Life in Orbit Royal Institution Christmas Lectures

Now this looks like fun, and it is...

..but it's just one of the many threats that astronauts face

when they're living in space.

With British astronaut Tim Peake up on the space station right now,

we're going to find out how to survive...in space.

APPLAUSE

Thank you. Thank you.

This is mission control for us

here at the Royal Institution for the next 60 minutes

and we're getting live information and pictures from the space station

and this is exactly what astronaut Tim Peake can see.

And, right now, we're going to see something very beautiful.

We're going to see, up on that screen,

sunrise as the astronauts themselves see it.

And it is very beautiful, but it is very brief.

And it's brief because it's brought about

by the motion of the space station as it hurtles around the Earth

at 17,500 miles an hour

and that speed alone makes it dangerous,

before you even consider what this really is.

This is a machine inside which people live

and an artificially-crafted bubble of life support,

upon which the crew depend for every second of every day

in the impossibly hostile ocean of space.

Now, welcome back to the 2015 Christmas Lectures.

I am Dr Kevin Fong and I used to work with NASA

trying to protect astronauts as they went about the business

of exploring space.

But Tim Peake's up there right now, living that,

and we're just going to take a second here

to have a look at how he's getting on.

Hi, Kevin, and hello to everybody in the theatre

in the Royal Institute Christmas Lectures.

I hope you're having a great time

and welcome onboard the International Space Station.

Now, remarkably, we've managed to get some questions up to Tim

and one in particular, which was poised by someone in the audience,

so I know that Lowry Howard is here somewhere.

Where are you, Lowry? Lowry, what was your question for Tim?

What does it smell like on the International Space Station?

So let's see what Tim thought of that.

Tim, what does it smell like on the International Space Station?

Really, it's an interesting smell. It's not a bad smell at all.

It smells almost metallic and also almost chemical-y,

but not in a bad, not in a strong way.

We'll be hearing more from Tim later,

but right now I've come up to space or at least what counts for space

here at the Royal Institution,

so I'm going to give a wave back down to Planet Earth.

It's good to see you all so well down there.

This is our replica of the International Space Station.

It's a remarkable piece of engineering.

It was built by 18 member nations over 15 years.

It is the brightest object in the night sky when you can see it

and just up there on the screen, you can see how we built it,

block by block, in time-lapse.

Every single one of those modules was put there by a rocket

and someone walking in space.

To build the space station, we had to turn space into a building site.

It's quite remarkable.

Now, the other thing you can see on our mission control screens

is the orbital tracker.

Now, the orbital tracker there shows us

the track of the space station as it's going across the Earth.

And right now I'm just going to lean out and see where it is.

It's just heading off the edge of the map, there,

just off the east coast of Australia, heading out over the ocean.

And it has a funny shape, that orbital track

and I can explain to you why.

So, this is the Earth rotating from west to east

and Space Station orbits around it,

but it doesn't orbit around the Equator.

It orbits at a kind of funny angle,

so each orbit goes over a different part of the Earth.

And let's just go to a bit of a video to see how Tim's getting on in space.

As you can see, right now I'm in the US laboratory.

Here on the International Space Station,

we have a number of modules where a whole range

of different scientific experiments are being conducted.

In fact, over the six months of my mission,

about 265 experiments are going to be going on,

ranging from fluid physics, biology experiments and, of course,

human physiology experiments - learning more about our body,

how it adapts to space flight and how it can benefit future

space exploration and also people back on Earth.

So great to see Tim there. APPLAUSE

Although he had his feet under a bar, you could tell he was floating.

So there's a question for you - why is he floating? Why is he weightless?

Now, Isaac Newton told us that the force of gravity

was the attraction between two objects that depended upon

how massive those objects were and how far apart they were.

Now, if you go from the surface of the Earth into space,

you're only travelling another 250 miles up and the gravity,

the force due to gravity, hasn't changed that much.

In fact, if you measure the force due to gravity in low Earth orbit,

it's only gone down to about 92% of what it is here on Earth.

So why are they weightless? It isn't because of zero G.

We call it zero G, but it's not because of zero gravity.

Now, how many of you have ever been weightless before?

Really? I think you're wrong. All of us have been weightless before.

All of us have been weightless every time we jump or every time we fall.

Every time you jump or fall, you leave the ground

and you are weightless until the moment you hit the ground again.

I'm going to get off this because I think I'm going to kill myself.

OK, whoa. Um, all right. What is weight?

Weight is just the reaction of the ground

against our bodies as we stand on it.

Right now, I weigh something cos I'm pushing on the ground,

the ground's pushing on me. When I jump,

I am weightless, and if you want to be weightless for longer,

you just have to find a machine that makes you fall for longer.

Now, you could do that by getting in a lift and cutting the cable

and you'd be weightless and you'd float like an astronaut

until you hit the floor. That would really spoil the ride, I think.

So the question is, can you find a machine

that makes you fall for longer

without the ground spoiling everything.

And the answer is, you can.

And let's just have a quick look at that machine.

It's a humble plane, except that this plane's about to do

something very strange.

It's cruising along now, pulling up some speed

and it's about to push into a very steep climb.

It's about to push its nose up and over the top

and, as it gets over the top, you become weightless for 23 seconds

and it prescribes the shape of a parabola.

That's why this is called a parabolic flight

and now you're floating around inside and now you're on your way down.

And this is pretty incredible when you're inside

and it's about to come down to the bottom of its dive.

There it is, it's screaming down at 45 degrees

and, as it pulls out, you don't go back to your normal weight.

You go to twice your weight for a brief second

as it pulls out that dive. You weigh twice as much as you do normally.

It goes up and down and up and down for about an hour and a half.

It's called a parabolic flight but it's so violent with its oscillations

that astronauts who train in it more fondly call it the Vomit Comet.

