Space Station 3D Film at the Science Museum – 13/2/8

Background:

SPACE STATION is the story of the unique partnership of 16 nations building a laboratory in outer space - a permanent place for the study of the effects of long exposure to zero gravity and the necessary first step towards the global co-operative effort needed if man is to someday set foot on Mars.  The audience blasts off into space with the astronauts and cosmonauts from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre and Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, allowing everyone to experience what it would be like to live and work in Space. Since assembly of the space station began in 1998, 79 nine astronauts and scientists have lived on board or visited - 68 men and 11 women.  In fact, there have been people living on the space station continuously for more than a year. Eventually, the million £ Space Station will include six laboratories and provide more space for research than any spacecraft ever built. Internal volume of the space station will be roughly equal to the passenger cabin volume of a 747 jumbo jet.  When the space station is completed an international crew of up to seven will live and work in space for periods of three to six months. Crew return vehicles will always be attached to the space station to ensure the safe return of all the crew in the event of an emergency.

The Film:

This film showed The International Space Station being built 250 miles from Earth and showed the Virtual Space Centre where the construction team learn how to escape difficulties using a jet pack which they wear on their backs to send them back to the Station should they become detached whilst working outside it. Many people from different Countries have been trained this way, including from Russia, America, Canada, Italy, France and Japan.  They also practise in tanks containing 6,000,000 gallons of water, which is the nearest feeling to being in space. In 1998, the first module, called Zarya, was carried into space and put into orbit by a Russian proton rocket.  The film showed this and how it would look if you were standing too close! In December the same year, the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavor attached the second module, Unity, to Zarya and the ISS assembly was fully underway. A total of 16 flights, including 12 Space Shuttles missions have delivered modules, tools, equipment and supplies.  Nasa Space Shuttles are like delivery trucks that then return to Earth. The electrical wiring and the phone connections are like the heart of the Space Station.  After arriving, the construction workers had to seal the hatch and install the antenna manually outside the Station.  Later the wiring would be done which would connect to the Science Lab when it arrived.  The anchored down a tool box for later use. The film showed William Shepherd in Kazakhstan getting ready to leave in the Atlantis.  It showed the press and lots of family and friends, the latter two of which wouldn’t have been allowed had the launch been from America.  406 launches have been made from the Russian launch pad, including the first to put a man in space.  It took Shepherd and his crew 2 days to arrive and they had to travel in a Space Capsule the size of the inside of a VW Beetle, with their legs under their chin. They had to exercise daily because in Space the muscles weaken quickly because there’s no gravity.  They ride an exercise bike and because the Station is moving so fast, looking down they can see that they’ve cycled from Paris to China for example! Also, away from Earth, they feel less a part of the Country from which they have come and more a part of the planet as a whole.

