Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Bogelbaum. Here, on any successful space mission, the cruise
Speaker 1: morale is at the top of the list of priorities.
Speaker 1: After all, the final frontier can be one high stress workplace,
Speaker 1: so it's no wonder that NASA has seen a small
Speaker 1: army of passionate pranksters over the years. We're not talking
Speaker 1: about anything too wild, of course, that could get dangerous,
Speaker 1: because space is absolutely willing and able to kill you. Still,
Speaker 1: these serious and seriously well trained crew people need to
Speaker 1: blow off steam as much as any of us, perhaps
Speaker 1: even more so because not all of us have jobs
Speaker 1: that involve being launched out of Earth's atmosphere at seventeen
Speaker 1: five hundred miles an hour. That's twenty eight thousand kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour, which is fast either way. So in no
Speaker 1: particular order, today, here are a few of our favorite
Speaker 1: NASA pranks. Let's start off with the tale of the
Speaker 1: disappearing reappearing cockroach. Okay, back in November of nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: a six legged squatter caused a bit of unrest in
Speaker 1: the days leading up to NASA's Apollo twelve mission following
Speaker 1: a test run at the Kennedy Space Center, a cockroach
Speaker 1: was seen hiding out in the command module that was
Speaker 1: to function as the crew's living space. It would also
Speaker 1: deliver them back to Earth after re entering the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Not wanting any insect stowaways on the vessel, the launch
Speaker 1: director used all sorts of tricks to try to capture
Speaker 1: the intruder, but, to the amusement of money, his quarry
Speaker 1: eluded him. Apollo twelve took off on November fourteenth, with
Speaker 1: three astronauts on board, including Commander Charles or Pete Conrad Junior.
Speaker 1: Five days later, Conrad became the third man to ever
Speaker 1: walk on the Moon. During the journey home, Conrad took
Speaker 1: part in an in flight televised press conference. As the
Speaker 1: broadcast wound down, he held up a strip of white cardboard.
Speaker 1: On its surface stood what very much appeared to be
Speaker 1: a cockroach. Oh. One of Conrad's colleagues at NASA said, Oh,
Speaker 1: you found them. Huh, We sure did, replied the astronaut.
Speaker 1: He was in the food locker. Is he fat? Asked
Speaker 1: the colleague. He's very fat. Conrad answered, alas it was
Speaker 1: a practical joke. A Conrad later admitted that the roach
Speaker 1: he showed off was just a plastic toy he had
Speaker 1: smuggled aboard. To this day, the real bug's fate remains unknown.
Speaker 1: Speaking of unauthorized crew members, let's talk about the first
Speaker 1: time that a woman transmitted a voice message from a
Speaker 1: space station, A decade before the first woman astronaut even
Speaker 1: went to space. In nineteen seventy three, Owen K. Garrett
Speaker 1: spent just less than sixty full days orbiting Earth on
Speaker 1: the Skylab space station. The flight's earth bound support crew
Speaker 1: included communications specialist Bob Crippen and astronaut himself among its ranks.
Speaker 1: One day, the space station sent Crippen a weird message,
Speaker 1: Hello Houston, this is Skylab. Someone said, are you reading
Speaker 1: me down there? The voice sounded distinctly feminine. It didn't
Speaker 1: belong to any of the three men aboard the vessel.
Speaker 1: When Crippen asked who was on the line, the caller
Speaker 1: identified herself as Helen Garriot, Owen's wife. Naturally, Crippen asked
Speaker 1: her what she was doing up there. She said, well,
Speaker 1: we just came up to bring the boys a fresh meal,
Speaker 1: a hot cooked meal. They haven't had one for quite
Speaker 1: a while. Oh, we thought they might enjoy that. Helen
Speaker 1: then nonchalantly said she had flown out to the skylab
Speaker 1: and talked about how California looked from space. By now
Speaker 1: a bewildered crowd had gathered around Crippen's speakers. Finally, Helen
Speaker 1: signed off, saying, well, I see the boys are floating
Speaker 1: in my direction. I've got to get off the line.
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to be talking to you. See you later, Bob.
