Explore Space with Astronaut Terry Virts 👨🏼🚀
LISTEN HERE
Episode 83 Description
🔭 What does NASA stand for? 🗣 We hear from a Ten'er to get the lowdown on NASA, and to learn his favorite thing about space. 👨🏼🚀 Then, it's time for the extended cut of our exclusive interview with Astronaut, photographer, and former Commander of the ISS, Terry Virts! 🚀 Plus, test your knowledge of outer space with the Trivia Question of the Day!
Links
✍️ Visit our website for a list of sources used for this episode and a full episode transcript
📝 Sign up for The Ten News-letter!
📸 Join us on Instagram
Sources for this episode:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57045058
TRANSCRIPT:
Various Voices 0:00
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Bethany Van Delft 0:07
It's May 15, I'm Bethany Van Delft, and this is no ordinary episode of The Ten News. This is The Ten News gets extra.
In today's episode, we're sharing our full interview with Terry Virts, a former NASA astronaut and commander of the International Space Station. We had so much to talk about, and great questions sent in from our listeners. But first, let's go to one of our Ten'ners and get the lowdown on what NASA stands for and one of his favorite things about space.
Box 0:51
My name is Box. I'm an eighth grade at New Roads School in Los Angeles, California. NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. One of my favorite things to do with space, is how SpaceX, can reuse the Falcon nine, creating a more sustainable future for space flight.
Bethany Van Delft 1:15
There's so much cool science and technology that's come from the space program. Let's hear from commander Terry Virts about what it's like to be an astronaut.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Terry Virts 1:35
Yeah, it's great to be with you guys.
Bethany Van Delft 1:37
Did you, did you always know like your whole life that you wanted to be an astronaut?
Terry Virts 1:42
When I was in kindergarten, the first book I ever read was one of those cardboard books with like one line per page. And it was about Apollo. So it was about the moon program. And it was, it was the coolest book, I can still remember it, you know what it looked like? And I was hooked.
Bethany Van Delft 1:58
So it's like two questions. But what do you have to study? And what do you have to be really, really good at to become an astronaut.
Terry Virts 2:05
So there's different ways in NASA to be an astronaut. Now, there's also private companies taking tourists into space, maybe starting this year. So for that, you just need money, you just need to be able to pay for your ticket. But if you want to be a NASA astronaut, you know a real, you go and live for six months, and you're doing science and research, you have to have a technical college degree. So something in math or science or engineering or medicine, something like that. And astronauts come from different backgrounds. I was a fighter pilot and test pilot, but there's doctors, there's engineers or scientists, there's people who have different careers, most importantly is you need to have some type of what NASA calls operational experience. Because when you're in space, you're not like writing equations on a blackboard, you're actually doing things and so they want people who have done things, you know, with their hands, maybe risky things before they pick you to be an astronaut.
Bethany Van Delft 3:01
Yeah, I would guess that you have to be okay with being a little bit a little bit frightened and taking risks and feeling confident that you can get through it. What is the longest time what's the longest period of time you've been in space in like one stretch?
Terry Virts 3:18
My first spaceflight was two weeks. And then my last spaceflight was 200 days. So you know, over six months was my longest mission.
Bethany Van Delft 3:28
Wow. That's incredible. And what happens when you come back to earth after spending six months in your body getting used to being in space? What happens to your body when you get back to Earth?
Terry Virts 3:41
That is a really, President Obama asked me that question. We visited him at the White House after my first flight.
Bethany Van Delft 3:48
Yeah, we were just like, totally as smart as each other, me and President Obama.
Terry Virts 3:52
I was, so I'm a sports guy. And I was I like to play basketball is playing basketball with my son. And like, I couldn't even get the basketball to the rim. I felt so heavy. It was just like, Oh, I was so heavy. And I was like, Oh, the ball wouldn't even get to the rim. And I forgot to tell him that story because he's into basketball too. And I'm still mad. So the next time I see him, I'm going to say, Hey, I forgot to tell you this funny story. I couldn't even shoot a basketball up to the rim. So you feel heavy, and you feel dizzy. Just really like, oh, the world was spinning. But my body recovered really quickly. I for some reason I was it's like I was made to fly in space.
Bethany Van Delft 4:32
You are a commander of the Space Station. What does that mean? What does it mean to be a commander of Space Station.
Terry Virts 4:39
Um, so it basically means like, if there's an emergency or some something goes bad, I would have been the person in charge. It's kind of like being the captain of an airliner. You know, when I talk about leadership, most people are going to be followers a lot more than they're going to be leaders. So the first thing you got to do is learn how to be a good follower before you can be a leader. And then when you're a leader, you have to understand who your audience is so like if the people you're leading are young, they don't have any experience. They don't know what they're doing. You need to tell them what to do. But then when you have a team or that people know what they're doing, and they're experienced, then you need to let them run things and stay out of their hair. So your leadership needs to change based on the team that you're leading.
