Presented by Station News Network
Edited to cut length, but Lance's parts are complete.
Erika: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Kids' Space Update. It's the news program just for students all about space. We're programming live from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and we'd like to welcome all of you guys.You know, Johnson Space Center is really the home of the astronauts. But guess what? It's been the home of a very special person. As a matter of fact, this person could be the youngest person ever to go into space, and I'm talking about pop star and future space explorer, Lance Bass. As a matter of fact, Lance could be the youngest person ever to fly in space again. He's been training in Russia and now in the United States. He and two other Soyuz 5 crew members are getting ready for a late October launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and to give you the latest and the scoop and the greatest, let's welcome Lance Bass to our program. Well, Lance, you know, to get the program started, all of us have one big thing on our mind, and that is why space? What got you interested in the space program?
Lance: I have been interested in space since I was just a little kid. I think my family got me into it. I remember when I was a kid wanting to go to Florida to see a shuttle launch, and my family brought me there for my first time to see a launch. I went to Space Camp when I was little, and I loved science and math and all that, so it's something I want to do. I've always wanted to be an astronaut. That's what I wanted to do when I "grew up."
Erika: Absolutely. You know we actually have students that are visiting with us today, and some of these students have some questions for you. Let's start with our first question.
Alicia: Why did you want to do this educational program today with kids?
Lance: Well, I think, with this whole mission that I'm doing with space, education is my big focus. I want to maybe inspire a younger generation to go into more math and science, maybe inspire that person to become an astronaut that might not have thought about it at an earlier age.
Matthew: How long has it been a dream of yours to go to space?
Lance: It has been a dream of mine since I can remember. Maybe four years old, I always dreamed what it would be like to travel in space and to be an astronaut.
Stephanie: Has your creativity as a musician been helpful in preparing for space flight?
Lance: Very good question. I think the good thing about being a musician and then also combining it with what I'm doing now, the things that have prepared me are like living on the road. I live on a bus, a traveling bus, so I'm used to being in confined areas with other people, respecting each other's space. And that is a big thing up on the International Space Station right now. You know you have just a small amount of people, but it's also a small amount of space, so you need to respect everyone's privacy and other people's stuff. If you want something, ask for it and return it, that type of stuff. So that really helped me a lot.
Erika: We actually have some questions that are already coming in across the Internet, and the first question is from Donna. First of all, she wants to say, congratulations for living your dream. Okay, and she wants to know if you can tell us a few details about some of your training.
Lance: Training. Training is very, very difficult. It's a lot of fun on one end, but it's a lot theory. You have to learn everything about what you're going to experience up in space. It's not easy getting around in Zero-G, and that's lot what you have to train for just as easy as eating on Earth, it takes a very long time to train to eat in space. So I think the hardest thing for me with the training is, I'm training in Russia, and the language barrier. You have to learn a lot of Russian because all your lectures and classrooms are all in Russian. So learning how to cope with space and then also doing it in a different language has to be the hardest thing.
Erika: I mean he mentioned about Russian, so, Lance, we want you to talk a little Russian for us. And then you have to tell us what you said.
Lance: [Russian]. "I understand Russian a little."
Erika: Not bad. Not bad at all. Something else too. We always have the fun things here. You mentioned something about food, and you’ve done some food stuff. We have a few things here. Now before we came on you kind of shared with me that he already has a favorite drink. Now I want you to share that with everyone watching today.
Lance: like three weeks ago, and my favorite is the pineapple. I know you don't like the pineapple too much.
Erika: Lance, Mr. Lance, he's a high school teacher, he wants to know if you’re going to be keeping a journal online for students that they can look and keep following your training and the launch and your journey in space.
Lance: One of - the great thing I've been doing since I've learned that I might have had a chance to train for this mission, is I've kept a journal every day. And I'm definitely going to share that with everybody when it's all over with. I'm doing, the great thing about my mission is it's going to be a documentary and it's going to be on television so you get to see exactly how hard these astronauts train to become what they are, cosmonauts and astronauts, and how our relationships are with Russia.
Student: What other astronauts/cosmonauts will be traveling with you?
