Back to Earth 2 Stargazing Live

Hello and welcome back to Jodrell Bank, where we have 30 more minutes

to ask more of the huge number of questions you've been sending in for

our special guests - Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham and

former International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield. And we're

lucky to have with us again Cassini's Dr Carolyn Porco, for the

first time the head of the European Space Agency's medical technology

team, Dr Simon Evetts, and of course Professor Brian Cox. Who will pour

the drinks? You pour the drinks. Do you recognise that? That is nice. It

is Russian champagne and we have doughnuts and steak and eggs. These

are traditional preflight meals. There is a lot of superstition for

that. Not in the United States! The steak and eggs was Alan Shepherd who

ate this before his flight in 61. The cornbread and bean is eaten by

NASA controllers. After the launch the smell of cornbread and beans is

strong. Does it smell, you're couped in small space craft. What does it

smell like? We focus on low residue! They said that about the ISS one of

the things people welcomed when a new crew came aboard was that waft

of fresh air. Often they bring fresh fruit and the whole station smells

of apples or oranges, that is a treat, after living inside a

machine. It is a Russian champagne, it is a tradition for them to drink

this. Sovetskoye Shampanskoye. Yes. Just a little taste and everyone, we

throw the glasses into the wall. Are we going to do that today? Throw

them that way at the cameras. Will someone make a toast. The simplest

would be to health or successful and fortunate voyage. I want to say some

great auroral displays. Tomorrow it might be very spectacular. They

delayed the launch. How dangerous can it be? You have a shelter on the

ISS? We are worried about increased radiation opt space station and

always get a higher dosage than people on earth. When the sun has

been particularly active, we have parts of the station that are better

shielded. But when they're launching a vehicle like Signus they don't

want to launch it into a heavy radiation area. So what is next in

the space exploration, Emma asks what advances might she see in her

lifetime. Would you make a one-way trip to Mars asks Mark. I believe

the only good goal to have is to go to Mars from here. That is the next

step for man. Not everybody agrees with that. Part of it has to do with

the politics, the cost and all of those things. But I think that is

the place for us to be targeting. Because that enables us to expand

man's knowledge. We would have to overcome things that we don't know

how to overcome now. They are considerable difficulties,

particularly if we want to bring people back from Mars. A one 46 way

trip to Mars is -- a one-way trip to Mars is ridiculous. It won't be any

cheaper to get there than for the round trip to get there. So I think

it is just kind of dreaming myself. But there may be other people. A

multinational trip to Mars, bring all of humanity together again. Are

there not specific health problems for a trip that long. Yes we talked

about radiation, muscle loss, those things are being tackled and we will

need to tackle them properly. In robotic space exploration, the

biggest boost we could get is to get, dispense with chemical

propulsion and go to a new form that gets us around the solar system

faster. The biggest problem is propulsion. We need the next

propulsion force. We are stuck with fossil fuel. They will still have to

discover or invent that. Because the rules, I would love to see a

propulsion system that is more efficient. But I haven't seen any

real indications of it yet. It will help with the medical conditions,

because we will get there quicker. One thing you mentioned, we have got

to be willing to accept losses. There will be losses and when you

start getting on a trip to Mars and back, this, the duration alone is

enough to set you back. You're both here from different eras of space

flight. Have, first of all have the risks changed and secondly, has the

attitude to risk changed and if so has it held us back? My first

shuttle flight, we only determined several years later what the actual

odds of that flight succeeding and not killing were. I think there were

about one in 32. So poor odds. We lost two of the shuttle crews. So it

wasn't like some guaranteed safe vehicle. We were both test pilots

before and fighter pilots. I have lost about one good friend a year

and it is normal in that profession. Like a lot of professions that

people lose their life in pursuit of something worthwhile. For whatever

reason, we have decided in the space exploration business that loss of

life is unacceptable, which is an interesting cultural norm. The rate

at which Apollo was leaping forward. It was October you went up on the

first flight into orbit. By Christmas they were around the moon.