And I had a go. Let's have a look at that.

So there's my friend, Sundeep Dhillon,

who is an intrepid mountaineer, who's terrible on a flying carpet.

Can you see him there? Dreadful. But he thought he'd give it a go.

Look, he's fallen off, it's terrible.

And that's zero G, or at least that's a zero G flight.

That's... You're weightless cos that plane's falling.

Now, weightlessness makes things...pretty strange

and to show you how strange,

I'm going to need three special volunteers.

Oh, OK, I think, you. Come on down. Er, OK, go on, we'll have you.

And I'm going to go right up to the top here

and I think I am going to take...you.

There you go, there you go.

All right, round of applause for our volunteers.

OK, so... Just face the front.

-Now, your name is?

-James.

-James.

-And your name is?

-Alex.

-Alex.

-And your name is?

-Rosella.

-Rosella.

OK, James, Alex and Rosella.

So, Alex, let's start lifting that weight and you come

and stand here, next to me. Come over here.

So just keep doing some bicep curls. All right, here we go.

So in and out and keep going until I tell you to stop. That's great.

OK, uh... Now, James, you stand over that side. We'll play ping pong.

And, Rosella, what you're going to do

is eat this tea with the chopsticks, OK?

So there you go. All right. So.

Um, now, let's see what happens

if you do these things on the Vomit Comet.

Um, so, let's see what it's like to lift weight in weightlessness.

'So it's much easier to...

'There's a bit of an awkward moment here where I lose the weight

'and gravity's coming back.'

Um... Oh, dear.

So, it's...

It is much easier to lift weight in weightlessness.

-Are you getting tired yet?

-Yes.

-All right, I'll let you off.

So, because the weight doesn't weigh anything any more,

it doesn't become effortless to move it, because it has some inertia

because of its mass, so it's hard to move around,

but as long as you don't lose it

and it doesn't fall on you, it's much better.

So, Alex, thank you so much for joining us. Good to see you.

APPLAUSE

So, James and I are going to carry on with ping pong.

So, now, I'm rubbish at ping pong.

James is much better than me, but this gets much trickier

when you take gravity away, so let's have a look at that.

OK, game on.

'Now, I had to have quite a lot of ping pong balls for this,

'because I kept losing them and you keep losing them cos you're floating,

'the balls are floating and they just don't do what they do on Earth.'

I don't... I'm not entirely sure... LAUGHTER.

I have no idea. OK? So the ball doesn't behave like this.

The laws of physics are the same but the physics of your situation

have changed, so everything is more difficult.

Alex, should we have a quick game? Yeah?

All right, then. APPLAUSE

Well done. Take your seat. Thank you for doing that.

Now, how are you getting on with eating that tea?

Not very well. So it's my fault,

cos it is obviously impossible to eat tea with chopsticks.

Unless...you're weightless. Shall we have a look at that?

I'll let you off with that. Let's have a look, Rosella.

'So this was very tricky. That is tea, despite what it looks like.'

'And you have to remember to open the bottle if you want to eat the tea.'

'I was very pleased with myself.'

Mr Miyagi...eat your heart out.

Deserves a round of applause - I ate some tea!

APPLAUSE Thank you!

So to find out more about the challenges of living and working

in space, let's talk to someone who's lived there for 132 days.

It's my great pleasure to introduce my friend and colleague -

twice flown in space, former astronaut - Dan Tani.

APPLAUSE

Great to see you, mate. Good to see you.

Great to see you.

Thank you.

Now, Dan, you know all about life support, but let me introduce you

to some of mine. Have a seat, I'm going to hook you up here.

-All right.

-This is my life support machine.

-I'm going to plug you in here.

-Yeah, plug me there.

And we'll have a look at you in a minute

and make sure you're all right. I'll leave you there.

Now, this machine is the machine I use at work.

This is a life support machine.

I am trained as an anaesthetist and an intensive care doctor

and we need to use machines like these to keep people alive

and this thing has to provide

the elements of a breathable atmosphere,

so, first of all, you need some oxygen.

Now, this machine does for one person

what the International Space Station has to do for a crew of nine.

It has to keep them alive and monitor them,

but this is how I take my oxygen. So there's about 700 litres of oxygen.

If you open the valve there.

And that's not a very good way to take oxygen up

to the International Space Station, because...

..it's in some reinforced steel, there. It's under high pressure.

There's about 200 times greater pressure inside that bottle

than there is outside, so there's an explosive risk here.

So it's heavy and it's not a very efficient way of storing oxygen,

so how do you take oxygen with you up into space?

What you do is you take that oxygen

and you park two hydrogen molecules near it and you take it up like this.

This is how you take oxygen safely up to the International Space Station

and how you store it. You store it as water.

Now, you're going to ask,

"How, then, do you get the oxygen out of that water?"

And the answer is you have to give it some energy.

And the energy that you give it comes from electricity.

Now, there's not much electricity on Space Station either,

so that electricity has to come from the sun,

or at least by converting the solar energy into electrical energy

so the demo team here...

There's no sun in this lecture theatre,

so they put this on the roof all day, they charged this battery

and that's passing electricity into this arrangement here, which is

an electrode which is passing current through the water,

splitting hydrogen from the oxygen.

And the bubbles that you saw there just popping up and down

are bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen.

On Space Station, they vent the hydrogen overboard, they keep

the oxygen and that is the safest way for you to take oxygen into space.

Now, that's not all. You don't want to take more water up there

than you need to, so, to try and make your use of oxygen

as efficient as possible,

you need to try and re-breathe some of your own exhaled air.

Now, Dan, I'm going to need your help for this.

I'm going to try and put you literally on some...

-a bit of life support here, yeah.

-Very good.

-OK, all right.

I'll take all that I can get.

