Astronaut Eric Phillips Answers Our Big Space Questions!

Astronaut Eric Phillips Answers Our Big Questions!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, we're very excited about our next guest because it's
not Katy Perry, but they've been to space just as
recently as Katie Perry. It's Eric Phillips. Here is our
very own Adelaide astronaut. He was up not that long
ago on the Space X flight. Eric has come back
down to Earth and is now talking to us.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Good morning, Eric, and good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
We're so excited to talk to you because we find
your job absolutely fascinating. Tell us about first of all,
tell us about your mission. What did you go up
there to do?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
We were taking our spaceship into areas that humans had
never been to before, and that was namely to fly
over the North and South Poles for the first time ever.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Why do people not go over the North and South Pole?
I was reading a little bit about it. But scientifically, physically,
it's not as easy to get into that orbit or something.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, it's a greater challenge. It has some orbital mechanics
that are not typical. And the other thing is that
when you launch from the cape and head on a
equi orel orbit, you get a little bit of a
fling from the Earth. If you like to get you
up into orbit there's some energy that can be used.
Whereas we launch, we do a dog dog leg and

(01:10):
we head straight to the south pole, so we don't
get that little zooming lift if you like, that's created
by the spin of the Earth.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
You're like the first Australian to fly out a SpaceX fight.
Were you scared?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Not scared at all? You know, in reality, SpaceX are
launching Falcon nine rockets into space weekly. This is a
very mature and robust technology and with the amount of
training that we do our training, we just fell back
on that every time. And because we did a dry
dress the day before, essentially a dress rehearsal, we went

(01:43):
through the entire motion on site on Launch Complex thirty
nine A where all the Apollo astronauts flew from. We
went up the tower, across the crew arm into the
capsule and all we did everything except igniting those engines
underneath that. So by the time they did ignite those
engines the next day, we just felt like we were

(02:03):
in the right place and full of confidence.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Do you've put your life into being someone who's trained
for these situations and then like twenty minutes after you
come back, Katy Perry just jumps on a plane and
heads to space for a little bit and gets all
these praise implawed. It's what's it like for you being
someone so well equipped for it? And then you see
Katie and the goals just up there hanging out.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
It doesn't phase me at all. But actually, for your listeners,
it's worthwhile just spending a few moments on the fundamental
differences between not just our mission and the recent mission
with Katy Perry and co. But also all of those

(02:46):
NASA missions of the Apollo era Space Shuttle, Mercury, Gemini.
There are gulfs in between all of those, you know.
I mean when we went into space, we were there
for three and a half days. We're in orbit. We
did fifty five orbits around the around Earth. So the
big fundamental difference between ours and the recent up and

(03:06):
back is that we went into orbit. We were up
there for three and a half days. We enjoyed that
incredible weightlessness, that micro gravity for three and a half days.
We went to four hundred and forty kilometers. The difference
between that and the Blue Origin flight is they went up.
They were about eleven or twelve minutes in flight, they
kind of touched space and then they came back again,

(03:30):
so they experienced microgravity for a very very short period
of time. So there is what's called a sub orbital flight,
and ours was an orbital flight.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
So she's not quite near alarmed. From no.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Astronaut to astronaut, do you think do you think.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Really is an a genuine moon unit?

Speaker 3 (03:54):
So true, we often have conversations whether or not someone
actually land on the Moon all those years ago? Did
it actually happen? Do you think it actually happens?

Speaker 2 (04:06):
There is no question that that happened. In fact, you know,
it really begs belief that people really think that this
is some kind of conspiracy. How could something so massive,
so earth shatteringly brilliant and change the course of humanity?
How could that not be believed? I mean, there is

(04:26):
an abundance of evidence out there, and boy, if I
had the option to fly to the Moon, I would
do it in a heartbeat.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
What do you really struggle with? What are some things
you can't do while you're up there that you'd love
to be able to do?

Speaker 2 (04:37):
As much as we had a Starlin connection and we
had radio connections, I could not order a pizza. I
could order a pizza, I could face time with my
family down on Earth. When we flew over Swialbard, which
is an archipelago off the north coast of Norway set

(05:01):
there in the Arctic Ocean, I called my daughter, who
was guiding our expeditions down on that beautiful icy island
at the time, and we had this wonderful conversation from her.
So it's not so much about the things that I
missed and couldn't do up there, because I didn't miss
a thing. It was about the things that we could

(05:21):
do and as we progress in this incredible journey into space,
you know, I'm just so proud of what we as
humans can achieve.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Eric Phillips, we want to keep you on. We've got
a lot of questions. We've got people calling as well
thirty one, two three if you've got a question that
you want to ask, and astronaut will take those calls
next