Lance: On a Soyuz it's a lot smaller than the shuttle, so we can only fit three people in that, and it's very tight fit, and so I will be in the far right seat. And then my commander's in the middle, and that's Sergei Zaletin. He's from Russia, and he's flown a couple of times in space, actually to the MIR Station. And then we have [Frank Davin] from Belgium, and this will be his first time to go up. He'll be my flight engineer, and he is a fighter pilot out of Belgium.
Student: After going to the space station, what is your next goal?
Lance: Wow. It's really hard to say. Eight months ago I didn't even know I would be doing this. This has been one of my lifelong dreams, and when I was asked to do this, it just overwhelmed me, and I still can't believe I'm here training for this. But my goals afterwards are to continue with the space program. I still want to be involved as much as I can with educating a lot of the younger generation out there and share with the world what my experiences were, and maybe to influence people to go the same route I did with math and sciences and especially to be an astronaut. And then immediate plans right after, definitely, I have another album to record right after. So in January I'm going to start recording the new album.
Zachary: What other countries will be represented onboard the International Space Station during your mission?
Lance: On my flight we have Belgium and we have Russia and we have America. And up there right now is American and one is Russian, Sergei, and the other one is...
Wendy: Sergei [Vilareibo] from Russia.
Lance: They're both from Russia, so two Russians. So it'll be Belgium, America, and Russia all represented on the ISS.
Erika: Well, this question's coming in from Susan in Texas, and she wants to know, actually she understands that astronauts take music with them to the Space Station. What music will you take?
Lance: I don't know yet. You have so little space to bring up on the Soyuz. I have five kilograms I can bring on what they call a progress, which brings up a lot of materials to the International Space Station. And then I'll get five more kilograms on the actual Soyuz itself. So you get just a little amount of stuff to bring, and with that you have to choose just a few amount of CDs that you can bring. So haven't really decided yet. Maybe there'll be some new albums out there that I'll want to listen to for a good ten days, but maybe I'll just download it onto an MP3 and have a lot of music.
Erika: We have another question coming in, and this is Tanner. And he says, "I'm only seven-years-old, and I've wanted to be an astronaut since I was three, and I just was wondering what kind of schooling do I need to be able to fly in space?" I want to put that question to you, Lance. I understand that you're an advocate of education and the importance of math and science for future space exploration and how we're going to get students that are with us like today, their age, they're going to be the ones that are going to get us to other planets and things like that. So what are your thoughts?
Lance: Well, my thoughts are, you have goals, and just like Tanner, to be an astronaut. There are thousands and thousands of jobs just dealing with the astronauts that are amazing, that you have to have the people that put those astronauts in space, and there are so many amazing cool jobs that you could have here at Houston at any mission control around the world that you have to have these math and science backgrounds for.
Samuel: Are you going to sing in space, and do you think your voice will sound differently on the space station than it does here on Earth?
Lance: That's a very good question. That's a question I've always wondered, what is the difference. And I don't know if you have experienced — can you tell if there’s a difference?
Wendy: There really isn't. The pressure that we feel in the room is the same pressure that we have on board the Space Station. Although once you're up in space, some changes happen to your body. For the most part, some of us get a very stuffy head, so we feel like we have a cold. So I think when you have a cold, you tend to sing a little bit differently, and that may happen to Lance. But otherwise, if he doesn't feel like he has a cold, it should sound exactly like it does down here on Earth.
Lance: And that's a good study. Maybe I could study the voice, and that's what I'm planning on doing to see what the effects are up in space. And also there are a few instruments onboard, as a guitar and keyboard, so on our downtime we might have a little fun and play a little bit and see how it sounds. It would be very interesting.
L.B.: How do you feel about going on the Russian rockets instead of the space shuttle?
Lance: It's very different. I grew up, of course, watching shuttles, so I have had no clue what the differences were between Soyuz and shuttle, and that is what's been great about what I've been able to do is learn and to be educated the difference between the Russian space program and our program at NASA. And the Soyuz is a lot different. It's a lot smaller, more confined. The shuttle can hold seven people, and I don't know if I can say it's a smoother ride, I know the shuttle gets banged up a little bit, but with the Soyuz your knees are in your chest, so your feet go to sleep after a few hours. But I feel very, very safe in it. The people behind both the shuttle and the Soyuz are very competent, and I think I'm very happy with everyone I've worked with and feel very safe that they know what they're doing.