I'm going to ask you to take some gentle breaths on that,

if I can get that going.

So you can see this monitoring his vital signs here.

And just breathe gently for me, Dan, to prove that you're alive.

That would be nice and I'll just dial down that a little bit. All right.

This machine is allowing Dan

to re-breathe the air that he's breathing out.

When you breathe in, there's 21% oxygen in the air that you breathe.

When you breathe out again, there's still 15% oxygen left

and you could use that again... MACHINE BEEPS

..only here's the problem... Oh, dear. Here's the problem...

That air has got carbon dioxide in it and you don't want to breathe that.

If you breathe enough carbon dioxide, eventually, you will feel sick,

feel confused, eventually get drowsy, become unconscious

and later you die, so you don't want to do any of that.

So, what you do is you try and re-breathe your own gas.

Now, this circuit here is doing exactly that for Dan.

He's breathing out through this limb of the circuit.

MACHINE BEEPS He's breathing in through...

Just ignore that, Dan, it's all right.

Breathe in through that limb of the circuit and it allows him

to re-breathe his own air.

I can add just tiny bits of oxygen and keep him topped up.

But how do I get rid of the carbon dioxide?

And the answer is right here.

Down here in this canister is some sodium hydroxide.

So this is a chemical which, when it reacts with carbon dioxide,

absorbs the carbon dioxide and removes it from the circuit.

Now, right now, you can see Dan's...

This number here is measuring how much carbon dioxide there is

at the end of Dan's breath. It's 5.2.

It's going up now, cos I've taken out the thing

that absorbs your carbon dioxide, Dan.

KEVIN LAUGHS And it's going to keep going up.

Now, Dan might start to feel a little bit like he's short of breath,

cos the thing that makes you feel short of breath is not being short

of oxygen, which he's got plenty of.

It's having too much carbon dioxide on board.

Now this is exactly how Space Station gets rid of carbon dioxide.

I'll get to you in a minute, Dan.

Space Station takes the carbon dioxide you breathe,

puts it through a scrubber, removes the carbon dioxide and gives you back

the oxygen so that you can breathe it again

with top-ups of only a little bit. You're nearly at six now, Dan.

I'm getting a bit worried, so I am going to get you

back on a scrubber, so we should see that number fall again.

OK, so just let's watch that number.

So it was six and it happens instantly.

Every time he takes a breath, it removes the carbon dioxide...

Ehh! It does work eventually.

I wouldn't kill my friend... on television.

LAUGHTER, MACHINE BEEPS

And we're going to see it dropping now

and that's exactly how Space Station works.

Dan, I'm going to take you off that, cos I might kill you here. All right.

Thank you very much, Dan Tani. Thank you.

Now, Dan, I'm going to let you get back to your seat

-and I will see you later, I hope.

-Great!

This is just like a space suit.

It works just like a space suit, it's awesome!

-Er, your space suit doesn't look as big as this.

-No, yeah, it's smaller.

DAN LAUGHS All right.

I'll see you later, Dan. Cheers. APPLAUSE

So, I've told you how you get oxygen up to Space Station,

I've told you how you store it safely, I've told you how you scrub

the carbon dioxide out so you can only top up your oxygen a little bit.

But the problem with a carbon dioxide scrubber is it doesn't work

if your carbon dioxide never gets to the scrubber.

Now, John is doing a bit of chemistry here,

with some pretty simple reactants.

So this is citric acid and bicarbonate of soda, right,

which makes carbon dioxide.

Quite a lot, and it's gathering in that cylinder.

And to help us see how this is going to behave, I need a volunteer.

I'll go all the way up here, shall I? And...how about....you?

APPLAUSE

-Come and stand here and face the audience. What's your name?

-Caitlin.

Caitlin. Caitlin, OK.

So, Caitlin, I'm going to show you that gases are affected by gravity.

Now, we don't really think of them as being affected by gravity,

but they really are. So John is going to do something here.

Can you see him pouring that stuff into that beaker?

-You can?

-Yeah.

-I can't see him pouring ANYTHING into that beaker.

-Oh.

-And can you see what's in that beaker?

-No.

There's nothing in that beaker. John, what are you doing, you crazy person?

But there IS something in that beaker.

There's carbon dioxide in that beaker and...

You don't believe me, but there really is and because carbon dioxide

is heavier than air, I'm hoping that it sits in that glass.

Now, Caitlin, I'm going to light these candles for you and...

you're going to take that seemingly-empty beaker in a second

and I just want you to pour it all over these candles.

-Are you sure you're done pouring, John?

-Yeah.

-OK, cool.

So, Caitlin, pick up that beaker, just gently, and pour it

on those candles, all the way across,

all the way, keep going, keep going, keep going, yes!

APPLAUSE

I love that one. Now, here's the thing...

Gravity held the heavier carbon dioxide in the glass.

But what it also did was clear it away,

because I can relight these candles.

That carbon dioxide doesn't sit on those candles,

and it doesn't because convection takes it away again,

so, as soon as the carbon dioxide hits the candles,

it falls down and cold air and heavy air sinks and hot air rises

and it mixes up and it ventilates the whole system, so, Caitlin,

that's why you could put it out

but why the carbon dioxide isn't there any more.

Caitlin, thank you so much. Take your seat. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

So, on the space station, there is no gravitational force.

Everything is weightless, so hot air cannot rise, cold air cannot sink,

and so there's no mixing, there's no convection and there are no draughts,

so you cannot get your air, your exhaled air,

to the scrubbers, unless you have an artificial draught.

On Space Station, the draught, like everything else

upon which you depend for your life, the draughts are artificial.

They're generated by fans that hum all the time.

That's the humming sound you can always hear in the background

when Tim speaks to us. John, thank you so much, thank you.

APPLAUSE

Now, when we first started sending people into space,

we started to think, "Well, what's going to happen to them?"

