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Becoming an Astronaut

00:00:15.05 Hi, I'm Sarah Goodwin. I'm a graduate student at UCSF.
00:00:18.17 And today for iBioMagazine we're talking to Dan Barry
00:00:22.02 who went from being an academic professor in bioengineering at Michigan
00:00:27.20 to doing space walks and working with the International Space Station with NASA,
00:00:32.06 and now he runs his own robotics company in Massachusetts.
00:00:35.25 And so, thank you for joining us.
00:00:37.09 And today we're talking from the NASA-Ames research center in Mountain View, California.
00:00:43.19 Why don't we start with talking a little bit about your academic background.
00:00:47.24 What got you into science in the first place? Where were your interests in the beginning?
00:00:52.22 And why did you go to graduate school?
00:00:54.20 Sure. Well, I grew up in rural Louisiana,
00:00:58.27 but I was fortunate to have a brother-in-law who was an engineer
00:01:01.26 and who kind of introduced me to basic computer programming.
00:01:06.01 My first program was a tic-tac-toe program.
00:01:08.21 And, I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
00:01:11.12 And, so with that guidance, I decided to go into engineering at Cornell.
00:01:17.27 And, I remember, distinctly remember, as a junior, studying a course on electronics
00:01:27.02 and just being struck by the idea that I could use mathematics to create something in the real world.
00:01:33.28 So that's where I decided to go to grad school, really.
00:01:36.26 And, underlying all this is, of course, I wanted to be an astronaut my whole life,
00:01:42.03 ever since I was...as far back as I can remember.
00:01:44.00 Is doing the academic path into bioengineering, is that a route into NASA?
00:01:49.00 Did you kind of have an idea that you would try to go into more aerospace?
00:01:54.20 Yeah. So, again, the summer after my junior year in college,
00:02:00.12 I go to an Air Force ROTC camp because I want to become an astronaut and I loved to fly.
00:02:08.23 And while I'm there, I write to a Skylab astronaut
00:02:12.09 and I say, "What I want to be is an astronaut
00:02:15.05 and I have two career paths; I can go to grad school in engineering or I can go be an Air Force pilot.
00:02:19.28 Either one is wide open to me. What I want to do is fly in space. What do you think?"
00:02:25.07 And he wrote back this wonderful, detailed letter which I still have today
00:02:29.19 that said, "If what you want to do is fly jet aircraft, go be a pilot.
00:02:34.27 If what you want to do is be an astronaut, then think about
00:02:40.00 the astronaut career five or ten years from now. There's going to be five scientists flying for every two pilots."
00:02:46.16 So he says, "Furthermore, what are you going to do in between and what are you going to do if you don't get the job?"
00:02:52.25 He said, "So what you need to do is figure out what you most love.
00:02:58.13 What is it that gets you up in the morning, even if nobody was paying you to do it?
00:03:02.13 Right? And go do that! And whether that's graduate school or engineering right now or
00:03:07.29 flying airplanes, go do that. Right?"
00:03:11.14 And I just thought that was the most brilliant advice in the world.
00:03:15.05 And I knew that flying airplanes was fun, but it wasn't going to sustain me for a lifetime.
00:03:21.19 And this idea of taking math and transforming it into stuff that was real could.
00:03:28.04 And so at that point I made the career decision to go to grad school in the thing I cared about most,
00:03:36.08 which was bioengineering. I really wanted to see how I could kind of model biological structures
00:03:43.05 and use engineering techniques to study them.
00:03:45.15 And what did your research focus on when you were at the University of Michigan?
00:03:49.05 By the time I got to Michigan, I really had figured it out.
00:03:52.00 Well, figured out what I wanted to do, which was to use signal processing techniques to study clinical phenomena.
00:04:02.24 So I had the wonderful opportunity to be able to practice medicine and see patients
00:04:07.12 in rehabilitation where there's a lot of bone and muscle injury and neural injury.
00:04:14.00 So my sub-specialty in medicine was electro-diagnostic medicine.
00:04:17.18 And what that means is that people who have issues with nerve or muscle,
00:04:21.22 numb toes, weak arms, and see those people,
00:04:31.04 diagnose the disease, and then develop a therapeutic approach
00:04:37.12 to, if not treating the disease (many of these are not treatable diseases),
00:04:43.12 overcoming the disability the disease creates to restore function.
00:04:49.09 And function that the patient cares about, not function that I care about.
00:04:52.11 So, being able to walk to the corner store, for example.
00:04:56.20 So, that's my clinical practice, and because my background was signal processing, it's perfect.
00:05:03.27 I could record these signals which we take clinically, and then analyze them from an engineering perspective.
00:05:09.22 And then at the same time, look at unique signals
00:05:12.27 that people had never studied before from biological tissues, specifically, the sounds that muscles make.
00:05:18.15 It turns out that if you put your ear up against your arm, like that,
00:05:25.16 and make a muscle, it rumbles. It generates sound. Who knew?!
00:05:32.02 I think that just epitomizes sort of the kind of interesting scientific question you can get in when you cross a couple fields.
00:05:38.27 So, I mean, it sounds like you're very passionate about that type of work,
00:05:42.20 so was it hard to kind of leave that area of research behind to go and focus more on space exploration?
00:05:48.10 What are you kidding?? All I wanted to do is fly in space my whole life!!
00:05:52.20 It was not hard to leave at all.
00:05:54.13 What was the application to NASA like?
