Original subtitles

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.

Thank you, thank you.

This is Mission Control for here at the Royal Institution for the next 60

minutes. And we're getting live information and pictures from the space

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

on that screen sunrise as the astronauts themselves see it.

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

And it's brief because it's brought about by the motion of the space station

it hurtles around the Earth at 17 ,500 miles an hour. And that speed alone

it dangerous.

Before you even consider what this really is, this is a machine inside

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

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 on board 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

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, but it smells

almost metallic and also almost chemically, but not in a bad, not in a

way. We'll be hearing more from Tim later, but right now I've come up to

or at least what counts as space here at the Royal Institution. So I'm going to

give a wave back down to planet Earth.

Good to see you all so well down there.

This is our replica of the International Space Station. It is 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

in space.

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

screen 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 going

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.

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

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

But here on the International Space Station, we have a number of modules

whole range of different scientific experiments are being conducted.

In fact, over the six months of my mission, about 265 experiments are going

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 him.

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

So that is 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

they were.

Now, if you go from the surface of the Earth... into space you're only

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 percent of what it is here on earth so why 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

I'm going to kill myself.

Okay. Whoa.

All right. What is weight?

Weight is just the reaction of the ground against our bodies as we stand on

Right now, I weigh something because 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 for 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

this that's why this is called a parabolic flight and now you're floating

inside and Now you're on your way down, and this is really incredible when

you're inside And it's about to come down to the bottom of its dive there is

screaming down at 45 degrees and as it pulls out You don't get back to your

normal weight You go to twice your weight for a brief second as it pulls

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

train in it will fondly call it the vomit comet.

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

So there's my friend, Thundeeb Dhillon, who is an intrepid mountaineer. He's

terrible on a flying carpet. Look, can you see him there?

Dreadful. Probably thought he'd give it a go. Look, he's fallen off.

Terrible.

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

weightlessness. That plane's falling.

Now, weightlessness makes things pretty strange.

And to show you how strange, I am going to need three...

Special volunteers.

Oh, okay. I think you come on down.

Okay, go on. We'll help you. And I'm going to go right up to the top here.

think I am going to take you. There you go. There you go. All right. Round of

applause for our volunteers.

Okay. So, just face front. Now, your name is?

James. James. And your name is? Alex.

Alex. And your name is? Rosella. Rosella.

Okay.

So, James, Alex, and Rosella.

So, Alex, let's start lifting that weight. And you come and stand here next

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.

Okay.

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, okay?

So there you go. All right, so.

Now, let's see what happens if you do these things on the Vomit Comet.

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

It's much easier to... Oh, there's a bit of an awkward moment here when I lose

the weight, and gravity's coming back.

Oh, dear.

So, it is...

It is much easier to lift weight and weightlessly. Are you getting tired yet?

All right, I'll let you off. So, because the weight doesn't weigh anything

anymore, 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.

So James and I are going to carry on with ping pong so now I'm rubbish at

pong James is much better than me, but It gets much trickier when you take

gravity away, so let's have a look at that

Now

has having quite a lot of ping -pong balls for this

because I kept losing them and you keep losing them because 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... I have no idea.

Okay?

So, the ball doesn't behave like this. The laws of physics are the same, but

physics of your situation have changed, so everything is more difficult. Alex,

should we have a quick game?

Yeah?

Now,

how are you getting on with eating that tea?

Not very well. Not very well, so it's my fault, because 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 that. Okay, let's have a look.

This is 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.

That deserves a round of applause. I ate some tea.

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 friends and colleague, twice -blown -in -space former astronaut

Parney.

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

mine. Have a seat, I'm going to hook you up here. Alright, so this is my life

support machine. I'm going to plug you in here. And we'll have a look at you in

a minute and make sure you're alright.

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. It's about 200

times greater pressure inside that bottle than there is outside, so there's

explosive risk here.

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

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.

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?

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 the 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 theater, so they put this

on the roof all day. They charge this battery.

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

electrode, which is passing current through the water, splitting hydrogen

the oxygen.

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

hydrogen and oxygen. And on space stations, they vent the hydrogen

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 a bit of life support

here. Yeah, very good. Okay, all right. 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 that he's monitoring his vital signs here.

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, 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

eventually get drowsy, become unconscious, and later you die. So you

to do any of that.

So what you do is you try and re -breathe your own gas. Now this circuit

doing exactly that for Dan. He's breathing out through this limb of the

He's breathing in.

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

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

his own air. I can add just tiny bits of oxygen and keep him topped up. 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, because I've taken out the thing that absorbs your carbon dioxide, Dan.

