How to Astronaut

by Terry Virts

  There is another change that I’ve noticed in my outlook after leaving Earth for seven months. I’m less of a black-and-white guy. When I was younger, it was easy to see things from a very simple point of view; some people were wrong and some were right, and everything was black and white. That is a convenient view of the world and one that is comforting. If you can say “those are bad guys” or “these are good guys,” it simplifies your worldview and makes it unnecessary to think critically or challenge your own perspective. But that’s not how my brain works now. In reality, the world is a complicated place, and though, of course, there is evil, and there are also good and selfless people, most situations involve some degree of gray rather than a purely black-and-white analysis. The ability to empathize and see and understand others’ points of view is crucial. Now I tend to try to understand why others think and act the way they do, and if there is something to be negotiated, I try to make it a win-win, allowing both sides to benefit from the deal at hand. I’m not sure why a trip to space would cause me to think this way, but it is a shift in my thought process. And I think it’s a positive step.

  This newfound global perspective has helped me realize what dangerous times we live in. A bold new era where nations around the Earth are turning toward autocratic strongmen as their leaders. Where people are fracturing and becoming afraid of others. Where there is near universal pushback on the ideals that made the late twentieth century so successful—liberal democracies and free-market economies. In my mind it feels like 1928, and I want to prevent 1940 from happening.

  I have seen what a uniting force space exploration can be, because people from around the world love space. Projects like Apollo and the International Space Station have brought us together in cooperation unlike anything else in history. I believe that this unifying power is needed as we stand at a historic fork in the road. Do we choose the path that divides us? Or the path that unites us? Helping to steer us in the direction of unity is my new mission in life. All this while so many nations seem to be choosing the other path.

  Seeing our planet floating through the universe has made it impossible for me to pick partisan or ideological sides in political arguments. There are much bigger issues for us to confront if we are to have a brighter future. I hope the next phase of my life, through speaking and writing and media, will impact hearts and minds around the globe. As we focus on building bridges, and not walls.

  Wearing PPE before PPE was cool. It is required when going into the US Lab’s observation window for photography—they didn’t want us sneezing on the million-dollar glass.

  Isolation

  Better on Earth or in Space?

  This was not a chapter I expected to write. When I put together a list of all the topics I wanted to discuss in this book, it included a mix of some expected, some fun, and some unexpected topics. Isolation, which of course is part of living on a space station for 200 days, was not one of them. There are elements of how I dealt with being isolated throughout the fifty-one chapters in this book. But until 2020, this subject was not a regular part of life on Earth.

  And now it is a stark reality for most every person on Earth.

  With that in mind, and with full recognition of the gravity of the pandemic reality facing us all, I will treat this topic in the same way I usually treat serious, life-threatening, “this-might-not-turn-out-good” situations: I’ll use a bit of humor.

  My life has been transformed in the same way that so many other lives have—I’m isolated and contained in my Houston home without normal human contact, unable to travel, much of my business completely shut down (except writing extra chapters for my book!), and running low on toilet paper. All this led me to make an interesting comparison: Which situation is better—being stranded in space or quarantined on Earth?

  Let’s start with space. On my second mission, we had been on the International Space Station for five months and were set to come home in a few weeks when the Russian Progress cargo ship had, to borrow a term from SpaceX, an “anomaly.” In other words, a catastrophic event completely destroyed the vehicle. While the Russian engineers and scientists conducted a safety investigation to ensure that it was safe to launch the next Soyuz capsule, and with it our replacement crew, we were told our mission would be extended indefinitely. Which meant we were stranded in space, low on supplies.

  Let’s begin with the first concern: food. There is probably nothing more important to the morale of an expedition, a military unit, or a space mission than food. And the food in space wasn’t bad. It tasted pretty good in general, and as I mentioned earlier in the book, we were mostly happy with it. There was decent variety, especially with some European and Russian food available. An odd quirk was the American beef, which, like any good wine, had a year stamped on each package. There’s nothing like eating a vintage three-year-old sirloin (like sipping a fine wine).

  There are some similarities between food on Earth and in space. Canned soup and frozen dinners are pretty similar to the space versions. Some of the off-the-shelf items we had in space were, well, off the shelf of a local grocery store. Cookies, candies, olives, tuna packets, beef jerky, and other things were just the same as what you get on Earth.

  There were some profound differences though. First, beverages. There’s no carbonation in space . No Diet Coke for me, no beer, nothing that would fizz, because in weightlessness that would make a big mess. There was no fresh bread in space either. I didn’t think I would miss it because I don’t normally eat a lot of bread, but the first thing I ate after landing was a fresh chicken sandwich at the airport kiosk. I’ll never forget how good that bread tasted. There are very few fresh fruits and vegetables in space as well. There’s no fresh anything in space, for that matter, which made a big hole in my diet for those 200 days.

