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Stories from orbit: Q&A with SpaceX Inspiration4 commander Jared Isaacman - CNBC

Stories from orbit: Q&A with SpaceX Inspiration4 commander Jared Isaacman - CNBC

Stories from orbit: Q&A with SpaceX Inspiration4 commander Jared Isaacman - CNBC
Oct 12, 2021 8 mins, 16 secs

"That just made me think that we've got to just get our a-- in gear a little bit more and get out there.".

What they do know is the recovery is very quick – usually even without medication it's less than 24 hours – and they do know that certain medications will reduce it even further.

What I do think was interesting is that for SpaceX, given their objective to put like potentially millions of people in space someday, we did participate in a research experiment before and after the mission.

So that's good because now maybe there's a different medication that those people who are susceptible to it could take before launch and minimize that impact … it reinforces the real role of a medical officer on a mission because, as much as we want to turn this into airline travel, the reality is you do feel very different in space … that can lead down a path where some medical treatment is warranted, so having Hayley Arceneaux on our mission to start divvying up shots as required was pretty important and that will be something they maybe even want to expand upon.

I was assisting Hayley in helping our other crew members, and I would say that it presented in two very different ways: One was very much like typical seasickness, motion sickness – where you're happy and then all of a sudden, you're like "I don't feel so well" and then the other I would say was much more gradual, slowly building.

Obviously you're looking out the window and you're seeing Earth and that's moving and then you're in a spacecraft now that can move on all axes while you're floating inside it and I think, for some people, maybe the combination of all three is a little bit of a sensory overload?

It did not feel like 10 minutes; it felt like, I don't know, 20 seconds.

[NASA's] Crew-1 told us that too, when we spoke to them, that Dragon does, as they described it, come alive … The first thing is the launch escape system, because you have to arm that before you put propellant on and that is a very loud noise as valves open and the system gets charged … so you feel that thud, and then it's only seconds thereafter before you actually hear grumbling propellant loading onto Falcon and then as tanks are starting to fill and you have venting you hear that.

You do feel as the transporter erector, the "strongback," retracts, because there's just a little less stability so even a little bit of wind you feel … by the time you hear the countdown of one, you're already feeling the sensation of liftoff.

It is not the big G event that people think because you're actually going rather slow initially, so you sense the motion, but it's nothing like being in a car and somebody slamming on the gas.

You hear and you feel the throttle up and throttle down, so going through Max Q ...

Once you're going past the speed of sound it's really what is on the vehicle that you're hearing?

You could be just as comfortable upside down facing the floor and that wouldn't feel that unusual.

When I made that call down about the doors opening up a bit, I was just looking under the screen and looking out the two forward windows and it looked like if you watch space camp, whether it's rendering or otherwise, it looks exactly like everything we've ever seen: "Holy s---, there's Earth through the window." I wasn't surprised that it looks so much different than I thought it would be.

It radiates more and it's higher resolution for sure — you're seeing it with your own eyes — but it looks pretty much what you would expect it to look like?

We got behind on our schedule the first day, which is exactly what was predicted based on a long simulation, that if even one person is feeling unwell – and to be clear, no one vomited, it's just an unwellness feeling where you just take your meds and you just ride it out.

And then by the third day you're even better because whatever adaptation your body's going through it's kind of at its strongest by that point....

This was another one where it was a 50/50 thing, where like 50% of astronauts say they love sleeping in space and 50% really don't.

It just happens, you can't like kind of curl up, you don't have like the same benefit of cocooning like in a one-G environment.

We all were tired – so I would have thought like hey, "I can go to Vegas, think of it like a bachelor party weekend, you're just gonna be up for three days." But no, I was just so exhausted, as was everybody at the end of the day.

I felt like I was very driven on a timeline to just "stay ahead of the jet," don't get behind … I was always busy – that didn't mean that I didn't take pictures – but could I have taken an extra second, to stage a picture better?

It's little things like that, that I was mad at myself for just not pausing in the moment and just trying to get it a little more right?

That just made me think that we've got to just get our a-- in gear a little bit more and get out there.

Well, how much more of that is out there if we just go and explore this vastness of space that we know literally nothing about.

There were happy moments of course: Chris playing a ukulele – where I'm quite sure if it was on Earth, we would all find anything else to do but if you're in space, you're like, "man, this is cool" – watching your crewmates eat and be happy, watching Sian paint.

There is a cooling process that begins prior to re-entry to just adjust the cabin, but you don't know it because you're in your suits and you're getting air, that's basically your climate control.

We'd done 50 re-entries in training and you know exactly when you're going to hit the denser part of the atmosphere ...

In the simulators, I would recall, from the time deorbit sequence would begin to splashdown it's about 70 minutes or so … there are gaps of time where nothing's going to happen – and then it just disappeared, the last 80 kilometers.

When I think about when I saw 20 kilometers versus when we hit the water, it felt like five seconds.

So I don't know how, at that moment, you would have you'd be able to do that – I think you'd just be focused on getting the chutes out.

Hayley will talk about how she looked at the G meter and saw 0.2 Gs and she's like: "Wow, I feel that" and it's true.

The way I've described it: Imagine just being in this tin can and somebody shaking it – it's a lot of lateral forces, where you're getting jerked around like that a little bit.

And then the next is splashdown, which is just like getting rear-ended with a car, you're like, "I'm just sitting here and somebody smacked me from behind" – that's what it feels like?

This was really important – which we emphasized in the debrief – is that you want to see your families, you want to let them know that you're okay and ease their concerns, and then you need to check out for a little bit.

It was just a very emotional experience for all of us – I don't think there was a dry eye, because it just meant that what we did mattered that much more.

The idea of going to space and coming back is intense in general, but when you're on SpaceX's timeline – clearly they do things in months that other people do in years – and you're living it … you're at this pace, you hit this peak and then it just drops and stops.

I think with Hayley it was when she got back home and she was unpacking all of her Inspiration4 medical officer shirts and she's like: "I may never wear these again, I may never pack to go to Hawthorne again." Everybody had it a little bit differently.

But when we came back, looking at all the objectives we set out to accomplish a little under a year ago – finding an amazing crew, bringing us all together, delivering an inspiring message to people (maybe some of it has nothing to do with space: Hayley overcoming adversity at an early age, Sian never giving up on her dreams) – and reaching people with that message, I feel like we did all that.

We had other things that are impactful but still important – you want to make every moment on orbit count – we signed up for a bunch of research with Cornell and Baylor, you want to go past the space station (because why not, if you're going to go to moon and Mars).

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