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station this is nbc how do you hear me

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i have you loud and clear help me

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i hear you loud and clear as well

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so that

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we thank you so much for doing this my

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name is alexa

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we kind of took a

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stroll through some of your tweets and

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have an idea of how we want to frame

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this story so if you don't mind i know

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we only have 10 minutes i'm just gonna

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absolutely alexa go for it

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great so um our first question is i know

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you are a native of baltimore

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and we were wondering what it felt like

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to fly over your hometown for the first

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uh it is absolutely fantastic to fly

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over your home time uh hometown and not

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just the first time but every time we've

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uh we've been having some great east

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coast passes the last few days and i've

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looked down at washington dc baltimore

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the whole i-95 corridor going up to new

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york city and just knowing how many

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people down there i love and how many

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great memories i have with my family

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it's just amazing to fly over your

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does it make you homesick at all

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i definitely miss my kids but it is

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pretty tough to be homesick when you're

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floating around going 18 000 miles an

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hour on the space station this is a wild

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great and do you feel pride being a

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i'm sorry can you repeat the question

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sure do you feel pride being a baltimore

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oh absolutely i i feel pride uh not just

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for baltimore but for the whole country

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uh right now i'm the lone american off

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of uh off of the earth and it's a great

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feeling to be be up here i got a german

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buddy with me and one russian and we're

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holding down the fort until uh barry

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wilmore elena and sasha come up here

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next week we're looking forward to

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seeing them

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so from the tweets it looks like you're

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still blown away

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by what you see every day do things

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our what i found is our earth is

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changing all the time and as we continue

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our orbit around the earth the earth

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continues its orbit around the sun and

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so it's always giving us a slightly

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different landscape the aurora change

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the way the sun hits the oceans changes

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and i i even saw a huge snowfall across

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canada i think it was last week so i'm

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starting to see even the seasons change

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it is really a neat neat experience from

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great so i'm just going to snowball off

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of that you've captured some

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extraordinary weather events up there

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what goes through your through your head

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when you see for example

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a snow storm or

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well first it's it's tough to say that

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you see the beauty in it but that's

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really what you see first a hurricane

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from up here is absolutely beautiful to

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look at

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it takes your breath away when you

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realize just how enormous these storms

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are they cover almost our entire field

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of view but then you also think about

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what's going on uh with the people that

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are underneath these storms and you know

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hurricanes are super dangerous when i

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see snow storms though i always think

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that hey kids might be off school the

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next day they might be out there riding

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their sleds and playing so those are

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always fun to look at for me but you go

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through a whole different mix of

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great and let's circle back then to um

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your tweets again

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um a lot of them you know even though

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you're an accomplished astronaut you

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often talk about everyday life in space

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like you're just any man on the street

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so let's just talk about a couple of

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things for example how long has it been

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well now i was just talking with alex

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it's been 115 days

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yeah we do we have we have good hygiene

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we have wetted towels we get to use with

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soap and all that but it has been 115

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and what about having a coffee maker up

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well it depends if it's your buddy

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making the coffee using our water

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dispenser here it's super easy actually

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it's easy no matter what and drinking

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coffee out of a bag you don't get any of

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the delicious aroma like you would in

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the morning at home drinking out of a

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coffee cup but still it's absolutely

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delicious and just having that nice warm

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beverage in the morning that's a little

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great and what has been the biggest

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adjustment you've had to go through with

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that's exactly it zero gravity

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everything floats

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i float my insides float my food floats

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when i take a screw out of a piece of

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hardware if it's not captive it floats

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my tools float and that has definitely

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been it's the most difficult but it's

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also the kind of the most enjoyable part

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of being up here is just learning a

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whole new way learn your body has to

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learn a new way to work to think to eat

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it's just it's really really really

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really cool

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now you're the first u.s astronaut i

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would say to become a bona fide social

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media star how do you think life would

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have been different if for example neil

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armstrong had twitter when he landed on

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uh

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first of all we would still be reading

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those tweets that he sent down from the

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moon with his crew and

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just to be able to share that experience

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so intimately could you imagine just

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being able to kind of walk with them on

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the moon to see high definition video

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sent down almost real time from what

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they're doing

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that would have been amazing and i

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really hope we go back someday the moon

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and asteroid mars it doesn't matter i

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think that that's going to be absolutely

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them what has social media enabled you

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well that's a tough question i haven't

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tried to do anything all i want to do is

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share this unique world that we live in

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through social media through photos and

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really i wanted to try to bring video

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into it because adding motion to our

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world up here is really what it's all

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about seeing seeing thunderstorms seeing

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the earth turning away the sun rising or

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setting watching hardware float around

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to me it's the video that really

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captures the imagination of living up

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great and then let's talk a little bit

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about um the students that you speak to

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in the classrooms that you speak to why

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is it so important to you to speak to

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them as often as you do and was just

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wondering in addition to that what

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well let's start with the the last half

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of that question what they're most

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curious about usually is the imaginative

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stuff how do you go to the bathroom how

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do you eat what's it like to float

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what's it like to look back at the earth

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so you can tell their their young minds

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are thinking about all those crazy

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things that we get to experience and

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love up here

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why is it so important to talk to them

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you never know

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when your little piece of outreach is

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going to have a connection with one two

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a dozen students and if you can just

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just trigger them a little bit just give

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them a little motivation to study

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science technology engineering and math

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in their lives

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and then just in terms of the fact that

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you know so many little kids growing up

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want to be astronauts when they grow up

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do you think that the social media the

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photos and the tweets and and the videos

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that you've been able to bring to them

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oh i know it's i know it's influenced

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them it influences their parents it's

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influenced my friends so certainly this

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this sort of effort to get the message

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out

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it definitely works there's no doubt

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about it

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and then in the simplest way how would

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you explain what you are doing

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really it boils down to just a few

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simple things we are conducting science

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that's our main objective up here and

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that is what we are spending almost

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right now three quarters of our day

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doing and then the other thing we're

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doing is we're taking care of our bodies

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because in weightlessness our our bones

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decay our muscles can decay so we have

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countermeasures we're on the treadmill a

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lot and on a workout machine to keep our

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muscles some bones strong and then also

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this is our home this is our laboratory

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and we need to upkeep it so we're

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working on maintenance fixing things

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installing new fuel samples that sort of

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work and that really that's it in a

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nutshell but it keeps us busy 12 hours a

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day

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great i think we have about 30 seconds

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left is there anything else that you'd

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no it's just it's really great to get to

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talk to you and i enjoy these events a

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lot and also it's wonderful working with

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my two crewmates up here these are great

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guys and i'm very lucky to be off our

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planet right now

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great well it was lovely speaking with

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you thank you so much for talking to us

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absolutely