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Coming up next / on " Jonathan Bird's Blue World ", /
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Jonathan goes to inner space / at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab, /
where / astronauts are trained. /
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Hi, / I'm Jonathan Bird / and welcome to my world! /
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"Blue World" takes me / on adventures all over the planet. /
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Today's adventure takes me / to the Johnson Space Center at NASA, /
in Houston, Texas! /
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And, / I'm standing / on the International Space Station! /
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Well, / not exactly. /
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I'm standing / on an underwater full size replica /
of the International Space Station / in a gigantic indoor swimming pool. /
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Here / they train astronauts / to work in zero gravity /
by simulating these conditions underwater. /
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Outside, / it just looks like a huge warehouse, /
but / inside is / the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory: The NBL. /
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I arrive early in the morning / and meet Daniel Sedej, /
the facility manager, / who has arranged our visit. /
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We drag all our gear inside / and get our first glimpse / of the NBL. /
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This thing is huge / - a swimming pool / nearly the size of a football field! /
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As / we arrive, / the morning mission briefing / is just starting. /
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The entire team, / from astronauts / to support divers to technicians, /
are all given a thorough run-through / on the training exercises for the day. /
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And / Cameraman Tim and I / are part of this meeting, /
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because / they are going to let us / dive in the NBL / today /
with the astronauts! /
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Our morning starts / with a quick checkup. /
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All divers in the NBL / must pass a rigorous physical, /
and a checkup / before the dive. /
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Cameraman Tim and I / are no exception. /
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We pass our checkup, / and next / we meet up with Sara Williams, /
the Dive Training Officer / who gives us / a dive safety briefing. /
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What to do / and what not to do / in the NBL. /
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Just as / we finish our briefing, / the team is gathering / on the deck /
to begin preparations / for putting the astronauts in the water. /
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Getting into a space suit / is no easy feat. /
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In fact, / it might be easier / in the zero gravity of orbit. /
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But here on land, / it takes assistance. /
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The astronauts wear / liquid-cooled underwear / to keep them from overheating. /
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That's / what these tubes are for. /
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The torso of the suit / is clamped to a cage /
because / its too heavy to lift. /
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That's because / this space suit is specially modified / for underwater use, /
and has a lot of lead weight / in it. /
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Climbing into the torso / is a little tricky. /
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It takes nearly an hour / to suit up. /
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The last thing to go on / is the helmet. /
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Underwater, / a high-oxygen blend of air / will be fed to the astronauts /
through their umbilicals. /
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Meanwhile, / the safety divers are in the water / getting ready. /
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They wear / double scuba tanks / so / they have enough air /
to stay down / as long as necessary / to complete the mission. /
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Tim and I / are getting ready too. /
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I can't wait / to see this enormous underwater facility! /
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I descend into the clearest water / I have ever seen, /
and / it looks like / an underwater movie set! /
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The pool is / a staggering 40 feet deep, /
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and / everywhere I look / are full-size replica sections /
of the International Space Station. /
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I take a few minutes / to explore the pool. /
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I can see / from one end to the other very / clearly, /
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meaning / that the underwater visibility / is over 200 feet! /
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I could spend a few hours / just swimming / around down here. /
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It's like a playground for divers, /
with all sorts of great structures / to swim through! /
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For the astronauts-- / now, the moment of truth. /
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A crane lifts them / into the pool, /
wearing 300 pounds of space suit apiece. /
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Underwater, / the safety divers meet them /
and carefully remove them / from the platform. /
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Each astronaut / is carefully weighted /
to be precisely neutrally buoyant. /
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Hey, / they don't call it / the Neutral Buoyancy Lab / for nothing! /
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Once weighted properly, / the astronauts hover in the water /
as if floating / in the weightlessness of space. /
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Since / fins don't work in space, /
the astronauts don't get to wear them / here. /
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They must be moved / from task to task / by the divers. /
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The divers are also responsible for / keeping a careful eye /
on everything happening. /
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Each astronaut has 4 divers / assigned to him or her. /
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Two are safety divers. /
Another has a camera / with a cable / going to the control room. /
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And / there are more cameras / mounted all over the inside of the pool too. /
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In the Test Director room / overlooking the pool, /