And, almost immediately, we realised that their muscles would waste.

Now, anyone who's even looked at a gym knows that if you don't use it,

you lose it and so your muscles waste very rapidly in space.

And it's not just your muscles.

It's the things your muscles are attached to.

Now, this is my friend, Juliet,

and she doesn't look like this because she's gone into space.

She's here to explain the effect of space flight on bones.

Now, you might think of bones as being one of those solid,

inert objects that one caveman might once have hit another caveman with,

but actually they're very dynamic tissues.

They remodel themselves constantly

along the lines of force that you apply to them.

That's why it's important, at least at your age, to do lots and lots

of exercise so you can make sure

that your bones think you need lots of bone for later in life.

Now, your whole skeleton doesn't bear the same

sort of weight as you're standing up.

In fact, the weight-bearing bones, the principal weight-bearing bones,

the bones that bear the most weight are here -

this is the calcaneus, your heel -

here, the neck of your femur,

and here in your lower back.

So I'm going to spin Juliet round.

Down here, the bones of your lower back.

So those are the areas that bear the most weight.

And when you go into space,

those bones don't need to bear any more weight

and your body says, "Well, why do I need to carry around this excess bone

"if I'm not going to use it?"

And the rule applies - if you don't use it, you lose it.

So your bones begin to waste.

And that's a problem, because when bones start to waste,

they start to lose their mineral density, they become weaker.

Now, to show you what that bone looks like up close, uh, we've taken...

Imagine, at least, that we've taken a speck of bone

from the neck of that femur there,

perhaps just slightly less than a centimetre cubed, and made a model.

And that's exactly what we've done.

So this is a model of bone.

This is that tiny speck from here - from the neck and the femur -

blown up maybe 400-500 times,

to give you an idea of the structure.

Now, you might find yourself a bit

surprised to see that it is full of holes.

You might have expected it to be solid.

But it's not, because it has to be strong but also light.

So it's got a very interesting structure that makes it

behave like that.

And the strength of the structure depends on the way that this

network of bone is laid down, but also how much bone we have in it.

So to show you how important it is to have the right amount of bone

so that your bones don't break, I'm going to need a volunteer.

Let's see... Let's have you.

APPLAUSE

-Come and stand here. What's your name?

-Luka.

-Luka.

Luka, when astronauts go into space, their bones waste.

At least their heels, and the neck and femur,

and their lower back wastes at about a rate of 1-2% per month.

Now, what we have done is we have taken this model of the bone

and we have simulated what would happen if we put it in space.

If we put that bone in space, Luka, it would

have wasted and it would have lost some of its density.

It's exactly the same structure, but it has wasted,

because maybe this person has a disease, or they have been to space.

All right? Now, to show you how weak a bone gets

when it starts losing some of its density, we've got this crusher box.

Bone is remarkably strong for the amount of material that's in it,

-and this is normal bone. How much do you weigh, Luka?

-40-50 kilos.

40 or 50 kilos. All right, let's see what this is like.

So if you very gently climb up on there. All right.

And stand on that... Now, this model of bone is made of plaster.

It's printed by a 3-D printer. So let's see how strong it is.

OK, ready, steady, go. All right.

So, that's pretty good.

Let's take you down, Luka. Let's come back down. Step down.

And let's try and do the same thing with the weaker bone.

Now, this bone, as I've told you, simulates what would happen

if you sent an astronaut to space for 14 months

and you let the bone waste.

Now, if you lose maybe 10-15% of the density in that bone,

you don't just get a 10% or 15% reduction in its strength.

It becomes incredibly weak.

Now, Luka, I'm going to ask you to try and stand on this one

and we'll see how we go.

All right, very gently on.

OK. Now, let's have a quick countdown.

Someone get a countdown for this one.

OK, three, two, one, go!

Oh! OK. Luka, down you get.

Luka, thank you so much for helping us. That's fantastic.

APPLAUSE

So that is what happens if you go into space. This is bad news.

If you are an astronaut coming back to Earth or visiting Mars,

what you don't want is to get off your spacecraft and have you

break both your bones because they have become as weak as this.

And that is another problem. Thank you very much, John. Thank you.

So that's muscle and bone.

And that's what happens to them when you unload them

and you stop them having to deal with weight.

In the end, all your systems are affected.

And that same thing that pulls the fluid out of your head and

pushes it into your legs on Earth - that is gravity - is absent in space.

And so the fluids in your body behave rather peculiarly,

and that's exactly what Tim Peake has been finding out.

So let's go and find out how he's getting on the space station.

My head feels a little bit full.

All the fluid in my body has shifted up into this central area

and so it's almost a little bit of a stuffy feeling,

as if you've got a bit of a blocked-up nose.

And so let's have a look at a picture of Tim now, on the right,

and him just before flight, on the left.

Now, can you see his face is much rounder, much puffier?

And that's not because there's an enormous module full of pies

up there, it's because the fluid has pushed up

from his legs into his head.

And that's why he feels that stuffiness.

They very technically refer to this shift in fluid from the lower body

into the upper body as "chicken legs" and "puffy face".

-Did that happen to you, Dan?

-A little bit, yeah.

I've seen pictures of you. You had a really puffy face! All right.

You can protect yourself from some of these changes by going to the gym.

And astronauts have to do that. They have to go to the gym a lot.

They spend about two hours in the gym. We're going to see a clip here.

This is Scott Kelly on something called the ARED.

This is a machine that looks like a weightlifting machine,

and they work out on the space station.

It allows him to do some exercise.

It's not because these guys are fitness freaks.

They're all very fit and healthy,

but it's because it's like the Alice In Wonderland story.

This is all about doing as much running as you can do just

to stay in the same place.

