i do think people that are doing their job should stay in their job if they are doing it well butyl voters need to stop i hate congress by like my congressperson.li you need to be a skeptical and hard about your own member of congress as much as the institution of whole change would be good right now. >> do you thank you surprised people with your party affiliation? we're probably because because where i live the only interesting elections and what the primary republicans and the democrats never get the chance to vote for presidential candidate they think that cinnamon buns cure diabetes. >> most are listed not announce their party registration. >> but i was asked on jobs what my registration was and i said it a couple of editors at the new york times were not happy because of their attitude in mind as you asked

the question i give you the answer. >>host: "it's even worse than you a think" by david cay johnston our guest at the of books.tival >> guest: thank you. >> retired astronaut scott kelly is next sharing details from his urine space be met good afternoon i am editor of the daily star i will spend the next hour chatting with commander scott kelly this presentation will last one hour and then we will open the floor to questions so because we are live you speak your question into the microphone

he will be doing interview right after this at 4:00 o'clock he will be at the tent and get it signed there. it really helps and we hope you consider becoming a friend of the festival with the rock-bottom remainders that includes the next panel and it is free and even better. if you came in late please silence your cell phone. let's get going no stranger to

spaceflight with three missions y lasting 159 days and then volunteered to spend a full hear above the iss to see what happens because nobody really knew his book endurance chronicles that year in fascinating detail it is not a great natural interest but it is fascinating it chronicles the year in space that is really interesting and i guarantee you all enjoy the book there are physical and mental cost the book open

barely able to walk pretty much like big giant water balloons. as a captain and fighter pilot and of course an astronaut with the international space station on explanations -- expeditions has total accumulated number of days in space please help me to welcome commander scott kelly. [applause] >> thank you very much it is great to be here it is nice to be anywhere with gravity but nice for you to show up that's great to support books and

they are important to me so i will read a little bit from the book you can hear in my own voice and then you have to buy the audiobook. >> but you should. >> i will read from the prologue after i got back in space after being on the space station after nearly a year and it was maybe about 48 hours after i got back and landed on earth. i was finishing dinner with my family and girlfriend who is now my fiancé in the front row and my daughter and my twin brother and his wife and daughter and my father it is

simple to sit at a table eating with those you love and many do it every day and i had been dreaming of that almost a year and i contemplated what it would like to eat the meal so manyt times now that i am finally here it does not seem entirely real. and the clink of silverware the swish of wine these are unfamiliar even the sensation of gravity holding me in my chair feel strange and every time i put a glass or fork down on the table there is a part of my mind that looks for velcro or duct tape to hold it in place. i've been back on earth 48 hours like an old man getting out of a recliner stick a fork in me i'm done everybody laughs encourages me to get rest so i head off to bed but

then i wake up a few hours later i struggled to get up and hit the edge of the bed feet down stand up and at every stage if you like i'm walking through quicksand the pain in my legs is awful on top of that i feel something more alarming. all the blood in my body is rushing to my legs like it rushes to your head when you do a headstand and shuffle my way to the bathroom with deliberate effort and flip on the light looking at my legs they are swollen alien stumps and not legs at all. are there kids in here? earmuffs. this is on television. [laughter]

oh crab i say come look at this. she kneels down and she looks at me with worried eyes i cannot even feel your ankle bones and then there is 360 more pages after that. [applause] >> let's start with what led you to become an astronaut. >> i am very atypical that wound up with this job because when i was younger i was a really bad student and if there are kids in here do not use me as an exampl example. i'm not a good example it is much harder to recover than just start off ahead.us

i couldn't pay attention,ti looking outside my whole first 13 years, looking at the clock to get out of the classroom and eventually i went to college and struggling there as well if i was a kid today maybe it would've gotten more help me be the person with add or adhd and to be a struggling student. and then to go in the bookstore i was not a big reader a and then just the book on the shelf with a really

cool title to make me pick it up and i read the back and i was interested and then i took the gun money push it on gas purchased the book that for the next three days and laid in bed as much as i could to read the sturdy stories of the fighter pilots that was the original astronaut it was called the right stuff. i felt like i had was only one exception that i was a bad student and cannot do my homework and i thought if i could fix that thent maybe someday i could become a military engineer or test pilot so really it was pivotal and the spark that i needed

