NASA Astronaut Breaks Down Space Scenes From Film & TV | WIRED

you sit in the blind is engaged the override hi I'm Nicole stop nicole stott is a retired astronaut and here's me in space today I'm going to look at how astronauts are portrayed in Hollywood cracking helmet Total Recall it's trying to present this exaggerated dramatis sized kind of view of a helmet opening up in space thank you the helmet itself is really very durable there's you know there's parts on it that if you hit it hard enough you could crack them if you I mean really moved fast towards a you know like a sharp piece of metal or something we try our best to avoid any contact with anything with the helmets because they'll they can scratch easily too when we do spacewalks we're always talking about doing a glove check or a crew you know crew member check where you look each other over and make sure you don't see anything that looks like it might be a problem and we each you know about after every hour we look over our whole gloves to make sure we haven't got any tears or holes in them where all of your air goes you know spewing out to the deadly vacuum of space but overall the suits and the helmets are really very durable and have done a great job protecting us in space spacewalk and gravity I remember the first time seeing this scenes in gravity and just being so impressed by the visuals can't beat the view I mean just the movement and the sound of it was was so reminiscent of what I felt when I was outside and what I saw is doing up there appears to be doing some form of the Macarena there's definitely not as much chatter as what you are hearing we try very hard to keep it to you know what the tasks are about yes an area we might be playing music inside of the shuttle but that's not something you'll hear throughout all of the you know the comm that's going on the spacewalks themselves are all really choreographed down to probably five minute increments and maybe smaller depending on the task Houston will be letting us know how close we are on the time line and then we always have somebody inside the space ship to letting you know where to go next and what to do I go to assist dr. stone and removing the panel assistance appreciated the thing that stands out to most to me is that you'd never have George Clooney or any other crew member just kind of jetpacking around while the the spacewalk was going on a lot might still prefer my 67 Corvette the suits that we wear though do have jetpacks integrated into them but they're not that big unit that he was wearing never crossed my mind and they are meant to only be used in case of emergency if for some reason you do get separated from the shuttle or the space station and you're tumbling and you need to get back back to the shuttle that's that's when you would use those you never want to have to use this not one second now shut it down yeah that was frustrating to me when I watched that movie and she didn't just stop like put the tools down and just you know abort when they call for that abort you saw how Clooney's character immediately boom boom boom back to the station disconnecting talking to the ground about where all the crew members are how they're getting back in [Music] we absolutely train for these what you would think of as worst-case scenarios where you have to abort immediately any number of things could go wrong out there that would require you to immediately have to go back to your safe place inside of the station or the shuttle this situation where out of you know almost out of nowhere comes this massive field of debris from the missile strike has caused a chain reaction is really unlikely there are people on the ground that track you know single pieces of debris in space that are like the size of your hand or even smaller and somebody down on the ground would have seen that coming away before the call that they they were given in this movie we have to go go go spinning off like that I think it's probably one of the greatest fears of any space Walker he's did you copy this hasn't happened to anybody in real life on the shuttle or on the station but we do train for that as one of you know our emergency scenarios and we do that in the virtual reality simulator ludicrous speed in space balls [Music] I have seen that in a lot of films the stars that you see all of a sudden it becomes these lines and I think it's just to give you the feeling of going really super fast I would say that the you know the speed of the Space Shuttle is you know in the grand scheme of things a little bit ludicrous I mean it's 17,500 miles an hour which is about five miles a second you don't get the lights like streaming by you like that but you know you're going fast and you know of course we're orbiting the the earth for about 250 miles up we don't really have a like a gas pedal for you know accelerating or Chris increasing speed I guess you could make an equivalent we've got like this little handle that you know can cause the thrust to increase that look like what you would fly the robotic arm with we just push on it and it gives this little burst of thrust out of the back of the you know the thrusters of course launching you know that's kind of this controlled explosion happening below you so the crew really doesn't have a button or a throttle or a handle for that robotic arm on the ISS in life I used to play catcher but only in t-ball [Music] [Music] on the space station and then even on the the space shuttle before we had this robotic arm big white you know long cream looking