Spark Science spoke to Captain Wendy Lawrence about how she became an astronaut, human activities in the space station, astronaut food, radiation dangers and waste in space.
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Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome to Spark science, sharing science of human curiosity. My name’s Regina Barber DeGraaff. I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University and I’m here with my wonderful co-host Jordan Baker, a cast member of the upfront theater in Bellingham, childhood friend. Hey Jordan, how’s it going?
Jordan Baker: It is going good!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s not my only question.
Jordan Baker: [Laughing.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Are you excited about today’s guest, Jordan?
Jordan Baker: I’m very excited.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Alright, I’m going to let you introduce her.
Jordan Baker: [Laughing.] We are excited to have Captain Wendy Lawrence, an astronaut, as our guest today. She’s part of the second generation of women to join the navy and has logged over 1225 hours in space, piloting four different NASA missions. Thank you for talking with us today.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: It’s absolutely my pleasure!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So, Jordan have you ever met an astronaut before?
Jordan Baker: Nope.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Nope?
Jordan Baker: Can’t say that I have.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Now you have! [Laughing.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So my first question to you, Captain Lawrence, or Wendy … We’ll go … I don’t know … what do you prefer?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Wendy, please.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wendy, good. I like formality.
Jordan Baker: Right.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: Sure.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I’m a traditional person. So, where did you grow up?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Ah! I grew up in a Navy family so I claim absolutely no where because my dad was also a Navy pilot. So, I was born in Florida. Let’s see, by the time I was six months old we’d already gone out to California. And then I think we came back to Virginia and ended up in Florida. And then, finally he got transferred out to southern California area. And I got to do most of my elementary school and junior high in southern California.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. How did you end up in Washington, then?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Ha! Yes, everybody in Whatcom County looks at you and goes, “Why in the world would you come here?” Well first off, it’s incredibly beautiful but I realized I needed to have a better story than that. It so happens that the commander of my first space shuttle flight was born and raised in Bellingham, Steve Oswald, graduate of Bellingham High School. So, during the 15 months or so that we were training together and up in space, he used to go on and on and on about how much fun he had growing up in Bellingham, being down on the bay, going up to Mount Baker, hiking the Chuckanuts. And so, it kind of put it on the radar map for me.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So he actually spoke to you about Bellingham in space?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Well, I mean we were training together for 15 months so we had a lot of time to talk …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh, okay.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … about a wide variety of topics. And his childhood was one he would talk about quite a bit because he really enjoyed living in Bellingham.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, it’s great here! Jordan and I grew up here actually. Not in Bellingham.
Jordan Baker: Well in Whatcom County.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: In Whatcom County.
[Laughing.]
But yeah, no I always wonder how we can have a collection of astronauts because we also have Pinky Nelson that here that lives in Whatcom County, right? So, I mean.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Have you ever lived in Houston?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: No. I haven’t!
Captain Wendy Lawrence: It’s flat, so we get tired of the flat and we get tired of hot, hot, hot and humidity. So it’s like, let’s go someplace where it’s not so flat and you can actually have seasons.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: And Washington ranks high on the beauty factor as well. And you know, remember, we get to see a lot of the United States when we’re up in space.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right! That’s true.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Because we travel at 5 miles a second so you can kind of look out the window and go, “Hmm pretty, pretty, oh yeah, right there.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So it’s like that game with the globe where you spin it and you put your finger on. You actually do that in space is what you’re saying.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: In essence, yes.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well then you actually are an all-American hero then since you’ve been all around America. And astronauts, in my view, I think are like probably the last, like American hero. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. That I can think of.
[Laughter.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You’re kind of say that. I don’t know that we necessarily view ourselves in that light. You know, for us obviously it’s a job we’re passionate about. Most of us had wanted to be an astronaut since we were, you know, little kids. Or at some point in our primary schooling. We were like, “Oh that looks like a cool job. I think that’s what I want to do.” But, it is a job.
[Laughter.]