Bethany Van Delft 5:26
Absolutely. That's a, that's such a, that's such good insight for leading anything, right? It's so great to have you with us. Now we have a few questions sent in by our Ten'ers.
Selena 5:45
Hello, my name is Selena. I'm six years old. I'm from San Francisco. My question is, why do astronauts have to use special rockets instead of aeroplanes?
Terry Virts 5:59
That's a really good question. So when you go into space, you either go into orbit, which is just flying around the Earth, or you, you go even faster and you leave Earth and you want to go to the moon or Mars, you have to go to what's called escape velocity. So to go into orbital velocity on Earth, or in we call it low Earth orbit just a few hundred miles from Earth, the speed is about 17,500 miles per hour. So that's pretty fast. And so if you tried to fly at that speed, you will just melt eventually. So you need a special rocket to get you above there.
Ryan 6:37
Hi, my name is Ryan and I live in San Francisco, California. And my question for you guys is how do astronauts entertain themselves?
Terry Virts 6:47
Well, so for me, I was mostly busy like every minute for six months, I had a lot of work to do. But one of the things that I did like in the evenings after dinner, I was a photography guy. They tell me I took the most ever pictures in space. I like baseball. So I watched a lot of baseball, or I listened to a show called Car Talk. It is the funniest radio show of all time.
Alex 7:13
Hi I'm Alex and I have a question for the astronaut. What do you feel like when you take off?
Terry Virts 7:18
So the first thing you feel is that you hear the engines and they are loud. It's a roar like nothing I've ever heard. And then when the rocket lifts off the launch pad, you're accelerating. So it's kind of like being in a car when you slip up when you, when you slam on the gas. And you're just smashed back. Only this space shuttle and the Soyuz got up to 3G, so three times your body weight. So that's kind of like laying on the ground and having three of your best friends lay on top of you. Just smashing you down. It's hard to breathe, you have to push out your chest in order to let the oxygen in. And so you feel acceleration, you hear this amazing noise. And the shuttle has solid rocket motors. So it's like somebody grabbing you and just shaking you so you know the sound the acceleration, the vibration is pretty amazing.
Lily 8:14
Hi, I'm Lily, I'm nine years old. Have you been to a planet Mars?
Terry Virts 8:21
I have not. In fact, no human ever has. But we have sent drones there which is pretty cool. These rovers and NASA just today, the day we're recording this, flew the first ever helicopter so its first ever airplane on another planet, which is so cool. So the last time humans went to the moon was in 1972, so almost 50 years ago. So no one's been back. Hopefully NASA is going to send astronauts there in the next few years, but we'll see. And then nobody's ever been to Mars. So hopefully someday the kids listening to this might be the first ones to go there.
Rose 8:58
Hi, I'm Rose, and I'm seven years old. What is the coolest thing you've seen in space?
Terry Virts 9:06
Our planet. I saw so much. You know the galaxy is so cool, but just seeing Earth and there's so many things about it. The problem with being an astronaut is your bucket list gets too long. And so seeing the sunrise and sunset seeing the moon rise and Moon sets, seeing the Bahamas and the snow of Russia and Canada and the mountains of the Alps in the Himalayas in the Rockies and the deserts are really cool. Saudi. Namibia. The Sahara deserts are massive, these beige pink things. Actually in Algeria. It's kind of orange and black. It's really cool. So anyway, there's just there's so many things I could talk for hours.
Charlotte 9:53
Hello, my name is Charlotte, and I'm 10 years old. I wanted to ask you what going up to space is like during COVID.
Terry Virts 10:01
You know the funny thing about that I actually I wrote a short book last year about how being in space was similar to being stuck on earth and COVID. Because when I was there, we had three cargo ships back to back to back, blew up. And so the station was all of a sudden low on supplies. And when the second one blew up, there was a rush in progress. They delayed our replacement crew because they didn't want to launch the rocket until they knew what the problem was, and we're sure safe. So they didn't want to send us back to Earth until the replacement crew got there. So they basically said you're stuck in space until we can launch the replacement crew. So we were stuck in the space station. We didn't know how long it was going to last. We were low on supplies. And there was just a lot of similarities between being stuck in space and being stuck down here and COVID. So my advice was, give yourself a schedule. Be sure you're getting physical exercise. Keep a good attitude. You know, this is not going to last forever.
Bethany Van Delft 11:02
Talia wants to know, what's it like to be in space? Is it fun? Is it not fun? Can you touch the stars?
