Speaker 1: They are homes.
Speaker 2: And splashdown, CREWD I'm back on Earth.
Speaker 3: Jesus nun.
Speaker 2: Waiting him in the sky. Splash down, copy, flash down,
Speaker 2: we see main shoots, cut Nick, Alex Butch, Sonny on
Speaker 2: behalf of s Basic, Welcome home.
Speaker 1: And there you have it.
Speaker 2: The side hatch is open for the first time since September.
Speaker 3: Oh, looks like we're getting our next crew member here.
Speaker 3: That is none other than Sonny Williams. Big smile, big waves. She,
Speaker 3: like her other crew members, now will be assisted onto
Speaker 3: the Nobility Aid.
Speaker 2: There we have it. Some waves, some thumbs up and
Speaker 2: some smiles.
Speaker 4: Well you did you and got some food and missed
Speaker 4: a key moment of it, but I was glued to
Speaker 4: the screen.
Speaker 5: Hi, y'all, let's bring in Professor Alan Duffy. Now, good morning, professor.
Speaker 5: What a cue teacher day yesterday, I'm gathering it all
Speaker 5: went to plan.
Speaker 1: Yes, good morning. It was a great outcome, absolutely perfect
Speaker 1: de orbit landing, and they even got a pod of
Speaker 1: dolphins to greet them, which is one of the more
Speaker 1: surreal experiences. It was incredible, right.
Speaker 4: It was like watching a movie watching that whole scene
Speaker 4: play out. As an expert in the field, were you
Speaker 4: watching it with any nerves or trepidation or did you
Speaker 4: just know that it was going.
Speaker 6: To work out?
Speaker 1: No, No, I was worried for the crew. There's a
Speaker 1: few stages which are incredibly dangerous. That there's the one
Speaker 1: where you're coming from essentially twenty eight thousand kilometers an
Speaker 1: hour and slowing down, burning through the atmosphere. That's very dangerous.
Speaker 1: I guess the sixteen hundred degrees on the outside, there's
Speaker 1: flames flicking up over the windows. These are the really
Speaker 1: dangerous which is.
Speaker 7: One it looked like a bit of a burnt marshmallow, right,
Speaker 7: What's happening to your body when you're traveling that quickly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so look you're getting an incredibly violent roller coaster.
Speaker 1: It's been described as so the crew are coming from
Speaker 1: this kind of serene experience sitting in orbit. They haven't
Speaker 1: walked for nine months, they haven't felt gravity, the weight
Speaker 1: of gravity, They've become very frail, and then they have
Speaker 1: to go through that on the way down, which becomes
Speaker 1: an extremely grueling physical experience. Just two minutes and it's over.
Speaker 5: Was about to say how long would that part be?
Speaker 5: Just the two minutes, because all that was it a
Speaker 5: seventeen hour trip home.
Speaker 1: Yes, so seventeen hours of agonizingly boring I think tension
Speaker 1: building orbits of the Earth getting ever closer until finally
Speaker 1: they go in for that last plunge through the atmosphere.
Speaker 7: So they press the button like they decide when they plunge.
Speaker 1: No, they've got no control there.
Speaker 6: They just strapped in.
Speaker 1: They're strapped in the moment from the space station. They've
Speaker 1: got a seventeen hour automated roller coaster.
Speaker 5: This might be a stupid question, go here we go.
Speaker 5: Is there any sort of on board entertainment?
Speaker 6: I knew you were going to ask for seventeen.
Speaker 5: Hours, I'm sorry, Like you download a podcast or something,
Speaker 5: wouldn't you.
Speaker 1: It's a great question. There's a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: lot of screens monitors on board the Dragon particularly, it's
Speaker 1: it's drag. Yeah, the Dragon capsule. It's made by SpaceX.
Speaker 1: Same that's a Lottle Master. It's the same as test Us.
Speaker 1: So there are screens that it looks like an incredible tesla.
Speaker 1: And but my understanding is there are no entertainment. There's
Speaker 1: no movie streaming. You might sneak a podcasts through the earpiece,
Speaker 1: but I think they probably would prefer the astronauts. Wow,
Speaker 1: focusing on the mission.
Speaker 4: So it's obviously, like you said, like a violent rollercoaster
Speaker 4: for a couple of minutes coming in and then you
Speaker 4: saw those we also those extraordinary pictures of them floating
Speaker 4: down to land in the ocean, coming in through the
Speaker 4: atmosphere is very dangerous. What about the parent like the
Speaker 4: parachutes to me just looked so basic. Is that like,
Speaker 4: were you scaring that part or once the parachutes had
Speaker 4: come out, were you like, no, we are safe as
Speaker 4: houses now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it was the big moment for the parachutes
Speaker 1: are the deployment. When they fully perfectly deploys and you
Speaker 1: get four of them, then you know you're fine. But yes,
Speaker 1: there was always there's always a sort of a heart
Speaker 1: in the mouth moment watching for the deployment. If they tangle,
Speaker 1: then yeah, very bad day. So yes, thankfully it was
Speaker 1: a perfect deployment. There's even if you lose one, you
Speaker 1: can still descend safely. But yes, that was another scary
Speaker 1: moment for sure.
Speaker 5: We are on the air with Professor Alan Duffy this morning.
