my first astronaut

Tuesday I met my first astronaut. I have to thank my E&M professor, Erik Sanchez, for being sick that day, thus allowing me to miss class and attend the lecture of Don Pettit, scientist and astronaut. Dr. Pettit spent 5 1/2 months aboard the space station performing all sorts of experiments and such. The interesting stuff, though, was what he did in his off time. First he showed us his view of the aurora borealis, which was freakin amazing. It was hundreds of miles of green glow. Then he went on to tell about the wacky experiments he came up with to perform in his off time. First, there was the sphere of water. As you know, there is no gravity up there, so liquids exist in spheres. He injected an air bubble into the sphere, then injected water bubbles inside that. The bubbles behaved really strangely. They rolled around the interior surface of the sphere and sometimes bounced from side to side. Every once and a while, though, they would give up some of their mass to be absorbed into the bigger bubble. When they did this, they maintained the same momentum with a much smaller mass, resulting in a much higher velocity, so they would shoot off across the bubble. It's kinda like when an ice skater extends her arms to slow down and retracts them to speed up. Sort of. Next he took another sphere of water and placed an alka seltzer tablet in it. That was kind of hard to describe, but essentially it bubbled and grew till it was almost twice its original size. There was more stuff like that. A gyroscopically balanced flashlight made of three cd players taped together in different directions, turned on to stablize it. You could put it somewhere and it wouldn't move. The most interesting thing, though, was the spiders. Apparently they took spiders into space to see what they'd do. They spun webs, of course, cause bird's gotta fly, spider's gotta spin. The webs turned out like garbage. At first... after a couple days they started to manage just fine, and their webs turned out correctly. Weird. They also took caterpillars to test their cocoons, but Dr. Pettit left before he could see that experiment play out. What I really want to know, though, is how the butterfly would fly. They fly by using their wings against the air to create lift, and they get used to flapping with enough power that the lift overcomes the force of gravity. Well, there's still air in the space shuttle. Would the butterfly attempt one flap and then shoot across the shuttle due to no gravity to weigh it down? That would be something to see. Anyway, I was definitely star struck, and he explained what his take on the process to becoming an astronaut is. First, he said that a military background does help, although its not vital. Negative. Next, he said you had to know your way around a screwdriver. In this environment, if any of your machinery breaks, you have the possibility that you might not be able to perform experiments, maybe you might not be able to survive. So you have to know how to fix stuff. Check. Also, a background in science is vital, preferrably ME, EE, CE, Physics, Chem, and some medical sciences. Advanced degree, check. Also, the best thing he said was that scientist astronauts are generally chosen in their early 40's, due to maturity and experience. AWESOME!!!! Anyway, the good doctor was a big nerd just like me, and I have renewed hope that I may make it up there someday.