How to Astronaut

by Terry Virts

  I loved medical training before flight, and I loved being the Crew Medical Officer while in space. Which brings me back to the MCAT story. I went to Barnes & Noble to check it out, and after about ten minutes of skimming through a practice medical school entrance exam, I came to my senses and put it back on the shelf. I’d be keeping my day job.

  Mouse Matters

  Live Animal Experiments in Space

  Science is the mission of the International Space Station. It’s the reason why a fifteen-nation partnership came together several decades ago and spent many billions of dollars building and operating this magnificent and complicated and dangerous orbiting outpost. During my 200-day mission, we ran more than 250 experiments, spanning every discipline of science—biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine, engineering, psychology, materials science, combustion science, you name it. Some investigations were very simple, and some were quite involved. Being a pilot, not a trained scientist, I enjoyed my time spent acting as the eyes and ears for scientists back on Earth, performing their experiments, as they nervously watched this fighter pilot operate their precious cargo.

  One of the most interesting and potentially impactful experiments we did on the station was something called rodent research. Yes, we had mice on the station. As you can imagine, this led to plenty of jokes. No, we didn’t have a cat on the station. No, we didn’t feed them cheese from the Moon. No, we didn’t have mousetraps in case they were badly behaved. No, they didn’t earn Mousetronaut wings, though that is the cool title of a bestselling children’s book that Mark Kelly, a fellow astronaut, wrote.

  Mice are extremely common in medical research on Earth. In fact, rodent research projects commonly order cohorts of more than 1,000 mice at a time from the mouse store. I checked and was unable to find them on Amazon, but maybe someday. As mammals, mice are good analogs for human physiology, including pharmacology; you can test medicine on them to predict its effect on humans. Also, when living creatures go into space, they have a variety of interesting physiological reactions. Some biological processes are accelerated and others are more intense, such as the virulence of pathogens. Others are hindered, such as immune system effectiveness. All of this combines to make space an ideal place for medical research and mice ideal subjects.

  Before astronauts are cleared to work with these little furry creatures, we must be trained, and that is a very involved process. The first thing we learn is that the animals must be treated humanely at all times. There are many processes in place to ensure that the animals are well cared for, every step of the way. Another critical aspect of training is learning how to handle the rodents. They are provided with enrichment activities that allow them some diversions during their time in space, including exercise. They are monitored continuously, and any animals deemed distressed are immediately tended to. NASA’s mice are the luckiest rodents, on or off Earth. I’m sure my pet dogs wish they were treated as well as the space mice, with the exception of dissections.

  After learning the basics of rodent care, it was time for actual medical training. First was how to scruff the animal, i.e., grab that wily rodent while she (almost all of the subjects are female) darts around. On Earth it is tough to catch a mouse because they can run on the ground and they’re highly motivated to avoid capture. In space it’s even tougher because you’re awkwardly reaching into their habitat and you have thick work gloves on, because those little suckers bite. Once you have her, there’s a very precise way to hold the animal, grasping her skin on the back of the neck and spine.

  After capturing a mouse come several quick steps. First is to move them from their habitat to the work area, known as the glovebox, where we do science activities involving dangerous or messy experiments. Some of the mice are dissected, some are given X-rays to see how their bone density is changing in weightlessness, and some are returned to Earth. The X-ray machine is interesting—the mice are sedated and then placed on a tray for the X-ray. For the dissection they are euthanized via injection. Once the euthanization has been verified and double-checked, the dissection begins.

  My rodent training was no less interesting than working with a human cadaver at a local hospital about a year before launch had been. It was fascinating to see how an animal body works, in detail. Astronauts who were trained medical doctors were very much used to such activities, but to this fighter pilot it was all new, and I loved it. Some of our specialized medical hardware included a centrifuge that was used to prepare blood for storage, and a freezer called MELFI (Minus Eighty L? Freezer I?) that was actually cooled to -95°C. I’m not sure how they came up with that acronym, or what the L and I stand for, but MNFF would sound weird. The freezer was used to store all kinds of biological samples as they awaited return to Earth—human blood, urine, and saliva, as well as various samples from rodents, or plants, or any other biological experiments that needed to be preserved for return to the planet.

