Science Friday - Astronaut Cady Coleman On ‘Sharing Space’

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

There’s a phenomenon known as the “overview effect,” a changed perspective some people experience after seeing the Earth from space. Retired astronaut Dr. Cady Coleman says that for her, it was a sense of home and connection.“First of all, I just don’t feel that far away,” she said. “I feel like home is bigger than we thought and I just happened to be the one of the furthest out people. But the overwhelming sort of sentiment that I have is if only everyone knew how connected they could be, there’s literally nothing we couldn’t solve.”Coleman flew on two space shuttle missions, spent 159 days on board the International Space Station, and operated the robotic arm during the deployment of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Her new book is Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change.She joins Ira to talk about her experiences in space and some of the challenges she faced in getting to orbit, from selection to training to the problem of obtaining a properly-fitting space suit.Read an excerpt of Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Is having to spend extra time in space such a bad thing? If you look at video of Butch and Sunny and the whole crew, they are decimating the to-do list up there because there's so many experiments that just don't get done because there's no crew time. It's one of the most precious resources. Today's Tuesday, August 27th, and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm SciFri producer Charles Bergquist. Last weekend, NASA decided two astronauts would stay on the International Space Station until February, rather than ride home on Boeing's experimental starliner spacecraft. What was originally supposed to be an eight-day stay in space could end up being eight months. Retired astronaut Katie Coleman talked with Ira about what it's like to be in space for long periods, her own route into orbit, and she shares some tips for future astronauts reaching for the stars. Here's Ira.

You know, you often hear from people who've been in space orbiting the Earth, commenting about how, quote, this experience changed how I look at the world. Did you know there's actually a word for this? It's called the overview effect, the effect of seeing the whole earth below you. And the comment that often comes right after that is, I wish everyone could experience what I have. And while we're not quite there with space tourism, my next guest who's been up in space, as there are other ways to share the wonder of spaceflight. Dr. Katie Coleman is a retired NASA astronaut, the author of the recent book, Sharing Space, An Astronaut's Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change.

Good to talk to you again. Well, it's great to be on. I love your podcast. Thank you. Tell me about the feeling of looking down on Earth. I mean, how do you describe it to those of us who've never been up there? Is it awe? Is it wonder?

Are you pinching yourself? It is all those things. And yet for me, the sort of overwhelming emotion is, first of all, I just don't feel that far away. I feel like home is bigger than we thought. And I just happen to be one of the furthest out people. But the overwhelming sort of sentiment that I have is if only everyone knew how connected they could be, there's literally nothing we couldn't solve.

If we all had that same worldview, you think? I think so. It affects everything you might be frustrated with or worried about or scared about here on earth where, I mean, our challenges are hard. but if we involve more people and more viewpoints, we're bound to solve them or at least get further. Are we making progress and having more people with different backgrounds and abilities in the astronaut corps, I'm wondering?

I certainly think so. You look at the folks that are up there right now, and there's a mix of, I think there's three women and three men on the U.S. side and Russians and Americans and people from different countries. the Astronaut Corps itself is, as I understand it, about 40% women these days. And I think that changes the way decisions can be made. So I think there's great progress. And at the same time, I think there's just part of our human nature that is, it's just hard for us not to kind of go back to the things that are sort of gut feel about, oh, you know, who gets it, who really knows their stuff?

Who is just like me and makes me feel like together we could solve this problem. the best thing in the world to do is to reach out to somebody that you really can't relate to and you never quite understand what they say and find out what they think. Yeah, exactly. You write in your book about the day that you realized that you could be an astronaut and a talk by Sally Ride. It's true. And I grew up in a family of explorers.

My dad was a deep sea diver that, you know, the hard hat diving, all those kinds of things. and then one of the people helping build the sea lab capsules that were where men were literally living under the sea. So living someplace dangers that not many people went was kind of normal in our family. Yeah. But in the media and even at home, I didn't see people that I could relate to. My dad's friends were named Uncle Squirley and Black Bart and things like that. And I didn't find out about Sylvia Earle so much later. So I think it makes an amazing difference.

not to everyone. Some people just kind of know inside themselves who they are, where they're going, and they just go. But I would say that's not the majority of us. And for me, seeing Sally Ride, listening to her, realizing that she's somebody where it mattered that she was passionate about what she was learning and what she was trying to accomplish. And at the same time, she had this amazing, cool, adventurous job. Didn't make me think, oh, I could do that. Like, certainly if she could do it, I could do it. But more, maybe I could try to have that job. And it was a pivotal. day for me. And what I think is important about that story is that every single one of us has that power to help somebody who doesn't know all the things they could be add one more thing to their

