Andy Thomas

Answers our questions from MIR

Andy Thomas on Mir

Press Release:

Gormandale & District P.S. launches into Space.

Wednesday 27th May saw a historic time at Gormandale & District P.S. when students had the opportunity to speak directly with Andy Thomas on the MIR space station. The contact was organised through the MIREX/SAREX organisation in the United States who facilitates amateur radio experiments with manned spacecraft. The original application to be involved with the program was 4 years ago and it was a great surprise when I received a phone call from the Australian coordinator, Graham Ratcliff, in Adelaide who said that Andy Thomas had spoken to a number of U.S. and other international schools but because of his Australian background wanted to speak to some Australian schools. The School of the Air in Adelaide and Gormandale & District P.S. were the only schools in Australia to receive this honour.

What followed was a request to the local amateur radio club, the Eastern Zone of the Wireless Institute of Australia, for support for the contact, which was enthusiastically granted.

As the date approached the preparation was intense both at the school level and with the technical aspect. Final confirmation of a time, which was acceptable to both the Russian Space Control, NASA and Andy Thomas, arrived only 3 days before the contact. The time allocated was 4.00 p.m. on a Wednesday so quick organisation was required to make sure all the students could remain at school for the contact.

Construction of the equipment commenced at lunchtime and by 3.00 p.m. we were as ready as we could be with 2 separate stations setup and the school nervously waiting. As 4.00 p.m. approached we had an audience of 100 students and 70 adults waiting silently for the first response from space. I could honestly say that as I sat behind the microphone calling in the MIR spacecraft with 170 people staring, it was the most stressful time I have ever experienced. It was with great relief and excitement that the first crackly response came through from Andy Thomas. What followed was a nine-minute contact where 12 students had the opportunity to ask questions and have them answered by an astronaut travelling overhead in space. Andy Thomas is an outstanding person who answered all questions in a clear and informative way. As the signal disappeared the whole audience responded with spontaneous applause.

The whole study of space had become a real life experience for all of us.

I have attached a full list of the questions asked by the students. For more information please contact me at Gormandale and District P.S. or check out our homepage at http://Home.vicnet.net.au/~gormandale

Rob Higgins

(Principal)

Due to circumstances (mostly beyond our control), some parts of the conversation are missing.

The parts missing are marked with ????????, I am attempting to find the missing pieces. If I

locate any of the missing dialog, I will update this page immediately. Andy's answers (in green)

are not verbatim, but pretty close.  If you can help us locate the missing sections of transcript,

please forward them to us at either, or both of the E-mail address at the bottom of the page.

Thank you.

Question 1, from Ashleigh B, grade 6

If you had a yoyo in space, would it work like on Earth?

Hi Ashleigh, that’s an interesting question, actually I haven't thought about that, I don't think it would work, because you need gravity. I don't think it would work at all, sometime we ought to try that, and see what happens.

Question 2, from Patrick G, grade 5

If you spun around in space, would you get dizzy?

 Well, yes you would, that can happen actually. Because we float around in the cabin, of course sometimes you float head over heels, and upside down, and you can make yourself quite dizzy, if you do too much of it, believe it or not, because your balance system is still working, so you can end up getting dizzy.

Question 3, from Jessica L, grade 5

How do you shower when there is no gravity?

That’s an interesting point, we actually don't have a shower, because you can't have a spray of water. The water won't fall, all it will do is float around inside the cabin and get everywhere and get on everything, there's no way to remove it, so we don't have a shower. We use wet towels and we sponge ourselves down with sponge baths. They have tried to make showers work in space by using fans to blow the air and water around, they haven't been very successful yet, so that’s why we just a towel and a wet cloth. 

Question 4, from Michael M, grade 3

How do you drink a glass of water, wouldn't it just float?

 Yes, you're right, that’s what would happen, actually we couldn't even ????????????? a glass of water or cup of any drink, because the liquid wouldn't stay inside, it would just rise up over the edges and float around everywhere, it would make an awful mess, as a matter of fact. So we don’t use cups of course, all our drinks are in drinking bags with straws, you squeeze the bag to get the contents into your mouth, and the straw has a little clamp on it, so you can clamp it off, when you're not drinking from it. It’s a little inconvenient, but you get used to it, and it’s a lot tidier that way.

Question 5, from Ashley A, grade 6

Have you ever been out of the space ship?

 No I haven't Ashleigh, I've been trained to do them, I've been trained in the U.S. to do them, and I've been trained in Russia to do them, but there was none planned for me for this flight. My cosmonaut colleagues have done five spacewalks since they’ve been up here, to do repairs on the outside of the space station, so they’ve been very busy with spacewalks, and they’ve done a good job. They’ve replaced one of the engines out there, and they’ve repaired one of the solar arrays. They’ve had a very busy time doing spacewalks.

Question 6, from Daniel J, grade 5

In space is the 'air' full of oxygen, carbon dioxide, or both?

 Ah yes, we breathe up here, just normal air, same as you would on the Earth. Of course we produce carbon dioxide by doing that, so we have some fairly complicated systems on board, that recycle the air, and clean the carbon dioxide from it. That keeps the air breathable, for oxygen of course, we need to regenerate oxygen. And to do that, we use water, we use a process called electrolysis, which breaks the water down into oxygen and hydrogen, so then we've got oxygen on board to breath, and the hydrogen we dump overboard. So we have a fairly good atmosphere up here, of clean breathing air, which has got plenty of oxygen in it, a little water vapour, and its pretty comfortable. It’s a good temperature too, it’s a shirt sleeve environment, about 25 degrees, so its very comfortable.

Question 7, from Vicki T, grade 5

How do you sleep in space?

 Well you sleep much the way you do on Earth, of course there's no up or down, so you don’t have to lie down anywhere. You can just tie yourself off anywhere, and go to sleep. We use sleeping bags, and I have mine which I tie down to the 'floor' and crawl into that. ???????????? have a few rubber straps to hold me down and hold me in it, so I wont float away, and go to sleep. Its really quite comfortable actually, because you don’t toss and turn, there's no pressure points from a mattress or pillow, you can just lie there comfortably without being squeezed.

I actually don’t use a pillow, there's no need too, your head just floats to its normal position, to wherever it feels comfortable, and go to sleep that way, so its really quite nice.

Question 8, from Brandon M, grade 5

How do you keep fit in space?

 Ah hi Brandon, that’s an important point, because you have to exercise fairly regularly, because being in zero gravity, you're not using a lot of muscles that you'd normally use on Earth, and they become weak after a while, and so we do exercise fairly regularly. We have a number of exercise systems, we have two treadmill machines, that we get on fairly regularly, of course we use bungy cords to hold yourself down on the treadmill so that you can run on it, but that works fine.

We also have a Cycle-odometer, which we use to peddle on ???????????

Question 9, from Cindy O, grade 4

Do you have to press buttons to fly the space ship?

?????????????????????????

Question 10, from Kelly T, grade 6

How many years training did you need?

 ?????????????????????????

Question 11, from Alison K, grade 5

Can you see any city lights?

Yes, city lights stand out very clearly, you can see them remarkably easy providing there's no cloud cover but, ??????????????????????????????????

Question 12, from Stacey K, grade 5 (Asked, But Unanswered)

Who controls the space satellite?

Question 13, from Meagan B, grade 5 (Unasked)

What is your favourite activity in space?

Question 14, from Toby C, grade 6 (Unasked)

Where would you store 4 months of food in a little space station?

(The last two questions were unasked, as the radio uplink was too weak to send our message.)