Like any job, you know, there are parts that you really enjoy, parts that are not as enjoyable but I think that when we’re up in space we just view it as, “We’re here to do our job.” It’s obviously something we feel very strongly about, the value of human space flight and the benefits it has for our country. But, I think we’re a little sometimes uncomfortable to say, “Oh yeah, we’re heroes,” particularly when you look at what the folks in the military are going through right now over in Afghanistan and they go through in Iraq.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s true.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Those folks are really the heroes, and along with our firefighters and police officers; people who on a daily basis are putting their lives at risk for others. We were up there having a heck of a lot of fun. [Laughing.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right, but the flight up and the trip down … and sometimes being up in space isn’t the most safe situation.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: It is definitely a risky job. You know, space is a very unforgiving environment, so that’s what we tell the young engineers. It’s not an environment that’s going to be kind to you if you make a mistake. You really have to know what you’re doing. You have to take the time to think through the problem and how you’re going to solve it and do a lot of testing to make sure you’ve come up with a good solution, because a mistake up in that environment could be very, very difficult to recover from.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. We’re going to come back to that. We’ll come back to like the dangers of space, but what I wanted to ask you (and I don’t know if Jordan wants to add to this) just like, what was the path to become an astronaut?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Well, it was pretty easy for me just to think, “Uhh, okay grandfather was a navy pilot, dad was a Navy pilot, umm, family business? I could do that. Flying would be fun.” But fortunately, a lot of first groups of astronauts were comprised of people who had flown in the military and had gone to college and studied engineering so I thought, that’s a pretty good path for me. Obviously it was successful for them so, when it became an option for me to go to the naval academy when they started allowing women to attend, I thought “Whelp, family business again, I’ll go to the naval academy, study engineering, learn how to fly” and so that’s the path I opted for. Obviously, it’s not the only path because most astronauts have never served in the military.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh really? Okay.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: They go the more traditional schooling route. It’s so competitive now, it’s almost a requirement to have your doctorial degree and experience in your field. So, most of the astronauts have done that.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay. When did that change over about?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I think really at the beginning of the space shuttle program because the emphasis was on, “We’re going to use this vehicle to do science up in space. To take experiments and have groups of people who with backgrounds that are related to that field of study and we’re going to have them do those experiments up in space.” And so towards the end of the Apollo program, NASA was shifting over and having scientist astronauts, and that mindset continued into the shuttle program and very much is the case in the international space station program where the crew spends most of their time doing science experiments now and research.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. So, I was going to ask did you have the idea that you wanted to be an astronaut when you entered the naval academy?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I had the idea that I wanted to be an astronaut when I watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon when I was 10, so yes! And I knew the naval academy would be a great step to take so that was very much in my mind. It wasn’t the only reason I went into the Navy. I did want to serve my country, like again that was kind of the family business. That was just the way I was brought up to give back to the country. And you know, growing up in a Navy environment, I enjoyed it and I thought, “Well it’d be a good job for me; it’d be a good fit.” Plus I wanted to learn how to fly.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right!
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Just flying, in and of itself, is a heck of a lot of fun as well. Basically we fly in space it’s just a difference of what altitude you’re at, but you’re still a pilot up there.
Jordan Baker: So did you think being in the military definitely gave you a leg up on your competition as it were to become an astronaut?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: For me I think it did. The Navy gave me some incredible opportunities and let me go out to see aboard ships, just like my male counterparts. That’s a very challenging environment, trying to fly on and off a ship takes a lot of planning. It gets you immersed in the world of kind of risk management, assessing a situation and trying to figure out what’s the riskiest part of it and what can I do, what specific steps can I take to try and minimize the chance that something’s going to go wrong.
So that whole thought process, that whole planning process is exactly what NASA does for any mission. And the team work associated with flying with a crew because in helicopters we typically had four people onboard. That aspect as well, prepares you well for a flight in space. Because you’re not, in this day and age, you’re not up there alone. You’re usually up there with anywhere from two to five other people. So, teamwork was, I think to me, a very valuable aspect of going into the military and serving with other people, particularly aboard a helicopter in challenging circumstances.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So the people in these teams and also in undergrad, did they know … did you make it public that that was your dream? And was there any pushback? Was there support?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: No, actually, you know I told my roommates. I don’t know how many other people I told. But yeah, I think people were supportive because many of us were there pursuing a dream. A lot of people wanted to fly, people wanted to drive ships, go on submarines, so we all had an idea of what we wanted to do and we were working hard to make that come true.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: If you’re just joining us, this is spark science, I’m Regina barber degraaff and we’re talking to Astronaut Captain Wendy Lawrence.
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You were talking about flying onto ships and off of ships. I mean, so the difficulty, I’m imagining is that the runway isn’t very big.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So for a helicopter, no, it’s not …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … it basically sometimes looks like a postage stamp …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But did you also fly jets though?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Not in the Navy.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I did at NASA.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: But not in the Navy. And you have to remember, it’s out on the water. The water, particularly the middle of the ocean, is rarely calm. There are waves.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: There’s wind so your boat tends to move around ….
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh yeah.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … quite a bit, which means your landing area moves around quite a bit and you’ve got to … it takes a little bit of skill to figure out how to put your helicopter down on something that’s rocking back and forth.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Were there, I mean, was there any instances where you thought to yourself, “This is very, very, very scary?”
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Like when you’re flying a helicopter.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Taking off from a ship at night is very very terrifying. People often ask were you afraid to ride the rocket, no not really. It was way too exciting! But let me tell you about taking off from a ship at night and trying to come back and land on a ship at night. That’s terrifying!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So you’re saying the helicopter was scarier than the launch in a shuttle?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh yeah. Yeah! Because sometimes you look out and you go, “Can anybody really tell where the horizon is? I mean I see water, I think it’s black and the sky looks black and I don’t see the definite line between the water and the sky so it’s just black.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow!
