What Happens During Astronaut Training? Astronaut Victor Glover Explains - STEM in 30

- I'm joined by NASA astronaut
and naval aviator Victor Glover.

Thank you for talking with us today.

- Glad to be here, Marty.

- You guys do a lot of training,

particularly training under water
for walking in space.

What is that training like?

- It's amazing. You've got lots of people
there to make sure things are done safely.

To put those two people in the suits, you
may have 25 to 30 people there.

And to put that on,
you're really wearing a spacecraft.

When you're outside of the Space Station,
you're in a personalized spacecraft.

Putting that on can require
the help of a teammate.

There's a lot of folks there to help
make sure things are done safely.

And then we get to go to work.

You start to train to repair things,
to use the tools,

and to work together,
and to communicate with your teammates.

It's amazing training.

- Do you guys use virtual reality
to train for space walks?

- Absolutely.

We have a virtual reality lab where
they have a system of pullies and gears,

and a mechanism set up that you put
virtual reality glasses on and your gloves

and they can grab the handles
from something--

we call them the machines, the boxes.
And, you hold on to those,

and the machine will simulate
what something feels like in microgravity.

So, I can hold on to
a seventeen hundred pound pump module,

and hold those handles.
And, I can hold it by myself.

But if I move a little bit, I can feel
what it's like to stop that mass,

Because even in microgravity
things still have mass.

Starting and stopping them
from moving can be a little unnerving.

We get to sense that
using virtual reality.

You can see your hands
holding the box and feel the weight.

- Wow.
- It's pretty amazing.

- Do you ever train
for the really mundane things?

Eating, taking a shower,
going to the bathroom?

Do you have to train for that?

- Ah, there's no shower.

So, you don't have to actually train
for that one.

You wipe down, and then you go to work.

The crew of the Space Station
has six people on it optimally, nominally.

With those six people, you have to be able
to perform all of the science.

You have to be able to do the spacewalks
to keep the station running.

You have to be able to work together.
They support public affairs events.

They do the maintenance
when something breaks--

when the toilet breaks,
they're the ones that fix it.

So, you have to be competent
in all of those things.

Crew members that are experienced
talk to us, new guys,

let us know what things are really like

and give us some things to choose from
so we understand what it's like.

- Is that an important part
of the training,

is talking to people
that have been there and done that?

- Absolutely. The folks that train us,
they've got the great degrees,

they've been at NASA for a very long time.

But there's only a small cadre of folks
that have actually been there,

and taken all of that training
and put it into practice.

So, that's the folks that have been
in our office for a while.

And so we lean very heavily
on their experience.

- Awesome. Thank you so much
for talking to us today.

- My pleasure, Marty!