getting removing in a positive direction. teaching myself how to study and pay attention but it wouldn't have happened of not inspired from a book. >> it's funny that you say to the kids don't be like me because that part is what i found the most inspirational that it doesn't seem surprising that school is easy for them for kids to know you don't have to have the perfect start or be the perfect kid when you figure out that is your passion you can still pursue that. >> it is a good story how it's never too late to change or situation from a kid like

me that really never thought he could be a good student i knew i could be good but i didn't know what it was something that required me to get an education and do well and that became easier but that is definitely a story for people made me feel they want to do more in their life and with some perseverance and endurance they could be successful. >> one thing i found fascinating with interesting detail you would never even think about of course face is different but how incredibly different not until you read the book can you talk about what space smells like?

>> that question has a lot of different answers it depends what you talk about exactly the space station is ahe big place and never take a shower because there isn't one there are smells associated with that where you store garbage for months at a time with a resupply ship and to have it unique and quirky smells is that anyone who has ever smelled it will not forget is the smell of the air that was recently in a vacuum and then to reintroduce air that was at one time in space or if somebody does a space walk and

has a very unique smell i think it smells like burning metal like a sparkler of people described that is a sweet smell but it definitely smells like what you would expect metal to smell like if it was burning. >> and you have to be super careful of the droplet of blood gets out of there it floats away to cause problems and similarly a new arrival of the space station is sick and throwing up and out of barf bags so to talk about the

cleanlinesss. >> that makes everything challenging. not everything that most things moving the objects because they don't have weight but mass but with unusual attitudes just like looking up cable on the back of the tv how much easier would be to flip u yourself upside down but everything else it floats so taking samples like blood samples is pretty risky not only do we conduct science experiments but we also are the science experiment. >> what could happen if a drop

goes floating away? you make it could make a mess on the wall. >> you talked about it getting into the vents. >> stuff floats around all over the place you have to be careful with things like blood. >> nobody really knows what happens to the human body after a year in space. so aging quest. >> the einstein twin paradox and it is interesting they use this as an example one twin on the earth the other goes fast for a long period of time together one ages at a slower rate and time is perceived differently so me spending 500

more days in a send my brother when it used to be six minutes younger now i am six minutes and eight milliseconds younger. i will take it. [laughter] but the other thing is genetically there were some genetic experiments also and the one thing they found the things on the end of our chromosomes the indication of our physical age not based on when we are born and as we get older those get shorter and more afraid when i was in space mine got longer in the direction of better meaning younger. which is the opposite of what they thought. so probably not a fountain of

youth but if you have a hypothesis h and then the exact opposite happens then two days after i returned they went back to normal. >> there was a scene looking at fruits and vegetables that you notice they are rotting quickly and you wonder if that happens to you as well. >> thinking this tomato gets otrotten pretty quick. >> so now to talk about vision on -- envision. >> you want to talk about the medical stuff. >> it is cool. >> not launching a rocket?

>> it feels like standing on day head 24 hours a pressure and congestion and flushed skin as with so many othersp aspects they evil under's gravity and not always respond well the increased fluid pressure to squish our eyeballs out of shape and cause swelling in the optic nerves. is that something you are aware of at the time? >> you can feel that. there is a rap song called big headed astronaut. those are maybe our egos. maybe others but your head feels swollen because of the fluid shift and we don't need as much blood as we have if not for gravity eat that up so

when you don't have gravity pushing down on your circulatory system you have this extra fluid and that makes your head swollen even after one year i still have a swollen head one year later which is not the most comfortablet thing. it does caused congestion and you can feel thatt no question. >> you talk about carbon dioxide and that is something you wrestled with and you pushed the science in that complaining about the levels going up so what did that do to your body? >> maybe on the spectrum i am an outlier how that affects me but i could definitely tell

within a system reduces carbon dioxide in theav atmosphere we have a mechanical system it works well but doesn't keep it where it is on earth. at its lowest on the space station still ten times higher than here and i was so sensitive i could feel it within 0.2 millimeters of mercury and that affects your ability to concentrate and then just to be aware and raise awareness to build systems that are better to keep carbon dioxide low.

