The CAPCOM Is The Person In Mission Control That Talks To The Crew.  They Are Responsible For Translating

When you first get into the capsule sitting on top of the rocket, it actually feels incredibly familiar.  It looks like the simulator that we've trained in for years and years, and so you sit down and you strap in, and it feels like you're just gonna go for another three hour sim.  And it might be really boring, and then there might be a fire, and then all of a sudden as you're thinking about those things the rocket starts to lift off and you realize it's not a simulation.  

So there's a lot of g-forces, the rockets shake, and the whole time you're thinking, "this is the most amazing experience I've ever had."  And really, the whole thing culminates at the end of it, after that nine-minute ride when you look out the window and you see the planet.  

We never get to see that in the simulator.

How does it feel to into space for the first time? Like liftoff and leaving earth’s atmosphere? It seems like the world’s terrifying roller coaster, but what’s it really like?

I thought, um, I actually thought The Martian was pretty good.  They do a good job there of kind of showing the challenges of working in a space environment: some of the isolation, how do you troubleshoot problems, the kind of interactions that crews would have.  I think that's a movie that captures somewhat the feel of space exploration.

What popular film is the closest to reality for you?

"Theoretical?  Yeah, I think so, I think we could do it.  Uh, technically there are still a lot of details that need to be worked out."

Could you theoretically time travel through a black hole or other object with such intense mass?

Over my 28 years here, I've had the opportunity to work a number of different critical missions at NASA, particularly as a flight director.  And each one of those missions has been an amazing honor to have the public's trust put in my hands.  

But one of the aspects I like the most about it, which is also the scariest, is the fact that people's lives are in my hands.  Decisions that I make can impact the lives of the crew members, the integrity of the vehicle, and the success of the mission, and I liked having that responsibility.  I was honored to have that responsibility.

And I think if you are a flight director and you ever lose track of that, then it's time to stop being a flight director.

Before my question I would like to congratulate you on your career at Nasa, it must be amazing to work there even if you didn’t achieve your dream of being an astronaut, you can still lead missions from the ground. (Sorry if my punctuation is a bit off) as for my question, what has it been like to work at nasa all of these years and get to help with so many missions? Do you ever get nervous for the people who’s lives are in your hands? Signed ~ Phillip

"So the way we understand that black holes form is when a massive star basically runs out of fuel and collapses in on itself.  And the reason that happens is because, the reason stars don't collapse in on themselves on a regular day is because they're hot.  

Hot gas has pressure, so you have all this gas pushing out, you have gravity pulling in and you get a nice balanced equilibrium.  But eventually you run out of fuel, so you run out of temperature, you run out of pressure, and the gravity wins.  So the gravity just pulls in and there's not enough hot gas to hold it up anymore.  

That's how they form.  How do they move?  They move pretty much like every other star in the galaxy.  Mostly orbiting around, for example in the solar system, orbiting around the center of the galaxy with a little bit of random motions here and there."

How do blackholes form and how do they move ?

"So, one of the really cool things about black holes that I've been working on recently is using black holes to study another aspect of astrophysics which we don't really understand called dark matter.  Dark matter pervades the entire universe. It's probably five, six times more populous than regular matter, and yet we still have no idea what this stuff is.

The only thing we know about dark matter is that it reacts to gravity.  And if you really want to push gravity to the extreme, of course the way to do it is with a black hole.  So we're trying to understand how dark matter and black holes interact together."

What is the most fascinating thing about black hole research for you, personally?

"The answer is both.  You will disappear forever, but you will still exist inside of the black hole.  So how does that work?  

Well, you disappear forever from the point of view of everbody outside of the black hole.  As you get closer and closer to the event horizon you get what we call redshifted.  You get kind of faded away darker and darker and darker until you just disappear.  That's what it looks like from the outside.

From the inside--from your point of view--everything goes pretty well at least for the next five or six milliseconds, before you get crushed to death."

What would happen if I go into a black hole? Do you think I would disappear forever or would I still exist inside the black hole?

On a daily basis?  That's a good question, because when you think of people that might be dressed in flight suits and things or have the duty title of a pilot, that's not all we do.  

Most of our time is actually spent working, coordinating with teams, whether it's scientists with different objectives, learning what they want to do so that we know how to translate that into where we need to put the airplane, to put their instruments in the right place to measure what they want to look at.  Or with engineers, when we're redesigning or modifying aircraft so they can perform the way we want.

That combination there is really pretty amazing.

What do you do on a daily basis?

Yeah, we had to troubleshoot problems pretty much every day.  So, we have our tasks that we’re doing every day: a science experiment or some maintenance, but things don’t always go as planned.  So that’s one of the really interesting things about science experiments is that sometimes you observe things that are different and that’s how science gets done.

One of the experiments I worked on was actually doing a chemical reaction with some small little pockets of–they’re plastic kind of tubes that contain pockets of water.  And we heated the reaction and we noticed that there were bubbles being formed.  When we did this reaction on Earth we didn’t have the same thing, so we had no idea was to expect when we did this on board.  So we documented this and actually found it to be a really interesting phenomenon.  The scientists took that back and that ended up being part of our analysis of the experiment.  

Sometimes you’re just troubleshooting equipment because things aren’t working.  So I was working on one of the vacuum furnaces one day, and it has these quick disconnects that you can use to supply power or water to the vacuum furnace.  And I tried to do one of the quick disconnects and all of a sudden the connection–the valve–stayed full open and there was water spreading everywhere.  

So that was some really quick troubleshooting, I had water going in my face and I wasn’t really sure what to do so I closed the thing as quickly as possible, backed off, got the water out of my eyes, and then I called the ground and we did a lot of troubleshooting that day.

Have you ever had to troubleshoot a problem in space?

Oh, for the year to come in 2020, what I'm mostly looking forward to is new opportunities to explore.  That's been one of the most fascinating things in my seven years that I've been a research pilot at NASA is working with different engineering and science teams and learning more and more everyday.

 I feel like - it's just like going to graduate school over and over and learning great new things about the earth's atmosphere and flight research every day.  I just don't have to take written tests or write a thesis or anything like that.  So it's a great way to go to school and learn and explore.

What are you most excited for in 2020?