  What’s more, there are no restaurants in space. Sometimes I just craved a burger or fried chicken. Or something from a fine French restaurant. Or barbecue. Or Mexican food like we have everywhere in Houston. It is good to eat out, at least occasionally. A lack of restaurants probably helped me lose weight, but there are real psychological benefits to eating out beyond simply the food, even if all you can do is carry-out. There is something beneficial about getting out of the house, going out for a treat, or enjoying time with friends and family.

  Food: advantage Earth

  Next, let’s talk about work. In space, my work day was always varied. There was something different to do every day—experiments, maintaining equipment, preparing for spacewalks, exercising, media outreach, unpacking cargo ships, medical exams, etc. And though my work days varied, there were common themes. We woke up at roughly the same time every day, had a kick-off meeting to start the day around 0730 GMT, and then met again to end the day around 1900. There was always time blocked off for lunch and exercise, Sundays were usually free, and so on, which lent a familiar ebb and flow to our daily schedule that was comforting if demanding.

  On Earth during isolation, it can be tough to establish this sort of predictable routine. First, you need to be disciplined enough to set up and follow a daily schedule. Just starting every day with a routine (alarm, shower, make your bed, breakfast, etc.) is a great thing to do, even though not all of us have that self-discipline, myself included. I’m lucky to have an office in my new house that is devoted to work, but for a few years after leaving NASA I had to use a couch as my office (which had its own advantages). There is a monotony to being isolated in the same house, day after day, under Earth’s stay-at-home orders without a clear schedule or program to guide the day’s events.

  Work: advantage space

  One of the recommendations I’ve given people suffering through this isolation is to try something creative. Start that novel you’ve been wanting to write. Take up drawing or painting. Have an acting competition with your friends over Skype. Or try my personal favorite: photography. We all have smartphones, so learn their obscure photography features like live mode, time-lapse, and slo-mo. Play with lighting and composi
tion. Learn Photoshop and other software. There are lots of photography skills you can learn while you’re stuck in your house or apartment.

  There are also plenty of things to photograph on Earth, but nothing compares with photographing Earth from space. For seven months, whenever I looked out the window, I never saw the same thing twice. And every one of those views was overwhelmingly beautiful—deep colors in the oceans or deserts, dark jungles, blindingly white clouds, intricate nighttime city lights, otherworldly auroras, power beyond imagination in thunderstorms and hurricanes. It was so spectacular that our cameras, the best Hollywood-quality still and video cameras available, could not properly capture a sunrise from space, or the unique colors of the curvature of the Earth in bright daylight, or the wonder of the southern lights as our spaceship flew through their giant green flowing river of plasma reaching hundreds of miles above the planet. Like an upper-deck home run, this one is a no-doubter for me. But it doesn’t have to be photography you pursue—it can be anything that unleashes your creativity and gets your mind off being confined at home.

  Photography: advantage space

  Going to the bathroom is another interesting, unexpected, and complicated comparison. Generally speaking, gravity is nice. It keeps everything moving in the right direction. Earth toilets are simple, their design and construction are pretty well perfected, and they usually work without a problem. (Unless you’re in the embarrassing situation of being on a first date and you clog the toilet at your date’s place, but that’s rare and a whole other story.)

  I did have to repair the space toilet on the ISS several times, and it was a complex operation, taking a lot of time and work. It was also fairly easy to have a minor disaster if you didn’t perform your toilet business properly, and quite messy, as I explained in detail in chapter 24.

  But this whole discussion comes down to two words: toilet paper. Despite three cargo ships blowing up in an eight-month period, the ISS never ran low on the stuff. Down here on Earth, there’s a virus going around and everyone on the planet feels compelled to buy all the TP and paper towels in sight. When we have a vaccine and the pandemic finally subsides, I predict that nobody will buy toilet paper for six months.

  Seriously, people, stop hoarding TP. Work is shut down, malls are closed, nobody’s flying, but they’re not closing down the toilet paper factory!

  Bathroom: advantage space

  Entertainment was another key component of my space mission. I watched more TV in space than I do down here on Earth. While working out, it was a real joy to disconnect from the daily grind and watch uplinked TV shows, movies, or sports events or listen to Car Talk. We wouldn’t exactly have enough bandwidth to stream Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, or Disney Plus, but the entertainment options were pretty good.

  Now that I’m on Earth, especially during the virus mess, I actually have all of those streaming options available. I also don’t have 2.5 hours of daily scheduled exercise that doubled as TV time (the gym was closed for physical distancing). But it is still nice to turn on a show or series at the end of the day.

  Like TV and radio, I had music uplinked while in space. Every week my support team at NASA would send up a few MP3 files of recorded music from my Pandora stations. But down here on Earth, I can actually listen to live Pandora, Apple Music, Spotify, or the local radio. You name it, I can get it!

  Beyond digital entertainment, there are also books. They are near and dear to me as an author and presumably to you since you are reading this book! We didn’t really have much of a paper book library (there is no storage for such things on the ISS), and though I could have had e-books uplinked, I chose not to.