list. I know your background is in polymer science, but you became one of the chief robot wranglers driving the robotic arm. Was that a little bit of a stretch or just, hey, I could do that. I think gradually I learned that I could do more and more things. I had a single semester of electrical engineering kind of circuit kind of stuff at MIT, decided chemistry was really more what I really loved and had sort of an instinct for and just a curiosity to stick with. But then there I was the lead mission specialist for deploying the Chandra X-ray observatory. And I needed to know every time I flipped a switch, you know, what did that affect,

what wires then connected, and what, was what was happening, what was maybe not happening, and how could I check? And so I found myself going back to those things and just, you know, using my colored pencils to really make it make sense to me. So I think it's interesting to know how much you can really learn. And it was really exciting for me, although I did wish that I played more video games, I think, as a kid when I became the cheaper robotics. Because, in fact, I went to the mall and bought those helicopters, those little helicopters

that my kid would go through those helicopters and those folks at the mall knew me by name and cell phone. And I went and I said, you know, we've got a new class of astronauts and they need to think about what's up, down, sideways from different directions. So I need a half dozen helicopters. There you go.

Boy, I wish I had a mom like you. Actually, his favorite place was the astronaut gym. On Saturdays I'd take our son to the astronaut gym and I'd work out and it's about two stories tall and it was a place where it's not too crowded and small robotic helicopters were not discouraged. You write a lot about balancing your astronaut obligations with your family. Is the message that you don't have to give up one to do the other?

Yes. That's it. I'd say balancing those things, you know, for all parents, but especially in my case a geographically single parent, is really challenging and you're always learning and you're always learning and you're always figuring out how to get help and inventing new ways to make sure you're being a family. And I tend to be somebody that when, you know, the media comes around and wants to talk about family, I tend to speak up about the fact that I have one, mostly because I'm not trying to say it's easy and it's so possible

or that I don't even have any regrets. You know, certainly I look back and wonder and hope and all those things. our kids are 40 and 24 now and seem to be doing great. But, you know, there's choices that we made. But I want people to know that it's possible for them to explore it if it's something that's right for them. Do you think there might be a double standard here? I mean, if I was talking to a male astronaut, would I even be asking about being a dad at an astronaut? You know?

Likely, it's not as likely that you would. And it's really too bad because, first of all, I learned some of my best. kind of coping with long-distance training and actually parenting from space, I learned a lot of those things from some of my guy friends. In fact, one of them, Mike Barrett, is up in space right now. And we talked about how to stay in touch and how to offload your spouse. And this was back of the days of fax machines. And Mike has five kids, and he would have them send fax their homework to him in Russia.

And then he would get up and do homework with all of them. And so I started taking screenshots of my son's math books when he was, you know, so he was 10 when I went to the station. So in those early days. And Coichi Wakata, Mike Lopez Aligria, you know, I found there's a bunch of us that are, we're going on our T-38 flights, you know, for training. And when we stopped for gas, we'd be taking books out of our pockets to read to our kids before bedtime. Oh, that is a great story. One of the really interesting and cool things you write about. It's a simple thing is about the challenges of getting a properly fitting space suit.

Tell us about that chapter. Well, space suits are a really big endeavor in that your spacesuit is basically your spaceship in the shape of a human. And we had sizes, small, medium, large, extra large. None of them are made for you, but there's hopefully one that sort of fits in your range. And when it came to the space station, NASA made a decision that they didn't have the logistics, they didn't have the money and the room, to be able to bring all the sizes. And so they eliminated the small spacesuit, which affected more than a third of the women astronauts. If you couldn't be qualified in that spacewalking suit, then you could not go and live and work on the space station.

And the first people that are affected by that were not eligible to fly until 2021 when we had a space capsule with four seats. In other words, not just two spacewalkers and a backup in a three-seat spacecraft, which is what we had most of the time. Once SpaceX came, we had an extra seat. And so now we are seeing folks that don't have to be spacewalking qualified. But that affected a lot of people. And it happens not just in space, but in other jobs too, is that a lot of equipment is made for a standard size that doesn't include about half the population. So did they make a, a, a, another version of the spacesuit that fit you? They did not.

I found and got a lot of help from both men and women to learn how to make a much too big suit work for me and to be able to work safely and efficiently in that suit. I'm very proud of that. But it shouldn't be that hard, and there's a number of people that don't fit in that suit, and it wasn't safe. And in fact, you even, you know, had the story of they didn't have two spacesuits to fit the women. But actually one of the women said, I told you I could work and work. both a large and a medium space suit. And I'm finding that the large is too big and I cannot

work in that space suit. And so there weren't two medium suits for the women. And so there wasn't a all-woman spacewalk for quite a while. But you, you MacGyvered it for yourself for it to work. I would say I got creative, you know, both in a social way. I had a lot of really great and creative help. Kathy Thornton said, okay, first move, as soon as they eliminate that small space suit, is you go to whatever store and you buy yourself a water skiing vest. And you show up at the pool with that water skiing vest because there's a lot of big volume in there and you're a small person and you need to not be able to sort of like at the bottom of the air bubble and you just have all this big spacesuit.

