HOW IT WORKS: The International Space Station
HOW IT WORKS: The International Space Station
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00:00Hello, I'm Sunny Williams. I'm up here on the International Space Station.
00:06So this is Node 2. This is a really cool module.
00:11Of course, most of these modules you'll see, they have four sides, and they're put together.
00:16That way we could sort of work on a flat plane, either a wall, a floor, another wall, or the ceiling.
00:25But again, all you have to do is turn yourself and your reference changes.
00:31The reason I'm bringing that up is because this is where four out of six of us sleep.
00:36And so people always ask about sleeping in space. Do you lie down? Are you in a bed?
00:41Not really, because it doesn't matter. You don't really have the sensation of lying down.
00:46You just sit in your sleeping bag.
00:48So here's one sleep station right here. I'm going in right now.
00:53You can follow me if you want.
00:59So I'm inside. It's sort of like a little phone booth, but it's pretty comfy.
01:05I've got a sleeping bag right here that we sleep in, so we don't have sort of like a little bit of a cover.
01:10We don't fly all over the place.
01:13But you know, you can sleep in any orientation.
01:15I have it feeling like I'm standing up right now, but like you saw, I'm on the floor.
01:20But it doesn't matter if I turn over and I sleep upside down.
01:25I don't have any sensation in my head that tells me that I'm upside down, so it really doesn't matter.
01:32The sleep station is also like a little office.
01:35We've got a computer in here.
01:37As you can see, we've got a couple little toys.
01:39I've got some books. I've got some clothes and other things that make it sort of like home.
01:45I'm coming out.
01:49And just for reference, that's one sleep station.
01:53This one's another right here.
01:59There's one on the ceiling, if you want to call it, right here.
02:05And then there's a fourth on the other wall over here.
02:11So all of us sleep in a little bit of a circle.
02:15All right, come on back. There's more to show you.
02:23I know that there's some questions about how to use the bathroom and how do you actually live in space like normal, like at home.
02:30I mentioned real quickly about getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth and washing your face.
02:35Well, how do you do that?
02:37Well, here is the bathroom, essentially.
02:39You get up in the morning, and we have a little kit, and it has all the essential things that you need, like your toothbrush and toothpaste and brush.
02:52See how much better the brush makes my hair look?
02:58I'm just joking. It still stands up straight.
03:00It doesn't matter where you are.
03:02It's always going to stand up straight while you're up in space.
03:05A lot of people ask about toothbrush and toothpaste.
03:08So luckily enough, toothpaste, you can do it upside right this way, is sticky, and so it sticks to your toothbrush.
03:16No problem.
03:18Another cool thing is that water sticks to your toothbrush, too.
03:25If you can see it, I'll have some water come out.
03:30The water is pretty neat up in space.
03:33It'll stick to your toothbrush, and it will make a big bubble.
03:44And that's just by surface tension.
03:49And then you can drink it.
03:54So a lot of people ask about what do you do with the toothpaste after you brush your teeth.
04:09Two options.
04:12Swallow it, and it's sort of like mouthwash, but it tastes a little gross.
04:20Or you can just spit it out in a paper towel, and then you don't have to worry about it.
04:26Swallowing thing I wouldn't recommend at home.
04:29I'm only up here for four months, so it's not that bad.
04:36One of the most pressing questions about living in space, of course, is the bathroom.
04:42So let's take a look at that little piece of work.
04:46Come on in.
04:56Here we are at the throne.
04:58This is awesome.
05:00You might have noticed the little moon on the outside.
05:04This is our orbital outhouse right here.
05:16And, of course, it serves for two functions.
05:20Number two, right here, I'll show you.
05:26But you see it's pretty small, so you have to have pretty good aim.
05:31Be ready to make sure things get let go the right direction.
05:36And it smells a little bit, so I'm closing it up.
05:39And that's, of course, for number two.
05:41And this guy right here is for number one.
05:45So they're sort of two slightly separate functions, but you can do essentially both by hanging on right here and doing number one and number two.
05:57I might add it's color-coded, so you really don't get it mixed up, which is nice.
06:00This is yellows for number one.
06:05And also there's a selection of paper.
06:11People always ask about toilet paper.
06:12What do you do with toilet paper?
06:13What kind of toilet paper do you have?
