Other Than Flying In Combat In My Military Days, I Would Say My Time At NASA When I've Been Exploring--probably

Being a flight director was such an honor.  I was only able to do it for eight years, but I loved every minute of it.  My favorite part about that is being able to lead such talented teams.  

I had a different team with me every day, different teams on different missions I supported, but the one consistent thing is that they are all dedicated to flying these vehicles safely, to protecting the crew, to executing the mission.  

And it was just an honor to be able to lead them. I considered it a successful day if I didn't have to step in and I could just sit back and watch the team do their thing, and they are beautiful.

What was your favorite part of being a Flight Director?

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?

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 interesting answer is that there probably is a black hole near the earth.  But in space terms, when we say near the earth, we don't mean really that close to the earth.  Maybe about ten or twenty light years away.  Just like the nearest stars are about ten or twenty light years away.  So the difference is that that black hole today is just sitting there, not doing anything. 

The black holes we know about are much farther away, thousands of light years away.  And they're really really bright because they're sucking in gas which gets heated up to millions and billions of degrees and shines in really bright x-rays.  So if one of those really bright black holes were one of the close black holes, about twenty light years away, it would kill us all."

What would happen if a Black hole would be near the earth? What would be the consequences to humans?

So floating is really interesting.  You're actually very unstable when you float for the first time because your body's rotating on all these different axes, and anything you touch anything, you're inputting motion into that system.  So one of the things we learn the first week or so we get on board is how to stabilize ourselves.  

So we actually hook our feet underneath some hand rails and kind of use our toes [wiggles fingers] to keep ourselves steady.  Then--only then--when we've mastered that, we start to learn how to float in a given direction.  We learn how to push off and get to where we want to go.  It's not always perfect at first, there's a lot of times when you bump your forehead into the hatches or you slam into the wall and knock the computer off.  That's like every first time astronaut experience. But after a little while, you get pretty good at getting around the space station.  

It's a whole 'nother concept when you come back to Earth and you have to remember how to walk again.  So again, there you're kind of unsteady the first few days you're figuring out--your feet haven't touched the ground in a long time, so you have to figure out how to walk. And then you move on to how to jump, and then finally you get good enough and you can learn how to run again.

What does it feel like to float?? Do you have trouble adjusting to walking on the earth after that ??

Yeah, so the human body changes a lot when you're in space. There's things that happen like fluid shifts, since you don't have gravity drawing the fluid down into your legs, all that fluid shifts upwards.  And the body can adjust to this, it does this by just getting rid of the excess fluid.  When you come back to Earth, however, you're a little bit dehydrated.  So one of the things we do is get fluid in right away.  

Another thing that's concerning is things like bone loss aor muscle loss, so what we do to prevent most of that on board is actually just work out a lot.  We have a device called ARED, which is a Resistive Exercise Device, and we have a whole gym's worth of weight-lifting exercises.  We do that, we do running, and we do cycling.  And that can counteract most of the muscle loss and the bone loss we see on board.  We're really successful in returning astronauts in pretty good health these days.

Is your health affected from being in outer space?

“Black holes are just...pure gravity.”

Whats the best metaphor/ explanation of blackholes youve ever heard?

My mother gave me the best advice I'd ever received, and it was "trust your instincts."  I've applied that when I was afraid to go away to college, and she told me, "Trust your instincts, stay at home."  

I've applied that every time I take on a new position where I'm afraid: I think I can do it, I'm not sure if I know everything that's required, but I'm pretty sure I could do it.  So trust your instincts, even though you don't have all the information, believe in yourself and you can achieve great things.

What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received?

I think it's actually just an incredible thing that we have picked a line-up of space-walkers--we've taken the most qualified people--and we happen to have enough female astronauts that we have two women doing a spacewalk now.  I think it really is a testament to NASA's inclusivity in their selection process.  

The last several classes we've seen a lot more women applying in these classes and also being selected.  And so I think everybody can look at that and say, "You know, that could be me someday!"

As an astronaut who has been on a spacewalk before, what does the all-woman spacewalk mean to you?

"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 ?