And it's going to keep going up. Now, Dan might start to feel a little bit

he's short of breath, because 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

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. And

we should see that number fall again.

Okay, so just watch that number. So it was six.

And it happens instantly. Every time he takes a breath, it removes the carbon

dioxide.

Hey, yeah, it does work eventually. I wouldn't kill my friend on television.

And we're going to see it dropping now. And that's exactly how space instruments

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

right. Thank you very much, Dan, Sally. Thank you.

Now, Dan, I'm going to let you get back to your seats, and I will see you later,

I hope. Great. This is just like a spacesuit. It works just like a

It's awesome.

Your spacesuit doesn't look as big as mine. No, it's smaller.

All right. I'll see you later, Dan. Cheers.

So I've told you how you get oxygen up the 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

dioxide never gets to the scrubber. Now, John is doing a bit of chemistry here

with some pretty simple reactions.

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?

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

Caitlin. Caitlin. Caitlin. Okay.

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

So, John is going to do something here. Can you see him pouring that stuff into

that beaker?

You can?

I can't see him pouring anything into that beaker.

And can you see what's in that beaker?

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

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.

You sure you're done pouring, John? Yeah.

Okay, cool.

So, Caitlin, pick up that beaker just gently and pour it on those candles all

the way across, all the way, all the way. Keep going, keep going, keep going,

keep going. Yes!

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.

carbon dioxide doesn't fit 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 is why you could put it out, but why the carbon dioxide isn't

there anymore. Caitlin, thank you so much. Take your seat.

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 drafts.

So you cannot get your air, your exhaled air, to the scrubbers unless you have

an artificial draft.

On space station, the draft, like everything else upon which you depend

life, The draughts are our perpetual.

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.

Now, when we first started sending people into space, we started to think,

what's going to happen to them? And almost immediately we realized that

muscles would waste. Now, anyone who's even looked at a gym... knows that if

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

she doesn't look like this because she's gone into space. She's here to explain

the effect of spaceflight on bones.

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

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

bones the bones that bear the most weight are here this is the calcaneum

heel, here, the neck of your femur, and here in your lower

back. I'm going to spin Juliet around.

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 the 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, 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

exactly what we've done.

So this is a model of bone.

This is that tiny speck from here, from the neck of the femur, blown up maybe

four, five hundred times, to give you an idea of the structure.

Now, you might find yourself a bit surprised to see that it's full of

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 this structure depends...

on the way that this network of bone is laid down, but also on how much bone

we have in it.

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

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

Let's see.

Let's have you.

Come and stand here.

What's your name?

Luca.

Luca, when astronauts go into space, their bones waste, at least their heels

the neck of their femur and their lower back, waste at about a rate of 1 to 2 %

per month.

Now, what we've done is we've taken this model of the bone and we've simulated

what would happen if we put it in space.

And if we put that bone in space, Luca, it would have wasted and it would have

lost some of its density. It's the same structure. It's exactly the same

structure. But it's wasted because maybe this person has a disease or they've

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.

So bone is remarkably strong for the amount of material that's in it. And

is normal bone.

And how much do you weigh, Luca?

40 to 50 kilos.

40 or 50 kilos. All right.

Let's see what this is like. So will you very gently climb up on there?

All right, and stand on that.

Now, this model of bone is made of plaster. It was printed by a 3D printer.

So let's see how strong it is. Okay, ready, steady, go.

All right, so that's pretty good. So let's take you down, Luca.

So let's come back down, so 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 or 15 % of the density in that bone, you don't just

get a 10 or 15 % reduction in its strength, it becomes incredibly weak.

Luca, 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.

Okay.

And let's have a quick countdown, so we'll get a countdown for this one.

Three, two, one, go.

Ooh.

Oh, okay, Luca, down you get.

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

So that is what happens to you 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've

become as weak as this. So that's another problem. Thank you very much,

Thank you.

So that's muscle and bone, and that's what happens to them when you unload

and you stop them having to deal with weight.

In the end, all your systems are affected. And that same thing that pulls

fluid out of your head and pushes it into your legs on Earth, that is

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 have a

look at how he's getting on on Space Station.

My head feels a little bit full all the all the fluid in my body has shifted up

into kind of this central area And so it's almost a little bit of a stuffy

feeling as well as if you've got a bit of a blocked up nose And so let's have a

look at a picture of him now on the right and him just before flight on the

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 is because the fluid is 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 to

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've got a really puffy face.

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

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 A -RED. This is like a machine that looks like a

weightlifting machine that they've worked out on the space station.