>> so to talk about life on the space station talk about astronaut i.c.e. cream but sitting down to a meal is different. >> first ofow all astronaut i.c.e. cream is a hoax perpetuated on all of our children. >> it is at the air and space museum. >> i had i.c.e. cream in spades on -- in space. the klondike bar. that astronaut i.c.e. cream is not what i have ever seen. i have seen it at disney world. the process of eating is much different. it is related to sleeping when we were on earth we are opposing gravity all the time

going about our daily lives use it down and are more relaxed than you are more comfortable but in space there is no change in your level of relaxation people like to relax that is an enjoyable feeling and help us sleep at night working on a computer or a science experiment in time to have a meal you are still floating her time to go to sleep it wasn't a relaxing thing. and then everything floats to be conscious of what you are doing with your spoon because the worst thing you could happen is luger spoon in space

then came over. [laughter] not exactly we have spares but if you have your favorite spoon and it floats away that is one of the worst things that can happen after orbital debris. >> is everything cold? >> no. we have a food warmer it is like a suitcase with heating elements that we don't have that microwave energy there too concerned interferes with electronics but we can heat up water and hot food. >> and something that the russians enjoyed but you did not like it very much? the appetizing appetizer?

what is it? >> it is neither. i don't know what it is. [laughter] some type of meat dish. >> talk about the mission itself and what it is like to get into that small space. >> i've launched four times and twice on the space shuttle and twice with the russians on the soyuz they both launch into space the shuttle is for different missions including large payloads include 50000 pounds grabbing a satellite through the hubble space telescope and bigger than a school bus you can put

a science lab in the back the space shuttle can do so many different things but soyuz is just designed to put people in space and does it pretty well. my first launch 1999 which ironically was almost 18 years to the day of when i read the book the right stuff ims drug link student 18 years later i find space for the first time and there is nothing like that first launch and first of all the launchpad is completely abandoned you and six other crewmates because it is risky. and then strapped in and

closed the hatch looking up at the sky the clock is counting down three hours prior getting the systems ready over 2000 switches and circuit breakers. the most sophisticated vehicle ever built for a kid who couldn't do his homework. not that easy. the clock stops at nine minutes to give you time to catch up if you are behind in what you are doing you also think this is really stupid. especially if you've never done it before. but you cannot get away and you would be embarrassed and then nine minutes and starts to count down at 30 seconds

the computers take over a six seconds and a then -- the main engine flight you are bolted to the launchpad so the clock counts down the bolts are explodeded open the engine is light did and if you like you are thrown into outer space you see the shuttle launch in person or on television it looks like it lifts off slowly but inside there is nothing slow about it. you get the feeling you are going somewhere but you know you are not coming back to florida. but you know you are not coming back to florida. fly at 17500 miles per hour.

and it is a different experience. there is three of you now instead of seven of you soyuz is smaller than the shuttle but still serious business liquid oxygen liquid kerosene and that supercooled vapor and you get up to the launchpad in central asia it isn't abandoned there is 100 people 00up there like they are having a party and they make great partners with the space program and i have a lot s of respect for those i come across but a certain philosophy is different and one of theirs is that when their friends go on a long trip, they have to be there to say goodbye. you have 100 people at the

base of the fully fueled rocket and some of them are even smoking cigarettes. swear to god. [laughter] you want to get in as quickly as possible for the escape system on top. it is as small as can be to fit three grown people url though to elbow no caps down clock. very automated and during the cold war maybe would have launched weapons at enemies, us. what time are we leaving? is that moscow time? and then pretty soon some guy ignition then you see a

smoker out there. [laughter] then the turbo pump and rocket motors it does lift off slowly still within nine minutes you go 25 times the speed of sound. >> during your year up there coming and going just the delivery vehicles? >> with those cargo ships what you are referring to is the russian ones crashed into the pacific ocean they thought soyuz had a similar issue that would not have been good but we also lost a resupply ship that blew up on the way from