Speaker 5: We are talking about Butcher and Sunny, the astronauts returning
Speaker 5: to Earth. After what nine months? They were saying, because
Speaker 5: you know, zero gravity nine months, they wouldn't be able
Speaker 5: to obviously walk straight away. But then I've just seen
Speaker 5: shots this morning of them getting off a plane back
Speaker 5: at NASA. So is that almost like a pins and
Speaker 5: needles job, You just got to slightly work your legs
Speaker 5: until they kick in or would they just have no muscle?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, so's there's two issues they're facing. The first
Speaker 1: is that sitting on board the space station, they haven't
Speaker 1: felt the weight of gravity quite literally, I mean their
Speaker 1: bodies have been floating for nine months, meaning they've become frailer,
Speaker 1: the muscles have wasted away, the bones have even become
Speaker 1: less dense, they've aged, essentially have become very frail. On
Speaker 1: the other challenge, they also don't they haven't walked for ninemens.
Speaker 1: They haven't got a sense of down, a direction of down.
Speaker 1: So once they finally get on the Earth and their
Speaker 1: bodies are feeling this is the direction down, it confuses
Speaker 1: the inn ear. They get unbalanced. In other words, they
Speaker 1: have to regain their land legs and they come off
Speaker 1: swaying and very confused as well as frail. So if
Speaker 1: they then do full they really can hurt themselves, which
Speaker 1: is usually why they're off in stretchers or wheelchairs and
Speaker 1: off actual and that key key first few hours.
Speaker 7: Hey, professor, what did they be? Gods? They were stuck
Speaker 7: up there for so much longer than they anticipated. Were
Speaker 7: they given extra tasks? Like did they achieve anything that
Speaker 7: they weren't actually initially set out to do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great question. They had lots of duties. They
Speaker 1: pulled their weight while up there. There's always tasks to
Speaker 1: fix this aging space station, but in particular there are
Speaker 1: a lot of science experience. I think Butcher clocked nine
Speaker 1: hundred hours of science experimentation up there my own Unich
Speaker 1: swimmer and we actually fly up experiments every year to
Speaker 1: the space station with schools across the country. So these
Speaker 1: are Sadly, I'm not sure that any of ours were
Speaker 1: getting helped by bus that would call moment. But yes,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of science done on board the space station.
Speaker 4: Exactly were they how far away from land from Earth
Speaker 4: were they on the space station?
Speaker 1: Yes? So the space station orbits about four hundred kilometers
Speaker 1: above our heads. It doesn't lap. It's really a few
Speaker 1: hours at highway speeds to get up there. It's a
Speaker 1: very In fact, it's close enough and it's big enough
Speaker 1: the space station that during sunset, if the timing is
Speaker 1: just right, you can actually see the space station so overhead.
Speaker 1: Is this the brightest star in the night sky? And
Speaker 1: it would slowly move across across the sky in a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes.
Speaker 6: Space freaks, man, that's pretty.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 5: I recently watched Matt Damon in The Martian where he
Speaker 5: grew the potatoes because he was stuck on Mars. Enough
Speaker 5: food at the space station for the nine months they
Speaker 5: were stuck their head. How they go with supplies?
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, they do grow a little bit of food
Speaker 1: up there. Mostly let us another other perishables, get some
Speaker 1: you know, actual variety in their diet. Most of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's packaged up. It's their little squishy sacks food. It's
Speaker 1: not great. It doesn't look very fun. Well, the biggest
Speaker 1: challenge is they can't. They've got no sense of taste
Speaker 1: or smell because without gravity to pull all the fluids
Speaker 1: from your head to your feet like we have every day,
Speaker 1: it just builds up. It swells your sinuses. It's like
Speaker 1: you've got a cold for nine months. You cannot smell
Speaker 1: taste anything.
Speaker 6: Oh would be so fit if we couldn't smell or taste.
Speaker 4: Hey, professor, bro Bro, Professor, do you believe in aliens?
Speaker 1: I do? I think there are so many habitable We
Speaker 1: have now discovered so many twins of the Earth in
Speaker 1: our galaxy alone. We've not yet found life on any
Speaker 1: of them. But the chances are billions to one against alone,
Speaker 1: So I think the stats have to play out the way.
Speaker 4: Alon's really work getting Do you think he's going to
Speaker 4: get there in our lifetime.
Speaker 1: Bro, I actually think he does. He's a billionaire who
Speaker 1: has the most powerful rocket in the world.
Speaker 6: We're taking the Tesla's and we're going to Mars, Baby.
Speaker 5: Professor, our and Duffy joining us on the air Mate,
Speaker 5: thank you so much. That was a great insight. We
Speaker 5: appreciated that.
Speaker 6: I think Smith, imagine you serious.
Speaker 5: You would have had a few yesterday watching that thing.
Speaker 5: My an, Professor, I'm actually training for a run. I
Speaker 5: had nothing coffee, I know, but it was it was
Speaker 5: a ninety year What am I going to do?
Speaker 4: No time doesn't count in space, Professor, Like the international
Speaker 4: departures at the airport, Champagne is fine at anytime. Jason
Speaker 4: Lauren Jason Lauren Wake Up Feeling Good on number one hundred.
Speaker 6: Lauren on socials