  One of the most involved parts of the rodent experiments was filming them. We filmed literally every second of everything we did with mice, usually with two different HD (high-definition) video cameras running simultaneously, generating many gigabytes of video that would take several days to downlink to the scientists.

  Surprisingly, the most challenging part of the mice experiments was finding, retrieving, and stowing all of the equipment required. Rodent research required several enormous MO-1s (NASA acronym for big-ass bag) full of gear, each one bigger than a refrigerator. It would take us hours to deal with the logistics of setting up and tearing down rodent research, and this was the area where I had the most suggestions for improvement during my debriefs.

  My big hope for our rodent research program is that it bears fruit for the government and pharmaceutical researchers who work on it. There is real promise for improved care for humans with bone and muscle disease, speedier recovery for those with traumatic wounds, as well as other possible drug breakthroughs. We should all be thankful for the role that these animals play in making life better for humans.

  Clothes Make the Astronaut

  Packing for Six Months in Space

  There are many things to be done before launch: learning how to pilot the shuttle, how to fly a rendezvous mission, how to maintain the spaceship, how to install and operate the payloads you bring to space, how to perform spacewalks, how to operate the photography and video equipment, etc. One of the most important, however, is picking out what clothes to wear. The good news is there isn’t much choice, but nonetheless there are important decisions to be made. On a two-week shuttle flight it wasn’t too critical, but on a 200-day, long-duration flight, wearing the wrong thing every day would have gotten old.

  Let’s start with shirts. On my shuttle flight NASA provided me a new shirt to wear every day, which was kind of ridiculous, but I didn’t complain because it was nice to keep them after the mission as a memento. They were Lands’ End cotton polos; we couldn’t use modern polyester fabric because it isn’t fireproof. In space you don’t get dirty or sweat much unless you’re exercising, so those polos were still in good shape after only a day or two of wear. However, on my long-duration station flight I was provided one polo per month, which I only wore for special occasions, like media events on camera. They gave us basic T-shirts for daily wear, and color selection was simple enough for this fighter pilot—black, green, red, or blue. They were fine, and comfortable, but not very fashionable. I always thought they should at least have put a mission logo on them.

  Bottoms were either full-length pants or shorts, tactical style with lots of pockets and Velcro added to them. Honestly, they were genius. I came up with a system of keeping my Leatherman multi-tool in one pocket, fresh CF memory cards for cameras in one pocket, used memory cards in another, Chapstick in one, headlamp in another, etc. Those pockets saved me countless hours of rummaging for stuff, because I always had what I needed with me. On Earth it would have been miserable to have all of that stuff tugging down on your pants, but in space it floated and wasn’t an issue
. A pair of shorts would last for many weeks, usually months. I rarely wore long pants, saving them for media events.

  Exercise clothes were also really important, though we didn’t have much choice in that matter either. We got a fresh pair of running shorts every week, along with a new Under Armour shirt every two weeks. The running shorts would get a little stinky, but there was a new pair after a week. On the other hand, the shirt got stinky after one exercise session on the treadmill, and there were still thirteen days to go to the next shirt! Those things got ripe, to say the least. I actually sent a used one back to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship, tightly sealed in Ziploc bags covered in duct tape. When I got back to Earth a few months later, I opened it and almost died, it smelled so bad. In fact, one of the experiments I took part in was to test out a new type of odor-free exercise shirt, made from antistink wool fabric. I was skeptical; I thought it would be too itchy, but I gave it a shot anyway. I wore that shirt every day for a month of exercise, two and a half hours drenched in sweat per day, and after thirty days it didn’t stink. I was shocked. That wool really worked.

  Underwear was an interesting subject. A few weeks before my launch, a Cygnus cargo ship had blown up immediately after launch, and with it went half of my clothes and underwear for my imminent half-year mission.