kind of thing and we could move equipment around with it we could move whole big modules around with it we could even strap people to the end of it and move them around with it during a spacewalk in things what's different in this films and it's all agree we made a fuss and nos mistake I mean there's a number of things but in this scene though - you know that spacecraft is moving really fast the arm itself while it could I think physically be controlled to grab the the spacecraft moving in I think the way it was moving in the speed and the difference between what was going on with the station it probably would have just ripped the arm right off of the the space station yeah we do grab vehicles like this that are flying to the space station with cargo in them and I had the chance to do that one time with the Japanese cargo vehicle it was the first one that flew up and then we had to grab it with the arm and because most the time they dock automatically to the station so that was really fun I mean we that was the first time we used the arm and flew it in a totally different way probably as close to this as you could get but the vehicle flew up and just kind of hovered next to us I did like the way they moved through the station they show um floating and flying several times and that that felt very real to me that little metal rectangular thing that's a drink bag kind of like a big pre Sun bag or something that happens sometimes when you let go of something and don't they'll grow it down and the view through the window is really good I you know I don't know I in these movies I don't know how they do it make it look so real really look good astronaut training in first man con you might encounter in space challenge is to stabilize the Machine before you pass out first victim Armstrong like that first victim so in this scene you see Neil Armstrong in what was called the multi-axis trainer and this was used to train astronauts to get into all kinds of like disorienting configurations that might happen because you know in space there is no up or down and if you start you know these different rotations you might have to fly yourself out of it and you can see that he's he's having to complete a task while going through this really dynamic simulation if you work the math it follows that is absolutely what we would have to do as part of any astronaut training that is absolutely what you will feel like when you are going through something like this I will say though I'm thankful that these days we don't use the multi-axis trainer anymore we have different kinds of simulators like through virtual reality we can get thrown off the space station like during a spacewalk and spun around and then have to use little jet packs to get ourselves oriented just thinking about this lecture Neil Armstrong never actually used this trainer but it was used for other programs during that early space flight time and so it does represent what the astronauts would go through as part of their training now training montage from Armageddon the United States astronauts trained for years you have 12 days when you train in the big pool there's divers all around you safety divers divers that are helping you with the equipment all of it getting you in and out of the pool the underwater work looks just like we would do if we were training to do a spacewalk thankfully in space it's easier to move around in those suits and you just got to figure out how to get yourself stopped if you get moving too fast but the the reality of what's going on in that pool is just like I remember it the underwater training for one spacewalk I think I did seven or eight six-hour runs in the pool you have 12 days they couldn't do I don't think all of this training and testing in 12 days but I don't think they would need to for this kind of mission either for the movie I think what they're trying to do is just give them like familiarization with what things would feel like I love that they included the training in the teeth the t-38 Jets that's the airplanes we used and that we still use for astronaut training we do that because you want to get familiar with what it's like to work in a really complex system like a space shuttle would be the airplanes provide that you're in a real extreme environment you're doing very challenging things I mean they're flipping you're around you think we'll get hazard pay out of this it's almost like the multi-axis trainer where you're having to be a little bit disoriented and still you know work safely every movie where they have people flying in airplanes like this jets the mask is always off one of the first things you do when you strapped into the jet is put the mask on and start breathing the oxygen and that's one of the things that keeps you the safest in that airplane and so never would we be flying in these jets with the mask on we need you to train them down here you want to send these boys into space fine sure they'll make good astronauts they don't know jack about drilling there's kind of a futuristic possibility in this as we start to fly more in space we really are going to be looking at going to the people that have these trade skills to fly them in space as astronauts the United States government just has to save the world removing helmet in space mission to Mars yeah if you remove your helmet in space that's that's a really bad day and I think in this scene you know they are trying to give you the like the ultimate view of what it would look like sadly it would take a little bit more time in the vacuum