The crew need good repair skills as there are no “spare parts” in Space!  They also recycle their air and water.  Water is in short supply on the space station, so conservation and the three R's - Reclaim, Reuse and Recycle - are an important part of life on board. Although water is delivered during shuttle missions, much of what is used by the astronauts is reclaimed and purified by the Space Station Water Recycling System. This includes the vapour from the air and water used for washing and brushing teeth. Without such careful recycling, 40,000 pounds of water would have to be brought from Earth to re-supply a minimum of four crewmembers. The space station Water Recycling System is so advanced that even purified sweat and urine are cleaner that the water that comes from your tap. Children can talk to the Space Station when it goes overhead on a ham radio.  We had found this out before when we did the Amateur Radio Day at Newhaven Fort.  It showed the children talking to a man in the Space Station and him telling them that education is a life-long thing. The film then showed Shepherd and his crew arriving in the Atlantis with the Science laboratory (called Destiny) and being all excited to explore and wearing “Stars and Stripes” socks to show they were American.  These flights are transfer flights and sometimes clothes, water and even a woman for company are transferred.  The Atlantis then pulled away again leaving the cargo bay empty. New people were then going to be sent up in the Shuttle Discovery to replace them.  It showed this crew getting home-sick before they had even left, knowing they were going to spend time away from loved ones (holiday times are the worst, though they can contact them by radio and email etc.) and knowing that they would be in close proximity to other people for their time away.  Luckily because they train together before hand, they all understand when someone might be sad, lonely or depressed and want time alone.  They knew too, that they would all miss the beach, fields etc. The film showed the countdown for the launch of the Discovery, and because the film is 3D you felt as if you were in the shuttle as it went up!  After it docked 2 days later, it showed the crew conducting experiments, growing spring onions, practising with a miniature mechanical arm inside the craft at zero gravity (important when you have to use the one on the outside of the Space Station as it is very easy to slam it accidentally in to the side of the Space Station) and growing crystals that only grow in zero degrees gravity and which could be useful for medicine in Space.  The crew also wear probes so that biological data can be sent back to Earth to be interpreted to aid advancement in Space travel. Before the crews go outside, they exercise whilst breathing pure oxygen, this helps stops the nitrogen in the body causing pain called the bends like divers suffer with.  Nitrogen causes the same pain that you get when you get cramp when running. In order to go in to space there are many occupations that are required.  These include engineers, inventors and doctors.

Summary:

More than 40 space flights over five years and at least three space vehicles - the space shuttle, the Russian Soyuz rocket and the Russian Proton rocket - will deliver the various space station components to Earth orbit. Assembly of the more than 100 components will require a combination of human space walks and robot technologies. One of the most important these flights took place in November 2000 when the station’s first permanent crew arrived to take their place in history. Since then, three new crew rotations have taken place. Crew five is scheduled to arrive this year.

Gene Cernan Drama Session

This took place in the Space section of the Science Museum on the ground floor, which was a shame because with people walking past, you could barely hear what was being said!  It would have been much better in a quiet room.  Gene Cernan (who was dressed as an astronaut and pretended to be American) told us that the rocket was 111 metres long and took 3200 tonnes of explosive to launch it.  An aeroplane travels at 550 miles per hour, but a launch goes at 24,400 mph which is the fastest speed at which man has travelled. To fight against the lack of gravity, people wear heavy boots in space.  Everything including a Space Ship floats in space, so technically you could balance a Space Ship on your little finger!  He told us (and we saw in the film) that water forms in bubbles that float that they then drink.  As food would all mix in Space if it were floating around, it comes in dehydrated packs to which you add water before eating.  Salt and pepper are not allowed unless they are in liquid form, or they would clog up the equipment or float into the crews eyes.  Wee and poo float too of course so they have to wee into a tube and poo into a clear plastic bag.  You can imagine what happens if someone is sick in Space and you certainly don’t want diarrhoea! He asked if we thought there was gravity on the moon.  Apparently, gravity does exist on the moon, but at one sixth of that of Earth.  He pointed out that they make the suits 6 times heavier to compensate and that the suit he was dressed in couldn’t be real or he wouldn’t be able to stand in it.  The moon is made from rock and if you were on the moon the clearest planet you would see would be the Earth, which would be blue and white because of the sea and clouds.  He said that perhaps our planet should have been called Ocean instead of Earth! Someone asked if a second in Space was the same as a second on Earth.  Gene told us that a second is a second regardless, but because you move faster in Space, it doesn’t feel the same. This means that because of the physics involved, if you went faster you could actually change time.  If you go faster than the speed of light you would go backwards in time.  A friend told us that if you were in a Shuttle you would see a sunset and a sunrise every 90 minutes.

Someone else asked if it were hot or cold in Space and he explained that it would depend on how close or far you were from the sun.  If you are on the moon you have to wear a suit that would cool you down as the moon’s temperature is 110 degrees and therefore hotter than boiling water. The session was ok, but we could have got most of the information from reading the boards around us and then we wouldn’t have had to strain to hear.