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station this is houston are you ready

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houston station we are ready for the

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cosmopolitan.com this is mission control

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houston please call station for a voice

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check

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station this is emma barker with

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hi i've got you loud and clear hello

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from the international space station

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hello

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um so we're good to go along with

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yes

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okay

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we're doing so we're doing the story

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because a lot of millennial women really

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want to break out of their daily grind

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right now

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you work as a biologist um but you made

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your career a little more exciting by

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doing it in space

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i know you've always wanted to go to

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space eventually but where were you and

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what was the one moment when you decided

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that's a great question i don't think

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you ever really decide that you want to

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be an astronaut there's so many people

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that want to do this job and there are

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so many factors that have to come into

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play so people ask me about how how did

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you decide you wanted to do this and i i

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basically was just incredibly lucky um

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so i think

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you know you put in your application

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you hope for the best

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and

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i think there's a lot of people that

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have dreams about going to space

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and i just happen to luck out and get to

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be selected but it's really nothing that

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i ever controlled or decided or made

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happen

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okay

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um so what does it feel like physically

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and mentally and emotionally to blast

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off into space like describe how what

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yeah we do a lot of training in the

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simulator so we spend hundreds of hours

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getting into the soyuz sim that's our

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spacecraft and the actual spacecraft

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looks a lot like the sim

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so

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launch pad it all looks familiar

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everything feels comfortable

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and then you think for a second oh wait

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i'm actually sitting on top of a rocket

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so there's uh there's quite a few hours

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before you launch

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you have a little bit of time to think

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and and uh reevaluate your life

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priorities at that point it's a little

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bit too late to back out and you're just

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pretty much along for the ride

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it's amazing

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it's very incredible that we launch

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yeah

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so you've been up there for about three

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months

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what do you miss most about life on

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earth and what are you glad that you

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so i miss the smell and the sound of

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nature a lot just being able to go

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outside take a walk see trees we're in a

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controlled environment up here which is

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truly amazing the fact that we recycle

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all of our air and our water we're

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really proving a lot of technologies for

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how we can conserve resources up here

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but what you do miss is all of those

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natural resources on the planet the

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planet is beautiful and we get a chance

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to view it from a completely different

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perspective up here

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one thing that i'm pretty glad i'm

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missing uh it frankly it's the u.s

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election season it's uh it's a little

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that's great um

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what is something that you can do when

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you're waitlist that no one on earth

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well you probably know that we can float

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but i don't know if you know that we can

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walk on walls i was practicing this the

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other day so you can walk up the wall

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if you go incredibly slowly

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the thing that i've been the most

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interested in is how fluids behave in

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microgravity you get all of this

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when fluids are in free float you get

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all of these different dynamic

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properties and one of the things that

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you can do in weightlessness is actually

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take a look at how

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fluids are behaving and i think we're

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quite getting quite a bit of science out

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of some of these investigations that

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um

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what has been your scariest moment in

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i wouldn't say that we really have scary

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moments up here

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we train incredibly hard and we simulate

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a lot of really

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i think what would seem to most people

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to be very scary situations

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for example launch

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doing a spacewalk depressurizing to

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absolute vacuum

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when we did some training with the navy

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they strap you into a helicopter

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simulator flip you upside down dunk you

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in a pool and you basically drown for a

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couple minutes until you can rescue

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yourself so you do a lot of these kinds

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of training events

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really to overcome your fear and to be

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able to operate in any kind of situation

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we have to be able to respond to an

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emergency up here so

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fear being scared that kind of response

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doesn't serve you particularly well in

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an operational environment

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and we basically just train it out of

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people

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wow

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okay

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um

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well i imagine it's still there are

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still stressful some stressful moments

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so what do you do to unwind when you're

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up there do you read books and how does

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yeah so uh up here we have

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the world's most amazing television set

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which is a window with the view of the

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planet so i have to say there's a lot of

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activities that i do at home

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that i really don't want to even do up

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here because

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that's time that we could be spending

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looking at the planet or taking photos

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or seeing what's happening in the world

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around us as we're all in free fall the

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entire station is in free fall so we

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talk about

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weightlessness and microgravity but

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really what it is is is we're constantly

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falling and all of these objects even

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this microphone here

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is falling with me and so you end up

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just doing experiments about what

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happens to

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fall so it's a lot of experiments and a

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lot of looking out the window

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that must be such a weird feeling

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have you i imagine um space might kind

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of like change your mindset a little bit

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have you had any really great ideas well

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up there that you plan to execute when

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you get home or has space like impacted

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yeah i'm uh i'm a scientist so i'm not

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necessarily sure i can lay claim to a

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whole lot of creativity but

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it has impacted my ability to think

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about

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uh ways that we might do future

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experiments up here actually seeing all

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of these changes uh has been spurring a

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lot of ideas for me about the kinds of

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research that we might do going forward

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and i do have to say it changes your

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perspective a lot to be able to look out

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the window and see the planet

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one of the thoughts that i had when i

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first got up here was

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we we really actually live on a planet i

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mean this is something that you know

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obviously you're you're not going to

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dispute that fact but to see the planet

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you just keep thinking we we really do

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live on a planet and we are in a solar

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system and we are flying through space

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right now

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so amazing

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um

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does being in space feel like an escape

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from your kind of like daily life or the

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i wouldn't say it's an escape

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it's it's really what we're trained to

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do so we train for years before we fly

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we practice all of the kinds of

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activities and experiments we do

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up here so we train for hundreds of

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thousands of hours on the ground so

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really it actually feels quite normal it

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feels like

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everything that i've been doing for the

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last seven years

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it just is all truly in low earth orbit

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this time instead of a simulator in one

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of our buildings at nasa

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cool

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um so one quick experiment for us

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an

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astronaut that we interviewed before so

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that it's really hard to wash your hair

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in space and so she uses a lot of dry

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shampoo and i was wondering if you could

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show us how it works to use dry shampoo

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yeah so um

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not sure where you got that information

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we don't uh we really don't have dry

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shampoo up here uh that's particulate

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that would float

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you wouldn't be able to really control

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it so

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we can wash our hair

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we do that a little bit less we like to

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conserve water up here

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but you can just take a normal drink bag

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this is what we

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and

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just use this put a little bit of water

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in your hair

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we use a small amount of shampoo and

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it's not that different than you would

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think

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in terms of what we what we do on earth

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so

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fascinating and completely different

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sometimes it is uh just as normal as you

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would expect on the planet

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all right one quick last question um a

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lot of people have this sort of

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melancholy feeling after they achieve a

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huge goal like going to space

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um like now what so

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how are you feeling about your return to

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i'm enjoying every moment in space uh

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it's really an amazing laboratory that

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we have up here i am looking forward to

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going back to earth and

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when we come back to the planet we don't

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just quit uh what we've been doing we

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take all of this knowledge and

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experience and we actually turn that

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back into nasa and work on future

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expeditions and future space flights so

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i'm really just looking forward to

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working with the ground teams getting

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back into mission control and

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redesigning the next set of hardware and

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experiments for future astronauts that

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are going to fly on board the space

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great

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all right i think that's all i have

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all right excellent it was great talking

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to you today i hope you enjoyed a little

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glimpse into space station life and

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we'd like to say

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hello from the crew of expedition 49

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station this is houston acr thank you

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thank you cosmopolitan.com station