Captain Wendy Lawrence: [Laughing.] And that’s what you’re taking off into. So, yeah, it’s very challenging flying.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So after the naval academy you do what to become an astronaut?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Well, if you’re in the military, you’re going to do whatever they tell you to do. Unfortunately for me, it was to go to flight training. So I did that for a little over a year, got designated as a naval aviator. And then went to a squadron that taught me how to fly the particular helicopter that I was going to fly in the Navy and then went to my first squadron, or what we’d call or refer to as an operational squadron, meaning we were assigned missions, we had to figure out how to carry them out, often times we would go out on a ship in support of other ships in a carrier battle group. And go up to the north Atlantic, go over to the Indian ocean, go through the Mediterranean, you know, depending on where you were stationed (I was in Norfolk), you know, we tended to go all the way over to the Indian Ocean. Squadrons on the west coast would go out into the pacific theater.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So, flying. And then the Navy called me up one day and said, “Hey, we’re starting this new program in ocean sciences. It’s a joint program with MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and we’re looking for people who have a background in either oceanography and ocean engineering. And we see you studied ocean engineering at the naval academy. Would you like to go to MIT to get your masters? Because if you get accepted we’ll pay for your tuition. So the Navy sent me to MIT to get my masters in ocean engineering.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right, because you weren’t going to say no to free education.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Or MIT.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh no! I’m like, wow MIT! Very challenging as I like to say to people, MIT absolutely kicked my butt. You know, I realized after my first week there, I’m like, okay I think a masters is all I ever have in my future. There’s no way I’m ever going to be able to get a PhD in engineering at a school like this! [Laughing.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well you are part of a small club of astronauts, though, so I think like …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yeah so, it worked out.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: And so, [inaudible] in the navy a lot, and then after I finished that I had an opportunity to go back and fly again. And then, my payback tour to pay the Navy back for allowing me to get a masters degree was to go to the naval academy and teach physics.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yes.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: How was that?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh it was a lot of fun! Definitely a lot of fun. I was about 1 chapter ahead of my students at any point in time.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s more than most professors.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yeah. [Laughing.] But, really it was quite a rewarding experience.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So, I was going to say you flew everywhere in the United States but you’ve also been in space, so really you’ve seen like all of earth. I mean …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Not quite all of earth …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … because in the space shuttle program, really the highest orbital inclination we’d have was about 51 degrees to match up with the International Space Station. So that allowed you to see quite a bit. Typically up over Canada and then you get almost to the tip of the south American depending on how extensive the ice flows were. You might see some of the ice flows around Antarctica but not quite enough to see all of the planet.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Laughing.] I like how you’re like, yeah I saw most of the planet. [Laughing.] I still think that’s a lot.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: It’s a lot, yes! And there’s some incredibly beautiful things that you get to see when you look out the window but …
Jordan Baker: So when you looked out, how big would you … think … I mean is it closer than we actually think or is it like?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Well, again for human space flight, when we typically now with the International Space Station and the shuttle flights that supported it, we were anywhere from about 200 to maybe 250 miles up above the earth’s surface.
Jordan Baker: Oh.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So definitely high enough that you can see that yes, indeed, the earth is round. There is a curvature. It is not flat; it’s not a square. It is round. They were correct when they changed their point of view and decided the earth was round. So we can verify that. [Laughing.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So like how much of a continent can you see through like the window? Is that what you’re asking Jordan, kind of?
Jordan Baker: Oh sure. You know, like …
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: Can you see all of North America?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: No. Oh, no. no. So, I’ll use this as an example. One time looking out the window we were over California so I could see all the way from San Diego up to San Francisco.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh okay.
Jordan Baker: Wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So it’s kind of that.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Through the window?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Through the window, yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What was your like favorite thing to do while you’re up in space?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh. Well, there are many favorite things. Keep in mind that we’re floating.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You know, we’re in this weightless environment. Gravity … we’re in this constant free fall condition so we don’t feel gravity pulling on us. So that in and of itself just makes it fun because you’re, you know, if you just want to flip upside down and hang around, you can do that because the blood’s not rushing to your head. You can fly around like superman. You can literally just float in front of the window and watch the world go by. So just being there is fun.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Are there fights over the window?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh yes!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Laughing.] It’s like a plane!
Captain Wendy Lawrence: There are not enough windows. Yes, there are fights over the windows. Now the good thing is, you can float. So, you can put yourself in any position to get in front of the window and so that makes it a little bit easier.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right, there could be somebody upside down …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Upside down, yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You know, yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
[laughter]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: We work it out.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
So, we actually, Jordan and I asked some friends on social media …
Jordan Baker: Well let’s just get to the burning question.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Let’s just get to the burning questions.
Jordan Baker: The one that everybody asks is how do you poop in space?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Carefully. [Laughing.] Remember, everything floats.
Jordan Baker: Sure. Yeah, exactly! so is there a container or a bag?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well I’m sure there’s a bathroom right?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: There is a bathroom.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: This is a fun question and I love to make kids ask this question. Typically if I’m doing a presentation to a group of kids I’ll show them a little short video clip of water floating in space because I want them to understand …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … that everything floats.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: And then you let their imagination get carried away a little bit and you kind of reel them back in and go, “Alright you are now the NASA engineer who has to make a toilet work and you do not have the benefit of gravity.” And eventually they’ll realize that, “Oh, wait I can take advantage of suction.” And so basically, that is how the toilet works.
You create suction using two different methods. One is the same method that makes your vacuum cleaner vacuum up particles from your run. You know, you have a motor driven that drives a fan and it creates this strong flow of air that kind of captures the liquid waste. And yes it all gets stored in a big container.
Jordan Baker: Ohhhh.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Now …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s not left … ?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: No, no, no, no.
