NASA Social: Astronaut Health, Fitness & Rehabilitation Pt.1

Yesterday, on July 17, I attended the NASA Social meetup at Johnson Space Center.  It was so much fun!

For those who may not know, JSC was established during Project Mercury, the very beginning of the era of human space flight, to be NASA's base of operations for training astronauts. In addition to all US astronauts training here, all international astronauts and cosmonauts come to JSC to train together as a crew, a process that I believe takes about two and a half years, before heading to Star City, Russia, for their final preparations and launch.

Expedition 37 mission patch

The theme of yesterday's Nasa Social meetup was astronaut health and fitness, and it coincided with the Expedition 37 Press Conference and the launching of the new Train Like Mike program. The "Mike" in question is Astronaut Mike Hopkins, a former Air Force engineer and lifelong advocate for sports and fitness, who will be flying aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket in September to live and work aboard the International Space Station until March 2014.

The day began with the NASA Social attendees meeting at the Gilruth Center, JSC's gym and fitness center.  The attendees were a mix of professional media, those with a professional interest in fitness, and folks like myself who are just enthusiastic about NASA and it's mission of exploring the stars. We were guided by a team from JSC's Public Affairs Office, and they had a very busy day planned for us!

ISS Mockup in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility.

The first thing we did was that which I was most excited for - visiting the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. This facility is a vast room that houses life-size mockups of all kinds of things the astronauts will encounter in space.  In addition to a mockup of the International Space Station, the building also housed things like a practice space toilet (not actually a toilet, thankfully!) and a pretend hatch to SpaceX's Dragon capsule.


Unfortunately, we didn't get to go inside the ISS Mockup as it was being used for training during our visit, but we did meet Astronaut Doug Wheelock, who flew on both the Space Shuttle and Soyuz, and lived on the ISS to equal a total of over 178 days in space, and 43 hours of spacewalking to repair a pump that broke while he was aboard the ISS.

Astronaut Doug "Wheels" Wheelock, who answered questions about the ISS and shook my hand!
Beside him is a mockup of the ISS's Cupola.

There's cozy, and then there's Soyuz cozy...

We also met the engineer who trains the astronauts on the Soyuz spacecraft, who spoke fluent Russian and was very enthusiastic.  I had heard Soyuz was cramped and very small, but I wasn't prepared for how small. You definitely have to be friendly with your crewmates!  It's just a good thing that they now can get the Soyuz to the station in a few hours, versus the three days it used to take them. Can you imagine spending three days in there with your two closest friends?

Next we met an engineer working on the new Orion capsule. Orion looks rather like an Apollo capsule, only twice the size. It's purpose is also the same - to take astronauts beyond low earth orbit, be it the moon, an asteroid, or even Mars. It is still in development, as is the companion rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), that will also be about the size of the old Saturn V's.  This is the program the Space Shuttle was de-commissioned to fund, and is the next step to getting crewed American rockets back in space.  That is, unless the private sector beats them to it.

Discussions centered around the EVA console.

Our next stop was Mission Control! There are several control rooms within the Mission Control Center. First we viewed the control room for the ISS, which was a cool nerd moment for me because I often watch a show called Space Station Live on NASA TV which shows live shots of this room as well as activities on station.  Yes, I am THAT nerdy. The control rooms have visitors galleries from which you can see the activities from the other side of a piece of glass.  It's not often that visitors are allowed to view an operational control room. We were briefed by a woman who works at one of the consoles in the control room about her job.  To be honest, the neatest thing was to see the Flight Director and two other gentlemen gathered around the EVA console, having very serious discussions.  Perhaps trying to figure out how water got into Italian Astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet on the spacewalk the day before.

After that, it was time for another huge nerd moment, but this time a historical one!  We were brought into the Apollo era Mission Control room. It is a National Historic Landmark, and though it was used until 1992, it has been restored to the state it was in during the Apollo era. This was the room from which Neil Armstrong was supervised making the first steps onto the moon, and from which the best minds of the day tried to bring the Astronauts of Apollo 13 home. Unfortunately, I also suspect this was perhaps the control room being used when we lost Challenger. It's a heavy place, and everyone in the room was both in awe and totally thrilled to be there.

The view as you enter the control room.

Yours truly sitting at the Flight Directors console.  If Gene Kranz's autobiography, Failure Is Not An Option, wasn't on my reading list before, it sure is now!

Lunar Module control console, located in the front row, right hand side.

Stay tuned to this blog for Part 2! After the lunch break, we learned much more about health and fitness in space and on the ground, and met more astronauts. Much more astronauts!