“To Be An Astronaut”

After my earlier post, I paid an obscene amount of money for a less than mediocre lunch. Then I wandered through the main exhibit halls, mostly killing time before this showing. This museum appears to be very much about (scheduled) shows (and the tour of JSC), with exhibits around to occupy you in between (but not as the main attraction).

The next event I went to was in the Northrop Grumman theatre (which has a 5-storey screen), about to see the 25 minute film “To Be An Astronaut”. This film is supposed to go through the entire process of becoming an astronaut, from getting the phone call, “are you still interested?” to your first trip into space. Needless to say, it excited me. I was one of those kids who once dreamed of being an astronaut for years.

I have to say, it disappointed me. I guess I was expecting too much for a 25 minute film (which is copyright 1993, which explains the computer graphics). Sure, it started out with someone receiving the phone call – and you got to see her being excited. But then it went right into essentially, “there’s lots of training.”

Now, I get it – there is (and should be) lots of training. But I was hoping to get a glimpse of the daily life of an astronaut. They live and train at JSC – what’s that like? How normal a life can an astronaut living at JSC live? Do you really work a 40-60 hour week like everyone else, and then get your own time to have friends and hang out in Houston? Do they socialize outside of their teammates and colleagues at JSC, or in general, do they restrict their interactions to those at JSC?

They said that you start out with a bunch of classmates and in the beginning you’re really close and you work together so everyone succeeds. What happens later? The class they showed had probably 20 people in it… but later in the film, we only ever saw 3 (the same 3, for that matter). Surely there’s a “weeding out” process. When does that become obvious?

So, the film went right into the training. There was a little bit on rides in the vomit comet, and even less (30 seconds tops) on training in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (underwater). From there it went into what I can only assume is final training, certainly not the kind of thing you’re learning your first days or weeks at JSC.

It was all about running simulations in the space shuttle mock-ups. Admittedly, this segment was entertaining – there are people whose job is essentially to sit around and think up worst-case scenarios, and then combine them in interesting (and catastrophic) ways, and make the astronauts (and mission control) figure out how to get out of it. Repeatedly, and under all kinds of stressful conditions – some training sessions, they said, can run for 18 or even 36 hours. If that’s not stressful, I don’t know what is. The astronauts narrating the film said that the simulations mean that the actual flight is always easy.

The next part was a flight into orbit. One of the astronauts said the hardest thing was saying goodbye to her kids a week before launch. The film never explains why there’s this timescale (astronauts are quarantined with their health monitored for a week before flight, to help reduce health issues in orbit). They just move on and show a fairly standard shuttle launch (and don’t actually tell us which one it was).

That’s about it. There was no “living in space” segment. There was no “science done while in orbit”. There was no “the terror of landing the shuttle” segment. I guess it really was about the process to become an astronaut, and they’re saying that once you get into orbit, you’re an astronaut. End of story.

1. Biswa Says:
   April 15th, 2008 at 10:42 am

   Hi…
   I m biswa , a very small part of the world ..
   I have a question…is that the universe is expand?????
   If yes…when the earth will be destroy by self….
   Thanks….

Leave a Reply