[laughter]
And the toilet that was onboard the space shuttle, and it’s similar to the one that’s abroad the International Space Station, we take advantage of the fact that, space is a vacuum so it’s an area of extremely low pressure. And if you have a difference in pressure, you get a flow of air and that’s the reason why we get wind. So I explain all that to kids; moving from high to low pressure. So you have high pressure inside your spacecraft; low pressure outside. So you typically will vent a container to the vacuum of space and voila, same sucking action.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yes and you want to make sure everything’s contained. We want to have a nice healthy environment so everything goes in a big container.
Jordan Baker: Is there a janitor? Does somebody have to clean that up?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You are the janitor, so you want to be a good crew member and leave the bathroom cleaner than when you went in.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: [Laughing.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So yeah, when you were talking about a pressure difference, my favorite demo, and this is radio so everyone can see this definitely.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yes. [Laughing.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But my favorite demo in physics classes is this demo, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, where you blow air on the top of a piece of paper …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yep. Yes.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And there is an upward force and that upward force is from when you’re blowing air over the top of the piece of paper, you’re changing the pressure. You’re lowering the pressure and the pressure underneath is higher so there’s this upward force.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yes. Yes.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. That was for you Jordan.
Jordan Baker: I’ve never seen that before.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Blew your mind!
Jordan Baker: It did. [Laughing.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But yes, that question I’m glad that you try to get …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: [Laughing.]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: … the kids to ask that question because I asked my husband, whose known Jordan longer than I have, and that was his first question. How do people poop in space and then Jordan asked the exact same question right after. So, [laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: There we go!
Jordan Baker: And we also had another question: being in zero gravity, does it make you gassy? I’m just going to get the potty humor done, right off the bat.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. It’s important.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So, it can. Your digestive system typically works the same way because it’s really a series of muscle contractions that moves food from your mouth down to your stomach. But, gas bubbles do behave differently in the absence of gravity and I will tell you a true story. On a couple of flights they actually, well on one flight they took up … I think Coke flew first to see how a carbonated beverage …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So Coke won the soda …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … would do.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: … wars.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh but, then Pepsi had to fly because NASA can’t appear to have favorites or endorse particularly products. So I think on one flight it was Coke and on one flight it was Pepsi. And the crew sampled the soda and space and said, never let it fly again because it was a carbonated beverage with lots of gas bubbles. The gas tended to expand very painfully.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: And you know you don’t have gravity pulling on certain parts of your body and helping certain systems move things along so it was not comfortable for the crew members who participated in those experiments.
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: Wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So, no we do not have soda in space.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow, soda is bad for your tooth and bad for astronauts.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yes it is.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Fact.
Jordan Baker: So, is it like … I sort of imagine is … a paste is that your food?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: No. Food’s much better now. And god bless those early astronauts who had to muck down that stuff and came back and complained vehemently. Food’s much better now. In fact, you name it, well I’ll take that back, not every food item works well in being freeze dried. We still have not figured out how to make freeze dried pizza taste really well. When you put the water back in and heat it up but you can have chicken fajitas, beef fajitas, enchiladas …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So you actually do heat it up. So it’s you add water …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: yeah, yeah, we have a food … yeah. So some food has had the water taken out through a flash freezing process so that makes it … it’s like going on a camping trip, you know, you don’t want really heavy foods so you take the stuff where you have to add the water back in.
Jordan Baker: Like MREs then?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yeah and some of the foods, MREs, where it doesn’t have to be refrgrdted so. Macaroni and cheese, soup, spaghetti and meatballs, tend to be in the MRE form where you don’t have to refrigerate it. Other items like scrambled eggs or sausage, you put the water back in and it’s much better now.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And there’s a set amount that you obviously go up with. So are there fights over that as well?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Well we’ve learned …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … particularly in the space station program that it’s just better to kind of do the pantry style. And so you have all your entrees packaged together, you have your vegetables packaged together, your snack food items, your breakfast items. And so, it’s kind of like opening up your pantry at home. “What am I hungry for?” it’s like, oh so I’ll get some scrambled eggs, I’ll get a sausage. And lunch, oh, I want a lighter lunch today so I’ll just get soup or for dinner you’re like, oh do I want macaroni and cheese? Do I want fajitas? Do I want spaghetti as my main course? And so crews pretty much can decide what they’re going to eat on that particular day.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So it’s not family style; you guys don’t get together for dinner or lunch?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: We try to, it just really depends on your workload for that day and what schedule is. But most crews try to have at least one meal a day together.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s nice.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: It is.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And then also the International Space Station, I know that there’s different modules, right? So, maybe somebody in a different module has a different time, I don’t know? Or is everyone all the same?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: We try to keep the crew on the same schedule but every so often they’ll have to shift their schedules to accommodate special events, like a resupply vehicle coming to the space station, because that is driven by a set launch time.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You know, world of orbital mechanics, you have to launch at a particular time so you might have to shift the crews schedule to be up when all that happens, or to do a space walk. But …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … usually it’s just easier for the control centers. And generally, everybody’s on the same schedule.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
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Jordan Baker: Welcome back to Spark Science. This is Jordan Baker with my cohost Regina Barber Degraaff and we are talking to astronaut Wendy Lawrence.
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
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Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Have you ever been to the International Space Station or worked with other people from other countries while you’re up there?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Uh, so I got to live and train in Russia for 16 months.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Whispers] wow!
Captain Wendy Lawrence: And I did two trips to the Russian Space Station, Mir, when it was on orbit.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: And then my last flight was to the International Space Station, so when we were there we had a Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev. So, I knew Sergei from the shuttle mir program. So, yeah that’s just a part of the space program now is that you get to work with people from many different countries.