And it allows them to do some exercise. Now, 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 to three hours of exercise a day

to maintain the standard of health that you do to maintain their muscles and

their bones and to a degree their heart as well.

Otherwise they'll just waste away and they'll have real, real trouble when

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 or 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 a

treadmill, whereas most of his colleagues will run about 26 miles, and

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're used to having mobile devices these days that know where they are.

one has a quite lovely app on it that knows where it is. So wherever I turn

app, the device knows where it is. And that's because it's got a really

impressive bit of sensory equipment in it 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

much more sensitive.

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

outer ear.

There's the middle ear down here that does most of your hearing or

amplification. And then here you have the semicircular canal

in which you have cells that do exactly what that switch does.

sensing acceleration as you shift around.

So these semi -circular canals that are orientated at right angles sense your

rotational acceleration as you spin around.

And there's a small swelling just below them that contains two other

accelerometers, and they detect acceleration in the linear plane, so

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 kind of calibrate itself. When you're in

space, that all changes.

If you're 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's going on here. There is no load

on. And your eyes say, calm down. You're in a spaceship.

It's fine.

And somehow that's okay. But it's still a bit funny. You feel a bit wobbly up

there.

Astronauts... If you go to space for the first time, feel sick or are sick for

about the first 48 to 72 hours, Dan, the first time you went to 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 that first couple of days, I just didn't

feel very good at all.

Were you sick in space?

I always had an airtight bag with me, but I never had to use it.

Okay, or I believe you. Now, to show you just how disorientating it is, if your

eyes tell you something that your ear isn't feeling, I'm going to need a

volunteer who is very good on fairground rides. Let's have you.

Thank you.

Come and stand here.

What's your name?

Brin, Brin, Brin, come and have some astronaut training with me. Now, this is

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

use quite a bit, yeah.

The Russians use it.

Did they ever put you on one?

No, I never got to ride one. Okay, okay, all right, well, let's not spoil the

surprise. So, Brin, this is, if you want to be an astronaut, do you want to be

an astronaut?

Yeah. Yeah? Okay, all right.

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

So I'm going to ask you to close your eyes, put your left ear on your left

shoulder. That's brilliant, okay?

Don't do anything until I say three, two, one, up, and then we'll see how we

And I'm going to need some blockers in. Okay, here we go, Bryn. Ready? So right

now, I am telling Bryn's inner ear that his head is rotating in a plane that's

not really rotating because his ear's over to the side, but it's not sure

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 am going to stop him.

Three, two, one, up.

You all right?

Oh, yeah.

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

Now, Bryn, just describe to me what that was like. That wasn't just dizziness,

was it?

Uh, that was... Yeah.

And what did you experience? Did you feel like you were tumbling?

Sort of like you're in a hurricane.

Like you're in a hurricane. Yeah.

I've never been in a hurricane.

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. Yeah, sure. All right, we'll help you back to your chair. You might need

this. This is our very own and donated to us by Dantani space sick bag.

It's great because, you know, you get your sick in there and then you can seal

it all up with 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.

So that's what happens to you on the space station, and we're just going to

some video from the space station to 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

your ears are saying.

as opposed to your eyes. Your vestibular system really 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's best not to move your head from side to side too much, like that,

up and down, but instead to 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

how you show off in space. This is how you show off in space.

That's Scott Kelly, who's been on board for months now, and he can really throw

himself around.

So, fantastic to see that.

But despite all of that, International Space Station is still a relatively safe

place to be so long as you stay inside it. The problems come when you want to

for a walk. Now, I know someone who has gone for a walk outside Space Station,

and he's right here with us in the audience. I'm going to ask Dan Tanney to

me back here. Dan.

Now, Dan.

I understand that when you go for a walk, you need to dress properly, right?

you need a spacesuit because you've got to protect yourself from the environment

and space, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

And how much is your spacesuit?

I don't know how much the whole thing is altogether. I do know that one glove

that we wear, one glove, it's about a million bucks.

A million dollars? Yeah, for each glove. We do wear two. Two million dollars for

a pair of gloves? Yeah, and we bring three sets just in case, so a backup set

and a backup to the backup.

So the whole suit, you know. Big million dollars for the glove?

Maybe $30 million, $50 million for the whole suit.

I don't have to buy it, but, you know.

Dan, I think your tailor is taking you for a ride. I think we here at the R .I.

can build a better space suit, and for that, show you how, I think. I'm going

need a volunteer. Who would like to volunteer?

Okay, let's have you.

Now, what's your name? Molly. Molly.