They had a different way of looking at the risk. When they said for

mission accomplishment you have three nines, for crew 0.99, I never

figured out what that meant. Now they have new risk assessment. It

meant how many mixes before you had a 50/50 chance of losing the space

craft. Which meant you would lose the crew as well. For the last

shuttle missions they were saying 78. Well about ten years ago that

contractor calculated what it was for Apollo and it was 18. Of course,

we quit at 11 missions and so we never pushed the limit. Also a

factor that has kept us back, as time has gone on, the congress

members themselves have deemed it their role to micromanage what NASA

does. It has been said - not by me - that the in the current culture the

change to send Apollo 8 to the moon when it was supposed to be a lunar

module test mission. What will we do? NASA didn't have to ask

permission. They didn't have to appoint a committee to study this

change in the programme. And they did it and that is why they were

successful. They left it in the hand o' of the people knew. We don't do

that. They tell us what missions. Did you achieve more competing with

the Russians or co-operating with them? It depend, if you look at

Apollo, it was tremendously successful in putting a man on the

moon by the end of the decade, but it left a vacuum of action. Because

it was a race that ended. If you want to incrementally expand our

understanding of the universe, it can't be a race that has a finish

line that everything stops. It will, if you look at all the examples, all

the world exploration, it will be slower and less entertaining and led

by innovation and technology. That is the way it has to be. One reason

for success at that time was the competition. With the Russians. Even

though they didn't admit it until later, they were serious about it

and they never could develop a booster. What you need in a

programme like this, is you need sustained support. And right now you

know it is like, what you need with the space programme is not

commensurate with the political cycle. Every four years you get a

change in administration. Those of watching in NASA are getting

whiplashed saying you're going to go here and then go here. We have been

all over the solar system with goals. It has to achieve the level

of importance like the defence department. You have to find an

answer to the problem with dealing with funding in congress. When you

have space acts which has some advantages and other commercial

space companies, they're not as overloaded with bureaucracy and are

able to operate more efficiently. But th also have to develop a return

on the investment. And you're not find by that pushing the envelope.

Now we will move to another direction and our quiz. Tonight's

question is apart from the their siteles what do o' -- titles what do

these three songs have to do with space. # And I think to myself

hps... What a wonderful world It's going to be a long, long time before

touch down brings me round again # Good day sunshine! # They are all

related to space. Send us your guess as to why, other than the titles.

Did you say the words... The worst Beatles song in history. The

addresses are on screen. Now space health, do you still have reduced

bone density from your time in space? We have beaten a lot of the

problem, I increased muscle and I kept bone density in most places,

from some areas where I lost 8% and lost 8% of the soft bone which is

impact resistant. So I was susceptible to a broken hip. It will

take about a year for that to reverse. You're trying to work on

ways in which the suits can be used. Yes our office is researching to

tackle that and similar problems. If we can reproduce that force, that

gravity puts on our bodies in a suit, then we are putting in a

stimulus for bone and should reduce the bone loss and it can also help

the muscles that waste away. We have these suits here by the way. Can we

get two members of the staff there. Give them an applause! No one said

it would be dignified. You're doing something for science. Could you

just twirl for us? Did they volunteer. That is nothing to do

with science, but you can see their underpants. You can see some elastic

at the bottom. What look like elastic are ribbons preventing is it

being too stretched. The material is trying to pull that you are

shoulders down to their feet. It is an early prototype. And you wear

this all the time in space. We need to think about how long it can be

worn. It may not be able to be worn all the time. That would have been

the answer for six months dressed like that? It depend whether it

works. I'm interested to hear the results. What we need to do for the

hip and upper femur is to load it up as similar as on earth. And that is

not purely like on a machine, but the random impacts you get in normal

life. We are on the third generation. Maybe by the fourth or

fifth we will solve that. Much appreciated. Does limit the

amount of time you can spend in them? If you are talking about

problems after six months, could you go much more than six months? There

is a list of problems we have two solved to leave Earth orbit

reliably. One of them is bone loss. We have

beaten a lot on the list a few years ago with medical research going on,

we have got to solve that problem. Radiation, power generation,

navigation, all of that needs to be done as well.