Terry Virts 11:09
Well, Talia, you can't touch if you could touch the stars once, but then you would melt and die. So those things are pretty hot. So you don't want to you can do anything once. But that doesn't mean you should do anything once. But in being in space is really cool. Floating is just awesome. You feel like Superman. Looking at our planet, looking at the stars is awesome. But honestly, most of what you're doing is work. I mean, I, you know, being in space is 99% work and 1% seeing the universe. And so, but that's okay, it was worth it just to, I was willing to do the work just to get that view for sure. So being in space is 99% work and 1% fun. But when you get the fun, it's really, really fun.
Sowa 11:55
Hi, I'm Sowa, and I'm 11 years old. And I want to ask you, what you eat for dessert in space, if you do at all.
Terry Virts 12:02
I'm a big dessert guy. I was there my crewmates Scott Kelly, and he and I both like chocolate, so they would send me up like I had a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. And they had m&ms. They give you these bags of food and they're supposed to last like two weeks. And the dessert bag of food, it's like a backpack, normally has brownies and chocolate pudding and, and blueberry cake. It has different types of desserts. But this one for some reason only had one chocolate item. It was a it was a little Debbie's brownie. And Scott and I were looking at each other. And so we cut it in half. And there's a picture of us we're both very sad astronauts, because we only have this half of a brownie for two weeks. It was it was really funny.
John Lee 12:46
Hi, my name is John Lee. I'm eight years old. And I want to know what it looks like looking down at Earth from space. Thanks.
Terry Virts 12:56
Well, it is amazing. And that like I was talking about earlier, there's just so many different things to see. So really, every time you look at Earth, it's a different thing. You know, mountains or oceans, or snow or ice, or nighttime, and nighttime, the thunderstorms are amazing. You see these lightning, especially over Africa, and South America, in the South Pacific, these tropical places, there's always lots of thunderstorms, and they're amazing. This is from a parent. Kelly wants to know, how do you go to the bathroom?
From a parent not from the kid.
Bethany Van Delft 13:36
Not from a kid.
Terry Virts 13:37
Yeah, look every human needs to go. So there The answer is very carefully. Because you don't want to be the person to make a mess. And the other the real bottom line is it's a it's it's airflow. So on Earth, you have gravity, gravity makes everything go in the right direction. In space, yeah, you need airflow. So they have these vacuums. They have a hose for number one and then a basically a can for number two. And so you go and the hose sucks everything away. And you wipe it up and you're done. Or when you go on the Can you just close it up when you're done and and then it stays there and then it comes back to earth and burns up and one of these cargo ships. You know every few months one comes back to earth and so if you ever see like a progress or a ISS cargo vehicle coming back to Earth, we call it deorbiting. And you see a big streak across the the looks like a shooting star, you'll know what that streak is made out of.
Bethany Van Delft 14:40
It is a poop streak.
Terry Virts 14:42
A shooting poop star, shooting poop star and the, for number one for the urine. We actually recycle that.
Bethany Van Delft 14:51
Wow. Thank you so so so much for doing this with us. It's so exciting to have you with us. And yeah, I guess there's so much to check out. Thank you again.
Terry Virts 15:02
Thanks for having me. This is really cool. Hope the kids enjoy it.
Bethany Van Delft 15:09
Up next, it's time for
Sound Bit 15:13
What, what, what's the big idea?
Bethany Van Delft 15:15
Trivia on The Ten. Lots of countries send rockets and astronauts up to space. But recently, something from the final frontier fell back to Earth. Was it A) a moon rock B) wrappers from astronauts deserts, or C) debris from a booster rocket? Did you guess it? The answer is C! debris from a booster rocket. Chinese space agency used the rocket to send up the first part of China's new space station. And according to the US Space Command, it entered Earth's atmosphere somewhere over the radian peninsula last week. This is the first time the Chinese have done an uncontrolled re-entry, meaning they're not guiding the rocket back down to earth. Normally, rockets are guided to an unpopulated area usually the middle of the ocean. Fortunately, things burn up upon reentry. Otherwise, we really might need to be looking into those Vibranium umbrellas we were talking about last episode. Time is up. Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Look out for new episodes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and extras on Saturdays. The Ten News is a co production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts and it's distributed by iHeartRadio. The Ten News' creative team is counting the stars and includes Kate Hill, Tracey Crooks, Pete Musto, Andrew Hall, Jenner Pascua, Stephen Tompkins and Sarah Olender. Our production director is Jeremiah Tittle and our executive producers are Donal Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan. I'm Bethany Van Delft, and thanks for listening to The Ten News.
Oh, no. I forgot to ask Mr. Virts about my favorite space thing. Look it up, it is so cool.