Erika: One of the things we want to ask you based on the question that Alex just asked is basically how do you pursue the love of music and how to integrate that into your love of space?
Lance: Well, it's great — I think music is the international language of the world. That's what I've always said. We do a lot of our music in Spanish and different languages. I lived, the first two years of my career I lived in Germany, and making music there. So it is definitely the international language. And what I've experienced with training in a different country such as Russia, knowing the same music and that type of stuff, it's such a bridge to kind of unite and talking about it kind of breaks the ice a lot. So with the love of music and the love of [this thing], the way it's compared is the same. I love both equally and it just makes me happy.
Erika: Here's a fifth grader from Pennsylvania wants to know what was the most difficult part of your training so far? What has been?
Lance: My training, the most difficult has been I guess the Russian language. It is very difficult just to train for a space mission, and then on top of that in another language. It's fun. I've always wanted to learn different languages and I never thought I was going to learn Russian, but it's a lot of fun. And I've been doing it for two months now and have a little down pat, so it's a lot of fun and I'm enjoying it.
Erika: Well, we're really excited about all the questions that are coming in off the Internet. This is: Lance, hi, I'm Iranda in Nashville. I'm wondering if you will be doing any live casts or Webcasts from the Space Station.
Lance: I will be staying in contact the whole time I'm up there. I'm getting my ham license this week. That is one of my goals this week, so I can talk to different [souls] around the world on the ham radio, and that'll be a lot of fun. And, hopefully, people can make contact with that, with the ham radio. So if you don't know what that is, ask somebody because it's a lot of fun. I can't explain it right now. And then also through my Web site and all that we're going to have updates and different things, and I'll probably be doing different interviews from the Station.
Erika: And also, we also have a lot of Web sites, or NASA Web sites, that you can keep abreast of exactly what’s going on with all the crews that are up. All right, we've got Annabelle from Switzerland. She says, "Hi, Lance. How did your family and friends react to the news of your impending launch in space"?
Lance: Different ones, different reactions. My whole family's sitting behind the cameras right now. But I've just gotten so much support from my friends and my family, it's been incredible. I think my mom was a little, at first, little iffy. Of course, it's a very dangerous thing, and so your mom's going to be a little scared. But the great thing is she's been here (and actually you're on television. Say hi.) The great thing is my family came to NASA this week, and they got to see what I will be launched in, and they got to see who's all behind it, so I think she's gotten a little more relaxed about it.
Erika: All right. Well, considering the fact that the average age of astronauts is nearly twice your age, do you think that your experience may encourage the space industry to select younger individuals for future missions?
Lance: I don't know how that's going to work, but I think I'm just happy that I can inspire a younger generation just to go ahead and start getting into this field. The criteria that NASA has of choosing their astronauts is their own way. There's been several cosmonauts/astronauts of different ages. It's just what they have to offer and what everyone's looking for. You have to have a reason to go to space. If you're a certain scientist or engineer, they choose certain people for certain missions. I think Yuri Gargarin, which was the first person to ever go to space, was Russian. He was twenty-eight-years-old. So there's no — I don't think there's any age limit. Just so that you're qualified enough and you know what you're doing.
Erika: This is not a question right here, but I’m going to ask, JC, Joey, Justin, and Chris, we've got to find out from your extended family members, what do they think about your impending...
Lance: They think it's amazing. Especially JC. JC's been so supportive. He's also a space freak like me. We've had so much fun just talking about it. He actually came to Houston. He left this morning. Gave him a tour around here, and he got to see some of the training. So he's even very excited about it, and the rest of the guys, too, have been very supportive. It came at a perfect time in our career because we, after the tour, we're just going to take the rest of the year off just to enjoy it, maybe do some other projects, and it just came at a perfect time.
Erika: Well, we have a question in about what was the physical, psychological, and emotional requirements that you had to meet in order to be eligible for the launch?