06:15We have gloves just because sometimes it does get messy.
06:18We have some Russian wipes, which are a little bit coarse if you like the coarse type of toilet paper.
06:24We have some nice tissues, which are nice and soft if you like soft toilet paper.
06:28We have Huggies just for any cleanup.
06:32You know, we were all babies once, and this sort of helps.
06:34And then if things get really out of control, we have disinfectant wipes just to make sure we clean up here.
06:41Because, you know, just like the water I showed you, the number one stuff can sort of go all over the place if you don't aim correctly.
06:48And did I mention both of these have a little bit of suction, so they should keep things going in the right direction.
06:53But, like I said, sometimes things get a little out of control if you are out of control yourself flying around.
07:00So we have lots of protective stuff.
07:03And, of course, you do have your privacy.
07:05There's a little door.
07:09So other people know that you're in there.
07:15Here's a pretty cool place.
07:16This is sort of like in your house where everybody meets in the morning.
07:20After you wash your face, brush your teeth, you want to find something for breakfast.
07:24And this is our kitchen.
07:27You might notice there's all sorts of foods here.
07:30It's like opening the refrigerator.
07:32You've got all your different stuff that you want to have.
07:34Drinks, meats, eggs, vegetables, cereals, bread, snacks.
07:42And that's a good place.
07:43That's where you find all the candy.
07:45Side dishes and then some little power bars just in case.
07:48So we have all this type of food.
07:50Some of it is dehydrated.
07:52And so we have to hydrate it, fill it up with water.
07:55Some of it is already made.
07:57And then all we have to do is heat it up.
08:01So something like this.
08:02I'm pulling out barbecued beef brisket.
08:04Pretty yummy.
08:06Not only is this food made in the U.S., but we also have food here from Japan.
08:12We've got Russian food.
08:14As you can see, all these red containers are filled with food that's from Russia.
08:18And then we get some of our specialty stuff, some things that we like,
08:22some of our favorite stuff that your family can send up.
08:25In fact, I like fluffernutters,
08:27and so I got sent up some fluff so I could make my fluffernutter with peanut butter.
08:32So you have a lot of food up here.
08:34No problems.
08:36Now, I'm going to say where we are.
08:38So right now we're in the Japanese laboratory.
08:41It's one laboratory out of many here on the International Space Station.
08:45It's actually on the left-hand side.
08:48If I was International Space Station and I was flying through space like this,
08:51my left hand would be where the Japanese laboratory is.
09:04So now, again, we're on the right-hand side,
09:06all the way on the right of the International Space Station.
09:09That is Columbus, the European module.
09:12It has science experiments all over.
09:14You can see it looks a little bit crowded.
09:16And here we do a lot of our medical experiments.
09:24Here we are in the U.S. laboratory.
09:26Again, this is a laboratory with science experiments on all of the walls here,
09:31all sorts of stuff that we do.
09:33And one of the things we also do is we exercise.
09:36We exercise equipment on board the space station.
09:39We need to do that because we lose bone density and muscle mass while we're up here,
09:45and that's a result of not having to fight against gravity.
09:49So how we keep ourselves in shape are with a bike, a treadmill, and a weightlifting machine.
09:56This is the bike.
09:57You notice the clip pedals.
09:59So all you need to do is actually clip your feet in, and then you can start pedaling.
10:04You don't need a seat because you don't sit down.
10:06Actually, I haven't sat down for six months now.
10:09So you don't need any type of seat.
10:11Just make sure you're held in with your pedals.
10:14You probably see that the bike bounces around a little bit.
10:17As I move it, it's not steady and held to the wall firmly.
10:22And the reason for that is the space station is pretty big.
10:26You saw that there's also solar rays on the space station.
10:29If we start putting any forces into the space station,
10:32it's going to make those solar rays bounce around a little bit.
10:35So to prevent that, the machines bounce around a little bit, move around a little bit,
10:40and that way we don't put any forces onto the structure of the spacecraft out to the solar rays.
10:47All right, a little farther on.
10:48Come on.
10:56I'm here with my two buddies in the airlock.
11:00These are two spacesuits that are ready, primed up to go outside,
11:05as we call it, to go do a spacewalk in case we have to do anything outside.
11:09Some of the things we do outside are just like inside, repairs.