of space all of the fluids in your body are gonna want to escape and they're gonna do that in a way that's like they're boiling off of you which is which is not probably a good feeling and then you will ultimately freeze like this but you'll suffocate before that ever happens docking a spacecraft interstellar [Music] it's necessary I love the way they they did this scene it's really an extreme example of you know of a docking scenario and an emergency situation like this this is no time for caution faced by black out you take the stick we do a lot of training where they're trying to put you in that extreme situation and to understand the capabilities of your own spacecraft and how you could manually fly and I just love that they spoke through it you ready and then visually they showed you how those two spaceships almost look like they weren't moving at all when they finally came together when in fact they were still really just like spinning like crazy come on baby so we use a lot of different thrusters on our spacecraft to move you know - you know thrust and move higher up into orbit or I think in this scene they use a term retro thrusters the retro thrusters which is one that would actually thrust in a direction that would cause you to slow down and kind of back in to orbit again or to drop down in orbit to go from high to low and again I like that they use that appropriately in this film I just really think they did a good job on this you know and and portraying the like the physical load that you would be feeling on your body while that's happening so when I talk about load like you know feeling the load you know when you accelerate us like this this feeling of weight on you and so you're loaded up with with G's and on the shuttle when we launched it was like 3 G's is what you would feel so it feels like 3 of you're sitting on top of you in this interstellar scene where there starts spinning as fast as that space station was you think about it you know some of those carnival rides that you're on when they spin you all of a sudden you feel like you're pinned back cuz there's this increased load on your body you know you see the one character is just really leaned over in her seat and ultimately passes out I think that's interesting because you've got McConaughey flying the spacecraft and I've always noticed this when you're the one flying you physically can overcome more than if you're the passenger you're the person that's kind of just in a benign position there and that doesn't mean that ultimately you might not pass how to if the load gets to be too much and you're not recovering properly but somehow you respond to it in a way that allows you get through more AI on spaceships and 2001 Space Odyssey all right hell I'll go in for the emergency airlock without your space helmet Dave we're going to find that bother difficult how I would argue with you anymore open the doors Dave this conversation can serve no purpose anymore goodbye right now I think the the current status of artificial intelligence or AI on our space missions is that we're not really saying we have AI what we do have is automated control of things and that's a great thing because then the crew isn't having to interact all the time to maintain the systems or ensure that everything is good that can happen automatically I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do our hope is that the AI whichever ones we do employ at some point are not set up that they could take control of our spaceship I'm sorry Dave I'm afraid I can't do that sharing oxygen and a spacesuit Rocket Man could we stay on this heading for another 20 minutes I see the pillow [Music] what I didn't do anything oh my god yeah not so accurate here they show the suit blowing up like that I think to just kind of give you a visual you know reference to what is going on inside it there's actually you know pretty good structure and that's in that suit but it's just not flexible in a way unless it was a huge amount of you know of pressure blasting off inside of the thing yeah I don't think we could produce that it would be a really bad day so we have primary life-support systems built into the suit that's where you're getting your normal oxygen from primary oxygen tank Lee we need to preserve his SOP solution there's a secondary tank that's pressurized with the oxygen that allows you to you know backfill if if you have a leak or are running out fast maybe fortunately we don't have alignment you can air lock event horizon [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so similar to mission to Mars this really is kind of an exaggerated presentation of how the body would react to being exposed to the vacuum of space on the space station right now we have an airlock module and it's the place that you go and you get all ready to go out on your spacewalk and it's a place that allows you to isolate from the main spacecraft where you still want to breathe regular air and you still want to you know live and survive and maintain a normal atmospheric pressure and the airlock gives you the capability to dump all of that pressure and equalize with the vacuum of space commander gets in and he's got him back inside and they close that outer hatch and it's like almost immediately they're opening the inner hatch and going inside there's a lot of things happening around it it takes about half an hour for in a normal re-entry for the airlock to repressurize there was a case of a guy who was doing a test like a spacesuit test and somehow got exposed to the