Lance: Well, you have to go through a lot of tests, which I had no clue I had to do. I started back in March. And first you have to do all the physicals. You have to go through the medical physicals at a place called the IBMP in Russia, which is an institute to [find] medical problems. And once they okay you, which it takes a good two to three weeks, they test everything, your blood and all that, and make sure that you're perfectly healthy for space travel. And then that goes to another board and they see, once you're approved, your educational background. They select you from a lot of different people wanting to do this. And then once you're selected, then you go on to your preliminary training, which I did in Russia starting in June, and you just start doing Russian classes. You start doing your basic training for living in space, the Soyuz, which I'll be going up on. And they've been very good about it because my situation is totally different from everyone else's. I'm not an astronaut. I'm not a cosmonaut. So I'm just a space participant, so we've had to do a lot of things a lot quicker than other things, and I've had a lot more classes. I do 12 hours a day, six days a week. It's very tough, but I'm sticking in there and I have tons of people watching me, making sure everything's going right, and if I do anything wrong, they're right there to tell me, "you know you're going off track, you need to go this way." So I've got a lot of support behind me.
Erika: Got a lot of people watching you here with the training, but you also have a lot of students out there that are watching you and just wanting to get a glimpse of inspiration about how important the space program is and what they need to do to stick with it with math and science in school so that they can make sure that the space program survives and that we get to the next step. So with that we've got some students that want to know some of the everyday types of tasks. For example, this one student wants to know, what kind of math, if any, is used in your training. By the way, their mom's a math teacher at Clinton High School.
Lance: My mom was a teacher in Clinton, a math teacher. Wendy's going to know way more about actually using it in space and for the training... And a good tip is to learn the metric system. We're the only ones that don't, so, of course, everything that we do is all in meters and all that stuff. Learn the metric system.
Erika: We all know the importance of music education in school curriculum and how music training increases brain power. How has your music background training and performance prepared you or helped you in training for space flight? Now they want you to be specific. Talk about examples and direct correlation between music education and scientific technological training.
Lance: Well, with me, I think just the creative part of it has really helped me. I think it's opened up something in my head. With music it makes you so creative you just even imagining going into space, you have to, with a lot of the training, there's no way you can simulate what it's going to be like, so you have to imagine that and be creative. With me, also, with the music education, a lot of it is like memorizing words and that type of stuff and seeing where it fits, and that's a lot to do with the training. You know a lot of memorization and trying to fit things into what goes where and all the physics.
Erika: This is Ryan. He's a third grader in North Carolina, and he wants to know what do you want to do the most in space rather than what will you be doing in space.
Lance: You're right, every minute is accounted for until you have such a strict timeline that you have to meet a lot of your fellow space travelers with you; they have different missions they're doing, experiments. I know Frank, the astronaut from Belgium that's going up with me, has an incredible timeline and so many experiments he has to have accomplished in the eight days that we're going to be up there, which I will be lucky enough to help out with. But what I want to do is, I have a few things that I have on my timeline, it's a lot of educational things, a lot of educational videos for different schools, ham radio communication back to schools. So mine is a primary educational mission. It's so late in the game to do many experiments and to prepare for it because sometimes you have to prepare a good year to two years for some of the things that they do up there and get them all approved to first space flight. Mine is primarily education and also I'm just going to enjoy, really enjoy being up there and taking it all in.
Erika: A lot of people already know that you went to Space Camp when you were younger and that you're a huge space enthusiast. So one of your fans out there wants to know, is there anything that has been surprising to you that you didn't expect?
Lance: I think all of it I didn't expect. It's so — it is so different. I wish everyone could have a chance to feel what it's like to train for something like this, and especially in a different country like Russia. It's totally different. I'm very lucky to be able to do what I'm doing. Of course you have a lot of expectations in what it's going to be like, and a lot of them, yes, I thought the food and all that. I was expecting it to be like that. But then there's so many things you overlook that you had no clue it would take you 24 hours of training to learn, just how to prepare your food and all that, to travel from here to there, just different systems, how to hook up your computer, how to use the computer, how to just use the communication to call down to Earth. It takes a lot of training and a lot of knowledge to know that.
Erika: Well, you know, there’s something I've got to ask you. How hard is it to go to the bathroom in space? I mean what do you do? How does that work? I've been wanting to know.
Lance: That's the number one asked question I think. It is very interesting. I mean there's a toilet, I know, there's one on the shuttle, there's one on the Soyuz, and there's one on the ISS, and basically it's all about you have, it's a hose, and it's a suction. So the way you use the bathroom deals with a lot of hoses, and it just takes it somewhere else. Is that politically correct?
