Captioning performed by vitac the first crew was expedition one and were up to 44. Weve got two americans and three russians and japanese astronaut up there. It truly is an international crew. Sometimes theres a canadian, a german, italian, its always swapping out there. And right here scott kelly and mikhail are doing a one year mission, spending a year up in space. Its 342 days. Its not quite a year but im going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Its a year mission there. Scott is has an identical twin brother mark kelly married to gabriell gabrielle dif fordse doing a twin study. And the iss is currently funded by nasa through 2024. After that time, were not sure whats going to happen. But nasas commitment runs out in 2024. Ive got to believe the russians arent going to want to give this up either. They dont like to throw space stations away. If nasa abandons it, i could see them jumping in there and saying well take it, well run it and maybe do something commercially with it. So whats next after the International Space station after 2024 . This is from a friend of mine and he sent an email back one day and i want to read this to you. From here up on the space station it seems so easy to go further. The station is such a solid footing up here that from this perspective, its hard to imagine that space flight wont become common place in our time. From here to the future of moon bases, bigger space stations and exploration of other worlds, it just doesnt seem like a big leap. On the ground it felt like Science Fiction. I hope it wont feel that way again once i get back. He was so optimistic, its like, we can do this, its such an incredible accomplishment. Lets look at the future designs and i told you earlier about the good year inflatable space station and Bigelow Aerospace is developing inflatable habitats. They want to launch these commercial a and having it as a mini space station that tourists can visit for a week or two, maybe nasa will use these as well. They are under contract. Launching a smaller version called the bigelow expandible activity module beam. Its like 8 or 10 feet across here. This is what it looks like when it launches, its going to launch on one of the spacex, the commercial rocket launchers later this year, early next year. Then it will inflate and it will be attached to one of the docking ports and just allow nasa extra storage room, just like all of our closets and garages and basements are filled with junk, same thing happens with the space station as i showed you. This will provide some more storage area and it allows us to test out inflatable modules to give you confidence in those, that these things will really work. Its made out of kef lar. Justin herently we think inflatable module . Like i dont know if i want to be on that. But this will give us confidence with that. Space tourists may go up there and we do special science activities, the chinese, we havent mentioned them all night. But they have a space station up there, a small module congressed the heavenly palace, launched in september 29th of 2011, they had two different crews and both of note worthy because they had one of the first female chinese astronauts go up. Very similar, if you look at it here, probably looks very similar to the mirror based block to the core module that the russians built for the International Space station. The chinese lie senlsed the technology from russia, the capsules aenspacesuits are similar to the russian suits and this design looks very similar to me to the basic module from russia and the soviet union. Fz called the large module space station, theyll add different science laboratories onto it, just add different components. Maybe one day, were talking about colonizing space. There were it ideas for this that it was popularized in 1976, one of the princeton professors, his name is jared oneill, wrote a book called the high frontier and talked about building colonies in space. This is what it may look like there. I like this one, i think they are having a wine and cheese party here. Heres somebody in a hang flider, nice rivers and streams and creating artificial gravity. I want to show you that these ideas arent totally new. This is in a book from 1959 here. Called the noahs arc of space. Giant, like a giant campbells soup can. But they have lakes and rivers, spinning, it looks similar to these other proposed colonies and space. And this is a quote from nasa administrator mike griffin from 2005 i think it is. He said in the long run a single planet species will not survive if we humans want to survive for hundreds and thousands or millions of years, we must ultimately pop youlate other plan et cetera and i know humans will colonize the solar system and in one day go beyond. If were going to do that, all of the work were doing today on the space stations, what we learn with the growing plants up there and having life support systems, providing oxygen for us, thats all going to help us in our efforts to colon size space one day. Sooner or later we will need to leave planet earth. That is about the history of space stations from Science Fiction days to current International Space station and looking ahead to future colonization. Why dont we open it up for questions. [ applause ] if you come over to