Okay, 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 is going to be much better than Dan's 50

million spacesuit. Dan, just tell me what we need here to get Molly ready for

space. Probably the most important thing to get pressure. You need something

that holds pressure. Something that holds pressure. A pressure garment. Oh,

there we go. This holds some pressure around you, Molly. All right, what else

we need, Dan? You need to protect yourself from the environment, the

environment. Thermal environment, okay. So we need something that reflects the

heat. Back into you in golden space. Oh, you know what?

But your body gets hot. You need to cool the body down. You need a cooling

garment. Okay, all right, Molly. All right, good.

Okay, you need a cooling garment. What else do I need? Those expensive gloves

and a helmet. Those expensive gloves and a helmet. You need to be able to pee

and work. I'm going to put those in there, Molly. All right, all right.

Okay. And a helmet, Molly. We're going to get this helmet. You know what? We're

in that thing for like eight hours or ten hours.

We wear a nappy. Oh, we need a nappy. Nappy. Okay, all right. Yeah, there you

go. Okay, we'll just put that in the top with everything else. All right.

And a portable life support system. Oh, you need oxygen, of course, yeah. Okay,

all right.

So that's brilliant.

And what on earth is that? That is a bit of Kevlar, isn't it? Oh, well, that's

very important. A bulletproof vest.

You need to protect yourself from micrometeorite.

Okay, well, let's stick it on. All right. All right, how are you feeling,

Very, very covered in everything.

Very, very covered in everything. Well, the real space suit weighs about 300

pounds. 300 pounds. This is quite light, actually. Yeah, it's a light one, yeah.

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

But I don't understand why...

You needed to have a bulletproof jacket in that seat.

Why did you need a bulletproof jacket? Well, you're going 17 ,000 miles an

and if you run into something going that fast, even a very tiny speck of maybe a

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

so you need some protection.

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

show you they really are, and to show you, I'm going to need a volunteer.

Here, why don't you come down?

And what's your name?

Viraj. Viraj, small objects traveling 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

you that this carrot can go through this.

Cardboard okay, which they've decided to put a picture of me on all right So

there are I want you to try and throw that carrot through that map that

ready give it your best shot No Let me try let me try

Dan It's quite it's quite therapeutic bit back to the other like But

we're not going to get it through. We need to move it a bit faster. Now, this

may look like some copper pipe in a bicycle pump, but it is an orbital

simulator. What we're going to do is we're going to 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

the power of the carrots here as we load it up.

The energy that we're using is kinetic energy. Kinetic energy, as you know, is

half times the mass times the velocity squared.

Definitely knew that, didn't you? 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, Faraj, you come around 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.

Now

look,

there is the hole in me.

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

home. I mean, it's not a joke. This stuff travelling fast enough will take

eyes out pretty easily.

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, very lucky here to have this space suit. Now, you have trained

on these spacesuits, and we're not allowed to touch them, so you can grab

gloves.

Tell me about this space suit, Dan, because this is an actual... This isn't

the space suit you launched into space in. This is a suit for a spacewalk,

right? For doing spacewalks. This is called an Orlan space suit. 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 this stuff

Now, this is a Russian suit. Some of this stuff's written in Russian, right?

of it's written in Russian, yeah.

But you have to learn Russian to be able to...

To walk in it, right? Yes, exactly right. And the spacesuit is its own

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'll regulate

temperature inside of you. And I don't speak any Russian, but this looks like

it's written backwards to me, this stuff around here. Why is that?

Well, it is because your eyes are up here and you're never going to see

on here. So we have a mirror.

that we have on our spacesuits. And so to see parts of your spacesuits, you use

the mirror. And just like the front of an ambulance or a fire truck that's

written backwards, this is written backwards so that when you look at it in

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

bright. And so you need the protection for your eyes, and you would get a...

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

that keeps you alive.

That's exactly right.

I just want to look around the back, because around the back here, I'm going

spin it around.

So this is a Russian suit. Now, I've tried to put on one of your American

spacewalkers. It's pretty hard. It's like a fiberglass T -shirt. You've got a

wriggle inside. I nearly dislocated my shoulder.

This is like a Russian suit. It's got a door. You climb straight in at the back.

It's very popular at the 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

suit all by yourself. It's a one -person donning suit.

What's your scariest moment on a spacewalk, Dan? Well, when we say

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

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, and I let go of

one, and I started floating a little bit and realized I didn't have it, and I

was able to quickly grab on, but that one second was a little terrifying for

Did you nearly fall off the space station? I almost lost the space

yeah. Wow, that's pretty exciting. 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

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, or maybe here

comes Ireland, and it's just unbelievable to have that experience.