Erika: I would think that of all the training that would be the one thing I'd want to know best. Absolutely.
Lance: And you need to know. You definitely need to know how to work all those types of things.
Erika: Wendy, what are some of the things that you found the hardest that were some of the simpler things?
Wendy: The advice that all the veterans give to the first-time flyers is just be slow and deliberate. Most of our food is freeze-dried, and I'm actually holding up a package of seasoned scrambled eggs. So if you're not reading the instructions carefully, you can end up putting way too much water in your scrambled eggs, and believe me, they really will not taste very well.
Erika: I'm going to pass some of this food around. What do you think? Do you think this would be pretty good? I mean you ready to eat this for breakfast in the morning?
Wendy: The pudding is good. The pudding is good, let me tell you.
Lance: I haven't seen the pudding yet.
Wendy: Where are the M&Ms? The M&Ms are really good, too.
Lance: We get to train on the Russian food, so, which is a really cool thing too. Half the food we eat up on the International Space Station is half Russian/half American, and it's totally different system, different ways of preparing it, and all that. So I need to look at this [talkover].
Wendy: Go for the M&Ms.
Lance: The M&Ms?
Erika: We have a question in from Rachel, and she's a sixth grader. And she wants to know how long will you be in space?
Lance: I will be in space, right now, a total of ten days. It takes two days to get to the Station, and then I will be there for about eight days. And it takes a couple hours to get back.
Erika: What are some of the things that you're going to be doing, or at least the crew members where you're assisting them?
Lance: Well, like I said, a lot of videoing, a lot of photography. I'm doing some environmental studies of the Mississippi Delta, and a lot of educational programs up there with the ham radio, with also a video. I will be assisting Frank Davin from Belgium with a lot of his medical experiments, so I'm going to be basically a test subject for a lot of things, hooking up my heart to things and testing out my heart, my blood, saliva. There's a saliva study. So there's all kinds of things that I'll be helping out with. There's my crew, right there.
Erika: We know that part of your training here in Houston was on the KC135. Can you explain to us what the KC135 is and what it does, and why were you on it.
Lance: We call it the parabolic flight. It's a training tool for — to experience Zero-G. It's a plane. It's all gutted out, and you can fit sometimes it's like 30 people inside. And you sit there and you go up. You experience Zero-G for about 20 to 30 seconds each parabola. I got to do 10 last week. And it was part of my training because I had to don on my space suit, take it off, learn how to travel around Zero-G and feel exactly how much pressure I need to push off a wall. I think it's a great experience just to get a feel of what it's going to be like. But I think, also, once you're up in space and experiencing total Zero-G, it'll be a little different and you'll learn a lot in a good five minutes than you've learned in hours of parabolic flight.
Erika: Is it part of your goal for your mission to get younger people interested in space travel and research?
Lance: I think that's great. Like I said before, the age is only a number. If you can learn something, if you stick with math and sciences, and if you learn it that quick that you can get a job here at Johnson, that's amazing. And I think that's great and hats off to her. But I think if you're qualified and you work really hard, I think you can do whatever you want to do.
Erika: We also have another question that's coming in. First of all, I would like to congratulate Lance in his endeavor in his space quest. I'm a big Lance Bass fan as well as an 'N Sync fan. Upon returning from space, do you have any plans to continue with the space program, and will you be returning to 'N Sync for more tours?
Lance: Thank you very much. Definitely I plan to do both. I want to definitely support the space program as much as I can. It's something I grew up with and was very excited about. It kind of inspired me to do what I'm doing now with the entertainment industry and it had a part of me growing up. So, yeah. I would love to go around and share my experience with as many people as I can, help out the space program as much as I can, and also I will be going back to 'N Sync immediately when I ... I mean I'm still with 'N Sync now, but we'll definitely be recording the new album early next year, and we have some tours to make.
Erika: We have a student that wants to know, they heard you speaking Russian, but was it hard learning how to speak Russian, and what other languages do you know?
Lance: It's been very hard, and I can't even say I speak Russian because I only know very little. It's very intense. Learning a hard language is hard enough, but on top of that doing ten hours of training a day on top of that, your brains just really fried. But just submersing yourself in the language. I'm living there in Russia where everyone speaks Russian. You're constantly around, all your instructions, all your classes are in Russian. So you're constantly around it; you're going to pick it up. And it's fun. I want to learn. I mean I'm just one of those people that just loves learning things like that. Other languages that I can understand is Spanish and German. I lived in Germany for two years, and then I live in Florida, so you can't really get by without knowing a little Spanish.
