Ah!
Oh no!
Oh, this is stressful.
Oh, hey. That's me, tumbling through space.
Today, I've convinced NASA to show me
how astronauts learn to do their jobs before going to space.
And that means doing a lot of simulations
to learn the basics and also to prepare
for the worst-case scenarios.
We're here at the Systems Engineering Simulator facility.
It's basically fancy talk for,
"We're going to drive some spaceships!"
Right now, astronauts going to space
pretty much have one place to go:
the International Space Station.
NASA wants to go into deep space
and potentially Mars, though.
And astronauts are going to need a way to get around fast
when they're on the surface of another planet.
Best way to do that?
A monster rover.
I'm in a rover right now — or, at least, part of a rover.
It's a simulation used so that crew members
can test out what it'll be like
to ride around on the surfaces of different planets.
Since NASA wants to go to Mars,
we are in Jezero Crater on Mars right now,
which they think was a lake bed at one time,
so, of course, it's somewhere we're interested in
exploring further in the future.
And so you have your hand controller there.
That is going to control driving,
so that's both acceleration and steering for the rover.
Now this isn't like your normal car.
We have way more wheels here, right?
That's right.
So how many wheels do we have on this?
You have 12 wheels total.
Okay. So six sets of two.
The 12 wheels can move 360 degrees.
That means the rover is capable
of basically moving in any direction:
forward, back, sideways, even spin around in a circle.
It takes a while for the wheels to adjust, though.
So it felt kind of slow.
You also have to keep in mind
that we have a third of Earth's gravity here
so it's going to drive a little squirrelly sometimes,
a little more bouncy, and, you know.
Gotcha, gotcha. It seems pretty straight-forward.
Ooo!
If I wanted to move forward, I just push forward.
And then I run into this thing.
The Mars Ascent Vehicle, yeah.
I've just run in. I've destroyed billions of dollars
worth of hardware. So now we can't leave.
We're stuck on Mars forever now.
(both laugh)
Driving in the nice, comfy rover is fun and all,
but it's not that immersive of an experience.
You're kind of just sitting still, moving a joystick.
Plus, it's not really practical right now
since astronauts won't be going to Mars for many years.
But something that is a big part
of astronaut training these days is spacewalks.
This is the Neutral Buoyancy Lab.
Being underwater is the closest thing we have
on Earth to re-creating the sensation of zero-g.
That giant structure you see inside
is an actual replica of the International Space Station.
For testing, astronauts have to suit up
outside the pool with a lot of help
and then get slowly lowered in.
Unfortunately, I won't be going
in the pool today, but we have some tech
that might supplement for the time being.
This is Johnson Space Center's Virtual Reality Lab.
It's where NASA trains astronauts
to learn how to do their spacewalks.
First step: learning how to maneuver outside the station.
I have to replace a battery.
One of the things you can do here with this model,
since you're in VR, you can actually figure out
what it's going to take to get from the airlock
or from your current work site out to a new work site.
What you're going to do is we're going to start you out
here on the truss. You're right around S0,
which is one of the truss segments.
Turns out, replacing a battery in space is way harder
than changing out the batteries in your remote.
It's a two-person job, with one astronaut pulling out
the old battery and the other handing over a new unit.
Sounds easy, right?
Piece of cake.
VR is great at showing you exactly
where everything is going to be out there
and whether you have a good enough wingspan.
Got it.
Oh, I'm attached. Okay, now you can see
you are climbing on the handrail.
Oh, wow.
Okay, so I want to go. There's my destination.
I see it. Yeah, look off to your right.
It's bright yellow.
Hey, you're good at this.
I think they're testing for a new astronaut class coming in.
You should just go ahead and apply.
I'm clearly the front-runner now.
All right, I'm here.
Is that it?
That's it for now.
But what would happen if your spacewalk didn't go smoothly?
Astronauts are always tethered to the ISS during spacewalks,
but NASA always plans for the remote possibility
of someone getting disconnected.
Well, I was going to experience that terrifying scenario
by getting knocked off the station.
And then I had to get back before,
you know, I burned up in the atmosphere.
When they go outside, in case they ever become separated
from the space station, so they don't float off,
which would be bad, they go out with a safety device
that's basically a jet backpack.
It's called SAFER.
Aptly named.
NASA thinks of SAFER as a life jacket in space.
It's worn like a backpack with jet thrusters
that are steered by a hand controller.
So far, SAFER has never been needed
for an actual emergency.
And that's good because this is a pretty dangerous scenario,
and you don't have a lot of time to get back.
What about, how much fuel
do you have before you run out?
Approximately five to 10 minutes’ worth of fuel,
depending on how aggressive you are
with your choices. So it's a you're racing
against the clock kind of thing?
Yes. Yeah.
You can't just take your time out there.
You need to get back.
If you're out there for more than, say,
15 minutes, it gets very unlikely you're going to rescue.
So, there I am, that tiny astronaut
hanging out at the Quest Joint Airlock.
Oh no!
And there I am, getting farther and farther from safety.
Oh, this is stressful.
Okay, we're going to make you wait
just a little bit now before we power up the unit.
They leave you spinning for a little bit
because you wouldn't be able
to get your bearings right away.
You've gotta slow yourself down
and get yourself under control.
I think I'd also be screaming.
And now, you would have the hand control
out, and you would power it on.
Am I supposed to—
And now it's going to bring you to a—
It's going to cancel out your rotations.
Okay.
You'll see yourself coming to a stop.
All right.
So now I need to...
Look around and find station.
The station is definitely to my left.
Okay, so yaw to your left.
Okay, you want to pitch down just a little bit.
You see that round,
horseshoe-shaped thing? Yeah.
That is the airlock.
So you want to point right back at that spot.
Now that I'm facing
the station, it's time to switch modes.
Now, you want to go over to translation mode.
That means I can move forward and back
or left and right in a straight line.
And now, start moving toward it.
Okay, here we go.
I think we might have changed the game.
It's a slow process, it seems.
Again, you don't want to go fast.
Am I going too fast?
No, you're not going too fast.
In space, a little bit of thrust goes a long way.
All you need is just a slight push
to send you going in the right direction.
Again, the translations are very slow.
Okay, but George Clooney moved so much faster.
Just reach out. Help me!
And if you can grab structure, you're saved.
And done. Now I'm a part
of the space station. You are there.
And that was the easiest-case scenario.
Other simulations have astronauts moving away
from the station four times faster than that.
And at night.
Yes, right, and at night.
Would I have actually made it?
Oh, four and a half. Four and a half minutes.
Okay, so I'm the speed demon. There you go. You were good.
Yeah, okay.
Clearly, I'm a spacewalk master.
But there are still a whole ton of things
astronauts have to do that I haven't trained for.
Like working the robotic arm
or doing lab experiments in zero gravity.
In fact, it's a two-year training process
before you can even be assigned to a mission.
These simulations are just the tip of the iceberg.
We would have had you climb further,
but we weren't expecting you to do very well at it.
All right!
We didn't want to give you too much of challenge.
And what was it that you underestimated about me?
People have a lot of problems with that.
A lot of problems. (Loren laughs)