Also on my last flight we had an astronaut from the Japanese space agency with us. In my shuttle class we had representatives from Canada, from the European space agency, and the Japanese space agency.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Do you guys trade food rations like at lunch time?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So, on my last flight we had some of the Japanese food and I have to say that Japanese curry, that we almost had fights over it.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: It was probably the best thing we had during that mission and we didn’t have enough so we were trying to share.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So everybody could at least have a couple bites of it.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I can imagine just having requests for future missions, can we please call up Japan and have them send over …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yeah! Well we told them, hey this is really good make sure they get to fly this again.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s awesome.
Jordan Baker: Were there any fights on the space station? Were there any disagreements?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: No.
Jordan Baker: Everyone just basically tried to get along like a big family?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Like the Sharks and Jets like kind of?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: generally, we all know one another …
Jordan Baker: There were no fist fights?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … and we’ve been training with each other for months at at time. So yeah, you’re not going to go up there and be up there with somebody you’ve never met before. Generally, you’ve been working with each other for 2 – 3 years. Yeah, so there’s some, you know, but there are days where you’re frustrated, you’re tired and so you’re maybe a little bit short with people but fights.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s a small space, too, right? So I mean like, any human in a small space …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yes.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I applaud all of you. I think I’ve met a few astronauts and they all seem to like each other and everyone has good relationships still. That would be hard.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: It’s harder for the guys who are up there for 6 months …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … because it’s 6 months away from home and from family and a different routine and a different environment. So, yeah, but for the most part it’s such a unique environment that that is what dominates your mode. Is, “I am up here in space, this is amazing, I have cool things that I get to do on a daily basis, and I have my own private area so if I need to get away I can. But general, I love being here and I’m happy to be here and share this experience with other people.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Great. Do you have more questions Jordan?
Jordan Baker: Oh, I’m just trying to look at … what was the … something that was not expected? Or what surprised you about being in space?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: There is definitely a learning curve associated with being weightless all the time. Yes, there’s this thing called a Zero-G aircraft so you get to experience it maybe for 30 seconds.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: The vomit comet.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: The vomit comet, yes. The infamous vomit comet. But suddenly when you’ve got to move around … as I like to tell physics students, this is when you truly understand Newton’s Law. So I mean, yes you study them in the textbooks, you had this understanding of center of mass, but now when you’re up in this environment you really get to understand where all the forces act through and torques, moment arms, all that good stuff, conservation of inertia and momentum.
So, I remember the first time I pushed off from the wall, I thought it was just … well it was way too hard and I was completely out of control. And I was like, [vocalizing] I gotta recalibrate this because man that didn’t take any effort whatsoever just to, you know, to push off. And you figure out how to position your body and kind of relax so you can glide through the air, not be completely out of control with elbows and arms going everywhere, knocking things off the wall.
So I think that was most surprising to me, that it was not as easy as I thought it would be to figure out how to move around and get good at it. So, the first couple of days or so I looked pretty clumsy.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But everyone does, right?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Every first time flyer tends to be. And then you’re up there with people who’ve been there, like on my last flight, Sergei Krikalev, he’s got over 800 days in space. So watching him move around is a thing of beauty because his ability to precisely control his body is just eye watering.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I mean, you’re just dazzled by it.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Is there more like training that maybe NASA could do to help that or not really? I mean, there’s nothing …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh, I mean not really, because the vomit comet, it’s not pure weightlessness. You do your best to fly that parabolic shape through the sky to achieve it but it’s really difficult for the pilots to get down to the level of, you know, micro gravity that you’re going to experience on your spacecraft. So, I’d say it’s not worth it, for the most part. You know, you’re going to get up there and you’re going to figure it out.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What did you like best about your experience in space and if you had the chance right now to do it again, would you?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So second question, absolutely! I’d love to be on the International Space Station right now. It’s really hard to say there’s one thing that you like best because it’s just such a fun experience. So, being there is great, being able to look out the window is awesome. Finally being able to go up there and do the mission that you’ve been training to do for the last many, many, many months that too is very rewarding.
So, and you can’t forget the rocket ride, because oh man, that’s just … there’s nothing here on earth that matches the power of the rocket. It’s really hard to put into words the experience, the sensation of acceleration and power and thrust. So, a rocket ride is a great way to kick off your space flight, because man it’s so dramatic.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So rollercoasters here are just nothing?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Kinda tame!
[laughter]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Sorry! Fun, but just not the same experience.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So do you have more questions Jordan?
Jordan Baker: Oh I was just going to ask, when you’re strapped in and you’re shooting up into space, what is your job? Like, what?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: It depends on what your grew position is. Shuttle … we towards the end of the space shuttle program, we usually flew seven people on each flight. Four would be up on the flight deck, mission commander and pilot actually sat at controls so if necessary they could control the vehicle after a certain point.
And you had two people who were sitting behind them who helped with the management of all the space shuttle systems and their operation during launch. And that meant you had three people down on the mid-deck, the downstairs area, who really had no responsibilities whatsoever during launch …
Jordan Baker: Just hold on and enjoy the flight.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … other than to be, yeah … you know, strapped to your seat and enjoy the ride. A little different now in the way we get crews to the International Space Station because they fly onboard the Soyuz spacecraft which only has three people onboard.
