During a May 24 Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) contact, students in Susan Singleton’s class at Coronado Village Elementary School near San Diego asked Expedition 11 flight engineer John Phillips, KE5DRY, about his view of Earth from orbit and the end of the world.
“When the sun collapses into itself and becomes a black hole, will it have enough gravity to suck in the other planets?” one student wanted to know. Phillips replied, reassuringly, “Our sun is not big enough to become a black hole.” Asked about his view of Earth, he told the students, “Earth is very, very beautiful. In the daytime you see the blue of the ocean, the white snow and tan deserts, and in the night you can see lights and lightning. Just the other day I flew over Coronado and saw the beach and the big hotels.”
One student asked if the space station’s living quarters looked like an apartment. Phillips replied, “It’s sort of like an apartment. We have a kitchen, a bathroom and two tiny bedrooms.” In view of the fact that ISS astronauts are in space for months at a time, Adam Phillips, the astronaut’s nephew, asked, appropriately, how Phillips kept in touch with his family. “I can send and receive e-mail,” he replied. “I have weekly video conferences with my wife and two children, and I can even make phone calls some of the time. In fact I’m going to call my brother Nathan and your family one of these days.”
One envious student asked how to become an astronaut. “Well,” Phillips replied, “you start by doing well in school and then going to college and start a career as a scientist, engineer, pilot or a medical doctor.”
The last question belonged to Mrs Singleton, who was filling in for an absent student. She asked Phillips whether he dreams in space. “I haven’t remembered any dreams in space yet,” he replied, “but that’s normal for me because I hardly ever remember them on Earth, either.”
ARISS http://www.rac.ca/ariss is an international educational outreach with US participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.