Fort Collins 2nd-graders' best questions about space, answered by a real astronaut

Astronaut Kjell Lindgren visited the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery on Thursday morning to speak to second-graders from Putnam and Laurel elementary schools, along with dozens of community members who showed up to watch.

Lindgren, who earned degrees from the Air Force Academy, Colorado State University and the University of Colorado, has spent a combined 311 days in space on two different missions since becoming an astronaut with NASA in 2009. He logged 141 days in space aboard Expedition 44/45, participating in two spacewalks and completing more than 100 scientific experiments. More recently, he served as commander of a NASA SpaceX mission to the International Space Station, returning to Earth on Oct. 14, 2022, after 170 days in space.

Lindgren was born in Thailand, where his father was serving in the U.S. Air Force, and spent most of his childhood in London before coming to the United States in high school. He graduated from a school in Virginia and then came to Colorado to earn a bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in Mandarin Chinese from the Air Force Academy in 1995, a master’s degree in cardiovascular physiology from CSU in 1996 and a doctorate in medicine from CU in 2002.

He completed a three-year medical residency, postdoctoral fellowship and another master’s degree program in Minnesota and two-year residency in aerospace medicine and another master’s degree program in Texas. Lindgren is board certified in emergency medicine.

Thursday, though, he was speaking to second-graders in Fort Collins about the importance of scientific study and discovery, and answering their questions about what it’s like to be an astronaut and spend time in space.

Lindgren asked the first question himself, acknowledging it was what kids that age had asked him about the most in previous presentations. The questions that follow it are some of the best questions from the Fort Collins second-graders.

Question: Some of you have asked the question, so I’m just going to get that out of the way. How do you go to the bathroom in space?

Answer: So, who has a vacuum cleaner at home? Everybody. Who has that long extension hose you put in the vacuum cleaner so you can vacuum up the stairs? Has everyone seen that? Guess what?

That’s where our liquid waste goes. You got the bathroom in that hose; you collect that urine. That urine goes into a machine called the urine processing assembly. And that goes into the water processing assembly. And that ouput goes to our water system. You drink that water. You’re able to clean that waste and turn that into drinkable water.

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And you know what’s weird is the first time, you’re kind of thinking, ‘Oh man I’m drinking my recycled urine.’ It takes a little while to get used to that.

And guess what? You know what it takes longer to get used to? That you’re drinking everybody else’s urine.

You know how we do that? We’ve got to make that water super clean, because we’ve got to take care of our astronauts in orbit. How did we figure out how to turn our wastewater into something that is drinkable? Science, right? How amazing is that?

Q: Have you ever been on the moon? (Asked by Putnam student Saphira Gonzalez)

A: I haven’t. But guess what? We just named four astronauts; they’re going to get them to a spacecraft called the Orion, and it’s going to launch in a couple of years to go around the moon. After they get back successfully, we are going to choose a couple more astronauts, and they are going to land on the moon.

So, we landed on the moon back in the 1960s and '70s, and we’re getting ready to do it again.

Q: How much time does it take to get to Mars? I think it takes like five or six months? (Asked by Putnam student Rozalyn Nitchie-Shonka)

A: That’s a really good question. So, you predict it takes months, and that is awesome; you’re already practicing good science, you’re making predictions.

It’s hard to make observations about how long it’s going to take to get to Mars. But we can look at things that engineers have created to help us kind of figure out what the answer is. And right now, the answer is about two to three years to go to Mars and come back, So, that’s a long mission and that’s why we’re doing this science, to help us figure out how to take care of our crew members so they can make that trip.

People that go to Mars are going to be people that are your age right now. So, one of you could be that person that puts your footprints on the Martian surface. It’s going to take some time for us to build the rockets and do the science needed to get us to Mars successfully and back. So, I hope one of you takes on that challenge, to help us build that rocket, to help us figure out how to grow plants to make food for our astronauts that are traveling. And maybe to be one of those astronauts that sets the first footprint on the Martian surface. Are you up for that challenge? Awesome.

