age to my bracket than to some of your colleagues in the astronaut corps. Do you think that meant that you faced any special challenges? It's possible that I did.

You know, I don't really know. My eyes are good. My ears are good. My heart is good. It's kind of an individualistic thing. Some folks that are younger can have eye problems, ear problems, that sort of thing. Some folks that are older can. So I guess it's kind of an individual basis as to how your body reacts to zero gravity

and whether you have big changes in your body or small changes and then how fast you recover. So I'm feeling pretty good. I feel young. I don't feel like I'm ready to move into the old folks home yet, but it did take me a little longer than when I was younger to recover from the muscle soreness and that sort of thing. So tell me, after all of this, how do you feel about our prospects, that is humanity's prospects, for long-duration flights, multi-year missions to Mars and beyond? I feel good about it. I think we have a lot of questions to answer still.

You know, I was living on a space station that was the equivalent volume of a three-bedroom house, and whether you can take a spaceship to Mars that has that much room, those questions remain to be answered. And I guess I'm pretty doubtful that we'll fly something that big to Mars. And so when you think about a six to nine month trip just to get there and the amount of exercise for a crew of four, perhaps, would have to do, you know, you need a place to exercise, you need the equipment to do that exercise. And I think those are all key questions that we still need to answer. How big will the equipment will be, how much space it will take up, and how effective it will be. So I'm kind of interested to see how it's going to pan out over

the next several years. Clay, let's turn to some of your other personal experiences as an astronaut. I mean, you really, another press release that came out about you described you as, Really, another press release that came out about you described you as, well, this is NASA's term, the little engine that could, in that you started work at the Johnson Space Center in 1983 in mission planning, but you also that year put in your first application to become a mission specialist, and it was 15 years later that you got accepted to the program. Did you ever lose faith? Well, actually, I did. Right before my first interview was in 1996, and I wasn't selected until 1998, but just before that time, my wife and I were actually talking about a career move and a relocation to somewhere else and trying something different, because it certainly didn't

seem at that time that NASA was too interested in making me an astronaut. And when we returned from that little trip that we took was actually the time I got the phone call that said, hey, could you come do an astronaut interview with us? And that sort of relit my fire. And I did apply every year since 1983 when I first became eligible, and I'm really glad that I stuck with it, and I'm glad that they stuck with me because I've had a wonderful time, and it's been an awesome experience. You got picked up in 1998, and then it was another nine years, and then, of course, that's when you made it up on STS-117 to the International Space Station and served as a flight engineer and science officer,

which I imagine was at least a couple of full-time jobs. Yeah, it sure seemed like it. You know, I guess patience was a virtue for me. And, you know, originally I was scheduled for about a two-and-a-half-month stint in space, and they moved me up to fly early on STS-117, which gave me the five months in space. So it's all worked out well. You definitely have to be patient as an astronaut, both in the application process and then even once you're selected. But I think it gives kids a great perspective on the fact that things don't always come easy to you in

life, and you have to put a little work and effort, and you have to sustain to see some of the results sometimes. If you got the call, would you be up there again? Yeah, I would. I would definitely go on a shuttle flight. The impact to family is a lot less. You know, it's about a nine-month training template with a couple weeks in space. For us to go on the long-duration route again, it would be a definite family discussion where we'd have to decide and do it as a family.

So we're not ready to think about that sort of thing yet. We still want to relax for a while, and we'll just see what happens when it comes. One last question. Did you get to write that song you had in mind? I got started on it. Unfortunately, when we talked about being the flight engineer and science officer, I didn't have a lot of spare time. So I wasn't quite able to accomplish as much as I want. But that's something I'm going to press on with on the ground and see if I can't get it done. All right. Well, I hope you can keep that melody in your head and get it down on paper.

And I'll tell you, we'll be the first to play it if we get it recorded, and we'll put it on right here on Planetary Radio. All right. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you so much for spending a few Planetary Radio. All right. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us today. It's been my pleasure. Thank you. Clayton Anderson, Clay Anderson, is a NASA astronaut. He, as you heard, spent 152 days between the shuttle and the International Space Station last year,

returning to Earth in pretty darn good shape and continuing that effort here on the ground and talking to folks like us about how he accomplished it. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Here's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, to tell us about the night sky and lots of other stuff. And I'm sorry you're just slightly under the weather. I am indeed, but I'm feeling better now, thanks to you, Matt. And inspired by the night sky, no doubt.

