What was the first thing you ever wanted to be as a child? Maybe it was a hairdresser, a teacher, a lawyer? For Don Thomas, it was an astronaut, and he didn’t stop until he reached the stars! VIVA spoke to Don about life before, during and after space; as well as comets, aliens and the galaxy! Thank goodness we were reassured there is a low possibility of a comet hitting Earth during our lifetime… there are possibly more galaxies than we could imagine, but sadly, no life has been found on Mars as of yet. I couldn’t wait to get home and watch Armageddon after our chat!

How do you like Manchester?

I was here about a year ago for 4 days… it’s my second trip here, it’s a really nice city. The last time I was here, I spent a day looking around the city centre. It’s a great industrial town, it reminds me of the town where I grew up in Ohio.

So, why did you want to be an astronaut?

You know, I was six years old when the first American astronaut launched into space. At my primary school, we gathered in the gymnasium to watch the small black and white TV; and as soon as I saw the rocket launch that day, I said ‘I want to do that!’ I don’t know what it was about it… I mean watching rockets launch with fire and smoke was exciting as a little boy. A few years later, astronauts were doing space walks, years later they were orbiting the moon, landing on the moon and it just kept getting better and better for me. So from a young age I was just hooked on it and always wanted to keep on that path.

How long was your longest mission?

For me, it was only sixteen days, which by today’s standards is not long. But nineteen years ago, which was my last flight, sixteen days was a long time… especially on the space shuttle. For my first mission, it was fifteen days, which was in 1994 and was the fourth longest U.S space mission ever and that’s been long eclipsed with our space station missions.

What were your main duties in space?

My background is in science and engineering, so I’m a mission specialist astronaut. We have pilot astronauts, who fly the shuttle and then mission specialists, who are the science astronauts. My role was to do science experiments, similar to what Tim Peak is doing now on the station. I was also trained for an emergency, in case we had to go outside and do a space walk, we were trained to work the robotic arm and deploy satellites. Every crew member has a speciality that they focus on, but we all work together.

Did you ever have to go outside the shuttle?

I never did. We didn’t have planned or scheduled space walks on my missions, so I only would have gone outside if a problem arose. I was always hoping for some small, non-life threatening event that may send me outside, because I always thought ‘I’d love to go out there’, but there was no such occurrence on my missions.

And I take it you would never go out there unnecessarily?

You would never do that, because you’re taking a risk, it’s very hazardous going out there.

What is the sensation of take-off like?

I was lying on my back, with a shoulder harness and seat belt strapping me down. I heard the roar of the engines and felt the shaking… there’s a lot of shaking as the engines come up to full power and then right at the moment of lift off, it felt like someone had their hand in the middle of my back and they were pushing me up into the sky. It’s not a gradual acceleration. You’re lying there, shaking and then BOOM! You feel that push and you’re on your way. It’s so exciting and there’s a huge adrenaline rush, because you know ‘we’re going, there’s no stopping it.’ Our two side rockets have to burn for two minutes, there’s no shutting them down, so as soon as you feel that push, you know ‘we’re going, we’re going somewhere.’

How long does it take you get in to space? 

What do you think?

I assume it’s quite a long time… I imagine space to be quite far away…

It’s eight and half minutes to get up there.

Is that it?!

It’s just eight and half minutes. Doesn’t that blow your mind? After eight and a half minutes, the engines shut down, we’re 200 miles above earth, travelling at almost 18,000 miles an hour, which is five miles a second. We go around the earth in only an hour and a half.

Wow, it takes more than eight and half minutes to get into town, have a shower…

I tell students, it takes them more than eight and a half minutes to get to school in the morning, and in that short space of time, (clicks fingers) I’m up in space.

The rockets from the side of the shuttle come off don’t they?

Yes they come off; they land in the Atlantic Ocean.

So, do you take off in a safe enough place to ensure they won’t fall back on to the land?

We launch right along the coastline of Florida at the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex and we start arching out over the Atlantic Ocean. We don’t launch straight up in the air. That’s what I thought we did when I was a kid. If you launched straight up and then shut the engines down, you would fall straight back down because of the pull of gravity. So we start arching out over the ocean and eventually move into orbit above the earth. The computers do most of the work during launch but we monitor it all. The computers fly us into orbit!