So they’re all involved in the operation during launch. So you’ve got your, again, Soyuz commander, your primary flight engineer sitting on the commander’s left hand side and another flight engineer on the right hand side. And they all have responsibilities, things they need to monitor during launch.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So I was going to ask a question about games in space. Like, I mean, I know you guys have a mission and we’re going to talk about that, we’re going to talk what the science mission actually is. But before we do that, I want to say, like, in between that time when you’re working, what kind of games do you guys play? Is there like … there’s not like floating board games, but like …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: [hesitating] yeah. Let’s see, I can honestly say we never had … well I’ll take that back. On one of my flights somebody loaded up a kind of like video pinball game.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I never had time to play it. My commander played it occasionally. I don’t know if there are actually any games up there right now. A lot of music. Music …
Jordan Baker: Eye spy?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Eye spy [laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You know mostly, your games are associated with who can fly the furthest down the module without hitting the wall.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Mmm.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Let’s play with our food.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Collisions.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Collisions. Yes. In fact, there’s a fun YouTube video from probably about 3 months ago where they took a GoPro camera and they put it in a big blob of water. So, you know, experimenting with things like that. What happens if we try? Here’s a fun physics experiment for you. Take a pair of scissors, open them up, and start spinning it and it will flip back and forth. So if the points are up towards what we call the ceiling, it’s spinning around, and then it will toggle down so the points are down towards the floor and it will just flip back and forth like that as it continues to rotate.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So, again it’s this incredibly unique environment without gravity. So things you learned in school, you’re like, “What happens when I start to experiment with things like this? How differently do they behave?” So we do play with our food because mixing water and orange juice together responds in a very different way than it would down here on earth. So, it’s just very fascinating.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well, and catch right? There’s no, there’s no projectile motion.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: There is no projectile motion, so you can’t really throw in space. I mean, you can go through that motion but there’s no arc.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. It’s just straight.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You really realize it’s all about pushing an object through the air.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s awesome. Did we have any other social media questions that were …
Jordan Baker: I think we hit most of them.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: We hit most of them? Good.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: If you’re just joining us, this is Spark Science. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff with my cohost Jordan Baker and we’re talking to astronaut Wendy Lawrence.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Good so tell us about the mission specifically. So, like I know you had several missions but give us one example of one of your favorite missions that you had to do. And what were the jobs?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: On my first flight I was basically the bus driver once we got up on orbit, so that was pretty cool for a Navy helicopter pilot to be able to drive the bus, because we had our payload were 3 telescopes out in the payload bay to do astronomy and the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum. And so, we had hundreds of targets that we were supposed to look at. You know, distant stars and galaxies trying to record any helium left over, residual helium left over from the big bang to see if that was a viable theory.
So my responsibility literally was to type into the onboard computer the position that the space shuttle orbiter needed to maneuver to. So that’s what I would do. Type all that in, make sure it went to the correct position and then the two other people on my team were responsible for precisely pointing the telescopes and then starting the observation. So, we worked 12-hour shifts for 16 hours a day doing round the clock observations, so that was pretty fun.
My last flight was the first flight after the Columbia accident, so a completely different type of mission. We were a test flight, we had new inspection procedures to test out, repair procedures for the vehicle. So that’s what we focused on for the most point was trying to verify that we’d come up with safer ways to operate in orbit.
But we also went to the International Space Station and did three space walks while we were there. So I was flying the robotic arm in support of those. So, really busy mission.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, I mean, and that’s another thing I want to talk about like again. Saying like, the dangers of space. We were talking to Dr. Melissa Rice last week and we were talking about this idea of actually traveling to Mars and the dangers involved in traveling to Mars, but who would actually go? And do we look past those dangers or do we just do it?
So my question to you is, what’s your opinion on that and would you go if you had the opportunity?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh I’d love to go to Mars! But, you can’t look past the dangers because one of the most significant danger for an astronaut going to Mars, staying there, and coming back is the space-based radiation. To complete the Mars profile that we’re talking about right now, you know, a year and a half to a two and a half year mission depending on what trajectory you want to choose. You’re going to put the astronaut over their lifetime limits for radiation exposure. And of course, the concern about radiation is it’s like to cancer. So, we got to get smarter on that. It could be that our limits are a little bit too conservative.
But, the problem is we don’t really understand the effects that space-based radiation and the damage it does inside the human body. So what we call the biological effects. We don’t really understand the biological effects of space-based radiation. And you can’t go test it out on humans down here on earth because it’s not ethical.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So we’re in this quandary. The best we can do is study astronauts onboard the International Space Station but they’re protected by the earth’s magnetic fields, though it’s not the same magnitude of exposure. So, it’s an unknown and it’s hard to assess risk when you really don’t understand the situation. So, it’s very likely that we’ll just have to figure out how to travel faster through space. Because if we can cut down the number of days during that transit to and from Mars, you cut down the radiation exposure and you make it a safer mission.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So I was thinking about this whole idea of what is the radiation levels on a regular space mission for a regular astronaut? Like you said, the earth’s magnetic sphere … helps us.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So, an example I’d use roughly the exposure you’d get from about 1000 chest x-rays, I think is what you’re roughly … your daily exposure or maybe 2 days of exposure up in space.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So it is significant.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I remember there was people that do heliophysics, solar physics, and they were talking about solar storms and when there is a solar storm event it’s even worse. So, there was another issue. Have you been on a mission where there was a big solar storm …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: No.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: … where you had to worry about that?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Fortunately not. there was a significant solar storm in, I think, August of 1972 and fortunately we were in between Apollo missions. But if the Apollo crew had been on the surface of the moon they very likely would have received a fatal radiation dose because the moon has no ability to protect, again without the atmosphere, the magnetic field doesn’t protect you from the incoming radiation.