  Entertainment: advantage Earth

  One of the best parts of being in space was sleeping there. It was the soundest sleep I’ve ever had in my life and just so cool to close my eyes, snugly wrapped in a sleeping bag, and float. For the first few months in space, every time I closed my eyes I felt as though I was pitching forward and rolling left because of my inner ear’s unique vestibular system. Falling asleep at night was no different, but after I got used to that pitching and rolling sensation it was somehow comforting knowing that I was in my “sleep zone,” tumbling in darkness, floating, often listening to music or recorded sounds from Earth.

  I love sleeping on Earth, too! I love my bed, comforter, sheets—just everything about it. But one of the experiments I did for my spaceflight proved scientifically what I knew intuitively. I wore a device to measure the quality of my sleep in my bed on Earth and compared it to my sleeping bag in space. The results were clear.

  Sleep: advantage space

  The question of necessary supplies isn’t as cut-and-dried as you might think. It’s true that we are running low on some things during the pandemic, and for certain countries like India the situation is dire and life-threatening. But for the most part, the supply chain for critical items in many places hasn’t broken down. Yet.

  Just before my Soyuz launch, we lost an Orbital Cygnus cargo vehicle when it exploded on liftoff—and with it half of my clothes, some food supplies, critical equipment and experiments, and Samantha Cristoforetti’s spacewalk gear. So that was not great. Five months later, a few weeks before we were to return to Earth, we lost the Russian Progress cargo vehicle, so supplies started to get critical. And yet again, right after I left the ISS we lost a SpaceX Dragon, the third resupply vehicle in an eight-month period. The supply situation on the ISS was critical at that point.

  From my perspective, neither the supply situation during my Expedition 42/43 mission nor the current pandemic supply situation is good. Hopefully, the pandemic we’re experiencing will clear up soon and we will return to a relatively normal situation. But in the interim, have I mentioned this yet?

  Stop hoarding toilet paper!!!

  Supplies: tie

  If I’m adding correctly, the score is Earth 2, space 4, and tie 1. Space wins! It’s better to be holed up in orbit than it is down here on Earth in this moment.

  In all seriousness, the coronavirus situation has no historical precedent. This is the first time that all of humanity has faced a common enemy. There have been pandemics in the past, but this is the first one in the connected age. It has come with unimaginable challenges but also an opportunity to unite as humans.

  Dealing with the virus itself is the immediate priority. It is a deadly disease and we need to do everything we can to slow its spread until a cure and a vaccine can be developed. Beyond dealing with the actual medical disaster, there is widespread psychological stress that many of us have been living with in the coronavirus era.

  If I were to pass on one piece of serious, sober advice from my experience of being unexpectedly stranded in space, it would be to focus on your attitude. You can make it through anything with a positive outlook and a will to survive. My attitude during that stressful time was simple: The situation would eventually end, we would make it back to Earth, and I would have the rest of my life down here. There was nothing I could do to change my circumstances, so why worry about it? Just make the most of the extra time I had in space, and then when I eventually got home and life got back to normal, I could move on.

  That attitude really helped me and our whole crew make the most of an uncertain and stressful situation. Our plight wasn’t nearly as bad as the pandemic situation, but it can serve as a metaphor that can hopefully provide some context.

  So do your best to keep a good attitude. This isolation will end (and maybe it already has!), the economy will recover, and your life will return to a modicum of normalcy, hopefully sooner rather than later, but in any case it will eventually. And until then, don’t hoard toilet paper!

  Acknowledgments

  This work was quite literally a lifetime in the making, and it is an impossible task to acknowledge all who have contributed to it. There is no more appropriate place to begin than by going back to Oakland Mills High School and my English teachers, Ms. Herman and Ms. Mitchell. Let me say right up front—I am sorry! I was t
he worst English student since Ferris Bueller. I literally read only one book, Death of a Salesman, from cover to cover during my whole high-school career, and that one because it was only about fifty pages long. All the other books I “read” in four years of “honors” English were via Cliffs Notes. I sucked as an English student, and if there were such a thing, I would have been voted “Least Likely to Write a Book.” But thank the Lord, I was lost and now I am found—How to Astronaut is my second book! After my first book, View From Above, I wasn’t satisfied; it felt as though anyone could write one book. It wasn’t until my second book that I finally felt like a legitimate author. When I ran my first marathon, it was OK and I was happy that I finished without having a heart attack. But after my second, I hadn’t simply run a marathon, I had become a legitimate marathoner. That was the feeling I had after finishing How to Astronaut. I’m finally an author, and Ms. Herman and Ms. Mitchell would be proud and shocked.

  Most of all, I want to thank my family, both immediate and extended. Writing takes a lot of time, and time spent writing is time away from them. Hopefully the royalties from this book will pay for my nursing home one day, and you won’t have to worry about me. Just kidding. I love you, and you were a big part of this work.