spacex but nasa does a good job to prepare for these eventualities and had we lostd a third one we would have been a bigger trouble. >> do you know you'll be coming back into the atmosphere? >> that is a s strong word. >> if you think about these things doing something this risky you think about your mortality but like a lot of people you can rationalize this in your mind and decide it is important you don't do well on it but it is risky and 140 flights into fatal accident one out of 70 chance

to get killed if i had a deck of cards whoever got the ace of spades would never go home that type of risk is involved. >> what did you learn about your physical self? >> one thing i learned i came backck smarter and more handsome than my twin brother. [laughter] and since this is his town i feel obligated to share that. [laughter] and may psychological standpoint over a long time i have that advantage to fly 159 days in space previously but i

didn't feel like i was climbing the walls although i was definitely ready to come home but if i had to stay for a reason it would not have been a problem. >> what about for your family that is a long time to be away. >> and they don't remember there dad or their uncle not being an astronaut. and then within to get used to.

and in some ways that experiences more challenging and then to understand that. so then what could happen with family members on earth especially first-hand on the first flight and i experienced firsthand on that 159 day flight and knowing that those kind of things can occur and have any ability to get home. >> we will open to questions.

>> still working on some books i had young readers version coming out in october and then i have three more kids books with the same publisher of random house i don't do public speakinggu maybe i'll have to figure out something else to do over the next year. >> does the space station have a clock and what time is it? >> that's a good question. we fly around your 16 times a day so day night cycle is not something you can operate on

like it is dark go to sleep so you do use time. a watch we use greenwich mean time not because it is international standard of time but the most convenient time to be on with different control centers around the world japan, germany and with the crew is that more are in the control centers working so they had to find a time that works for everybody. and they chose greenwich time becausero those that worked in the control center to utilize the metro system to get to and from work because it isn't open all the time so that is

based on the moscow subway schedule. [laughter] >> you mentioned the number of things that made you feel unsafe like co2 levels or the spacewalk so knowing all of those things do you still feel safe? >> i would not say not safe the word i use had a very specific meaning but we try to make everything as safe as we can would i go again? i would go right now if there was a rocket outside that is just an incredible experience and something i really miss. yes there is risk involved

sometimes they look like bullet holes or other risks involved living and working in space but i would do in a heartbeat. absolutely. >> have you spent more than one year in space? >> not at one time but i have spent 520 days total. >> how do you see the voyage of people going to mars to spend all that time? how long would that take first of all how do they spend that time and how does that feel? >> it would take conventional wisdom today with current technology would take 200 days to get there spend a year on theke surface and 200 days to get back that is a long time with over two years in space

at the time i spent in space was longer than people who go to mars not counting land time as space-time but i guess you could their experience will be much different than mine. and more for psychological reasons even though we are in space we are 250 miles away from a physics perspective far awayay from home it is complicated to get back but visually using very close. and with a big giant pair of binoculars i could see my house. you do feel connected and can make a phone call,

videoconference. and then to have a real time voice conversation and then not to have the incredible planet out the window to look at the sign will always be out when they look outside so psychologically it is a much different experience for the first travelers to mars. you find the right people. there are people that can deal with that absolutely. that doesn't mean that we can't or shouldn't do it. what is on your shirt? >> that is mario.

>> the 7-year-old tells you what is on your shirt? you know you're on television? [laughter] >> i used to play the videogame some kind of mario. he flips the enemies away with his tail. >> thank you very much or your service and contributions. [applause] as we move from the government to private enterprise what dangers and liabilities do you see? >> to privatize the space program means something to different people. look at the space shuttle program and then to turn the

wrenches to put this together but still company built the vehicle. not nasa. . . . .er

spacex as a good example. and then by doing that, nasa could potentially have more money to do other things, like building a rocket for deep space, like the sls or orion going back to the moon or mars some day. so it's a really good partnership, i think, and hopefully once we start flying people on these vehicles, they'll be as safe as we possibly can make them. still be risky but hopefully as safe as we've flown in space previously. the notion of privatizing the space station, which was recently in the news because of the administration's budget, had 2025 we would turn the space station operations over to a private entity. i'm not really sure exactly what that means. part of the space station is