This is going to sound like a silly question, but with different time zones around the world, what is the time zone in space?

We work on a 24-hour day, based on the time at mission control in Houston, so everything is based on that. You get 8 hours to sleep, an hour for breakfast, an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner. Outside the shuttle, the sun is going up, going down, going up, going down, but we ignore what’s going on out there. The natural rhythm of the human body works on a 24-hour cycle, so it works really well.

Did all four of your missions have different purposes?

Three out of four were all science missions. We would do different science experiments… we’d see how fires burn in space, we’d take up small plants and animals to see how they’d behave and grow at zero gravity. During a two week shuttle mission, we’d work on maybe 150 different science experiments, given to us from different researchers across the United States and the from around the world. Similar to our space station missions, Tim Peak is up there doing a lot of science for the European space agency.

What are these, I’m very intrigued (referring to space food)?

This is space food. People ask me, is space food good? I don’t even have to answer that, I could just point to that (points to dried space food). This is old space food, but it still doesn’t look too appetising. These are cornflakes, and if you look on the bottom you’ll see some powdered milk. 

When I told people I would be talking to an astronaut, everyone wanted to know what the food was like. Is this the juice you would be given?

This is how we’d be given juice, lemonade, coffee, tea. It’s all powdered, we’d add water through poking a little needle in the top, then mix it up, add a straw and squeeze it.

So is that how the water doesn’t float away?

Exactly. So we had a little straw with a clamp on it.. that way you don’t accidentally squeeze it and have it go everywhere.

When you trained to go up into space, how old were you?

I got selected when I was 35, and then I started a four-year training programme for my first flight.

How intense was the training?

It was all day every day, for five, six days a week, for four years. That’s all you’re doing full time. Most of our training was learning what to do in case something went wrong- you want to be prepared for that. Although the launch is only eight and a half minuets, we will train for a thousand hours in the simulator, looking at different scenarios that might go wrong.

How many things could go wrong?

Maybe more than we can count. The shuttle probably has more than a million parts in it, and any of those parts breaking, failing, even cracking could be catastrophic.

Would you say the simulators they use when training you are real representation of what to expect?

The simulators are really good. NASA allow us to experience everything we’re going to experience in space, so that when we’re up there we don’t get any surprises… we don’t like surprises in space. 

What do you think of space films such as Deep Impact, Armageddon and Gravity?

I try to look for the good in them because they do a good service getting the general public thinking about space and experiencing it on some level. I know too much about space to enjoy a space movie. I went to the movies to see Gravity with my wife and some neighbours. We were a few minutes into the film and I nudged my wife and said ‘they got that wrong’, but visually the movie is outstanding.

What was it like coming back to earth?

It’s great. On all four of my missions everyone was so happy to come home, no one said ‘I want to stay up here.’ When you’ve successfully accomplished your mission and everything you’ve trained for, everyone just wants to come home, have a hot shower, see family and have fresh food. When we would land safely there was another adrenaline rush. I couldn’t wait to see my wife and son.

What was the first thing you did when you got home?

It just felt so good to get home, close the door behind me and to know I had privacy from the rest of the world. I’d been living in a small space with six people for two weeks. The first thing I did after every mission was call for a pepperoni pizza.

When you were called up to be an astronaut and started the training, was there anything that put you off or made you think, this is not for me?

Not at all. You know about it before you get into it, and if anything, it makes you want to do it more.

You said you were called up when you were 35, what did you do before?

I was applying to get into the programme and I studied to get my PHD. I worked doing research, then moved to Houston to work as an engineer on the space shuttle programme, just trying to get closer.

What do you do now?

I do a lot of outreach programmes with school kids. We’re going to a school in Manchester to talk the kids there. I also visit the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex and talk to the public there. I try to inspire young kids and the public. That’s what we do at the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex everyday, we’re there for entertainment and education. Someone could come and ride the simulator and get that look in their eye that I got at 6 years old. That’s what I’m looking for, if I can effect one life, one child or one student out there, then what I’m doing is all worth while.

Follow Don Thomas on Twitter @astro_DonThomas