the microphone, dont be shy, come on down and ask your questions and then everybody can hear them and well give it my best shot. You mentioned having spent two years in russia. To the extent its possible to generalize, could you compare, contrast the u. S. And the soviet Russian Space programs in various aspects, for instance, design philosophies, tolerance for risk and research . I was amazed. I did spend two years there and trained in the russian soyuz craft and russian components of the space station. The design is so similar. When we have a valve, they have a valve. When we have redundant valves amend backup valves, they have that. Over pressurization, the positions were so similar it made it easy for me as an astronaut to learn their system. Its very similar to what weve done in the shuttle. Space suit design, using lithium oxide, there was so many similarities there. The one difference is the russians tend to build something. They keep it simple and make it very robust and dont change it. The same module from 1971, the core of the space station with minor modifications, they are still flying that today on the International Space station. They dont modify things. The United States, brandnew and different and always making it more modern. We pushed technology when we do that so its not all bad but thats just the difference in philosophy. Their soyuz capsule they use to launch to the space station isnt much different than they launched it in 1967. Weve gone through apollo, sky lab, Space Shuttle and building up a new generation of rocketses already here. The soviet union and russia now, they find something when it works, they dont mess with it and keep using it over and over again. We read about them finding an earth planet. Do you think there could be life on that planet . Yeah, katy, thats a great question. Weve discovered i think over 2,000 planets around other star systems, which is really amazing. We think that planets are very common and each star, you look out at the night sky, every star probably has multiple plan et cetera around it. We found some that we think are earth like. One of them is bigger than our earth. They are about the right size and right difference from their star, its not too cold there, not too hot. Its called the goldilocks zone, its just right. We think there are planets out there like that. Weve seen two earth like ones but theres probably millions and billions of these. With the hubble space telescope, they zoomed in on a small part of the sky, maybe the size of a marble if you held it out at arms length and zoomed in and took a long picture. It took a month to collect the light from the image. In the one small part of the sky, they found 10,000 galaxies. Each galaxy has maybe 10 billion stars. Each star has multiple planets and we think the galaxies are evenly distributed. There was nothing special about the one spot. You look at any one area like that, youre going to find 10,000 galaxies and given all of that, i think theres got to be other life out there. I havent seen it yet and we havent found any other evidence for life but given the number of stars in each galaxy, i think somewhere out there there is other life and theres going to be other earth like planets, whether we can get to them, were not going to get them with a super fast rocket ship or worm hole. Were going to need to build these colonies that set out towards a new star system like that if youre heading towards the new system, you probably wont make it out there. There may be kids and multigenerational that finally get to the planet but thats how well colonize other stars in our local galaxy here and maybe other, you know, galaxyies many years down the road. Thank you so much for a very interesting lecture. The present International Space station looks totally different from those early 1950s, 60s concepts and what do you think was really wrong with those concepts that it that the present one is so drastically different . The Current Space station looks totally different than the wheel design. The International Space station was designed to be a scientific laboratories where we can investigate the effects of zero gravity, how plants grow and human body reacts. Its designed to study zero gravity. And early space station were weigh stations from going from earth out to the moon orl3n goi to mars. You go to the space station and spend a few days there and get new fuel, fuel up your rocket. Then in there to moon and mars. Because the function is different from a weigh station to a research laboratory, i think thats driven the separation of the shuttle. Its got totally different purpose of the maybe if were going out beyond mars and want to build a big space ship, were going to spin it i could see well spin it around to create artificial gravity because we havent solved that bone problem in the muscle problem yet. Were Getting Better at it, but i would imagine in the future, youre going to see maybe in spinning and centrifuges and maybe astronaut sleep in a centrifuge, but youre going to spin things to get like a one gravity position for our astronauts. First off, in terms of experience right now, which ones do you think had the greatest promise and can you give us examples of what how they might be applicable in terms of down on the earth