  Underwear was an interesting subject. A few weeks before my launch, a Cygnus cargo ship had blown up immediately after launch, and with it went half of my clothes and underwear for my imminent half-year mission. So that was bad. Luckily, a choice I made when picking out my clothes ended up saving me. Crews go to the Flight Crew Equipment office about a year before flight, both in Houston and in Russia (and by that I mean Star City, which is how all US astronauts think of Russia), to select a whole host of personal items for flight. You sit down with experts and pick out clothes, tools, headlamps, notebooks, razors, sunglasses, toothpaste, and deodorant—basically, any personal items. However, you can’t just pick anything you want; you need to select your items from a fairly limited, flight-approved menu. Luckily, I had a philosophy of variety; I didn’t want to pick 100 percent of one thing and end up in space and discover that it didn’t fit or work, so I tended to pick different sizes or types. I chose mostly L shirts, but also a few M and XL. Mostly shorts, but two pairs of long pants. Mostly thick socks, but also a few thin ones. You get the idea.

  When it came to underwear, I picked mostly the standard tighty-whitey type, but I also picked some other longer briefs as a backup. Fast-forward to my first week in space, and I was in pain! It felt like something was squeezing my boys, and not in a good way. At first I thought it was my body adapting to zero g, but then I realized it was my underwear. So I switched to the briefs, and they were great. It turns out that underwear can last a really long time in space, and I went 200 days using one pair of my alternate briefs every two weeks. I ended up with a million extra tighty-whities, so I used them as towels and spare rags. It was a little awkward, but I was in space, and you have to be resourceful and use what you have. The Apollo 13 guys would have been proud. My philosophy of underwear variety ended up giving me the margin to survive the Cygnus explosion.

  Another important piece of clothing was running shoes. Exercise was such a critical part of daily life on the station that these were extremely important, and shoes were one of the only things where we had freedom to get what we wanted. I took two pairs of the same brand of running shoes that I used on Earth. I didn’t wear shoes most of the time, but I did for the treadmill and weight-lifting machine (for the bike I used standard cycling clip-on shoes). After I got back to Earth, I sent those running shoes off to a prominent athletic gear company for them to analyze how they’d held up in space. They put them through a vigorous X-ray and MRI testing protocol, and their engineer told me he’s never seen a piece of athletic gear revered in their lab as much as my space running shoes were. It turned out that they were almost like new, which surprised me because I did so much running. Maybe it was because running on the treadmill in space had a lower load factor than on Earth; we were held to the treadmill with a bungee cord that pulled me down with the equivalent force of less than 70 percent of my body weight. Or maybe it was because the treadmill itself was floating, not fixed to the wall, giving the shoes more cushion than they’d have on Earth. Whatever the reason, those shoes could have lasted indefinitely. It’s one of the few areas where space is cheaper than Earth!

  Getting some personal items and clothes back to Earth was not a problem on my shuttle flight, but on the Soyuz there was very little room for returning items to Earth. The good news was that the equipment returning on the SpaceX Dragon needed packing material, so we used worn clothes for that purpose, and sometimes we even got some of those items back. I ended up getting a few exercise shirts and polos. When I die my kids will get a chest full of old space stuff, and they will be able to know what Dad smelled like while running on the ISS treadmill, all those years ago. I wonder if they’ll realize just how important it was to have two types of underwear?

  Astronaut CrossFit

  Physical Training for Spaceflight

  Let’s face it: Going to the gym ain’t easy. For me the biggest impediment is time—it takes me a few hours to get dressed, drive to the gym, do some weight lifting and cardio while watching Netflix, drive home, and shower. It’s not a twenty-minute activity. Even going for a run in the neighborhood ends up taking an hour by the time I stop sweating in the Houston humidity and shower. So, is it worth it? And how do busy astronauts fit gym time into their schedules?