With the luxury they have got now with the machines, I have seen them

at NASA, what we had, our total exercise machine, it was pulling

back and forth on things, and it was one of those things that our

commander, he didn't want us to try. After we got on board we could

hardly fight to get it away from him. Just to have some kind of

exercise. All day you have been chatting about

the mission and Wally Schirra comes up a lot, he seems to be a strong

character. How were the crew dynamics? You lift with your crew

for two years before you went on the ISS, psychological profiling, you

gave the impression there is a bit more banter going on.

We were together for three years before our launch. It has to do with

personalities, but we were close on the ground, the Apollo 11 crew, they

were not really close friends at all, but they were all dedicated to

doing the job and they had separate jobs. It has to do with your

commitment and your motivation, I think.

I did two short duration flight and one longer one, you can have a whole

different mix of people in a shuttle, a bigger crew for two

weeks, you can put up with anyone for a couple of weeks and be very

good but if you are going to live with a small crew for a long time,

you cannot get off, you want a different psychological group.

Rushing to -- the Russian cruise were famously feuding.

The book about the descent into bad dental state, a lack of support,

just not recognising how important that is -- mental state.

Even age 11 ask is apart from the stars and planets and space junk

have they seen any unidentified objects? No. What was the most

beautiful thing? The most beautiful thing I saw was looking down at the

Earth when we had those rare chances to do so. We had very little

opportunity to see the Earth. That was the most exciting.

You mentioned you had the only window that didn't fork up.

That is the reason there are test. There is thick glass so if one of

them breaks you can keep the pressure. They were separated by a

space and there was, after three or four days, the only decent window

was on my side. I took most of the pictures. If we had appointed to the

ground. Do you miss green? I think the way Mars people are going to

miss it. Since you go around north to south so much you see all of the

different seasons, summer in a Streller, winds up here, you see all

the colours and textures regularly -- summer in Australia, winter up

here. People going to Mars within two weeks will have a diminished

view of anything human and they will change mentally and we will have to

keep them healthy psychologically. There will be a fairly fixed

attitude. What is the most beautiful thing you

have seen, that you have been involved in taking photographs of?

Oh, my goodness. Saturn is beautiful, everything you could hope

a planet would have. Getting to Saturn orbit and seeing the northern

hemisphere was blue was a terrible shock. It is there because it is the

Winter Hemisphere and it is colder there, less sunlight, more

opportunity, methane absorption, both of which make the atmosphere

blue, and it ends up having a slice of the Neptune atmosphere spliced

onto the atmosphere of Saturn and that was a shocking new discovery,

and beautiful. Having been on Voyager, getting to Neptune, we knew

it was the last planet we were going to see and having it the loo and

white like the Earth was almost like this feeling of home, it was

beautiful. And your least favourite but Beatles

song. Let's have a quick snatch of all three.

"What a Wonderdul World" by Louis Armstrong.

"Rocket Man" by Elton John. "Good Day Sunshine" by The Beatles.

Various actors have been given. All performed in space. Encrypted into

Voyager. On Cassini's gold disc. Plato to astronauts waiting for

liftoff. -- played. I heard a story George Harrison was going to go on

the Voyager record. His publisher turned it down without telling him.

When George found out he was furious.

It was here comes the sun. Those are not correct. What is the

answer? I am going to get a three of the

songs that the work the astronauts every morning. The top three popular

songs played by Mission control as wake-up music to the astronauts in

space. We did not have wake-up music. We

did not have all that nice food. Heaven was bacon bites. Would you

say you are the real astronaut? He lived in luxury. You said you

found bacon bites in your suit on last day? Just before we launched

some of us stuck a few things into our suit in case we were not able to

get out, and bacon bites was the best and nothing we had was warm.