Erika: We have a question for Lance, and I'm not quite sure if this person read something somewhere about this, but they want to know was science your favorite subject in school?
Lance: It definitely was. Science and math I loved. I loved physics and all of that. It was something that was just in me that came easy to me, and I just loved to study. I liked English and History and that type of stuff too, but it's something about the math and sciences that really I grasped a lot easier, and that's why I knew I wanted to go into a field in that direction.
Erika: I would say that being in the band would probably give you a lot of experience of actually having to deal with different personalities all the time. Maybe you'd get stuck somewhere and you’d have to deal with the same personalities all the time. Do you think that might give you a little bit of insight of what our astronauts are experiencing on the International Space Station?
Lance: Oh, definitely. I've experienced just — I've been in 'N Sync for seven years now, and just living in Germany for two years, getting over that cultural shock at first and trying to communicate with someone from a different country has been an amazing training for me in Russia. Also, just traveling in a pack of five/six people, for years traveling all on bus, altogether, yeah, you definitely learn to respect each other's "space." And learn how to live with someone. And you also learn how to read people. I can probably tell you what everyone is about to do before they even do it. And I think that's what a crew also does, too. They train so much together that they become family, and you know each other backwards and forwards, and you can read each other's mind, and that's exactly what you need to be able to do in an environment such as space.
Erika: So let's talk a little bit more, Lance, about the kind of things that you're preparing for. We want to know, for example, after you leave Houston, what more or how much more training will you have?
Lance: Well, I'm halfway done now in training. The mission right now that's until October 28th, so I have a couple more months. I go back to Russia Saturday and continue my training where right now a lot of the theoretical stuff has been learned, it's all the interim classroom study and all day taking exams and stuff. Just like being in school. And now we're in the simulators and the markups of the Soyuz, and with my crew we do mission after mission, and they're going to simulate what it's going to be like going into space from launch to landing and see how we react hour after hour of being in there with your knees in your chest. So and just to see what it's going to be like. They'll throw different emergency situations in there just in case you lose a little oxygen, little depressurizes, so you know you're safe, and you're going to do in a different emergency.
Erika: We have kind of like a quick sneak peak of some of the places you've been training here in Building 9. It's the building with the life-size mockups here. I know that we actually at one point had some modules that are — some of the modules that are already on the International Space Station. And this — actually this building is huge. We have a shuttle trainer mockup. We also have mockups of the modules, and as a matter of fact, I think this might be some video from your training.
Lance: That's me right there. That's me an my crew and my backup crew. We were training the last couple of days on the mockup of the International Space Station on the Russian and American segment. And so we're just going over different emergency procedures and where everything's located so that we don't accidentally bump into something and destroy something. So the big key is just to know where everything is and how to react in different situations.
Erika: Okay, we only have a few more minutes, and so during the last part of the program I definitely want to give you a chance to kind of leave some final thoughts with all the students across the globe that are watching us today.
Lance: That's amazing. Exactly. Dream big and work hard. That is the key. I mean I, as much as I've wanted this so bad, and as big as the dream has been, I've worked very, very hard at this, and I don't know. And everything I do I work very hard, and as long as you have that goal above your head and you dream so big and you work at it, eventually it's going to happen.
Erika: Well, guys, it's about time for us to go, but I actually have one more question for Lance, and it's from our students that are in the audience today.
Alicia: When you were a child, what was your favorite folk song?
Lance: My favorite folk song? Wow! My mom used to sing to me a lot as a kid, and maybe she can think. What was the song that you always sang?
Lance's Mom: Hush-a-Bye.
Lance: Hush-a-Bye. Hush-a-Bye, it was an awesome song. She used to always sing me to sleep with that. So that's something I remember as a kid.
Erika: All right. Well, it's time for us to go, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us for Kids Space Update. We want to give a big hand for Wendy Lawrence and Lance Bass for joining us today. Until next time, make sure you stay connected, get inspired, and reach the stars.
For the complete transcript and video of the chat, go here.