Exit Interview: Scott Kelly (atlasobscura.com)

An excerpt from a new interview of Scott Kelly, now a retired astronaut, who spent 11 months and three days at the International Space Station in one stretch: Q: What does space smell like?
It smells different to different people. Some people say it smells sweet. To me it smells like burnt metal, like if you took a blowtorch to some steel or something.

Q: When you're up there on the ISS, arguably you're the most expensive human being on the planet except the president. The amount of resources being spent to keep you alive are enormous. Did that weigh on you at all?
Never even thought about that. No. Never considered it. I appreciated the effort that people went through to make sure you're safe, and are taken care of and supported while you're there, but I never considered the cost of it.

Question: Did it feel like, 'Man, I gotta work all the time'?
I think some people feel that way. I kind of felt that way on my [first, six-month ISS mission]. But having flown for six months, and then a few years later flying for a year, I realized I couldn't do that. So I definitely had to pace myself throughout the course of the year.

Q: Did you lose anything in the station?
All kinds of stuff! One of the last things I remember losing was this fancy, 3-D printed cover for some experiment. It was for the camera and I turn around and the thing's gone, and they didn't have a spare. I've got to see if they've found that thing yet. Oh, yeah. We lost a bag of screws and washers one time.

Question: When you're on the U.S. side of the ISS and the Russians are on their side, how much interaction is there, day-to-day?
They work predominantly in the Russian segment and have their meals there, so during waking hours, they're generally on their side, we're generally on our side. You interact, you go down there, you chat with them, you come back, you might perform some kind of experiments, they might do a little thing in our space station, but it's what we refer to as "segmented ops."

Question: Does it feel like you're all in it together?
Yes! Absolutely. We actually do some things to help each other that we don't even share with the ground because then it creates like bureaucratic ... issues for them to deal with. I've been asked to help fix some of their hardware, their treadmill one time. We help each other getting trash off the space station without telling the folks in Houston.

Comments

Not quite

[nospam007]

"Q: When you're up there on the ISS, arguably you're the most expensive human being on the planet "

Rather the most expensive human being NOT on the planet.

Smell of Space

[fermion]

I saw him and he elaborated on 'the smell of space'. It was the smell of the airlock, or whatever, that had been recently exposed to the vacuum of LEO and then pressurized. He said it was a unique and clearly identifiable smell.

The interesting thing is the vacuum of low earth orbit is pretty dirty. We can make much better and cleaner vacuum on earth on a limited basis, say in a cubic meter or so. Even on earth, after pressurizing a vacuum you can smell the difference. On earth that might be because it is a nitrogen rich atmosphere at that point. But there is smell.

The most poignant thing he said was that he got a call where NASA cut off external communications, like to NASA TV, to talk to him. It was about his sister in law being shot. Each time the channels were cleared after that he wondered what catastrophe happened.

The funniest thing is the difference between Russian and US culture. When there was a possibility of a collision, one that would like destroy the station, the US procedure was to lock everything down in a futile attempt to minimize damage. The Russian response was to accept the inevitable outcome if the station was hit and have lunch. It reminds me of French colleague that always insisted that the problem would still be there in a hour, so there was no reason not to have a peaceful lunch.