Hawaii-schooled NASA astronaut Ed Lu was as impressed with Hawaii's science students at the recent State Science and Engineering Fair as they were with him. "There's good stuff out there," he said, commenting on the sophistication of exhibits at the Blaisdell Center. "It's pretty amazing for high school students. They're doing things we never dreamed of doing in high school."
astronaut prepares
for space station stay
Science Fair students listen
By Helen Altonn
intently as Ed Lu describes life
in orbit and how to train for it
Star-BulletinNow, the 38-year-old astronaut is doing things high school students dream of.
A research physicist, Lu was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy from 1992 to 1995 when NASA accepted him as a mission specialist.
He flew on the space shuttle Atlantis in 1997 for a nine-day mission to rendezvous and dock with the Russian space station Mir.
Last September, he was a mission specialist and payload commander on a 12-day mission to construct the International Space Station for the first permanent crew. It is now 13 stories and will be the size of a football field when finished, he said.
In October he is scheduled to live at the station four to six months with two Russian crewmates, he said.
"I got a chance to build my home, and now I get to live there," he told students in a talk at the Science Fair.
Lu described what it is like to be an astronaut, to fly 18,000 mph in the shuttle and work in space. He showed photographs of himself and other astronauts building the station, eating, sleeping and playing in space.
The space station's main living quarters "look like a big bus inside," he said. The astronauts took tools and equipment to work on construction, which will take about three more years, he said. They also took their own power supply, oxygen and water.
Besides 300-pound space suits, which weigh nothing in space, the astronauts wear jet backpacks on spacewalks, Lu noted. "If you floated away from the space station, you could fire the jets and fly back. But it's something you don't want to do."
There is no such thing as up or down in space, so on the first flight, he and a colleague spent one day doing everything upside down, Lu said.
"The neat thing about space," he said, "is you can look down and see where you lived. If you miss it, in 1 1/2 hours you can see it again."
Every 45 minutes, the station is on the dark side of Earth, which means the sun comes up and goes down 16 times a day, he said.
It is about 250 degrees in space on the bright side and minus 250 degrees on the dark side, he said. The space suit is insulated for both extremes, he said, but it is still cloth, so astronauts do not go outside if there is a big solar flare.
"It's pretty incredible when you're outside," Lu said, noting he saw four sunrises and four sunsets once when he was outside for 6 1/2 hours installing cables and sensors.
"You see the earth going by below. It's a pretty good view."
Lu pointed out that the astronauts carry all their equipment when working outside the shuttle because they do not want to keep going back. Even though the equipment is weightless, he said, "It's a lot of work. "Guys inside the shuttle have the easier job. They're taking pictures here and we're way up there."
Three U.S. and Russian astronauts were living at the station when he was there, he said.
He showed pictures of a stack of water tanks, describing how they generate oxygen by running electricity through water. In the next mission, he said, hydrogen from the water will be mixed with carbon dioxide to produce methane to burn as rocket fuel.
Since astronauts "fly everywhere" and do not walk, they have a little bicycle to exercise their legs, but they do not have to sit in the seat, Lu said.
"Floating around in space is kind of fun. Once you're moving in space, nothing is going to stop you until you hit a wall, so you have to be very careful where you fly. It's easy to bump into things and break things."
The astronauts built a 900-pound floating treadmill to run on during the last trip, using springs and bungee cords to hold themselves down, he said.
Photos showed them making meals by adding water to food in plastic containers. Lu was throwing macadamia nuts to his crewmates, and one was blowing water bubbles.
Going to bed is no problem, he said. "You can sleep on the walls. Sometimes I slept on the ceiling or floor. You can sleep anywhere you want in your sleeping bag."
Coming home, he said, "You want to take a hot shower and get a good meal that isn't dehydrated."
Slowing from 18,000 mph to zero for a landing, he said, "You feel you're being pushed forward in your seat. ... Everything feels really funny for a few days."
His legs feel so heavy back on land that it takes two to three hours to walk normally, he said.
Students had a lot of questions for Lu, starting with, "How do you get to be an astronaut?"
Anyone who wants to be an astronaut should send an application to NASA and get a college degree in engineering, science or math, Lu said. "You have to study science -- no two ways about it. Even pilots have engineering and science degrees."
Good physical condition is important, he said. "I don't know any astronauts who smoke."
John Glenn, going back to space at age 77, "was in pretty darn good shape," Lu said. "My dad is 77, and I couldn't imagine him flying a jet."
Lu does aerobatic flying. He also coaches wrestling, surfs, skis and plays tennis and the piano.
Among other questions, students wanted to know how to tell time in space and how the astronauts can eat when they are always floating.
Telling time in space can be confusing, Lu said. "The only way is to use your watch."
He said astronauts can request things to eat. He once asked for something "like Chinese sticky rice and chicken," he said. Dried foods do not work well, he said, explaining the trick is to use some sauce so the food will stick to the spoon, and to eat slowly.
Lu, who calls Honolulu and Webster, N.Y., his hometowns, said he had macadamia nuts and Kona coffee at almost every meal.
Toward the end of the mission, his colleagues were offering to trade beef raviolis and other items for Kona coffee, he said. "I could get any food I wanted by trading."