Partners Evening 1st September 2009

An evening including a talk with Astronaut Steve Smith

Notes from the meeting:

Life of an astronaut by Mr. Steve Smith

Charlotte introduced his colleague and speaker of tonight Steve Smith. Mr. Smith after his studies in electrical engineering and business administration at Stanford University joined IBM and them moved to NASA in 1989. Since then he has taken part in 4four space flights and is currently working as a liaison between NASA and ESA.

Our speaker started his speech with a brief summary of the space flight situation: as of today only two countries can launch people into space (USA, Russia) but in the next few years China and India will be able to do the same. He also states that as of today the International Space Station is the greatest project in the field of space flights, the 300k tonnes structure, result of a collaboration between NASA, ESA and the space agencies of Russia, Canada and Japan) has the size of two football fields is hosting 13 people (six residents, 7 visitors) and is an important step towards a more complete space colonization which will eventually lead to the reaching of Mars.

He then stated that he always wanted to be an astronaut and proved his statement with a drawing he did when he was eight, 25 years and 4 NASA refusals after, he was on a launch pad for his first space flight. Mr. Smith then described the first few moments of the launch when a 2.2 million kilos engine is launched eastward (to exploit the rotational speed of the earth) until it reached its maximum speed of approximately 7.5 Km/s (27000 km/h) and stated that even if it is a critical moment the astronauts are not nervous but are only concentrated on checking that everything goes smoothly.

He then described, with the aid of some brilliant pictures, some of the practical aspects of the magical experience of space flying. In particular he concentrated on the absence of gravity and its effects on all the activities on board (eating, moving, sleeping, shaving etc.) and the strange situation in which you witness a sunset and a sunrise every 45 minutes. Finally he showed some pictures of his space walks during a "visit" to the space telescope Hubble.

The presentation was extremely enjoyed by all the attendance and some more questions were asked, Malcolm thanked the speaker on behalf of the Club and Patricia presented him with a copy of the "Taste for life" cookbook.

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