already privatizes in the spacex and another company to christopher payload. some of the payloads are privatized. this idea you can take this $100 billion space station that takes a billion dollars a year to operate, to just keep the lights on, and you're going to have some company that would be willing to take over the whole thing and pay the government money, i guess, in billions of dollars to do this, doesn't seem very practical to me. >> thank you. >> two questions. one, how long does it take your body to get accustomed to weightlessness? truck about get eight customed to gravity and some of the medical effects of that and then the second question is, inning space for a year in close quarters with other people, how do you deal with differences in personalities? you must get -- i know -- i'm sure there's psychological

jeaning and all that but how do you deal with that? >> so, adjusting to living in space is a process that occurs the whole time you're there, at least that was my case. i never got -- i never had a day where i would say, i feel exactly like die on earth -- like i do on earth but i say most of that adjustment occurs in the first month. i think once you get past the first month, you're feeling close to as normal as you can feel. which is interesting because if you have flown in space for a short flight, like a couple of weeks, you never really even got there. but it's a process that continues through my whole time in space. and the things you have to get adjusted to are your vestibular system without gravity pushing on the hairs in your inner ear and your system, you feel like

you're tumbling because you really are. you're falling in freefall the whole time you're in space, and this is an effect that causes some people to get sick. usually you get over that in about a week if you get sick. the other things you have to adjust to is just how do you manage yourself and all your stuff when everything floats and that's a skill that takes a long time to really master. meaning like a month or a couple of months. just moving yourself around, that's another way you need to be able to adapt. the second part of your question was -- >> ous about. >> getting along -- >> in coast quarters, dealing with differences in personalities and disagreements and getting on each other's nerves. >> was go to make a joke but i thought maybe you would believe me. he we just fight it out. no nasa does a good job and

international partner does a good job of vetting people when they come into the program. we do background checks on people. we know a lot about them before you send somebody into space to live on the space station for a long time. so, generally the people i go up there are good at dealing with -- first of all, avoiding conflict for one, and then if you have conflict, knowing how to deal with it. i never saw anything that was -- at least personally i've never experienced any kind of conflict where you would have to send each -- two crew membered to their individual corners. >> there were two russians who weren't speaking to each other. >> yeah, there were those guy. >> would you help we are if the microphone. >> hi. well, like probably other people here, i've met mark few times. this a weird deja vu kind of thing.ment you messengered how you read the book. did you kind of push him into

the same field? >> he had a different path than i. he told me recently, couple years ago, how -- when were in the eighth grade our far sat us down and said, okay, you guys are not very good students, we're going to start thinking bat vocational career, education for you, fine. my brother was like, wait a minute, i want to go to college. so he immediately in he ninth grate started getting straight a's and i always wondered what happened. and he told me that -- about this conversation i have no recollection of but a there was -- probably a squirrel running outside in the window. yes so he did well in high school and did well on the s.a.t.s and went to this place call the u.s. merchant marine academy. so he wound up being ahead of any college by a year, but i

caught up eventually. then i passed him. i flew in space first. and i flew in space last. and longest. [laughter] >> i hope he's watching this on c-span. >> okay go ahead. >> is it scary when you were in space? >> so is it scary? there are parts that could be a little scary, like when you're launching on the rocket for the first time, or coming back on the soyuz. coming back on the soyuz could be the most scary thing. when you -- the space shuttle and the soyuz come back the same way you fire an engine and slow down by a few hundred miles an hour and then the rest of the speed ex-take out with friction in the atmosphere. but in soyuz when the engine cuts off, it's exploded apart and you're in the middle someone

the debris is going by the window, and then you hit the storm atmosphere and you see pieces of the heat shield flying by and then your in 3,000-degree fireball and it's like you're staring into the sun which is six inches from your head, gets hot inside. kind of like going over no -- niagra fall in a barrel but your on fire, and then as soon as you know you're going to be okay, it's the funnest thing to do in life. sometimes scary but not too much. >> i want to be an astronaut. >> all right. [applause] >> do you guys ever accidentally throw up in then have it come back into your mouth?