and also, in terms of the logistics of the crews working with Mission Control in terms of like when something comes up and someone down on earth has to make a decision, what logistics, is there a committee that runs is it . Is it out of houston . How does that work . The space station is managed and its principle my supposed to be run out of the Johnson Space center. When we designed the program houston . All of our agreements in houston there. The agreement was that for the space station, houston, Johnson Space center, Mission Control will control the International Space station. And english will be the official language of the International Space station. Thats what we all agreed to. And it turned out weve got two control centers and weve got one am moscow for the russian portion of the space station and houston still controls the u. S. Kpoen enlts, canadian, european components up there as well. We ended up with two different control centers and two different languages if youre on the russian portion, you speak russian, if youre on the u. S. European canadian side, then you speak english over there. Everything is in two languages, all of the switches throughout the station. And so for the american astronauts, european, we need to learn russian, the russians have to learn english as well. And i was training i told you on the six crew, i was going to fly up, crew of three with another american and russian and i worked hard and learned russian. I wanted to make sure i could talk and communicate with my crew member. He didnt speak much english. Whenever we communicated it was in my bad russian. But its still really important for crews together on long periods of time, youve got to be able to interact and get to know one another. Learning each others language and culture, really important. The research were doing on the space station, we do almost any kind of field you can think of. We grow crystals up there and do kburgs science work out there and look how flames burn when theres no convective forces. Flames dont go to a point like here on earth. In space a flame will burn perfectly round. Scientists study things like that and understand the basic fundamentals of combustion, how do things burn and pollutants and incomplete combustion, how does that happen . Maybe from these experiment we can improve power plants, automobiles, things like that. For our astronauts who lose bone densecy in space, were trying to figure out how to keep this from happening and what causes it. This has great applications here for Senior Citizens with osteopore rose sis, weakening of the bones and muscle loss. When you come back from space, everybody is a little dizzy and disoriented and our inner ear shuts down in space. We have a lot of vestibular problems when we come back. The simple act of tilting the head up, got the whole run spinning. A lot of what we learn on hult an body for muscle and bones and balance and effects of radiation, that will have implication here on earth. Some research we can apply here, weve sent some experiments up with fish and seeing how they behave, which way is up. How does that impact us . It doesnt, its basic Research Universities across the United States and around the world, with the idea this is basic research and maybe in the future, we can learn something and get some application from that. Actually, one followup on that Research Results have to be shared by all parties, correct . Not all of the research has to be shared by all parties. They have special exclusive agreements and they fly and pay nasa to fly up on the space station but their results are proprietary, some of the research weve done, the researcher gets to publish it and get credit for it but then its supposed tok open data. A lot of data from astronauts and experiments they did on me, its open to other researchers to go back and look at the data and maybe analyze it again or use it as part of other studies they are doing. Thank you. Youre welcome. Great questions here. Thank you for the fascinating talk, its incredibly gripping and the space station passing overhead, ive never known to look up to it for a couple of weeks ago. The first time you realize that, its a manned station passing overhead, its unbelievable. I definitely want a piece of paper. I have more than just rambling though. I have a question. I didnt realize how big it was until you said it was the size of a football field. Having seen gravity, which im sure more than a few of us have, and mild spoiler alert things go wrong and chain reaction, are there how much of a danger is there from either micrometeorites space debris, space junk up there. The larger the station gets, doesnt that then raise the risk of something going wrong . Anything bigger than my fist, we track the orbit of it, nor add tracks in colorado. Anything 5 inches or bigger, we know the orbit of that. If one of those pieces is getting within a half mile of the space station, we can fire some engines to increase that so that it isnt like half a mile plus or minus a mile that we can really separate that to make sure it doesnt happen. Anything smaller than my fist, we have no idea where it is up there its a low probability event. The probability of some object in your Space Shuttle or space station being at the exact same spot