All of these people have to do two-three hours of exercise a day

just to maintain the standard of health that you do, to maintain

their muscles and bones and, to a degree, their heart as well.

Otherwise, they will just waste away and have real, real trouble

when they come home.

Tim is up on the space station right now,

and he's going to go to the gym pretty much every day

for two-three hours, which means that he thinks he's going to be able to...

Well, I'm told he's going to run

the London Marathon on the treadmill. Whereas most of his colleagues

will run about 26 miles, he'll run about 20,000 while he's up there.

So there are other systems that are affected.

Now, not just your bones.

Not just your muscles, not just your heart,

but there is the apparatus that senses where we are.

Now, let me explain that. We are used to having mobile devices these days

that know where they are. This one has a quite lovely app on it.

It knows wherever it is.

So wherever I turn this app, the device knows where it is.

And that's because it's got a really impressive bit of

sensory equipment in it. It's called an accelerometer.

It detects acceleration

and that's how the device knows where it is in space.

Now, this is impressive, but you have your own system of accelerometry,

and it's much more sensitive.

And that system of detecting acceleration is in the inner ear.

Now, that's the outer ear.

There's the middle ear down here,

that does most of your hearing or amplification. And then here...

..you have the semi-circular canals in which you have cells that do

exactly what that switch does -

sensing acceleration as you shift around.

So if these semi-circular canals, that are orientated at right angles,

sense your rotational acceleration as you spin around, there is

a small swelling just below them that contains two other accelerometers

and they detect acceleration on the linear plane.

So forwards and backwards in the horizontal plane, and up and down.

Now, the problem with all of that when you go to space is that

your inner ear, your system of detecting acceleration,

seems to need gravity as some sort of reference to calibrate itself.

When you are in space, that all changes.

If you are floating in a module, there's no pressure on your feet,

there's no load on your joints for you to detect.

Your inner ear says, "I have no idea what is going on here."

There is no load going on.

And your eyes say to calm down, you're in a spaceship, it's fine.

And somehow, that's OK, but it's still a bit funny.

You feel a bit wobbly up there.

Astronauts who go to space for the first time feel sick

or are sick for the first 48-72 hours.

Dan, the first time you went space,

-what were you like for the first 48 hours?

-I didn't feel very good.

It felt like my whole stomach was in my throat

and it was a very unpleasant feeling.

But, boy, I tell you - I woke up on the third day

and I felt 100%. It's amazing.

But for the first couple of days, I just didn't feel very good at all.

Were you sick in space?

-I always had an air sick bag with me, but I never had to use it.

-OK.

Well, I believe you. Now...

To show you just how disorientating it is

if your eyes tell you something that your ear is not feeling,

I'm going to need a volunteer who is very good on fairground rides.

Let's have you. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

-Come and stand here. What's your name?

-Bryn.

-Bryn.

Bryn, come and have some astronaut training with me now.

This is a chair that's used in astronaut training, Dan, right?

-This is a chair that we've... The Russians use it.

-Yeah.

-Did they put you on one?

-No, I never got to ride one.

-OK.

Well, let's not spoil the surprise. So, Bryn, this...

-If you want to be an astronaut... Do you want to be an astronaut?

-Yeah.

Yeah? OK, all right.

You sound less sure about that than you really should be.

So I'm going to ask you to close your eyes

and put your left ear on your left shoulder. That's brilliant.

Don't do anything until I say, "Three, two, one, up."

And then we'll see how we go. And I'm going to need some blockers here.

OK, here we go, Bryn. Ready? So right now,

I am telling Bryn's inner ear that his head is rotating on a

plane that's not really rotating, because his ear is over to the side.

So it's not sure what is going on.

He's getting a bit of information from being on that seat,

but not much, and his feet are off the ground.

His eyes are closed, so he can't use that as a source of information

and so, at the moment, his body is saying,

"What have you volunteered for?"

And in a second, I'm going to stop him.

-Three, two, one up!

-Ugh!

CROWD GASPS

-Are you all right?

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

You're not sure about that either, are you?

Now, Bryn, just describe for me what that was like.

That wasn't just dizziness, was it?

-Erm... That was...

-And what did you experience?

Did you feel like you were tumbling?

It was like you're in a hurricane or something.

-Like you're in a hurricane.

-Yeah.

Yeah, I've never been in a hurricane, personally.

But it feels, I'm told - because I do this to other people,

but I don't do it myself - like you're tumbling head over heels or

think the world is spinning around at a funny angle.

And that's all that fluid calming down, but giving you a

really, really, really incorrect set of inputs.

-So, Bryn, are you all right getting back to your chair?

-Yeah.

-You sure?

All right. We will help you back to your chair. You might need this.

This is our very own - donated to us by Dan Tani -

space sick bag.

It's great because, you know, you're sick in there

and you can seal it all up. And there's a little towel

for you to wipe your face with.

So that's what you get for doing that. Thank you so much, Bryn.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

So that's what happens to you on the space station.

We are just going to see some video from the space station

and see how Tim's finding all of that.

When I first came on board, it was all a bit disorientating

and your body feels a little bit dizzy.

If you can imagine that your brain is trying to work out

the difference in what your ears are saying as opposed to your eyes.

Your vestibular system is all a bit messed up in zero gravity

and we have to rely on the information from our eyes to

try and make sense of our orientation.

And so it is best not to move your head from side to side too much.

Like that. Or up and down. Instead, move your whole body.

However, I've been amazed at how quickly the body has adapted

to space already. In just two days,

I'm feeling a lot more comfortable in this environment.

Today, I was unpacking cargo, changing orientations

and really feeling a lot more comfortable.

So this is Tim a couple of days in space, doing a somersault,

but this isn't how you show off in space.

THIS is how you show off in space.

So that's Scott Kelly, who's been on board for months now.

And he can really throw himself around. So fantastic to see that.