21 monitors keep the staff informed / of everything that happens below. /
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They oversee / the safety of the operation. /
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If / anything were to go wrong, /
the divers can get the astronaut / to the surface / in only seconds. /
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In the Test Conductor room, /
another team / is conducting the training run. /
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The test conductor and team / speak directly to the astronauts /
through communication gear in their helmets. /
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But / powerful underwater speakers / allow /
the divers to hear / everything that is being said, /
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even if / they can't talk back. /
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The point of all this effort / is to provide a learning environment /
for astronauts /
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where / they can practice tasks / over and over /
in simulated zero gravity, /
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before / they are required / to do it by themselves / in space. /
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Tasks that are easy on land / become much harder / in zero gravity. /
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And harder still / while wearing a space suit /
that has to be able to protect an astronaut / from the vacuum of space. /
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A space suit is designed / to have more pressure /
on the inside / than on the outside, /
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since / it's effectively inflated / like a balloon in space. /
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Here in the NBL, / that pressure is backwards. /
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Water is definitely / not a vacuum. /
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In order to keep the water pressure / from squishing the astronauts /
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as they go deeper, / the suits are inflated / to a pressure just a few PSI higher /
than the surrounding water. /
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When / an astronaut goes deeper / into the pool, /
the water pressure pushes in on the suit / and tries to compress it, /
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so / the suit is given / more internal pressure /
to keep it inflated correctly. /
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As / the astronaut ascends / towards the surface, /
the air inside the suit / expands /
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and / tries to overinflate the suit, /
so / some of the air / is released. /
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In this way, / the suit always stays inflated /
just as / it would be in space. /
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After a couple hours of training, / the divers move one of the astronauts /
over to the platform / and remove her glove. /
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This training exercise / simulates a suit failure, /
and / it's one of the things / that astronauts practice underwater. /
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The continuous flow of bubbles / from the sleeve /
shows the regulator / in the suit / attempting to maintain positive pressure. /
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Soon, / the astronaut is lifted / from the water /
after a successful training mission. /
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Tim and I / head back to the surface too. /
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That is / the coolest swimming pool ever! /
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Later, / I have the opportunity / to meet Ron Garan, /
a real astronaut. /
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He has spent nearly half a year / in space, /
and more than 27 hours spacewalking. /
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So / you know / what I had to ask him. /
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You gotta tell me / what it's like / to be in space. /
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What's it like / to be in space? /
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Well, / it's a lot like / being in the pool here... /
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the only difference is, /
when / you turn upside down / in the pool, / you feel upside down. /
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When / you turn upside down / in space, / there is no upside down, /
so / you don't have that sensation / of blood rushing to your head. /
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And / you can't beat the view. /
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Yeah, / I guess / that's true, / huh? /
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What did you do / here, / that helped you / as an astronaut? /
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Well, / what we do here / is we train / for our space walks. /
There's two ways / to look at it. /
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When / we were flying the shuttle, /
we had / very specific, very choreographed space walks. /
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And / so for every hour / that we spent / outside in the vacuum of space, /
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we spent about 7 hours underwater, /
making sure / that we knew exactly / how things were going to be. /
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There's a full scale mockup / as you guys saw /
of the space station down there. /
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So / just to know / how to get around, / know the lay of the land, /
know how the equipment works. /
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But nowadays, / since / we don't have the space shuttles, /
what we're really training for / is if something breaks. /
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If / we have a piece of equipment / that breaks, / then / we have to go out, /
sometimes in a fairly expeditious manner, / to fix the equipment. /
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And / we never know / what's going to break / beforehand, /
so / we have to kind of train a skill set /
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to learn the basic skills / on how to fix /
anything that can go wrong outside. /
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I spend an hour / chatting with Ron / about being an astronaut, /
and training underwater / in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. /
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I explain / that I'm a perfect choice / to join the space program, /
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I mean / after all, / I'm already good at / working in zero gravity. /
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But / I don't think / he was convinced. /
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So, / instead of joining the space program, /
the Blue World team / ended our exciting day /
by getting our picture taken with Ron. /
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Sometimes / my adventures in "the Blue World" / take me /
to fascinating places / I'll never forget. /