Sounds incredible, and you've done that six times? Six spacewalks in my career

have been very important.

Dan, thank you so much for sharing that with us. It's been great to see you.

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.

And 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

-Zanfali. and Karen Clark, our paramedic.

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

as possible. What we like to think that we can bring some of the emergency

department and the intensive care department with us to deliver enhanced

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 the scene to deal with an

emergency. You're pretty proud of that kit.

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

to show it to us.

I want to introduce you to my very good friend, who is not only a doctor, he's

also an astronaut, flown in space twice, for one tour aboard the International

Space Station. I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Mark Brown.

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

of medical kit trump. See who's got the best medical kit. And there's two of

you, so I'm going to take the International Space Station medical kit.

right, so let's get it on. I'm looking forward to this. What is your

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 8.

Yep, 8 out of 10. You can give a general anaesthetic.

Okay.

Mike, Mike.

Helicopter, 8 out of 10 for anaesthetic capability. International Space Station.

So on the International Space Station, we would have only local anesthetic, 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

us a 2.

2 out of 10. I'd think a 2 out of 10.

They won that one.

All right. Okay, okay, okay.

Intensive care capability.

Helicopter, what is your intensive care capability?

Well, we have a ventilator. We have all the equipment to monitor somebody

who's... Being given a general anesthetic, we have the ability to give

transfusion and plasma for somebody who's lost blood.

So you can give a blood transfusion? We can.

So I think probably... So you've got drugs to support the heart as well?

so I'd probably say seven or eight for that as well. Intensive care capability,

seven or eight.

Don't disappoint me here, Mike. 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

of saline here But then when that's done, we're done. So I would probably

us about a two.

Two out of ten.

Yep.

Two nil.

Two nil. We've got one more category and I think we can take this category.

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

before I do, I'd like to explain to you that this is Mike Barra, current

astronaut, former NASA flight surgeon.

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

What is your surgical capability?

Well, in my humble opinion, I think our surgical capability is pretty good,

actually. So we can do a surgical airway.

and we also are able to perform emergency chest surgery, and that

-heart surgery where necessary.

So I think probably about six to seven.

Mike, this is awkward.

They can do chest surgery on a motorway. What is the International Space

Station's surgical capability?

So we can do a laceration repair, a pretty deep wound. We can do a chest

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 a 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, but I will advance us

three.

We locked Mike.

Okay, we're 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 sick bay up there. Why don't you have that? Right. So that's an

excellent question. And mostly it's because the patients that we have to

with are very different from what Marwa or Karen would have to deal with. So 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. And 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

And my colleague from Tensori Suffolk Bear Ambulance, Karen Amawa. Thank you

very much.

Thank you.

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

always better than cure.

And they're 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.

Now, that's the way that Tim, one way or another, is going to have to come home

at the end of his mission.

And 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 the atmosphere, it gets very hot.

Now, why does it get hot?

I used to think that it was because it hit the atmosphere and there was loads

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

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 of the way,

I am going to try and...

The piston didn't touch the cotton. It just compressed the air. The air got hot

enough to light the cotton. And you can start a fire like that. Actually, it's

quite 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.

Now, the way to defend against that for the Soyuz is to have a very clever type

of shielding called an ablative shield.

And 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 at about

1 ,000 degrees.

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

kiln's at. 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. I'm going to pick it up without any gloves.

All right.

Okay, so let's get that kiln open, Alex.

Why do you have gloves and I don't?

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

Okay. So 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.

So that is going to stay hot for hours. That's been baked for hours.

You can see that glowing red hot. Now, if I'm right about this, and its

properties. It rejects heat very quickly. So it calls from the outwards

furthest bits from the centre, the corners, so I should be able to pick it.

really actually don't want to do this.

I don't think I'm going to help, is it? Licking my fingers.

Oh my God.

Wow.

I am as amazed as you are, actually.

That only works because that is how this material is 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

still very hot, but it's losing that heat immediately.

And so even a couple of seconds out of the kiln and I can pick it up. And that

is how you survive re -entry. Thank you.

and we're going to finish as we started with sunset as it happens on the space

station 45 minutes after sunrise and that's what we're seeing here you can

the darkness spreading across the earth there's the soyuz on the right there

that very beautiful sunset 45 minutes after the sun rise and that brings us

end of this lecture we have found out how to live and work in space if we can

crack that so where else might we go next perhaps back to the Moon or onwards

Mars, perhaps more exotic destinations.

And we've just heard some exciting news.

There might be a spacewalk, an unexpected spacewalk happening in the

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.

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