[laughter] >> i think i wrote about that in my book. we're on tv. you don't want to talk about throwing into our mouths. back and forth. >> come over here. >> thank you for coming to talk to us. thank you very much. >> my pleasure. >> i have four quick questions. >> what? >> we only have five minutes so have one so we can get to another question from a child. >> i have four quick answers. >> at weird but here we go. how close are we in that technology where humans can go into stasis in one. how close are we to artificial gravity, especially inside a ship. >> not an expert on the first

thing. like a coma -- >> yes. >> i don't know anything about that other than what i've seen in movies. artificial gravity? i think if we're going to go further than what -- where mars and is be in space much longer than 200 days, like years, going to go to saturn or jupiter, the moons, then artificial gravity would be important. >> and that takes me to the third question. we are probably quite a bit away from "star trek" technology, the enterprise. >> i would agree. >> and fourth and final question, did you see any ufos? did you come cries any alien intelligence in are you willing to tell us what you actually saw in all classified? did they tell you to bury that information and never tell us? >> what's your question? just kidding.

you know, when i became an astronaut in 1996, i thought the first thing they were going to do is give us our astronaut bonus and tell us about the aliens. neither of those happened. i haven't seen any aliens. i was always hoping would open a window shutter in the morning and there would be some alien spaceship hovering outside the window. never happened. i'm sorry. >> when you got chosen for your year in space, what were your first words? >> uh-oh. [laughter] >> actually got chosen for this and then i got pulled off of the flight for, like, 24 hours. that was disappointing. actually wasn't really interested in flying in space for a year but then he warmed up to the idea, and i was -- i really feel like it's a privilege to have gotten to do that, and i really appreciate

the opportunity. but, yeah, it's a -- it's challenge but i was excited about it. >> i think the questions from the kid have been the lest so last take another. >> all right. >> thank you for your talk. so, i watched your pbs documentary and now mentioned that you were taking care of flowers that had kind of been abandoned by your crewmate. is that something you cherished since it was something that was on earth, too? >> so, i had these flowers that i took great care in bringing them back to life, and my crewmates had nothing to do with thisment they kind of died or started to die just because of the time delay in being told when to water them, when not to water them. but the reason i -- at least initially the reason i got very interested in making these guys come back is that i took a picture of them, i posted it on my twitter or something and some

guy, some internet troll saido you're no mark watney. the guy from "the martian." the fight is on after that. i made those flowers as beautiful as they possibly could be. but, yeah issue got attached to them. you don't have plants there, and nature is important. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> so, i'm afraid we're out of time. it want to remind you can get your book signed at 4:00. don't leave yet. we're not done yet. i just said we're out of time. you can get your books signed at 4:00 at the u of a book store tent. and you can buy them and want to give the last word to commander kelly. >> how about this girl. what's your question? >> okay. when -- i'm 12 right now and when you were my age, what did you want to be when you grew up? >> i didn't really know.

maybe like doctor. i was pretty -- i think ignorant at the time because i couldn't do any homework ask that's important to become a doctor. but you're not too tall to be an astronaut so don't think about that. you can still do that. so i want to leave you with one final thought. i appreciate you coming. i've been privileged to have this career and it was really a privilege to be able to write this book and share it with everyone. i just want to leave you with a final thought and when i was leaving leaving the space station -- this is a space station i spent 500 days of my life on. i'm looking out the window. this giant truss and i'm thinking we built this thing, our country, and our -- international partners, this thing -- the space station weighs a million pounds. the size of a football field. we built this in a vacuum in extremes of tower muss or minus

270 degrees. with international partnership of 15 countries, different languages and cultures, this is the hardest thing we have ever done and if we can do this, we can do anything. want to good to mars go to mars, cure cancer, put the resources behind it, we can do that. want to fix or problems with the environment the challenges we have, we can do that. challenges in this country, challenges in your lives. after spending a year in space i was absolutely inspired that if we can dream it, we can do it. thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] [inaudible conversations]