you know to the vacuum to find out what happened to the other he reports that he felt boiling of his spit on his tongue and in the end he was fine I have no idea how long that was I mean it had to be quick because as soon as that started happening they'd be looking at how do we get back in there and get this guy out I'd like some answers doctor you have the potential of you know popping eardrums and and and hurting yourself by that pressure change so you want to bring that that change on slowly that so that your body you know can react to it in a good way self-destruct button in Star Trek 3 awaiting final code or one-minute countdown code zero zero zero [Music] destruct sequence is really there's nothing like this on board but the range safety guys do have this capability an Air Force team that's on the ground and they watch their monitoring whenever a spacecraft is launching they watch to make sure that it's maintaining control and so they have the capability of flipping this switch and terminating the flight computer destruct sequence one which would you know take the crew as well if there was the possibility of it coming back and you know causing harm to a greater population destruct sequence completed any it would be an explosion yeah so and they would do that in a way that it you know was as safe as possible in the air before you know the vehicle came back and impacted the land turn death into a fighting chance to live I think you learn about it right going into flight training you're learning about how the flight is controlled and managed and that's just you know that's one part of it what have I done what you had to do g-force training in Space Cowboys so we have the opportunity as shuttle crew members to go experience the centrifuge so this machine that kind of spins you around and simulates not just the g-forces that you'll feel you experience them like you would as you were launching so it takes you through the same trajectory that you would experience launching on the space shuttle and they mentioned it in the film it's it's three G's and you're on your back and it's coming through your chest which really is a lot easier to handle then you know in an airplane where you're doing aerobatic and pulling a lot of G's it's coming through your head and you're having to squish down like this I'm sure you people think you're putting on a great show but this is not a toy getting sucked into space and aliens on the space station we had three what we called three primary emergencies and it was fire toxic atmosphere like you know high concentration ammonia getting into the air and depressurization which was like a hole in your spaceship and you didn't even want a little hole because little holes mean the air is going out and if you can't find that hole and isolate it it means that you're gonna have to you know get in your spaceship and head home because you know all the air will be gone and you won't be able to breathe there anymore if you get a hole it's gonna rush out really quickly and so in doing so it'll pull things towards the hole so if the hole is big enough it can pull you right out with it same thing is true in an airplane when you're flying in a plane you'll hear about like depressurization or in movies you've seen like the door fly open and people get sucked out too and that happens in space as well another scene in gravity crying in space when you say your prayer for me or is it too late I mean I'd say one for myself but I've never traded my life [Music] yeah you can cry in space you can cry pretty much anywhere it's a little different in that you know you're you're floating you're in in microgravity and when you squirt out water it comes out and like little spheres this like equal loading all around it the tear just kind of coats your eye or builds up in like a little pool and you know in the duct of your eye there's nothing causing it to get pulled out of your eyes you know she was moving around a little bit so it could I mean if she had been crying enough and the tears had built up enough and you know squeezed your eye if if it separates from your eye or your body it will be like little you know balls of tears floating away conclusion yeah I hope you've enjoyed this kind of comparison between what goes on in the movies and what happens in real life as much as I have I am so thankful for the science fiction that we are presented with I think it gives us an opportunity to think about what our future could be like already we've seen so much sci-fi that's turned into SCI fact that I am really hopeful for what we'll see in the future and I hope that we can continue to compare over time what we're doing in real life and how we're imagining it in the sci-fi movies [Applause]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 2,975,226

Rating: 4.9330401 out of 5

Keywords: nasa, nasa astronaut, nicole stott, nicole stott interview, interview nicole stott, astronaut reviews, astronaut breaks down, space break down, nicole stott wired, nicole stott nasa, nasa astronaut breaks down, astronaut explains, astronaut explains space scenes, space scenes in movies, nasa astronaut wired, technique critique, technique critique wired, technique critique nasa astronaut, astronaut break down, nicole stott astronaut, wired

Id: p-YaTGA4kW0

Length: 26min 52sec (1612 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Beard_of_Gandalf]

Nice to see interstellar getting some praise for its authenticity.

[u/Lansan1ty]

I'm a bit sad they didn't comment on the Expanse. Fun video nonetheless.