You're like a giant air bubble of a spacesuit that you're trying to work into the pool. And she said, and they will be horrified when you show up with that water skiing vest because it's not certified. It's not this. It's not that. And then you say, well, do we have any foam that we use in the spacesuit? And you say it nice. And they go, well, we do have padding.

And so there's ways to help everybody think of a solution together. And I really was so happy to have all that help to get certified in the spacesuit and go up on the space station and live and work for six months. Yeah, it's so important to know how to work the system. So you did that very successfully. Well, you didn't. But you know you shouldn't have to, Ira. Yeah. That's the point you're trying to make, no matter what job you're in, you shouldn't have to do that.

Well, the best news, if I could tell you the best news, which is that, first of all, all this stuff led to some real honest talk about how are we training astronauts for spacewalking? And Tracy Dyson, who's up there right now, is the person who led, let's redesign spacewalking training, not as let's look and see how they do. Because there was a certain kind of attitude that we'd have to kind of keep an eye on the women more than the men. about how they did. So she revamped the training. And now that we're designing suits for the moon, those suits are being designed to fit everyone in the astronaut core. Can space ever get boring?

I mean, you've been on the space station for months at a time, seeing the same five other faces, eating the same rotating menu of meals. Does it just get, gosh, I wish I could do something else for a while? I think that the way you are on the ground is going to be the way you are in space. And I just don't actually think I've ever been bored in my whole life. There's always something to think about, something to do, something I haven't done, maybe because I just don't get enough done.

But, you know, so I was never bored up there. I would have spent another six months in a minute. And I think that part of that, and I would have gone up again, you know, again, certainly. Yeah. But even for a year, all those things. Not everybody's, it's not what everybody wants to do, but I think it's about the mission and the fact that once you're up there, it's so clear how important the work is that so much of it cannot be done on the ground and that the steps you take forward,

every experiment data run that you make is counting towards data to figure out how is our environmental system working for creating one to go to Mars. I love the fact that so many of the experiments lead straight back to Earth with understanding more about our bodies, the environment, our Earth. So I just felt like every day, every hour was important.

And it takes a while to get good at things and not lose them up there. So I wanted to stay. Well, speaking of staying, I know that right now we have some astronauts on the space station who've been there for much longer than expected. They're waiting for their,

their flight home. They've had some problems with the capsule they came in. The media has been calling them stranded. What is your take on this? What are they feeling and what is the media getting wrong about this? First, it's just the whole essence of being NASA and the space program, NASA and her commercial partners, is that those people did not get strapped into a rocket and go to space without people thinking ahead about all of these things. Like if everything goes wrong, how long could they stay up there? If they really can't come home in their capsule, people were already thinking about these things

and thinking about, well, I guess the good news is they'll get a lot of work done up there, but the bad news is, you know, especially Butch might eat a lot, right? And so it could be hard on consumables. And so all those things were looked at ahead of time. I mean, that's NASA. I mean, Administrator Nelson has to be able to look for us. and Biden in the eye and say, we've thought of these things, we've got, we've got plans. But when I think when you spell out the plans and some of them involved, we might have to

bring a moment a different capsule, it might actually be to our advantage to keep some of them up there. Then people like to leap on those sort of like, oh, stranded, because I think there's this feeling that it must be terrible to be in space. And if you look at video of Butch and Sonny and the whole crew, they are decimating the to-do list up there because there's so many experiments that just don't get done because there's no crew time. It's one of the most precious resources. And now they're just knocking all the things that have been on the list that are necessary

but never get there. They're knocking them out of the way. And I'm excited to see what kind of work we do on the space station now that this supposedly terrible thing has happened. We're running out of time, but I want to know some advice, some tips you might have for young folks listening who might want to follow in your. your footsteps. I'd like to assign them homework, which is realize that every adult that you see probably has something to teach you and whether they know it or not, but it's your job to tug on

their sleeve to ask them questions that they might not understand how important the answers might be to you. And so realize that your job as a student, as a young person, is to find out where you fit in the future and what kind of work you want to do to make it the best future. And And to do that, you'll need some help. You'll need more knowledge and don't hesitate to ask people and just take some bravery, but it's your job. Well, thank you so much for taking time to be with us today, Katie. Well, it's so great to talk with you and to, well, share space with you. So thank you.

Sharing space. That's the name of the book of Dr. Katie Coleman, retired NASA astronaut, author of Sharing Space, an astronaut's guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change. and she's based in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. That's all the time we have for today. Lots of folks help make the show possible, including John Denkowski, Annie Niro, Jason Rosenberg, Rasha Aridi, Shoshana Bucksbaum. Next time, I'll look into the complex, often error-filled world of death certificates.

But for now, I'm SciFri producer Charles Bergquist. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.