And medications. In that order, I hope. I hope. But in the night sky, with or without medication, you can hopefully see Saturn getting lower and lower as we go through the days and weeks. It's over in the west. And you can check that out looking yellowish. Spica is far to its left looking much bluer. In the middle of the night or just late evening, if you pull out the binoculars or possibly if you live in an incredibly dark site, you can get away with no binoculars. Vesta is at opposition right now, so as bright as it gets,

and it is the brightest asteroid in the night sky. I had no idea that Vesta was a naked eye, if you'll pardon the expression, object. It's borderline, but it's right at the edge of naked eye. Certainly with binoculars, it's easy to spot. It's in Capricornus. It's up in the late evening. If you do want to give it a shot, I suggest find a finder chart on the web and make sure you're looking at the right spec and know that that's where Dawn is now playing NASA Spacecraft Dawn. Yeah, I'm going to wave.

You may need more than binoculars to see it wave back. Jupiter, super bright, coming up around midnight in the east and high overhead. You can also check out a dim reddish Mars over in the east in the pre-dawn. And that's the night sky roundup. This week in space history, Apollo 15 launched from the moon in this week. And it was the first televised launch from the surface of the moon. They left their robotic camera there.

So that was 1971. MESSENGER launched Mercury in 2004 after its very circuitous journey. It's now partying and giving great data in orbit around Mercury. As you remember, I'm quite old, and I remember, I was a little kid, I remember watching that launch and still think of it as one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen in my life. Watching

the upper, the ascent stage of the lunar module take off from the moon and stuff fly out in every direction. It is really really cool video. I agree. We'll keep talking about moon stuff. We move on to random space fact. Humans have hit or landed on the moon with over 170,000 kilograms of stuff. That's a lot of junk. Well, most of it wasn't junk when it hit, although a few upper

stages of rockets were. I'm just thinking that someday the Lunar Historical Preservation Society will be fighting to protect every last fragment of metal. Exactly. That precious 170,000 kilograms. Gosh, okay. We move on to the trivia contest. We asked you, not counting this last mission because it had not landed yet, how many times did space shuttles land at each of its three landing sites, Kennedy Space Center, Edwards, and White Sands, New Mexico? How did we do, Matt?

Well, it's a good time to enter the contest because everybody's out of town, so your chances of your number coming up on random.org are much improved. And in fact, that is what happened to our friend Torsten Zimmer, who we mention often because he keeps us laughing, but it has been almost two years since he won the contest. He won it this time. Here it is. And the big surprise here for me was Edwards Air Force Base, that there were so many. Kennedy Space Center, 77 landings. Edwards Air Force Base in California, 59. Now note, that includes the five free flight or drop tests where, you know, it didn't come back from space. It just fell off the 747.

Fell off? It just fell off. And finally, one big landing at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, STS-3. Torsten, we're going to send you a copy of that enhanced e-book, Moonshot. This is pretty interesting. Galen Anderson, who didn't win but had the answer right he said that it was a tour guide at kennedy space center who told them what they learned from landing at white sands you know what they learned what did they learn never do it again

you know what how it is at the beach sand gets into everything, that does sound very uncomfortable. I can assure you that it is, whether you're a shuttle or a human being. All right. We move on to our next trivia contest, and we're going to go to Acronym Land. What does TDRS stand for in the space business? TDRS, T-D-R-S. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter.

You have until August 8th. That's Monday, August 8th at 2 p.m. Pacific time to enter this time around. And we're going to go back to giving away Planetary Radio t-shirts, but you know what else we can give away? I just found in my car, still in the tube. This is such a scary start to a story. No, it's not old dirty socks. It's a pale blue dot poster with a lovely writing of Carl Sagan on it. So I thought, hey, we can throw this in. Nice. Just to be clear, it's not in his handwriting. No, no, I'm sorry. It's the writings of Carl Sagan. Which is really just as good when you think about it. No, it's still really cool. I just want to make sure we weren't misleading

more than we planned. Thank you for that. You're welcome. We're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about naps and whether you'd like to take one right now. Thank you, and good night. I'm already in bed. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up. A celebration of the Dawn spacecraft's arrival at giant asteroid Vesta.

That's next time when we visit the Vesta Fiesta. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and made possible in part by a grant from the William T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation. Clear skies. Thank you.