11:12We have a lot of electrical boxes and machinery and solar rays, in fact, that I talked about earlier,
11:19that are outside, and sometimes they don't work quite right.
11:23Remember, space is really cold and really hot, and it's also the vacuum of space with no pressure.
11:29And so some of the equipment doesn't work well all the time.
11:32So we might have to go out and do a spacewalk.
11:35Right behind me is actually the hatch that you go out into space.
11:39And right now we have it filled up with a couple other spacesuits
11:42because we've got four of them up here and some of our tools.
11:46But right behind here is the hatch in which you actually go right outside into the vacuum of space.
11:52The spacesuit is pretty big, as you can see.
11:54It's like being a football player.
11:57Part of the reason it's so big and bulky is because of this backside, this backpack.
12:02It's like going on a hike with a backpack, but the backpack and the suit weighs about 300 pounds.
12:07Luckily, in space, nothing really weighs anything, so you don't feel that it's so heavy.
12:12But we need to have such a big suit because that guy back there is essentially the heart of the spacecraft.
12:20I call this actually a spacecraft.
12:22It has all the oxygen for you.
12:24It has all the carbon dioxide removal system for you.
12:27It also has a heating and cooling system to make sure to regulate our body temperatures while we're outside.
12:33It also has a computer, so it tells you on a display here if there's anything that's going wrong with the suit,
12:40if we're running out of oxygen, if we have too much carbon dioxide, or any type of electrical problem.
12:46So it's a pretty awesome little spacecraft.
12:49I actually got to go out, use my spacecraft, a little spacecraft, a couple times, and it worked like a charm.
12:55Lucky that it works very nice.
13:00You might want to see what the helmet looks like.
13:02It's pretty cool, too.
13:04We don't usually go out like this, so you usually can see when the helmet's open.
13:09So you can see what it looks like inside.
13:13Somebody's little head would be inside of here.
13:16You can turn your head all the way around while you're inside of there, but the helmet stays still,
13:21so that determines how far you can see.
13:26It's usually pretty sunny out there, so we have to wear our sunglasses,
13:30and this is our sunglasses right here, which make you look pretty cool.
13:42It's like a glass-bottom boat.
13:45This is the cupola. It sticks down below the space station.
13:51It's one of those places you find yourself hanging out in all the time,
13:55because all you want to do is look back at our planet.
13:57I think some questions I had were about, what do you do in your free time?
14:00And you can't help but want to just come to the cupola and look outside as much as you can.
14:07And a lot of folks, I play this game with myself about where we're flying over the Earth.
14:13I try to come in here and just guess.
14:16After being here for a little while, you can sort of figure it out.
14:19You can tell different cloud types over different continents.
14:22You can tell different soil types over different continents.
14:25So let's see. And then, of course, there's a lot of ocean,
14:28so usually we're over the ocean at first glance.
14:32I will tell you in just a moment where we are.
14:36There we go.
14:38So right now we are right over Africa.
14:40It's a little bit cloudy, as you can tell.
14:43So we're right over the continent of Africa.
14:47Hey, what's that?
14:50I think that's a Soyuz spacecraft.
14:52That's the spacecraft that's taken us home to planet Earth today.
14:56Oh, my gosh. We might have to go take a look at that.
15:00That's pretty cool.
15:02It's a little bit smaller than the rest of the spacecraft, the space station,
15:06so you'll see if we go there, it will be a little bit more crammed.
15:11You can look all the way back to the back of the spacecraft,
15:14which is where the Russian segment is,
15:16and then you can look all the way forward to the front of the spacecraft,
15:20where the Japanese laboratory, the European laboratory,
15:25and the American laboratory are,
15:29and then back to the solar arrays where we started this morning
15:33when we were looking out the Japanese window.
15:50So other questions that were here are,
15:54what would you recommend as a job,
15:57and to what type of person would want to be an astronaut?
16:01I think people who would like to explore.
16:03Of course, people who like math and science, that's what this is all about.
16:07We have people in the office who are doctors, teachers, veterinarians, engineers, pilots,
16:14so all sorts of people become astronauts,
16:17and I think you see it's just sort of cool,
16:19so I think people who like to do a little adventure and like to do cool stuff
16:22probably usually become astronauts.
