NASA Astronaut Gives Kids Advice on Reaching for the Stars

Dr. Jeanette Epps, a NASA astronaut who spent over 200 days on the International Space Station, visited the Intrepid Museum’s annual Kids Week Astronaut Talks from Feb. 15-17 so she could help introduce aerospace careers to families with underrepresented backgrounds. She told Straus News that she herself was first introduced to this field by her older brother when she was nine years old. He was visiting from college, and Dr. Epps and her twin sister were eager to show him their report cards. He looked at their math and science marks, and told them they could become aerospace engineers. Even though she didn’t think she would ever go to space— “I was one of those kids who never thought they would select me,” she said — Dr. Epps went on to study aerospace engineering.

She worked for Ford Motor Company for a couple of years, and was then recruited to work for the CIA, where she spent the next seven and a half years.

When did you decide to apply to be an astronaut?

Working at the agency, it taught me the difference between being technical and operational, meaning—this is the description that I give to students—you can be technical in that you know how to design an airplane, you know how it works, but you can’t really fly it. And then you can be operational where you may not know exactly how to design one. And so when those two came together, I thought, “You know, those are the kind of skills you need to become an astronaut.”

And so it was in 2008, where I decided, “Hey, I’m getting older. I may never ever get a chance to apply again. Who knows when they’re going to have another class?” So I went ahead and applied in 2008, and then 2009 I came on board and yeah, it’s been an interesting ride. I’ve done things that I could not in other jobs, there’s no way I would have done, like, flying a T-38, all the analog missions that we did. One where you live underwater, or that’s called the Nemo Mission, one where you live in a cave for five days. I’ve done just about everything that you could possibly do. I did language immersion in Moscow, which was fun, after the fact. So it’s been a pretty interesting career.

What’s life like in space?

Well every day you had to exercise. Squats, deadlifts, especially. Because we don’t lose a whole lot of bone density in our upper body but our legs because we don’t walk at all. Yeah, no walking, you use your hands mostly, I think that’s probably why you don’t lose much bone density in the upper body, but the lower extremities, you have to do squats and deadlifts almost everyday. But of 233 days on the station, I spent 194 of those days exercising.

How did the change in gravity affect you when you returned to Earth?

Oh, gravity sucks. So the small muscles are the ones that are really difficult to work. So when you come back, you notice that your head weighs like 100 lbs. because you haven’t held your head up and it just floats. And so all the little muscles around your neck are pretty weak, and they atrophied a little bit, but it’s easy, you just get back in the gym and it comes back faster and faster. Gravity. I hadn’t felt it in eight months, so everything felt heavy, everything.

How do you lift weights in space?

It’s resistive, it’s against a vacuum cylinder, so it’s against basically air. And so you’re lifting weights against a vacuum. It’s kind of a neat way that they do it, because you can get up to 600 lbs. on there. I only got up to two, I didn’t get up to 600. Some of those guys do though, you can get up to pretty heavy, heavy weights.

The big thing when you come back is that your inner ear is so unstable, so you’ll feel a little dizzy for a couple of days, but then the only limiting factor after that is the small muscles, getting those back and getting those to fire again.

How do you train that when you get back? Do you have to do exercises to get your head back right?

So I was a little wobbly when I came back but that’s because all those little muscles, even in your ankles, your inner thigh, just all around your body holding you up, so when I would walk I would just start [mimes teetering] falling down, so yeah, figuring out how to balance once you come back. At NASA we have these strength and recovery trainers (we call them “ASARs,” so Astronaut Strength and Recovery Center), basically, they’re just helping us work the small muscles so we can hold our heads up, we can walk straight without falling down, and there’s all kinds of different balancing techniques that they use.

It really is cool. I’m always surprised, after 30 days, when I first started I was like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I can’t do this anymore.” Even just squatting was difficult, like here on Earth. It turns out, in space with the advanced resistive device, we’re only loading the bones, and not really working all the tiny muscles that help with a squat, so even squatting when we came back was hard. Everything was difficult. And so even after 30 days you’ll see it. “Okay, I’ve gotten a little better.” After 40 days. After 45 days, 60 days, and just everyday you make a little bit more progress.

I understand that there have been some roadblocks in your career. Do you have any advice for kids or for parents?

I’ve had some major setbacks. And so when I say this, I want kids to know that I understand what I’m asking them to do. And they need to understand that things are going to happen, and the goal of it is to get you to leave and to take your spot. But every kid has every right to access our taxpayer dollars. And it’s paid so that every individual can have an opportunity. You do have to be resilient, and what that means is that there’s gonna be some tough times, and you gotta fight through it and maintain who you are.

And once you become self aware, and understand who you are, what your dreams are, you really do have to stick to it. Along the way, people are going to tell you, “No.” You haven’t lost anything. But you’re going to find that one or two people are going to say “Yes.” And that is going to make the difference. And holding true to yourself.... Don’t let someone else define who you are. And that’s the biggest thing people try to tell you.

And I’m surprised that it never dawned on me. And I know someone will say, “Well, I know who you are. You’re this,” but you know, that is totally not me. I know who I am. I can’t let someone else define me, especially someone who I don’t respect, who’s not my family, someone who isn’t my mentor, someone who isn’t a trusted advisor. And that’s the other difference, is having a trusted mentor, be it a family member, a teacher, someone. Find that person who’s always going to tell you the truth.

Study hard. Understand what you’re getting into. Mitigate all of the risks by understanding what you’re getting into like, why can’t a 12 year old learn to scuba dive if they can understand the risks of what they’re getting into? Like swimming is a must. Understanding all of the gas laws before you start scuba diving and how long should go down and come up, understanding your dive watch.

There’s things that you just have to go through in order to be safe, and understanding that for yourself. Don’t let anyone else do it for you. And that, to me, was one of the most important things. You need to make sure you’re safe, not someone else is making sure you’re safe, right?