Secret Space Escapes – The Real Life Gravity

Last weekend at New York Comic-Con one of the hot-ticket panels on Saturday was for Secret Space Escapes – The Real Life Gravity. This panel promoted the upcoming television show of the same name that premieres on November 10, on Science.

The panel opened with a virtual welcome by Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian astronaut to perform a spacewalk. Moderator Alex George, the Tech Editor for Popular Science, then introduced the live panelists (all astronauts!): Jerry Linenger, Robert Curbeam, and Soyeon Yi.

Clips from the new show were shown throughout the panel, starting with parts of Dr. Linenger’s episode. During his time on the Russian space station Mir, Dr. Linenger faced a sudden fire on board. A fire in space is particularly dangerous: it damages equipment, it could puncture the hull of the station, and it uses up all the oxygen that you need to breathe. One of the first things that Dr. Linenger had to do was to find a respirator to provide oxygen. As his peripheral vision grew fuzzy, he grabbed one and pressed it to his face. When he turned it on, it failed to produce any oxygen.

The panel then turned to a discussion of the astronauts’ experiences in training. Soyeon Yi is the first South Korean astronaut, chosen from 36,000 applicants. She recounted how her family had influenced her path to become an engineer in a culture where she learned to work in facilities without women’s bathrooms or even women’s locker rooms! Her episode on the show will show how she survived an abnormal reentry and up to 20 G’s of force before landing off course by 260 miles.

The panel was asked to recount their worst moments in training. Was there a time at which any of them almost quit? They all agreed with Robert Curbeam who said that, “you want it so badly that you just suffer through it all.” Dr. Yi shared similar sentiments, but did regale the crowd with her experience in survival training in a capsule in the Black Sea. She lost almost eight pounds from dehydration and vomited every five minutes from motion sickness. Dr. Linenger mentioned that he had to train in a survival suit with holes in it, and that it kept filling up with water.

The next clip from Secret Space Escapes showed Dr. Curbeam’s experience on a spacewalk. The International Space Station is cooled by using anhydrous ammonia. This substance is very caustic and poisonous. Curbeam’s job was to hook up an ammonia line to the laboratory. When he started to move the line, ammonia leaked into space, onto the station, and all over his space suit. In some places on his suit, it was an inch thick. Even after the leak was controlled, he couldn’t return to the station with the ammonia on his suit.

The audience asked the astronauts about the role of mission control, and whether they appreciated being told what to do by people who weren’t there beside them. Dr. Curbeam replied that there are, “a couple thousand brains down there and you’re in a situation where you may not be thinking very clearly.” Mission control is essential to the astronauts in space. It was also mentioned that it was comforting to have them there to keep you from doing something stupid.

The second part of Dr. Linenger’s clip played at this point. As he searched for a respirator he thought of his wife and family, certain that he was about to die. Thankfully, he found a working respirator at that point, but the reenactment on the show had Dr. Linenger tearing up while he watched.

Finally, the panel was asked about the scientific accuracy of recent space movies such as Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian. Dr. Linenger loved The Marian but told the audience that these movies were all very good and get people interested in space. Dr. Curbeam enjoyed the movies as entertainment, remarking that when you have experience in an area, you will be able to find inaccuracies in any film. However, he really appreciated the views of Earth in Gravity.

With only an hour allotted for the panel, it was over much too soon. For more stories about astronauts and the dangers and triumphs in space, tune in to Science on November 10.