16:25Hey, one thing I didn't show you, or I talked about but I didn't show you,
16:28was the exercise, another piece of exercise advice,
16:32which is the advanced resistive exercise,
16:35and that's what this is right here.
16:37This is ARED, and you can probably see this bar.
16:43Let me just do a little bit of maneuvering here.
16:46Let me just do a little bit of maneuvering here.
16:48Stand by.
16:49You have to set it up just like at any other gym.
17:01Hold on.
17:05I'll show you how this works.
17:08So you can see you can change your attitude just by going from one module to the next,
17:14going up from the cupola down here.
17:17This is what we call the ARED,
17:20and with this you can lift weights based on vacuum in these cylinders
17:29just like you do at home at a gym.
17:32For example, if I wanted to do a squat, I could do it like this.
17:36Oops.
17:37I'm going to need some weight on this thing.
17:40I'm not lifting with anything, so it's too easy.
17:46One of the cool things you can do, you can do things that you can't do at home.
17:50For example, single leg squats with just one leg
17:53because the other leg, you won't fall over.
17:56So all sorts of stuff.
17:58You won't fall over.
18:01So all sorts of stuff.
18:02You can also do bench press.
18:04We have a bench that we could add on here,
18:06so you can work on your beach muscles.
18:18Hey, Aki, what are you doing down there?
18:21Trashing things.
18:23This is one of the cool things about space, too.
18:26It sort of looks like there's a big old hole here,
18:29but you don't even think twice about it.
18:31You can just jump over the hole,
18:33or if you want, you can go jump into the hole.
18:36I'm coming down.
18:47Then you can come right back up again like Superman.
18:57We're lucky we have a really cool big space station that you can fly around in.
19:01That's actually called the PMM.
19:04You might have saw it out the window.
19:05It's a big silver canister.
19:07What's really great about that is it's essentially our closet
19:10in our pantry or whatever you want to call it.
19:13We have extra food down there.
19:15We have extra clothes.
19:16We actually throw the trash out down there.
19:19So it's nice and organized,
19:20and we have all of our stuff that we need
19:23while we're working in all these other modules
19:25all stowed in this location down here.
19:28It's a lot of fun to play in.
19:30We're going into the Russian segment.
19:32Be ready.
19:33You don't need a passport either.
19:45It goes a lot farther back than this.
19:48We'll go take a trip and say hello to the boys down there in just a minute.
19:52Let's do that first, actually,
19:53and then we'll go down to the Soyuz at the very end.
19:55This is Yevgeny.
20:00Doing a little tour.
20:07This is the FGB, and what's cool about this module,
20:10it is actually the very first piece of the space station that came up in 1998.
20:15The space station has been around for about now, man, for 12 years,
20:20but it's been up in space for about 14 years.
20:23And this was the very first.
20:25It is like the Russian's PMM.
20:27It has a lot of storage, as you can see.
20:43Можно?
20:44Снимаем.
20:46Чуть-чуть.
20:51So here we are in the heart of the space station, really.
20:54This is the service module.
20:57This is the central post.
20:59In case we had any problems, I know a couple of the questions were about
21:02what type of things do you have to worry about.
21:04And some of the things we have to worry about in space are fire.
21:07If we had a fire, if we had a depressurization,
21:09like we were hit by a micrometeorite and it made a hole,
21:12or if we had some type of toxic atmosphere.
21:15We use ammonia for our radiator,
21:17so there is a possibility that ammonia could come into the vehicle,
21:21and then it would be bad for all of us.
21:23If we have any of those problems, we come right here,
21:26which we call the central post.
21:27It is the main heart of the space station.
21:30It was also the first computers that came up here that ran the space station.
21:35So behind this wall right here are these main computers.
21:39So we gather here as a group of three or six
21:42and then figure out how we're going to either fight the fire,
21:45patch the hole, or solve the toxic spill.
21:49And what's cool about this module, of course, is the central post.
21:53It also has great windows right down toward Earth.
21:58It has controls to fly in visiting spacecraft
22:03if they need some assistance right here.
22:06It has Russian computers as well as American computers
22:09to help us control anything we need to on the space station.
22:14It's a couple of our crewmates back there,
22:16Oleg Novitskiy on the right and Yuri Malenchenko on the left.
22:22And there's also a second bathroom here, which is really cool
22:25because six of us going to one bathroom is really tough.