at the exact same time is pretty low. They are all in these different altitude crossing orbits there. Its a low probability event. It will happen some day and on two of my shuttle missions, we got hit in the window by a small piece of debris. One day i was having lunch looking out the window at the earth and saw a little dot on the window and thought it was some of my tang. I took a napkin to wipe it up and it didnt come off. Oh, thats not juice. I took a look at it, there was a little crater in the window. Something had hit us. And during low angle sun light near sunrise or sunset if youre driving into traffic, and the windshield looks dirty. During sunrise and sunset on the subtle, when there was a low sun angle, i could say the pattern, whatever hit us vaperrized and deposited on the window. It was 7 inches across. It really looked impressive and reminded you theres junk out there. What they think hit us, they analyzed the impact when we returned back to earth and said it probably came from a flake of paint from a rocket stage. And i could toss a flake of paint to you and you wouldnt feel it, it would bounce off and you wouldnt know it. The same flake of paint going 18 miles an hour has a lot of kinetic energy. Any object the size of a marble or moth ball will blow a hole and do serious damage. This will happen some day. But it hasnt happened yet. Its a very low probability of it ever happening and were tracking the bigger pieces up there. How do they train you in case it does happen . In case it does happen, if the thing is people ask do your ears pop . Do they pop when you launch or land . They dont. They seal up the shuttle whenever youre launching and youve got sea level pressure. If the ears pop in space, youve got a leak somewhere. Thats the first indication. For the astronauts on the mir, they got hit by a cargoship and punctured it. They could feel that immediately in their ear. They dont do any the training we do is for depreciiee you arization. What do you do if theres a fire on board . We memorize those two emergency procedures, Everything Else we have a long procedure that we work through. Its a cabin leak, you dont care what kind of cabin leak, you try to save yourself, save the vehicle. Any other questions . Yeah, my question was, he brought up space junk earlier. What efforts are there for cleaning up space junk and recently there was a shooting down of a satellite by china and im sure theres tons and theres concern about that. Theres a lot of space debris in the aftermath of that event. Yeah, early on, when we had rocket stages, we would launch a satellite or even a gemini program, the upper stage of the rocket stayeded in orbit. Typically you have residual fuel once you make it to space. You dont burn your fuel all the time. You have a little bit of reserve. Typically what would happen, that fuel would heat up over time and finally the tank would burst and everything would explode. Then you have one rocket stage and all of a sudden it becomes 10,000 small pieces of shrapnel in different orbits there that can hit you. For a big piece, you like a big piece because its going to fall back to earth and its got more drag on it and its going to come down quicker than small pieces would. So in the last decade or two, you know, nasa and other countries have agreed to vent when you have a rocket stage, you vent it as soon as you get up there. So we dont have these kas strofic explosions. China did a test similar to our star wars program, to shoot down a satellite and i saw some recent plots of that one satellite created 10,000 pieces of debris that are in all of these orbits around the earth. Theres not much you can do except wait for that to slowly degrade and come back down to earth. Even at 200 miles up, 300 miles up, theres still residual atmosphere. Its not much but not a perfect vacuum. So theres drag on all of these particles. Slowly over time they will come back. Theres no going out there and just plucking them, you know, thats almost impossible to do. So what were working on are International Agreements not to do that and not to have a blowup satellite as tests for their system because this does create this debris. Its going to hurt all countries in space. Its going to hurt the Chinese Space station as well. Its really in their best interest not to do that. So i think were working in that direction, although you cant control everybody doing that. My second question was about lets see, what was it . Okay, sorry. I lost it. If you think about it, come on up. Do you still work for nasa . I left nasa. I ugsed the kind word retired from nasa in 2007 but i terminated my employment and started working at towson university, they hired me to do outreach programs, i go to 70 or 80 schools a year trying to get Young Students interested in math and science careers. Today my contract with towson ended and im selfemployed and do public speaking and still go to schools and go to space camp and talk to students there and go to the Kennedy Space center. So when you leave the astronaut program, thats a tough job to beat. How do you top that . But i found another passion and it is helping our next generation. Weve got katie in the audience here today. Shes the perfect age to be one of those astronauts going to mars. Im too old to go to