  The most important thing for me was to realize that fitness was critical. In space, your bones and muscles don’t have to constantly fight against gravity like they do on Earth, and that leads to atrophy. You may be lounging by the beach as you read this, and as you do you are getting a workout simply by holding up your head and arms, however light they may be. That 24/7 effort doesn’t exist in orbit, with serious consequences. During the Russian Mir space station program in the 1980s and ’90s, researchers learned that cosmonauts’ bones would atrophy about 1.5 percent per month, no matter how long they were in space. It was as if they were on a straight-line trajectory to becoming jellyfish. In addition to losing bone density, the space travelers also lost muscle mass, especially in the lower body, which led to serious problems upon return to our planet. I know two people who have broken their hips who weren’t over the age of ninety, and both had recently returned from a long-duration spaceflight.

  To combat these bone and muscle problems on the ISS, we came up with a very effective exercise protocol. Like any good Earthbound workout regime, it involves two basic components, aerobic and anaerobic. The aerobic component was fulfilled by TVIS (NASA acronym for treadmill) and CEVIS (NASA acronym for bike), and the anaerobic was fulfilled by ARED (NASA acronym for weight-lifting machine). More on those later, because before you get to space you need to get in shape on Earth.

  One of the benefits of being an astronaut is having access to an amazing gym. When I first showed up at the Johnson Space Center in 2000, it was a decaying relic from the 1960s, but the newly built astronaut gym is a palace that would make any professional football team jealous. It is roughly the size of a grocery store, and there are rarely more than a handful of people working out. Every imaginable aerobic and free weight machine is available. The most interesting machine there is called the zero-g treadmill, in which you wrap a giant bubble skirt around your waist and inflate it with air. This lifts you off the treadmill while running, which means less leg impact, making it possible to run with less wear and tear on old knees. There is a treatment room where our flight surgeons could come and perform exams, a lap pool, and hot and cold tubs. There is also a room full of mock-ups of the CEVIS, TVIS, and ARED space hardware for us to train on. Overall, it’s a pretty impressive facility.

  More important than the hardware were our ASCRs (pronounced “ace-ers”), the NASA acronym for personal trainers. These guys and gals have backgrounds as top collegiate strength a
nd conditioning coaches, and their job is to get us ready for spaceflight. Once we get to space, they tailor our daily workout program and track our progress as we log our exercise sessions, sending us updated plans. They also watch our form and technique via downlinked video from the ISS and critique us, making sure we’re squatting deep enough, running on the treadmill with good form, etc. Station crews have a short tag-up with them about once per month, something that I always enjoyed, talking not only about exercise techniques but also about the latest sports scores on Earth, family updates, or other gossip. Those calls were a nice break from the monotony of repairing hardware and performing experiments on the ISS.

  Besides basic bone and muscle health, there was another important reason to get and stay in shape: spacewalking. Putting on that beast of a spacesuit and moving around in it for eight to nine hours at a time is a serious workout, using a significant amount of upper body strength, endurance, and hand strength. That strength doesn’t just happen on its own; it requires a lot of time at the gym, especially doing exercises that focus on your forearms and hands, like pull-ups, kettle bells, etc.

  With that as background, what exactly was our workout plan to prepare for spaceflight? Every astronaut is different, from thirty-something marathoners and mountain climbers to sixty-something “experienced” astronauts, and the average age of crewmembers flying in space is probably around fifty. The vacuum of space is not politically correct. It doesn’t care what your age or gender is. And the inevitable toll weightlessness takes on your body doesn’t hold back for those who don’t have time to work out. Everyone understands this, and most make a concerted effort to get in shape preflight and stay in shape once in space, and to rehab once back on Earth.

  One of the best parts of working with an ASCR was having a personalized workout, as well as motivation to keep going. There is always a WOD (workout of the day) posted on the gym bulletin board that is a quick and intense body-weight program: pushups, pull-ups, lunges, sprints, stretches, etc. If you are fast you could finish in twenty to thirty minutes, but it would wipe you out. There is also a more formal weight-lifting program, focused on Olympic-style lifts. There are also plenty of aerobic opportunities, with miles of outdoor running trails, indoor machines, and a pool.