So we’ve been fortunate in that we’ve had some solar storms but we have some shielding onboard the station so we can protect the crew. Literally, we can put them behind walls of water, bags of water that are lining walls. It’s … the solar storms are of concern because it’s a massive amount of particles but the more significant concern is the constant radiation of space, what’s called galactic cosmic radiation because these are heavier particles with an incredible amount of energy.
So, there just ..i like to call them the cannonballs that bombard the human body constantly. Solar particle radiation is more like being pelted by BBs but the galactic cosmic radiation, because the mass tends to have these really high energies and all that energy gets transferred to your body, so think of it as being hit by a cannonball.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So if that was fixed, you’d want to go, is what you’re telling me?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: If we had good, you know … so you can attack it a couple ways. Have better shielding for the spacecraft or travel faster. But, radiation I do not think is something we can ignore. And of course, you’re going to have to shield the crew once they’re on the surface of Mars.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. Because Mars itself doesn’t have …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yeah. I mean, you have not as much magnetic field, you’ve got shielding from some of the mass of the planet depending on where the galactic cosmic rays are coming from. But, yeah. The surface stay time’s not a piece of cake either. [Laughing.]
Anybody’s mobile device now has far more computing power than they had on any of the Apollo missions, any of the shuttle missions. You can attribute the space program to some degree for the push for that increase in computing power. And more importantly, the miniaturization of computer components. And so, you kind of created an industry and they took it from there and it’s just amazing to see the advances. But yeah, we had 56k computers onboard the shuttle. We had five of them. Pretty limited in its computing power so we used to fly a lot of laptops to augment our ability to do other things.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: We had a program that would help us rendezvous with another spacecraft. So …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And that’s not including the ping pong game that you were talking about earlier?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Well I had the ping pong game. It allowed you to do emails, send messages back and forth to the control center, it supported science experiments, so but we had to fly laptops.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … because onboard computers, just … they were completely full with just the software to keep the orbiter flying safely in space.
Jordan Baker: Was it a pretty good internet connection up there?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: [Laughs] Well actually my first ….
Jordan Baker: You were pretty close to the satellite, so …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: My first space shuttle flight, it was the first time that we had an ability to send messages back and forth. The speed is the issue. You travel at 5 miles a second, so incorporating GPS into the spacecraft was not trivial.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Because at the rate of speed at which you would approach a satellite and then move away from it. They had to completely rethink how they were going to do that signal processing.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow. So where do you see the future of missions going then? Like what do you think is the next big, like, mission? I know we have small missions that help with the launch of space telescopes and other scientific experiments but where do you see NASA going from now?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I do see NASA increasingly work with commercial companies, you know, bottom line, NASA’s always worked with commercial companies.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: NASA rarely builds its own spacecraft. It writes the requirements and then turns to a commercial company and says, “Alright you guys figure out how to meet them, you figure out the system design, the spacecraft design, we’ll monitor what you do, we’ll prove what you do, but you guys go do the work.”
Now, you’re seeing more of that with NASA just basically saying, “Here are the services we need somebody to provide to us and here are our guidelines for requirements in terms of reliability,” other technical terms that I won’t get into but basically a little more hands-off approach in that, “Okay commercial guys you go figure out how to design a spacecraft to provide these services to NASA.” And the important difference is NASA doesn’t own the spacecraft anymore; the commercial guys own the spacecraft. NASA oversees the mission but the commercial company is still responsible for the operation of the spacecraft.
You’ll see an increase in that partnership and then I think you’ll see some companies like SpaceX try and venture out on some of their own ambitious missions. I don’t know that Elon musk is going to be the first one to Mars because there’s a heck of a lot of risk and I don’t think any company’s going to take that on …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … just by themselves. So I think you’ll see NASA continue to try and push for Mars, to fly farther away from earth, increasingly farther away from earth. I would not be surprised if we end back up at the moon first. If we just go back to the moon and use it as a test bed, to me that makes a lot of sense. I think there’s some people in congress they think that makes a lot of sense so I would not be surprised if we go back to the moon, figure out how to operate there, operate at least a human-tended base (maybe not permanent occupation) and then take that knowledge and then press on to a harder destination, maybe Mars or maybe one of the moons of Mars. We’ll see.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well we were promised, you know, amusement parks and hotels on Mars. Sorry on the moon, so …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I grew up with the promise of a flying car.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Thank you George Jetson. I’m still waiting for my flying car.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well Back to the Future is this year, right? Back to the Future 2. 2015. We’ve all been promised these things.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I know! We got to get crackin’!
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? The magnificent droid plays there
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
Jordan Baker: Welcome back to Spark Science, this is Jordan Baker, with my cohost Regina Barber DeGraaff. And we are talking to astronaut Wendy Laurence.