mars. Well send crews there to years. Ill be 90. Her generation, 30 years from now, shell be the first to set foot on mars. Even though i cant go to mars, i still want us to go to mars. So thats the way ive dedicated the second part of my career to do stem outreach to try to get our Young Students excited and inspired to study hard in school and math and science because we need them to be engineers for the missions going to mars and we need them to be the astro nuts setting foot on the planet mars as well. I remember my question because its connected to the question that was asked. The astronauts that go up there, what are their backgrounds, scientific backgrounds i guess, some would be doctors or Health Scientists . Astronauts have a wide range of backgrounds, we have a lot of military astronauts, scott kelly right there, commander been up there for the year. Hes a navy fighter pilot. We have a lot of our astronauts come out of the military, test pilot schools then maybe a third of the astronauts are science astronauts, typically with phs although its not required but most have them. Their backgrounds are varied, we have astronomers and oceanographiers and veterinarian. Im a materials engineer, chemical engineers, biologists with you think of some area of science and we probably have an astronaut with that background. Going to mars, maybe you want people with geology backgrounds like we did going to the moon. They were looking at the astronauts with geology backgrounds, but they pick the backgrounds are so varied and just because im a materials engineer, doesnt mean im going to work on that in space. Im a professional scientist, im a trained observer, they are going to have me working i worked on salamanders and rats and Everything Else when i was up there besides the crystal growth experiments. I have quite a bit of interest in Space Science and i obviously thats why im standing here. Im curious about kind of paths that there may be for entering the field after like having basically shifting from one into another, like shifting from one from like another area from one field to another. I mean, i think that was a great part for me being an astronaut. I worked on all kind of things. I had to give a hormone injection shot to a salamander and i did with with my eyes closed and looking away and realize why im a materials engineer. You get exposed to all of these different areas of science talking with the researchers and picking their brains as to what they are looking for so i can do a better job up there. It was a fascinating job because its so multidisciplinary in all fields of science. All with the focus of looking at the effects of zero gravity up there. Thank you. Yeah. Mentioned that the space station [ inaudible ] what do you think of the next step . How do you see the Space Program timing out in the next hes asking the space station is funded through 2024 and whats coming unnext after that. Beyond space stations nasa is working on a new generation of launch vehicles, the space launch system. If youve seen pictures of the saturn 5 that launched the sky lab, our space launch system rockets are even bigger. Sat turn 5 it 7. 5 Million Pounds of thrust and even more powerful and bigger rockets. Nasa is working on these to go to Missions Beyond earth orbit. Were going to go to the moon and asteroids and near term destination, relatively near term is going onto the planet mars. Maybe orbitting mars or landing on one of its moons or sitting foot on mars there. And after mars, thats not the end of it going to mars. Theres plans to go beyond that but this new space launch system will have the capability for us to break free of earth. The shuttle could not get out of earth orbit. Its too big and too heavy and designed to go around the earth and focus now is were going to explore deep space. You know. I want to thank you guys for joining us here tonight. Thank you so much. [ applause ] thank you, ive got some sheets with a space station time. Make sure you go up go out one night when its clear and see the International Space station pass overhead. Youre watching American History tv, to join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. Each week American History tvs reel america brings you archival films that help to tell the story of the 20th century. Its time for the longines kron know scope, a Television Journal of the important issues of the hour, brought to you every monday and wednesday and friday. A presentation of the longines wittnauer, distinguished companion. This is frank knight. May i introduce our coeditors for this edition. William bradford hue we, editor of the american mercury and harly butt, noted author and correspondent. Our distinguished guest this evening, mr. George meany, secretary treasurer of the American Federation of labor. The opinions expressed arent necessarily those of the speakers. Many of our viewers of course, members of the American Federation of labor and they together with the rest of us, im sure would like to hear some of your opinions tonight on the political situation. First, sir, the American Federation of labor has just broken the precedent of 28 or 30 years by endorsing a president ial candidate. Now, sir, first of all, why did the afl see fit this year to endorse the candidacy of govern