Speaker 1: It didn't take Houston long to figure out that this
Speaker 1: entire exchange must have been a practical joke, a one
Speaker 1: Owen was undoubtedly in on. But how did he pull
Speaker 1: it off? The answer was well, very carefully. Before the mission,
Speaker 1: Owen and Helen had written and recorded a few lines
Speaker 1: of dialogue, making sure to punctuate her lines with pauses
Speaker 1: in the audio. This gave Crippen, who'd agreed to help out,
Speaker 1: enough time to offer scripted replies to Helen's statements. This
Speaker 1: was actually a mystery to NASA until Owen revealed his
Speaker 1: methods in nineteen ninety nine. This next one I connect
Speaker 1: with personally as a human with the last name that
Speaker 1: some people find difficult. Let's talk about Pierre Thwitt, whose
Speaker 1: last name is spelled for the record Tuot. Before NASA
Speaker 1: recruited him in nineteen eighty five, the Connecticut native had
Speaker 1: built up an impressive resume as a pilot with the
Speaker 1: US Navy. He took part in three space flights during
Speaker 1: his career as an astronaut, the first of which was
Speaker 1: a nineteen ninety Shuttle mission known as STS thirty six.
Speaker 1: As is the custom, a special patch was designed for
Speaker 1: each member of the five astronaut crew. Unfortunately, Thwitt's badge
Speaker 1: misspelled his name thhout. From there, some good natured ribbing ensued,
Speaker 1: with Thewitt's crewmates calling him Pierre the Out in jest. Ultimately, though,
Speaker 1: he got the last laugh when the mission was finally
Speaker 1: set to launch on February twenty fifth of nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: Upon entering the room where their pressure suits were kept,
Speaker 1: the astronauts discovered that Thwitt had gotten his revenge. At
Speaker 1: some point, he had removed the name tags from all
Speaker 1: of their chairs, excluding his own, and swapped them out
Speaker 1: with erroneously spelled placards. In good sports, everyone seemed to
Speaker 1: get a kick out of the stunt, one of the
Speaker 1: earliest space pranks that we know of occurred in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five during the Gemini three mission. At the time,
Speaker 1: NASA's and meal plans were carefully constructed to meet calork
Speaker 1: and safety requirements, but were not lauded for their appeal.
Speaker 1: Previous missions had involved limited options of foods, like a
Speaker 1: puree of beef and vegetables in an aluminum tube, or
Speaker 1: crushed corn flakes molded into bite sized cubes and coated
Speaker 1: in gelatine to prevent crumbling, or dehydrated shrimp. The Gemini
Speaker 1: foods were an improvement, but apparently they didn't particularly impress
Speaker 1: Gemini three mission commander Virgil or Gus Grissom during training,
Speaker 1: which is why the pilot John W. Young pulled out
Speaker 1: a corn beef sandwich and offered it to Grissom after launch.
Speaker 1: He had smuggled it aboard in a spacesuit pocket. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it didn't prove very tempting. The bread immediately began crumbling
Speaker 1: and the smell of the meat suffused the enclosed cabin.
Speaker 1: On the official flight transcript, Young says it was a
Speaker 1: thought anyway, not a very good one. Of course. In
Speaker 1: our modern era of accessible video technology, astronauts have upped
Speaker 1: the ante on pranks. In twenty sixteen, video emerged of
Speaker 1: a gorilla chasing astronaut Tim Peak through the International Space
Speaker 1: Station to the tune of yackety sacks. It was, of course,
Speaker 1: not a real gorilla a but Mission Commander Scott Kelly
Speaker 1: in a gorilla suit. Scott and his twin brother, Mark,
Speaker 1: himself an astronaut, conspired to get the suit on board.
Speaker 1: The chase video was staged, but apparently Scott did surprise
Speaker 1: fellow crew members and Russian cosmonauts on the other side
Speaker 1: of the station by floating around in the suit, and
Speaker 1: he filmed a few science communication videos with it on
Speaker 1: which almost makes me wish that this were a video podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article Ridiculous History five
Speaker 1: of NASA's Greatest franks on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by
Speaker 1: Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com, and is produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio visit
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