Television provider. Welcome, i am john, event director at literati bookstore. Were pleased to welcome terry virts in support of how to astronaut in conversation with fraser cain. You came in but you are muted and will remain muted, speaker of you will be the primary viewing experience for you tonight, that way you will be speaking on your screen at any given time and we asked you keep your video off as well. The chat is closed but you can open your chat window because ill be dropping links to purchase terrys book and more information in the chat window and you can submit questions to me directly for the q and a at anytime whenever the spirit moves you. Feel free to ask a question and i will ask at the conclusion of the conversation any ofthose questions we have received. As a reminder you can purchase how to , how to astronaut at the chat and theres a link on the youtube description as well. You can also shop for more books at literati bookstore. Com. Ifyou live in southeast michigan , we do ask that you consider a five dollar donation to sustain our virtual programming but i like to think about as a five dollar donation to this weeks event or for the events in the months of september or for events remaining in thisyear. You can make a donation at literati bookstore. Com donations. Thank you for your attendance where you may be joining us from today. Without further ado, colonel terry virts earned a bachelor of science in mathematics in the United States air force academy in 1989 and a masters in aeronautical science degree from embry riddle aeronautical university. Selected by nasa 2000 he was a pilot in the sts 130 mission aboard the shuttle endeavor in march 2016 he assumed command of the International Space station and spent over 200 days on it. Hes also the author of use from above, he lives near houston and razor cane is the publisher of university and a cohost of the astronomy podcast and is also the creator of the guide to space theories, videos on youtube. Its been a safe journalist for over 20 years porting on new discoveries in the universe and space exploration. Please join me in using your zoom class or heart reaction function to welcome terry and fraser into your living rooms. Terry, can you hear me . I got you loud and clear, goodto see you again. Its been so long. I know. So i think before we get started with this weeks conversation where im just going to ask you every single question ive ever been curious about spaceflight, youve got some Cool Pictures to share your experience on board thestation. I do, but me jump into that. Ill do screen share. The book that were talking about tonight and let me find the screen share. I think literati will have to give mepermission for that. But youve got it, its on the way. There we go. So how do astronaut is a book i really wanted to write as something thats fun to read. I wanted to have a book that is something thats not technical. You dont have to be a space nerd to get into it. My goal when i wrote was for the readers to laugh and say wow, those are the two reactions i was looking for and its not a memoir. Theres 1 million memoirs, this is not one of those. Its something you can read by the pool or the beach. 51 short essays so the chapters are all short. You can read them in any order you want. So its designed to be a fun, learn something. A lot of the chapters are things youd expect and a lot of them are things you may not have expected that youve seen in other astronaut books so these are a few of the chapters that i wrote. And of course every good book starts with a launch, every good astronaut book and i talk about a lot of the different aspects of launch, just getting into your suit and how complicated that is and the process of getting strapped into the Space Shuttle is not exactly like going and getting in your car and putting on a secret and then the experience itself launch with all the noise and the views that i had and the sounds of things happening and what it feltlike , just the experience of launch. Ive done a lot as a Fighter Pilot and i thought i knew what i was getting into. And actually launching on endeavor was unlike anything ive ever done. So the launch chapter is pretty cool. I like that part of the story. And another part of life in space that youprobably expect would be spacewalking. Again, gettingin that suit that you see me in , that thing is a three or 400 pound behemoth. It takes hours to get into. Astronauts as they decrease the pressure they have to worry about the same problem divers have and that is getting the benz when youre changing pressure if you do it too quickly area so in hollywood youthrow on your suit and you go outside and start fighting the aliens. In real space this whole process takes hours. Its a long ordeal i talked through that and what its like to be outside. Youre in this big bulky suit, youve got this been elastic visor in front of you and on the other sideof that is instant death. So the threat level of being outside on spacewalk is higher than it is doing other things. The views that i saw i felt like at times i was seeing creation. Like, humans are supposed to see this, this is gods view and then i had to get back to work and plug in some more tables so theres these extremes of 99 percent of the spacewalks work and one present is seeing things you cantimagine. Theres a few chapters on different aspects of spacewalking that are pretty fun. The, my computer just locked up,can you guys hear me . I can hear you. Interesting. Let me try and do this. There you go. Hows this . Can you see that . All right. Another aspect of life in space was i got a chance to film a movie area i had planned on it but my whole life life ive been seeing imax movies and i love them. Thats what motivated me to be an astronaut and when i found out i was going to get to film a beautiful planet with tony myers final film, shes been a director for all the imax films going back to the 80s, all the space movies. She was a mentor for me now that i actually made a movie last year and hopefully im moving into tv and film she was