Can I give a story about how far we have come?

In a second. Here is Mark's guide to spotting galaxies will

we are going to use the pull-out which sits in the heart of the great

Bear consolation Bacharach constellation.

-- the our first galaxies can be found by

drawing a diagonal line across the blade of the plough them continuing

on the same distance. You will come to M 81. With a

telescope you can see it's beautiful spiral arms. Just to the left you

can see it's close neighbour, an 82. These two galaxies are moving

towards each other stop in a few billion years they will have merged

into one. Two more galaxies can be found if you move down the plough. A

short distance to the left, forming a triangle with the last two stars

of the handle you will find M 101 the largest galaxy, and moving a

similar distance to the right, you will find the spectacular whirlpool

galaxy, M 51. It is the most distant of tonight 's targets. You should

still make out it is actually a large Aleksei with another smaller

galaxy interacting with it. -- Alex C. This is a taster of how the basic

telescope can transform our view of the night sky.

We have had some wonderful photographs sent in. This is one of

the ISS and the setting sun. Some wonderful pictures from larger

organisations such as the European space agency. A lovely shot of Venus

from the Venus express mission taken on Tuesday morning at an altitude of

50,000 kilometres. You can see details of the wind blowing around

the polar region. And we have an exclusive here, we have got an image

sent in exclusively to us from NASA, a picture from the messenger

probe, it was acquired at nine minutes past eight this evening. The

mission was launched in August, 2004, the first time it has ever

been seen, wonderful details of the craters on Mercury. That is it,

please keep sending in all your pictures. You can find details on

the website. You will also find a link to our photo group.

Apologies, what was the story? You know these days people can buy

themselves right on the International Space Station, I made

the acquaintance of Charles Simoni who did this. On Earth one day I am

in the cheese section of whole foods in Boulder, Colorado, I get a phone

-- phone call from him, he is in the International Space Station flying

overhead. Did he ask for some cheese? It was surreal. He said he

is at the window, somewhere over the Pacific. Half an hour later I said

where are you now? Somewhere over Africa. It was amazing.

I got a message when I was in Africa and you were in space. Great in

terms of the public outreach. You took photographs, and you did. In

terms of public outreach, we want to see Earth as it exists in space, we

want to see our place within the Kosmos. There is a vast appetite to

see how we fit in, people want to see themselves in perspective, and

from the space station we are in a wonderful position to do that. And

three social media I can take a picture of anywhere and within then

it the whole planet can see it. There is a great human need to feel

connected with other humans around the globe. People felt in a moment,

our pitcher is being taken and we are all in it together.

Pictures today are so wonderful compared to the ones we took on

Apollo. I love the pictures today. Is this a most valuable thing about

space exploration, the perspective it gives us? You spoke about the

ideal when you are in space you end up seeing one Earth, there is no us

any more. Is that the most valuable thing? There are valuable

technological spin offs, economics, but is it really be emotional power,

the need to explore? The results of inspiration, if you

can inspire young people to something that is right on the edge

of possible, they can see this was impossible for my parents, or just

barely possible and if I apply myself maybe someday I can do that.

A quick final question from Ciaran, aged 11, what should children learn

to become astronauts? To become an astronaut you need a

proven ability to learn complex things. You should not pursue

something you dislike but something that is complex and technical,

pushes you to the edge of your ability, show your ability to learn

complex things. They have broadened the potential, there are so many

different areas, the International space Station, you were talking

earlier about the medical problems. It is a laboratory now, we can check

those things out. Definitely easier now, they are not

real astronauts. It has been an honour, thank you to all our guests.

For our final night tomorrow we will be venturing deep into space, the

Milky Way, we will see it over the UK, keep a lookout and send us your

photographs. We are back at 8pm tomorrow and Back to Earth at 9pm.