[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Probably one of the most fascinating experiments up there right now, is the combustion experiment.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. I was going to ask about that but …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Because …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Your visuals were so good and I was like visuals radio. [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You know, it’s a blue ball of flame. It looks completely different than any different fire you’ve seen down here on earth. Fluids behave differently, so yes, from the astronaut point of view, it’s like, “this is cool. This stuff is fascinating. Look what I get to be a part of now; I’m just the kind of the button pusher; I’m not the person who designed it. I’m pushing the buttons and making sure the data are getting recorded but I get to be a part of this,” and it’s just mind boggling at times to see how things behave in such a radically different way once you take away gravity.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I was going to ask if you were going to be an author on … when there’s publications from all the data that’s taken up in space …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: No. No.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: That’s bull crap. [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Well you know …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: You were up there and you did it.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: We didn’t analyze anything. All we really did was collect. So, there’s no analysis.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Collectors get authorship, don’t they?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You know, I should ask.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Some do! It depends on the field.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I should ask John Grunsfeld if he got any because he’s a PhD astrophysicist, so he might have … the mission was called Astro 2, so maybe he contributed to some of the papers.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well I mean, there are papers that have like 13 people on it. Right?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Oh yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I mean, to not put an astronaut on it seems ridiculous.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I think they probably … I’m sure they probably on some of them, “And thanks to the crew.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Have you ever checked your publications? I didn’t see that on your Wikipedia page, so …
[laughter]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: No. I guess I should. I do have one public… I mean, my thesis was published …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Oh yeah.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … in the Journal of Physical Oceanography, so.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Cool.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: That was cool.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I haven’t asked you anything about oceanography either. Like, I don’t know. [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Well you know …
Speaker: Are you an oceanographer?
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Ocean engineer.
Speaker: Ocean engineer. Oh wow!
Captain Wendy Lawrence: So basically …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Makes oceans. [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You know whatever the oceanographer needed we could build for them. So, like the underwater ROVs or instrumentation or …
Speaker: Right.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Actually, I can build oil rigs too.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow. That’s good money.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Go meet the kids who are working at SpaceX.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Man, they’re believers. You meet the young engineers working at NASA, it’s the same mindset. They’re there because they’re passionate and they love what they’re doing. And they look around and go, “I cannot believe I’m getting paid to do stuff like this.” Same with the young engineers at JPL, driving the Mars rovers. They just, oftentimes, they’re like,”I gotta pinch myself. I’m getting to do this!” So that mindset’s very much there. It doesn’t get covered as much in the media, …
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: … and I think that’s the real problem, is media attentions drifted off to other things.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. I’ve met many people that are involved with NASA and that feeling of pushing forward, being adventurers, being explorers, that is definitely, I think, increasing with SpaceX and everything.
But, speaking of media, I do want to say this. Are there a lot of astronomers, sorry not astronomers, astronauts that really like Star Trek and like space-related things? I …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I grew up with the original Star Trek. I believe my brother and I saw every episode of the original Star Trek. So, yes some Star Trek fans. Battlestar Galactica.
[laughter]
Sometimes it’s hard to go watch a movie and go, “Oh it is so not like that. Nope. Didn’t get that right at all. That wouldn’t … nope whole scenario just not plausible” I had fun watching Gravity. It was a fun movie but honestly you cannot take out all the communication satellites with one malfunction, like one explosion.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: [Laughing.]
Captain Wendy Lawrence: That just does not happen!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I still haven’t seen it. Spoilers!
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Okay. So I won’t, so no more spoiler alert.
[Talking over one another]
Jordan Baker: But that’s not reality.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: You’re like nah, no, no, no, no, no. Okay so some things you did really well, but the whole premise for the move, ehhhh.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Jordan and I still haven’t seen Interstellar. We’re going to watch it …
Captain Wendy Lawrence: I haven’t seen Interstellar. I need to go and you know get it on Netflix I guess, so yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I think that idea of being explorers, being adventurers, that kind of utopian society of, “We’re all in it together and as humanity we’re going to move forward.” I think Star Trek: The Next Generation was very much a series that was kind of encompasses that.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Yes.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And there’s nothing really like that anymore on TV.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: Which I think is unfortunate. Because I, you know, obviously when you look out the window and you look back at your home planet, you have a very different view than everybody. I mean, they’re not even 700 of us who have been absolutely privileged to have that experience.
And so, you do come back with a different philosophy, different sentiment about things. You know, we watched continents go by. There aren’t any obvious boundaries between the countries and the states. And, you know we draw borders because it’s convenient for us to have a way to organize things but we don’t see those boundaries. We don’t see those divisions. We see one place, this frail planet against this immensely deep and vast black background of space and you think, “That’s the only place we know how to live and I wish everyone could see this to get that sense.” That we would all be better served by not highlighting our differences but looking for what we have in common and working together.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I don’t see how we can end better than that. So, thank you Wendy for being here. This was awesome.
Captain Wendy Lawrence: My pleasure; lot of fun! I always like to explain the bathroom question!
Jordan Baker: Yeah!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yes!
[laughter]
Jordan Baker: Thank you very much.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah, thank you!
[?Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground
[End of podcast.]