22:29And so there's one bathroom here
22:30and one bathroom on the other side where I showed you.
22:33And you can probably see on the wall behind Oleg and Yuri
22:37some of the heroes of the space program,
22:41Sergei Korolev, who was a chief designer of putting men into space,
22:47and, of course, on the right-hand side, Yuri Gagarin,
22:50the first man to go into space.
22:53So it just reminds us of our roots.
22:59Yuri, what are you doing?
23:00What are you doing?
23:02Making coffee.
23:07Black coffee.
23:11Looks good.
23:16Okay.
23:20We're going to check out our Soyuz real quick.
23:23Make sure it's ready to go.
23:26All right, back to the Soyuz.
23:37I'm going to stop here just for a quick second.
23:39You can see on the Russian spacecraft,
23:41there's also other modules that stick out down and above.
23:47Right here is, let's see, I'm trying to be oriented.
23:54That's a place where we do spacewalks from for the Russian side.
23:59There's Russian spacesuits in here
24:01and also a visiting vehicle which brought fruits and vegetables
24:05and becomes a trash container when we undock.
24:08Up on this side is also a future place where they're going to do spacewalks from
24:12and connected to it is Kevin's, Oleg's, and Yevgeny's Soyuz spacecraft.
24:21And now let's go see ours.
24:24Sorry.
24:26No problem.
24:27It's a traffic jam.
24:51Slow down.
25:10It's a little tricky getting in here.
25:18This is the docking probe right here, this big thing.
25:20This helps us connect to the spacecraft.
25:23This probe actually sticks into this cone, and that's how the spacecraft,
25:30our Soyuz becomes connected to the ISS initially.
25:34That is then replaced by clamps, which are around here,
25:40that will allow the two spacecraft to be stuck together.
25:43And you can remove the probe in the cone.
26:00Are you okay?
26:01All right, so here we are in the Soyuz.
26:03This is what we call the veto, the living compartment,
26:06vitovoi otsek in Russian.
26:08It also has a little bathroom.
26:10It's not as good as the other bathrooms.
26:12So we try not to use it too much.
26:14It has drinking water in it if we need something to drink.
26:17And then, of course, it's filled up with a lot of cargo for us,
26:22for us bringing up and also bringing back down.
26:26It has a second purpose when it comes back to Earth.
26:30It serves as a garbage container.
26:33During the descent, we'll get rid of this area right here,
26:37and everything that's in it will just burn up as it's coming into the atmosphere.
26:41And that way we can get rid of a little bit of trash.
26:44But the main area where we were on launch and where we are going to be on descent
26:48is down here because we're not part of the trash.
26:50So we're in a safe place.
26:52So we're in the descent module, SA.
26:58It's a little small, but you can get in.
27:15Not sure how well you can see in here.
27:18Hold on for a second.
27:20I'm going to turn it up this way just so you can see the hatch,
27:23and you can see Kevin.
27:25It's a little bit small, but we'll come in and show you around.
27:32You coming in?
27:33Probably not.
27:34Okay.
27:42Got to move a couple things.
27:43We were just starting to get ready.
27:44We were preparing a couple days ago for our ride home.
27:49It's a little bit squishy, but everybody asks,
27:52how do you sit in the Soyuz?
27:54And you sort of sit in your seat like this.
27:56The seat is molded to your body,
27:58and so you can just sort of squish in here and be pretty relaxed.
28:02Everybody has a handmade seat for them.
28:06And then, of course, there's a control panel,
28:08and that's where we do most of our actions and work right here.
28:13There's hand controllers, which you can fly the vehicle with,
28:16and there's a stick right here primarily used for communications
28:20when we're trying to talk to the ground.
28:22So three of us fit in here.
28:24Like I said, it's a little squishy,
28:26but somehow it seems like we all managed to get in here and fit pretty well,
28:31and it's a pretty safe ride home.
28:33You're probably wondering what's all this junk behind us.
28:36Well, it's all of our parachute, first of all,
28:38and then it's all of our survival gear,
28:40just in case we end up landing in some strange place on the planet
28:44and nobody's there to rescue us right away.
28:46We have all sorts of survival gear with us, keeping us safe in here.
28:50So they've pretty much thought of everything,
28:52and we'll be home on the planet within the next 12 hours.
28:56Pretty shocking.