i'm astronaut mike massimino and i am going to attempt to explain to you what jeff bezos's flight will be like in just about the same amount of time that it will take him to take that flight t-minus 50 seconds until takeoff the blue origin flight is only going to be 11 minutes you get inside there's no pilots it's totally automated everything should work perfectly if it doesn't there are backup systems but there's really no human intervention with that spacecraft and it'll come back to earth so it's like again in the ride go up weightless look
at the planet look around a little bit and then come back down jeffrey bezos is set to leave july 20th with his brother a space tourist who paid 28 million dollars and wally funk who is 82 years old this is nine days after richard branson took his virgin space flight oh my god so let's start off with a countdown for mission control t-minus ten nine eight seven six five four command engine start two one first liftoff the crew will strap in and prepare for their launch the engines will light and take them off the launch
pad i think the most important thing during liftoff is to pay attention be alert and don't touch anything you're not supposed to that's what i would say you know i don't say hey i wonder what this button does don't do anything i went to space on the space shuttle uh the main engine started up first we were on our backs waiting there on the launch pad for a couple hours making sure everything was okay and the main engine started they ran for about six seconds firing his arm but after those six seconds the solid rocket
boosters would light and they're like giant sticks of dynamite you could not turn those off so once they light you're on your way my first launch seemed like a blink i didn't even i never it went by so quickly everything was so new but the second time i i felt like i was a little more uh engaged because i knew what was going to happen and i just wanted to enjoy it as best i could and i think that's the that's the important thing this is a very rare experience getting a chance to be under
powered flight with a big rocket motor underneath you taking you away from the planet t plus two minutes light hits mach three after a couple minutes the g forces build up the maximum g's that we took were three g's now what that means is that's three times the force of gravity that's hitting you in the chest you're on your back because that's the best way to take that g-force is right in the chest it feels like a pile of bricks is on your chest like you have three big dudes sitting on you that's kind of
what i felt like three times my body weight hit me in the chest and that lasted for about two and a half minutes when you experience zero gravity is dependent on when your engines stop running i was under those g-forces and then the engines cut and it got really quiet and all the violence all the shaking stopped and everything started to float i was still strapped in my seat but my arms just rose up like this t plus three minutes capsule separates from booster zero g begins next the crew will enter zero gravity they will
experience weightlessness for a few minutes one of the first things i noticed when i got to space was i didn't feel so well i just felt nauseous and i knew this could happen it happens to most astronauts because your inner ear is not working it works on gravity so the vestibular system inner ear zero gravity nothing's happened it's telling the brain you are perfectly still but as you're moving around your eyes are saying oh no you're not you're moving around so you can get that conflict and it can lead to disorientation and nausea my advice
to anyone going on one of these trips is medicaid take the nausea medicine that's available to you they're pretty good pretty good nausea medicine these days ask the medical officer there's got to be someone that knows about that stuff working at these companies what do you suggest take that stuff and uh i think that'll help you enjoy the experience because why take the chance you might unstrap and feel really awful and it's only a couple minutes so that's what i would do t plus four minutes light reaches apogee and the flight will reach its apogee
which means its highest point away from the planet they'll be able to unstrap float around a little bit and take a look out the window so we would want to be really careful when you first get to space you're kind of out of control when i first got to space i went to look out the window and i felt kind of out of control i was just it's like and a walk again you're just moving around and i grabbed something and i grabbed a circuit breaker which i wasn't supposed to grab and pulled it out
and it wasn't supposed to happen like it's like oh my goodness the first thing i've done in space was something wrong but of course i reported it you know to my commander in the grounds i had to worry about it was just a switch that really wasn't needed at that time so i just put it back in but it made me realize you got to be careful around here watch what you're holding on to so if you get out of control you're liable to do something you might regret so you want to be really careful
about that you usually want to go slowly and be under control so you can enjoy the experience you can move around more actually more efficiently and quickly when you when you do that so go slow to speed up and that's what i wanted to do on my first space flight of course was unstrap and take a look at the planet and that's what i did i got a chance to to see the planet from space for the first time and that's the moment that you're looking forward to the overview effect is the term that is
used for the experience that people have gone above the karman line astronauts when they view the planet you're seeing it from a from a different perspective and it can change the way that you feel about the earth or or role in the universe or the beauty of our planet and that all those different emotions and feelings that people have tried to describe over the years since we first started sending people to space has been uh kind of put in this category of the overview effect and i think most people feel that as well where you
