coming up next on Jonathan Birds blue
world Jonathan goes to inner space at
NASA's neutral buoyancy lab where
astronauts are trained hi I'm Jonathan
bird and welcome to my world
Buhl world takes me on adventures all
over the planet today's adventure takes
me to the Johnson Space Center at NASA
in Houston Texas well not exactly
I'm standing on an underwater full-size
replica of the International Space
Station in a gigantic indoor swimming
pool here they trained astronauts to
work in zero-gravity by simulating these
conditions underwater outside just looks
like a huge warehouse
but inside is the neutral buoyancy
laboratory the NBL I arrived early in
the morning and meet Daniel sedae the
facility manager who has arranged our
visit hey Dan thank you I can't wait to
see this place we drag all our gear
inside and get our first glimpse of the
NBL this thing is huge a swimming pool
nearly the size of a football field as
we arrive the morning mission briefing
is just starting the entire team from
astronauts to support divers two
technicians are all given a thorough
run-through on the training exercises
for the day and cameraman Tim and I are
part of this meeting because they're
going to let us dive in the NBL today
with the astronauts
our morning starts with a quick checkup
all divers in the NBL must pass a
rigorous physical and a check-up before
the dive cameraman Tim and I are no
exception we pass our checkup and next
we meet up with Sara Williams the dive
training officer who gives us a dive
safety briefing the pool deck itself is
also a functioning working pool deck
what to do and what not to do in the NBL
so all divers need to comply with the
direction of the dive supervisor as I
said they are the supervisor on deck
please give them a heads-up when you're
getting ready to get in the water so
they know that they have someone to
account for just as we finish our
briefing the team is gathering on the
deck to begin preparations from putting
the astronauts in the water getting into
a spacesuit is no easy feat in fact it
might be easier in the zero gravity of
orbit but here on land it takes
assistance the astronauts wear liquid
cooled underwear to keep them from
overheating that's what these tubes are
for the torso of the suit is clamped to
a cage because it's too heavy to lift
because this spacesuit is specially
modified for underwater use and has a
lot of lead weight in it
climbing into the torso is a little
tricky it takes nearly an hour to suit
up the last thing to go on is the helmet
underwater a high oxygen blend of air
will be fed to the astronauts through
their umbilicals meanwhile the safety
divers are in the water getting ready
they wear double scuba tanks so they
have enough air to stay down as long as
necessary to complete the mission Tim
and I are getting ready to I can't wait
to see this enormous underwater facility
I descend into the clearest water I've
ever seen and it looks like an
underwater movie set
the pool is a staggering 40 feet deep
and everywhere I look our full-size
replica sections of the International
Space Station I take a few minutes to
explore the pool I can see from one end
to the other very clearly meaning that
the underwater visibility is over 200
feet I could spend a few hours just
swimming around down here it's like a
playground for divers with all sorts of
great structures to swim through for the
astronauts now the moment of truth
a crane lifts them into the pool wearing
300 pounds of spacesuit apiece
underwater the safety divers meet them
and carefully remove them from the
platform each astronaut is carefully
waited to be precisely neutrally buoyant
hey they don't call it the neutral
buoyancy lab for nothing
once weighted properly the astronauts
hover in the water as if floating in the
weightlessness of space since fins don't
work in space the astronauts don't get
to wear them here they must be moved
from task to task by the divers
the divers are also responsible for
keeping a careful eye on everything
happening each astronaut has four divers
assigned to him or her to our safety
divers another has a camera with a cable
going to the control room and there are
more cameras mounted all over the inside
of the pool - in the tests director room
overlooking the pool 21 monitors keep
the staff informed of everything that
happens below they oversee the safety of
the operation if anything were to go
wrong the divers can get the astronaut
to the surface in only seconds
in the test conductor room another team
is conducting the training run the test
conductor and team speak directly to the
astronauts through the communications
gear in their helmets but powerful
underwater speakers allow the divers to
hear everything that's being said even
if they can't talk back the point of all
this effort is to provide a learning
environment for astronauts where they
can practice tasks over and over in
simulated zero-gravity before they're
required to do it by themselves in space
tasks that are easy on land become much
harder in zero-gravity and harder still
while wearing a spacesuit that has to be
able to protect an astronaut from the
vacuum of space a space suit is designed
to have more pressure on the inside than
on the outside since its effectively
inflated like a balloon in space here in
the NBL that pressure is backwards water
is definitely not a vacuum in order to
keep the water pressure from squishing
the astronauts as they go deeper the
suits are inflated to a pressure just a
few psi higher than the surrounding
water
when an astronaut goes deeper into the
pool the water pressure pushes in on the
suit and tries to compress it so the
suit is given more internal pressure to
keep it inflated correctly as the
astronaut ascends towards the surface
the air inside the suit expands and
tries to over inflate the suit so some
of the air is released in this way the
suit always stays inflated just as it
would be in space after a couple hours
of training the divers move one of the
astronauts over to the platform and
remove her glove this training exercise
simulates a suit failure and it's one of
the things that astronauts practice
underwater
the continuous flow of bubbles from the
sleeve shows the regulator in the suit
attempting to maintain positive pressure
soon the astronaut is lifted from the
water after a successful training
mission
Jim and I head back to the surface to
that is the coolest swimming pool ever
later I have the opportunity to meet Ron
Garan a real astronaut
he has spent nearly half a year in space
and more than 27 hours space walking so
you know what I had to ask him you got
to tell me what it's like to be in space
it's a life to be in space well Scott
it's a lot like being in the pool here
the only difference is when you turn
upside down on the pool you feel upside
down when you turn upside down in space
you you don't there is no upside down so
yeah so you don't you don't feel that
have that sensation of blood rushing to
your head and you can't beat the view
yeah I guess that's true huh what did
you do here that helps you as an
astronaut but what we do here is we
train for our space for our spacewalks
and you know we there's there's two ways
to look at it one is that if we're doing
when we were flying the shuttle we had
very very specific very choreographed
spacewalks and so for every hour that we
spent outside in the vacuum of space we
spent about seven hours underwater
making sure that we knew exactly how
things were going to be there's a
full-scale mock-up as you guys saw
there's a full-scale mock-up of the
space station down there so just to know
how to get around know the lay of the
land if you will know how the equipment
works but nowadays since we don't have
the space shuttles what we're really
training for is if something breaks we
have a piece of equipment that breaks
then we have to go out and sometimes in
a fairly expeditious manner to fix the
equipment and we never know what's going
to break beforehand so we have to kind
of train a skill set you know to learn
the basic skills on how to fix anything
that can go wrong outside I spent an
hour chatting with Ron about being an
astronaut and training underwater in the
neutral buoyancy lab I explained that
I'm a perfect choice to join the space
program I mean after all I'm already
good at working in zero-gravity but I
don't think he was convinced so instead
of joining the space program the blue
world team ended our exciting day by
getting our picture taken with Ron
sometimes my adventures in the blue
world take me to fascinating places I'll
never forget
you