Despite all of that, the International Space Station is

still a relatively safe place to be, so long as you stay inside.

The problems come when you want to go for a walk.

I know someone who has gone for a walk outside the space station,

and he is right here with us in the audience.

I'm going to ask Dan Tani to join me back here. Dan.

APPLAUSE

Now, Dan, I understand that when you go for a walk,

you need to dress properly.

You need a space suit, because you've got to protect

yourself from the environment of space, absolutely.

Yeah, and how much is your space suit?

I don't know how much the whole thing is altogether.

I do know that one glove that we wear is about a million bucks.

-1 million?!

-For each. And we wear two.

2 million for a pair of gloves?!

Yeah, and we bring in three sets just in case.

-So a backup set and a backup to the backup.

-6 million for the gloves?

Maybe 30 million, 50 million for the whole suit.

I don't have to buy it!

Dan, I think your tailor is taking you for a ride.

I think we here at the RI could build a better spacesuit,

and to show you how, I think I'm going to need a volunteer.

Who would like to volunteer?

OK. Let's have you.

APPLAUSE

-Face the front. Now, what's your name?

-Molly.

-Molly, Molly.

OK, Molly, Dan bought a suit for 50 million. It's ridiculous.

Now, Dan, we can definitely do better.

So, Molly, we're going to get you the Royal Institution spacesuit

that's going to be much better than Dan's 50 million suit.

So, Dan, just tell me what we need here to get Molly ready for space.

Let's see. The most important thing is something that holds pressure.

-Something that holds pressure. A pressure garment.

-Yeah, yeah.

Let's apply some pressure to you, Molly. All right.

-What else do we need, Dan?

-You need to protect yourself from the environment,

-the thermal environment.

-Thermal environment, OK.

So we need something that reflects the heat back into you.

You know what? Your body gets hot.

-You need to cool the body down.

-So you need a cooling garment. OK.

All right. You need a cooling garment. What else do you need?

Those expensive gloves and a helmet.

Those expensive gloves, and a helmet.

I'm going to put those in there, Molly. OK, and a helmet.

Molly, we're going to get this helmet on you.

We're in that thing for, like, 8 or 10 hours... We wear a nappy.

We need a nappy, a nappy. OK. All right.

OK, we'll just put that in the top with everything else.

-And a portable life support system.

-You need oxygen, of course. Yeah.

So that's brilliant. And what on earth is that?

That there's a bit of Kevlar, isn't it?

-Well, that's very important, because you need...

-A bulletproof vest?

You need to protect yourself from micro meteorites.

-OK, well, let's stick it on.

-There we go.

-All right.

How are you feeling, Molly?

-Very, very covered in everything.

-Very, very covered in everything!

Well, the real space suit weighs about 300lbs.

-So this is quite a light one, actually.

-That's a light one, yes.

Molly, this is our space suit that we have made for you.

It does all the things that Dan said.

-Would you be happy to go into space in this?

-No!

No, I don't blame you.

Maybe we should spend money on space suits. Molly, thank you so much.

Molly.

APPLAUSE

But I don't understand why you needed to have a bulletproof jacket

in that suit. Why did you need a bulletproof jacket?

Well, you're going 17,000 mph

and if you run into something going that fast,

even a fairly tiny speck of maybe a piece of paint

or some part of an old rocket, it could go right through you

and so you need some protection.

Now, it's a bit weird to think of small objects as being harmful,

but we can show you that they really are.

And to show you, I'm going to need a volunteer.

Here, why don't you come down?

APPLAUSE

-And what's your name?

-Viraj.

Viraj, small objects travelling very quickly can cause a lot of damage.

Now, to prove it, I've got some orbital debris here that we

have specially brought up so that may look like a carrot to you.

Now, Viraj, I'm going to tell you that this carrot can go through

this cardboard, OK, which they've decided to put a picture of me on.

All right, so, Viraj, I want you to try

and throw that carrot through that figurine.

Ready? Give it your best shot.

No. LAUGHTER

Let me try, let me try.

Dan?

It's quite therapeutic, this, actually.

But we're not going to get it through.

We need to move it a bit faster.

Now, this may look like some copper piping and a bicycle pump

but it is an orbital debris simulator and what we're going to do is

give those carrots enough energy to get through this.

So, we're going to get some safety glasses on.

You better put those on and I better put these on

and we're going to show you the power of the carrot here as we load it up.

Now, the energy that we're using is kinetic energy and kinetic

energy, as you know, is half times the mass times the velocity squared.

-You definitely knew that, didn't you?

-Yeah.

And so the important component is the velocity,

how fast the thing is moving.

And so if you get it moving fast enough,

it can have some surprising consequences.

So, Viraj, you come round here and just, in a minute,

I'm going to help you.

If you put your hand down there and you tell me, Dan,

when you're ready to go.

-Go.

-Three, two, one, go! Whoo!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-High five.

-Good job.

Now, look, there is the hole in the...

LAUGHTER

I'm very upset right now. I'm going to have a bit of an emotional moment.

So in case you didn't know, carrots are dangerous.

Carrots moving at high speed are dangerous.

Never, ever, ever try and do this at home.

It's not a joke,

stuff travelling fast enough will take your eyes out pretty easily.

And so, Dan, that's just one of the hazards you face

when you go on a spacewalk.

So what's that like?

When we're doing a spacewalk, we're out there to do a task -

fix something or move something.

And we are very lucky here to have this spacesuit.

Now, you have trained on these spacesuits

and we're not allowed to touch them so you can grab some gloves.

Thank you.

Now, tell me about this spacesuit, Dan, because this is an actual...

This isn't like the spacesuits that you launch into space in,

this is a suit for a spacewalk, right?

For doing spacewalks. This is called an Orlan spacesuit.

It's the Russian version of the spacewalking suit.