really my mentor and getting to film beautiful planet was amazing. I ended up taking a lot of pictures. Theres some poor guy in houston whose job it was to count photos and it turns out i took more pictures than anybody. I didnt plan on that but i took a lot of photos so the experience ofdoing that was Pretty Amazing. Are you able to share your screen again . Im not, im on screen share. Im sitting here staring at it on my own computer. Theres a lot going on in your background. I think it keeps us busy but you were not screensharing again. How is that . Hopefully my laptop wont lock up again. This is apicture of me taking those photos from a beautiful planet , this was the land i installed on the Space Shuttle flight. You installed a couple, i didnt know that. I installed the last three. It was amazing. The couple is everybodys place. Its an incredible, you cant even describe it. So one of the parts of how to astronaut is learning how to be a doctor area i was through medical officer which im just a Fighter Pilot but i was actually the crew medical officer so i got to spend a week in houston atthe hospital , sewing of people that got bit by their pitbull and then in Car Accidents and chemical plants, fires and all kinds of disasters and i was there in the er working on them, learning how to deal with these differentthings and a funny story , i would always put on that white coat when i would go through training and i put the stethoscope around my neck and these engineers in houston would volunteer to give blood were to be guinea pigs that we can poke and prod because we needed practice on people and i walk in the sky was super nervous as i was going to draw blood and he sees me in my white jacket says how long have you been a doctor and i said im not a doctor, im a Fighter Pilot and he turned as white as my coat. Anyway, the medical training was, i loved it, i really fell in love with that. Survival training is something you may not think of but i had to do it in the air force as a Fighter Pilot in case you get shot down or you have to survive or you have to go into a prisoner of war camp. And i thought i was done with that after doing it with the air force and doing it with the French Air Force as i did anexchange with the French Air Force. In nassau i had to do it with the navy and then i had to do it with the russians. We did winter survival in russia and water survival in russia and i had to do it again at nasa twice in alaska for this kayaking trip so i just spent a lot of my career living in the woods freezing and being hungry. Theres a chapter about all the different experiences there. Flying jets is something youd probably expect. Its the most important training we do. You can practice the Technical Skills of how to install this piece of equipment and how to do this experiment but the thing thats flying jets is gives you more important than anything else is the ability to have your brain we call it stay ahead of the jet and you have to think five steps ahead and whats going to happen in the future and if i do this in thisdirection whats over there . Youre doing all that while your butt is on the line. Ifyou crash, you die. Its not a simulator where you hit the pause button and go get lunch. The flying airplanes is good for your mental ability to stay ahead of whats happening. We call that Situational Awareness and also stay calm under pressure because of all the training almost all of its in a simulator, the key 38 jets are one of the only realworld things we do so flying jets is so important super important to my astronaut training. One of the things i never expected was to get to know earth by color and the cupola helped with that. The station turned red and i didnt know what was happening and there was the outback of australia, theres a picture of australia on the bottom left but i really got to know the planet by colors and that was unexpected. Canada and russia are white area in the caribbean is this beautiful blue turquoise green aqua color, you see the bahamas there area of Central Africa andsouth america also that really africa , the congo is dark. Its almost black its so dark there. Australia and saudi and the sahara, and the name and desert in namibiaare all pink, red, orange. Have these bright colors so i got to know earth by color which is something i hadnt expected. This is the Southern Satellite flying bydown there. This is for australis , the Southern Lights and that is just this amazing alien thing. Its just something ive never experienced before seeing the northern and Southern Lights. I need to go see him in person but i never have. There a sight to behold but i cant even imagine looking down on them. A problem with being an astronaut is your bucket list gets too long. So thats definitely on my bucket list. Talk about unexpected, that makes samanthas hair, cement is italian. This is a three person job, anton l the vacuum cleaner while i did the cutting and this is a stressful thing area did you find that chapter pretty funny but cutting hair was something i never expected i would do but its important. Shes the most popular italian on the planet, shes the most wellknown italian. So i had to make sure ididnt screw that up. So that just an example of some of these chapters and i apologize for the computer glitches earlier but there is a stop share button, how is that . Perfect. You were able torecover from the near disaster. You got stink on your feet. On your astronaut training came back in that moment. Ive read that book acouple of times at this point. And as a journalist, ive beenreporting on this stuff for 20 years and theres lots in it i didnt know. And i think one of the. Some of it is even true. Some of it is true. In air force and have to be 10 percent true so thisis at least 10 percent true. One of the conversations i love happened with astronauts is that syrians of launching on board a machine the Space Shuttle. So you showed us a picture of a Space Shuttle flying away but can you kind of put us in the seat with you and help us to understand what that whole thing feelslike . What flying the Space Shuttle is like . Whats that experience from sitting up to getting in and then feeling it . The suiting up part is like i said takes hours. Cool thing when i launched on endeavor present in the same chairs, we were in the same room and plugged into the same oxygen tanks but it was like the same room as it was. The government doesnt want to pay any money toupgrade the furniture or anything. I think theyve upgraded it now. Now its historic. There was no one flying so they spent money on new furniture, they went to ikea. You go through that process , the launch itself is amazing but as a pilot flying the shuttle its really broken out into three phases. Launch which normally the computer flies but we trained the flight and you have to be really smooth. If you touch the stick a little bit too much , this those big giant engines putting out millions of pounds of thrust will move quickly and that will waste a lot of energy. So if youre not super smooth , you waste so much energy you cant make it into orbit for you cant make it into the orbit you want to be in you end up in lower orbit and you want to abort and you cant do your mission so flying on launch you have to be very smooth in an airplane, if you want to go faster and better you push the throttle up and you go faster and that catches up to the guy youre trying to shoot down in a spaceship if youre trying to rendezvous on somebody you slow down which causes you to think. And it causes you to speed up this is how you catch up and then you have to speed up causes you to climb which causes you to slow down and thats how you fly inspace. Its completely nonintuitive area you make one input and you wait and you have to wait a minute or two and see whats happening and then you make another input thoughits kind of like watching paint dry. And when you come back to earth i got a chance to hand fly the shuttle in the atmosphere and its an airplane except its dont know when or when you pull back because want to climb, when you pull back the first thing a delta wing airplane like a Space Shuttle or a mirage or an old f106, it will sink and when it sinks, the nose comes up and you get more angle of attack that causes a decline. So what you dont want to do is be aggressive on the stick just like on launch because when youre coming in the land if you go like im coming down too hard, i need to climb the first thing the shuttle will do is think so you have to stay a couple steps ahead of it. The Space Shuttle is not an airplane you want to fly the doctors and dentists to fly on the weekend. And youre going downhill at 20 degrees dive at 300 knots which is basically a divebomb approach in and at 16 so it was normal to me , like im on a divebomb approach. Its a divebombing lighterand you only get one shot. You dive, you pull up and youre going to touch down and thats it. Theres nomore shots after that. So flying the shuttle is awesome, i love it. These new vehicles are great but the pilots dont have anything to do. Theyre just passengers, theyre not pilots, youre just along for the ride so i was lucky and fortunate to fly the shuttle where youcan fly the vehicle. You had a chance to fly and a couple of vehicles, launchedon the Space Shuttle, launched on the so use. How are those two vehicles different, how does it feel . The shuttle is like a big american muscle car. Itsbig, its majestic. Its the same weight and thrust as a saturn five, its huge. We havent flown it for 10 years now. The so use is more like a boring, more like a sports car. It was a soviet icbm so its designed to get moving as fast as it could towards america. I mean, its not designed to sit there and go slow and to be majestic area and is like boom, youre gone. That was different. The so use is small. Kind of like being in the front seat of your minivan to otherpeople in these big bulky spacesuits. It seems like they custom make those seats to fit you. And your suits, everything. Its a little too small. Of the seats they make about a couple inches above your head, its a cat so youre laying down on the couch but they put you in this long underwear. They put you on a crane with some stress and they give you down into plaster area like a baby like in germany they have these big festivals every august and september. And if youdown in their , they pull you out. So you have your own custom fit couch or your spine because it hits the ground going so hard. Its like driving through your neighborhood swarming over and running into a telephone pole. Pretty much a crash. I have these soft landing rockets. But i suggested that they rename them less of a crash landingrockets because when the so use it its pretty hard but it works. If you survive. I had a couple bruises, i was finei crawled out under my own power. If not this nice, fancy air force landing on a runway. Its a maybe crash landing on the ground but it works so theres something to be said for simple and working. So once you make it to space whether youre onthe Space Shuttle or whether you are on the International Space station , how different is trying to just get around and just do things in space compared to what youre used to down on her . We have a saying, everything is more difficult in space. Thats almost true. Pullups are easier in space but Everything Else is harder. Everything harder in space because everything is floating away area its to move around. If youre a new guy in the first day ortwo in a week its hard to move you like when you move ,you translate. You move and you rotate. So its not as simple as just walking over to the door. You have to float yourself over there and not spin yourself around and i tell funny stories about how i messed that up and then all the stuff youre trying to deal with is floating away so nasa gives us the school shorts. Theyre kind of like policeman on bike shorts. Those kind of softball guy shorts but they have 10 pockets and lots of velcro. So your velcro in your tools and your pencil and everything has to either be in a pocket or velcro otherwise it floats away immediately. Theres a few chapte