Q: Are aliens real? (Asked by Laurel students Chloe Johnston and Maeve Regan)

A: I don’t have any evidence that aliens are real. Now, I know that there’s some really weird video that pilots have taken, and there are definitely some things that we can’t explain. But I personally have not seen anything that would suggest aliens are real.

But that’s part of the science that we’re doing. We’re going to Mars. We have robots on Mars right now, and scientists that are looking for life on Mars, because we see things that suggest water has existed in the past on Mars. In our experience, water was required for life. So, if there has been water on Mars, maybe there have been conditions where life has grown on Mars. So, we’re looking for fossils. We’re looking for things that suggest that there may be life on Mars.

I’ve been in space for nearly a year on two missions and we never had any aliens in space come and visit us. I feel like if there are aliens out there, we’re hanging out there in space, that’s the first place that they would come. I never got to meet any, but we would love your help to explore that question.

Q: What are stars made of? (Asked by Putnam student Abby Hanson)

A: That’s an amazing question. How incredible. What’s your favorite star? Do you have one? Do you know the Big Dipper is made up of so many different stars at different distances from the Earth? You know what my favorite star is? The sun.

The sun is a star. Isn’t that cool. How crazy is that? Whose mind is just blown?

The sun is a star.

The sun provides us energy and helps us and is basically responsible for the Earth being able to sustain life, so we’re really lucky to have the sun nearby. The sun’s mainly made up of hydrogen and helium. The gases that create this bright spot in the sky provides heat and light to us.

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Q: Did you see a star up close? (Asked by an unidentified Putnam student)

A: So, lots of people think when we got to space that we’re a lot closer to the stars and planets. It turns out, we’re only 250 miles off the Earth. Texas is farther away than the space station.

And so, if you think about the Earth as a peach, you think of the earth as the size of a peach, the space station is still flying in the fuzz on that peach. That’s how close to the Earth we are.

So, we don’t have that much of a closer look at the moon or the planets, but everything is clearer since we’re not looking through the atmosphere. So, stars don’t twinkle in space, they’re just clear dots of light.

Q: Is anybody going to land on a planet and maybe live there? (Asked by Putnam student Keegan Devries)

A: What’s your hypothesis? That is NASA’s goal, is to explore the moon and then to go on to explore Mars and someday maybe to create a sustainable habitat so that people can start living there for good. That is a challenge. That is a hard thing to do, to be able to support life on Mars for long periods of time. So, we need smart people. We need hard workers to help us figure out how to build that rocket to get to Mars and how to sustain people on that surface for long periods of time. Maybe you can help us do that.

Q: What and how do you eat in space? (Asked by an unidentified Putnam student)

A: The way that we eat in space, the easy answer is very carefully. All of our food is prepared; we don’t use ingredients to cook food in space. Our food comes in some metallic envelopes, and we put that into a food warmer like on a hot plate to warm it up. And then, when we’re ready to eat, we cut that open and use a spoon to scoop it out very carefully to move to our mouth, because if we go too fast it’ll come off the spoon and it will float and then we can make kind of a disaster, a mess to clean up.

Who’s had a Capri Sun before? Does everybody know what a Capri Sun looks like, kind of that metallic envelope? That’s what our drinks come in. So, it’s empty but maybe has some fruit drink powder or some dehydrated coffee, depending on what kind of drink you’re having. You fill it with water, you shake it up and you drink it.

Q: How much space have you explored? (Asked by Putnam student Daisy Smith)

A: Honestly, not a whole lot because most of our windows look back at the Earth, and so we don’t really have an opportunity to look out at the space beyond the International Space Station.

But our astronauts that are eventually going to study and go to Mars are going to have an opportunity to see space a little bit better.

Q: How is it like to float? (Asked by Laurel student Hadley Stover)

A: What is it like to float in space? It is amazing. It’s crazy, and what’s amazing is our brains actually get used to it. Something that we have no experience with on Earth, something that we have never felt before, that within two hours, we’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is normal.’

Our brains are absolutely powerful organs. That our brains that could adapt to something like that, that we’ve never experienced before, is amazing.

And it’s so much fun to float from one side of the module to the other.

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.