Just take me through some of these features.

These always look very complicated so just some of the stuff here.

Now, this is a Russian suit,

some of the stuff is written in Russian, right?

All of it's written in Russian, yeah.

So you have to learn Russian to be able to walk in it?

Yes, exactly right.

And the spacesuit is its own machine,

it's a very complicated machine

and so this here selects what kind of oxygen you're going to be

breathing, either from your umbilical or from your tank.

This is a regulator for temperature so if you're getting too cold or

too hot, you move this and it will regulate the temperature inside you.

And I don't speak any Russian but this looks like it's written

backwards to me, this stuff round here. Why is that?

Well, it is because your eyes are up here

and you're never going to see what's on here

so we have a mirror that we have on our spacesuits

and so to see parts of your spacesuit, you use the mirror

and just like the front of an ambulance or a fire truck,

it's written backwards, this is written backwards so that

when you look at it in the mirror, it'll look the right way.

And then up here, gold? Gold sunglasses? What's that about?

Well, it's very bright.

Without an atmosphere to protect you, it's extremely bright

and so you need the protection for your eyes and you would get

awful sunburn if you didn't have this kind of protection.

Wow, that's pretty impressive.

And this does all the stuff that we tried to get Molly's suit to do

-earlier on, it keeps you alive.

-Exactly right.

I just want to look round the back cos round the back here,

I'm going to spin it round. So, this is a Russian suit.

Now, I've tried to put on one of your American spacewalk suits.

It's pretty hard, it's like a fibreglass T-shirt,

you've got to wriggle inside,

I nearly dislocated my shoulder.

The Russian suit has just got a door,

you just climb straight in at the back.

It's very popular with astronauts when they train in it

because it's very easy to get in and it's very cleverly designed

so that you can close up and seal the suit all by yourself.

It's a one-person-donning suit.

And what's your scariest moment on a spacewalk, Dan?

Well, when we say spacewalk, we're not walking with our legs,

we're walking with our hands

and I remember going down the space station

and I think I got a little overconfident

because there was one moment where I was going to grab onto one handrail

and let go of the other but it turns out I wasn't even on that handrail.

I let go of this one and I started floating a little bit

and realised I didn't have it and I was able to quickly grab on

but that one second was a little terrifying for me.

Did you nearly fall off the space station, Dan?

-Almost lost the space station, yeah.

-Wow, that's pretty frightening.

Now, I think what all of us want to know is what does it feel like?

What is the best thing about walking in space?

The best part is when you open that hatch,

there's nothing between you and the Earth

and so you float out of the space station

and you're holding on but you look down at your feet

and under your feet, 250 miles below you is the Earth

kind of rolling by you and maybe it's the coast of California

and here comes Ireland

and it's just unbelievable to have that experience.

It sounds incredible and you've done that six times?

Six spacewalks in my career, I've been very fortunate.

Dan, thank you so much for sharing that with us.

-It's been great to see you.

-Thank you.

APPLAUSE

So, you take a lot of precautions up there

but what if something goes wrong?

What if you get seriously injured or seriously ill?

What do you do?

Well, I know what I would do here on Earth - I would call

my colleagues and friends from the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service.

So that's what I'm going to do now.

I would like to introduce you to my friends

and crewmates from Kent, Surrey & Sussex Air Ambulance,

Dr Marwa El-Zanfaly and Karen Clarke, our paramedic.

APPLAUSE

So, guys, this is...

We fly together, don't we,

on the back of a helicopter delivering medical care.

This is our kit, tell me a bit about how this all works.

So what we try to do is we use the helicopter to get

to our patients as quickly as possible

and we like to think that we can bring some of the emergency

department and the intensive care department with us to deliver

enhanced care where the patient needs it the most

-so in their home or the side of the road.

-All right,

so this is the kit that you bring to scene to deal with an emergency.

You're probably proud of that kit.

I want to show you another kit, a kit from the International Space Station

and to show it to us, I want to introduce you to my very good friend,

who is not only a doctor, he is also an astronaut.

Flown in space twice

and one tour aboard the International Space Station.

I'd like to introduce you to Dr Mike Barratt.

APPLAUSE

-Good to see you.

-Nice to see you.

Now, you have a helicopter emergency medical kit.

Mike here has the International Space Station's medical kit

and I think, given that it's holiday time and Christmas,

we should have a game of medical kit trumps,

see who's got the best one, and there's two of you so I'm going

to take the International Space Station medical kit.

All right, so let's get it on. Looking forward to this.

What is your anaesthetic capability, helicopter?

So we can deliver a number of different anaesthetics depending

on the situation so we've got some drugs here and here to do that.

We also carry all the necessary equipment to deliver a safe

anaesthetic as well so I think I'm going to give us an eight.

-Eight out of ten, yeah.

-Eight? You can give a general anaesthetic?

-Pretty safely, yeah.

-OK.

Mike, helicopter, eight out of ten for anaesthetic capability.

International Space Station?

So, on the International Space Station,

we would have only local anaesthetic,

a little injection of lidocaine that can deaden the skin

so that we can repair a cut, a laceration if you will,

but that's all we have so I would probably give us a two.

-Two out of ten?

-I think a two out of ten.

But they won that one. All right, OK, OK. Intensive care capability.

Helicopter, what is your intensive capability?

Well, we have a ventilator, we have all the equipment to monitor

something who's been given a general anaesthetic.

We have the ability to give a blood transfusion

and plasma to somebody who's lost blood.

-You can give a blood transfusion?

-We can.

Drugs to support the heart as well.

I'd probably say 7 or 8 for that as well.

Intensive care capability, 7 or 8.

Don't disappoint me here, what's our intensive care capability on the International Space Station?