see the thinness of the atmosphere and you see the beauty of our planet i think mainly it's it's an emotional experience of what it's like to look back on our home uh from space t plus six minutes time for re-entry astronauts rebuckle then the crews will start their descent back toward earth as they get closer to the planet the g-forces will build up again and they'll start to feel heavy if we have to be in weight let's going from zero to something feels a lot more than it than it would be your your whole your
body's is getting used to that again and that we were but i was in space for a couple weeks i don't know what it's going to be like for them it'll be an interesting question what was it like after just being there for a few minutes did your body have to go through another orientation to readjust the gravity so we'll see what happens but it's more a function of of slowing down and having the earth pull you back in than it is of any particular altitude or speed tomorrow's a big day for you i mean
you've had all kinds of big days but it's tomorrow kind of the biggest day for you very special and that's because so on my flights uh on the space shuttle when we were coming back to earth you know we were orbiting at 17 500 miles an hour and so what we did is we pointed our rocket ship the the rocket itself the back end of the space shuttle where the engines were not the main engines but these two big engine bells on the side and we would burn those engines we'd we'd light them up what
that did is that propelled us in the opposite direction and kind of acted like putting on the brakes and so as you as you slow down you'll get lower and lower and then eventually you'll pick up the earth's atmosphere as your as your altitude lowers that builds up friction a lot of heat in the case of the shuttles about four to five thousand degrees outside of the space shuttle was got really hot we felt fine inside but i could see the tail i held up i was on the flight deck and i could see uh
by holding up a mirror i was able to look out the window and see the tail of the space shuttle and i was filming it for a while i was like that's kind of cool looks like the tail is almost on fire and i was like that's kind of scary enough of that and then we got below that and we picked up the horizon of the earth again what's different about the jeff bezos in richard branson's space flights compared to what we've done up till now is that this truly i think marks the entry point
of commercial space flight unlike spaceships that carry astronauts to the international space station they're typically flying for their governments this is a new way that people can get to space with a commercial company and a private enterprise t-plus nine minutes parachutes deploy and then they will land with a parachute very close to where they took off you know kind of like almost an amusement park ride we got lower and lower and at one point we picked up like as we're picking up the atmosphere it almost seemed like we were in a cloud we were just
exciting the particles around us so it's almost like we're in a soup and we're like you know what we would say like when you're flying an airplane you're in the soup you're just in a cloud you can't see anything and i i had no sensation of motion you know we still didn't have g's really building up at that point but i had no visual indication out the window that we were moving at all and i felt like i was perfectly still no indication of motion at all until i looked at our velocity indicator we're still
going about 12 000 miles an hour at that point that's the only thing they told me was still moving t plus 10 minutes capsule lands finally touchdown the crew will have completed their journey to space and back i think they're pretty much going to be able to get off and walk away just like they're getting off an airplane um in both the in both the blue origin and the uh virgin galactic examples your body hasn't had any deterioration it hasn't been much of an adaptation because it wasn't very long to zero gravity so i think
they'll come back and be in in in one gravity without without any issues uh we had been in space in my case on the shuttle usually typically it was about a two week journey that's what it was for me because you're adjusting to gravity but that was the goal you wanted to do that and look up and point to the spaceship and not fall over you know like i was a zombie or herman munster or somebody like walking her frankenstein moving around so i wouldn't fall over very slowly on my flights once we landed you
know you're you're back on the runway now you're grateful to be home and safe i don't think you're going to need the same physical conditioning that we need that i needed when i was an astronaut to fly to space i think it's going to be more like the amusement park restrictions mission accomplished i would love to go on one of these flights with richard branson or with jeff bezos or with anyone else i was interested in going but i don't want to pay that much money for it so i'm not paying for that experience but
i would be happy to go if they want an interested observer or maybe some help you know i could be the flight attendant i'm happy to do whatever they would want me to do on one of these flights i would love to do it but that the ticket price is a little much for me right now uh i i think i'll wait till the price comes down if i have to pay for it even though only it's a couple minutes they will get a chance to look around to look at our planet to experience weightlessness
and especially that view of our planet and what it looks like from space they'll be able to get a pretty good look at it even though for a couple minutes we understand a lot about how our planet works by being here on the planet but there's still a lot of big questions like where did we come from how did we get here and how to best take care of our planet that i think we can only answer by traveling to space because it gives you that different perspective so i'm interested to see what these two
guys in particular who are very interesting people very successful entrepreneurs have experienced a lot of things in their lives i want to find out how this experience of flying to space will have changed them