So on the International Space Station, we can put in a definitive

airway but we have a very limited supply of oxygen we can use,

because you release all that oxygen into the atmosphere

while somebody breathes it,

and the oxygen concentration gets too high and we worry about fire,

so we can't really ventilate someone too long.

We can put in a large intravenous line

and we would have normally three big bags of saline here,

but then when that's done we're done,

so I would probably give us about a two.

2/10!

Two-nil. We've got one more category.

I think we can take this category.

Helicopter, I would like to challenge you on your surgical capability

and before I do, I would like to explain to you

this is Mike Barratt, current astronaut,

former NASA flight surgeon,

and I am going to get you to challenge us on surgical capability.

What is your surgical capability?

In my humble opinion, I think our surgical capability is pretty good.

We can do a surgical airway

and we also are able to perform emergency chest surgery,

and that includes open heart surgery where necessary.

So I think probably about 6-7.

Mike? This is a bit awkward.

They can do chest surgery on the motorway.

What is the International Space Station's surgical capability?

We can do laceration repair, pretty deep wounds.

We can do a chest drain, so we actually train people to do that

because we worry a lot about pressure changes and injuries.

But that's about where we stop.

One of the most important things we don't have to go with

the surgery kit is a surgeon or anybody trained to do such surgery,

so I'd like to give us a little bit better than two,

so I will advance us to a three.

We lost, Mike.

Darnedest thing.

OK. We are going to have to talk about this.

Why is their kit so much better?

I would have thought a helicopter would not have as good a kit.

I thought you'd have a whole Star Trek-type sickbay up there,

why don't you have that?

That's an excellent question and mostly it's because

the patients we have to deal with are very different

from what Marwa or Karen would have to deal with.

If you take some of the forces that cause the injuries

that you respond to - falls, motor vehicles, we don't have that.

You can't fall up there, we don't have any cars,

so a lot of those energies that cause those injuries are gone.

Gunshot wounds, stab wounds, we tend to be an affable group,

we get along quite well with each other,

so we don't have those types of injuries.

I'm really disappointed to lose that game, I chose the wrong side.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's my great pleasure to say thank you to Mike Barratt.

APPLAUSE

And my colleagues from Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance,

Karen and Marwa. Thank you very much.

APPLAUSE

So what we've learned is that in space, like everywhere else,

prevention is always better than cure,

and they are very good at doing that on ISS,

but what do you do if the worst happens?

What you do is you come home in an awful hurry

and the way you do that is aboard the Soyuz capsule.

That's the way Tim, one way or another, will have to come

home at the end of his mission.

The problem with that as a lifeboat, as a thing that gets you

off the station, is that when it comes home eventually,

it needs to pass through the atmosphere

and when it passes through the atmosphere, it gets very hot.

Why does it get hot?

I used to think that it was because it hit the atmosphere

and there was loads of friction and as it came through that's why it heated up,

but that's not true.

The reason it heats up is the same reason that this

tube of air is going to get hot.

If you imagine the end of this is the Soyuz capsule coming through

a column of air in the atmosphere,

then this capsule is going to compress the air as it comes through.

The air molecules just don't have time to get out the way,

and I am going to try and...

go!

APPLAUSE

The piston didn't touch the cotton, it just compressed the air.

The air got hot enough to light the cotton.

You can start a fire like that, it's an ancient way of starting a fire.

It's a better way of starting a fire than rubbing sticks together,

but that is exactly why Soyuz gets so hot as it comes through the atmosphere.

The way to defend against that for the Soyuz

is to have a very clever type of shielding called an ablative shield.

As it burns, this shield releases gases that literally push

the flames and the heat away, protecting the capsule and her crew.

That's how Tim will keep alive as he comes back at the end of his mission.

And to show you just how good this material is at getting rid of heat,

I'm going to need some help from my colleagues.

What we have in here is the material that protected the space shuttle,

but you can't get it very hot

if you just play a blowtorch over it for a few seconds.

You have to put it in a kiln and that kiln has to be about 1,000 degrees,

what's that? 1,100 degrees. Right there, you can see that.

We are going to open that in a second

and when it comes out, this material is going to be red hot,

you're going to see it,

and I'm going to pick it up without any gloves.

OK, so let's get that kiln open.

Why do you have gloves and I don't?

Let's not go there right now, all right, all right.

OK. That's pretty hot!

So this material is made mostly of air.

It's silica, actually, woven,

and so if we get the lights down a little bit, you can see that glowing.

That is going to stay hot for hours.

That's been baked for hours. You can see that's glowing red hot.

If I'm right about this and its properties,

it rejects heat very quickly so it cools from the outwards in,

the furthest bits from the centre, the corners,

so I should be able to pick it...

I really actually don't want to do this.

I don't think that's going to help, is it, licking my fingers!

Oh, my God.

Wow!

APPLAUSE

I am as amazed as you are, actually.

That only works because that is how this material was made.

It doesn't hold heat, it's got a very low specific heat capacity.

It gets rid of that heat as soon as it comes out the kiln.

The centre of that is still very hot

but it's losing that heat immediately,

so even a couple of seconds out of the kiln, I can pick it up,

and that is how you survive re-entry.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

And we're going to finish as we started

with sunset as it happens on the space station.

45 minutes after sunrise, and that is what we're seeing here.

You can see the darkness spreading across the Earth,

the Soyuz on the right there, that very beautiful sunset,

45 minutes after the sunrise,

and that brings us to the end of this lecture.

We have found out how to live and work in space,

and if we can crack that, where else might we go next?

Perhaps back to the moon or onwards to Mars

or perhaps to more exotic destinations,

and we've just heard some exciting news.

There might be a space walk, an unexpected space walk

happening in the next couple of days

and we'll be covering that live in the last lecture

in this series, but for now, I am Dr Kevin Fong

and this has been how to survive in space.

APPLAUSE