00:05:57.04 Well, the application to NASA is a civil servant application.
00:06:00.04 So you send it in and you fill out all the forms and you get a couple people to write letters for you.
00:06:05.04 And they reject you.
00:06:08.06 And then, so you do it again the next year and they reject you again.
00:06:11.00 And so you do it again the next year and they reject you again.
00:06:13.29 So, I did this for fourteen years before they even gave me an interview.
00:06:18.18 So you'd been applying the whole time that you were still doing the research?
00:06:21.19 Absolutely, I started applying the first day they took space shuttle applications.
00:06:25.17 And, got rejected for fourteen years.
00:06:30.24 But you're following your childhood dreams. That's amazing.
00:06:33.24 You are.
00:06:34.04 How many people do that?
00:06:34.23 You are, and really when I go to schools and I talk to students, there are two messages.
00:06:40.07 And one is: You know when I was in first grade, everybody thought it was a good idea to be an astronaut.
00:06:45.13 By the time you're graduating from high school, in college, it's not so great anymore.
00:06:52.12 You know the guidance counselors say things to you like, "Get real!" you know.
00:06:56.19 And then there's also the message you get which is:
00:06:59.07 You are not smart enough to be an astronaut. You are not athletic enough to be an astronaut.
00:07:04.14 You're not good-looking enough to be an astronaut. You don't know the right people to be an astronaut.
00:07:09.22 You know? So give up this ridiculous childhood dream. You cannot listen to those people.
00:07:16.29 Later I found out, those are the people whose dreams never came true.
00:07:20.24 And they're trying to protect you. They're not malicious. They're trying to protect you from disappointment.
00:07:25.02 But, the fact is, that if you listen to them, you're going to grow up and just be like them.
00:07:29.13 And I don't think that's a very good idea.
00:07:31.23 And then the second message is: You have to keep your dreams alive.
00:07:37.00 You can't listen to these people, but you can't just wait for them to come true.
00:07:40.00 I mean, the moment that it becomes possible to realize your dream,
00:07:44.00 you have to go after it, whatever it is you want to be, artist, dancer, doctor.
00:07:49.15 You just have to force people to let you do that thing you wish to do.
00:07:55.13 So did you find that your training in bioengineering and medicine
00:07:59.04 helped you in your training to become an astronaut?
00:08:03.14 Absolutely and in fact, you know, when you look across these careers,
00:08:09.08 you, kind of in retrospect, you look for unifying themes.
00:08:13.05 And in rehabilitation medicine, the approach to the patient is, at least my approach,
00:08:20.03 boils down to three things which are adaptation, cooperation and function.
00:08:25.17 So you take someone who's had a spinal cord injury, for example,
00:08:28.18 and you see their body's already started the adaptive response
00:08:32.04 the moment that they've had the injury and as time goes on there are a lot of adaptive responses
00:08:36.24 to that injury, some of which are good, some of which are bad.
00:08:40.19 So, you kick in the cooperation side, which is that the patient, and the physician,
00:08:45.14 and the nurse, and the PTs, and the OTs, and the...all the people come together as a team
00:08:50.05 to try to enhance the good adaptations and suppress the bad ones.
00:08:55.19 And then the function part is you focus on function.
00:08:58.10 If a person can do the things they want to do,
00:09:00.23 well then, does it really, you know, matter that there's an underlying disability there?
00:09:05.01 It matters, but it's an approach to disease which is a little bit different than
00:09:11.27 some of the other fields where you're trying to, you know, get the liver enzymes just right, for example.
00:09:15.29 And, I see those three things, adaptation, cooperation and function,
00:09:22.20 as tools that I brought to the space program
00:09:25.29 and completely helped me in terms of learning how to fly in space.
00:09:33.01 Adaptation: you get to space and for the first time in forty years,
00:09:38.08 there's no gravity, right? And so your body starts
00:09:40.14 to do all these adaptive responses, some of which are good and some of which are terrible.
00:09:44.11 And then, of course, there's the cooperation among crew and support people.
00:09:48.09 That sort of thing.
00:09:48.21 And there's function in terms of let's, you know, what ever it takes, let's get this job done.
00:09:52.22 So what was it like to do a 6 hour plus space walk, or multiple 6 hour plus spacewalks?
00:09:57.25 Well, this is a dream come true. Going out of that hatch,
00:10:01.17 and looking up out of the payload bay and seeing the Earth from above the sky,
00:10:06.22 and you hang out over the sill of that space shuttle and you just let the Earth pass below you.
00:10:12.10 The view of the Earth is something no camera will ever show you.
00:10:15.20 The camera...camera's just don't have the dynamic range to give you
00:10:22.04 the whiteness of the clouds against the utter blackness of space.
00:10:26.19 They don't have the color depth to show you the green of the Amazon jungle, and
00:10:32.16 the turquoise of the Great Barrier Reef, and the multiple, multiple levels of blue in the atmosphere.
00:10:39.08 This little thin coating around the Earth it just has, must be, 25 different layers of blue in it.
00:10:46.17 And, to sit there and just take a moment, and they give you a moment at the beginning because people understand,
00:10:53.17 to drink all that in and to say, "I'm here!", you know? And it's so beautiful.
00:10:59.23 And I'm not here by myself, you know, I have, you know, a guy who has
00:11:03.06 become my best friend over the last year, and he's right next to me.
00:11:05.22 And you know, my other six best friends are right inside
00:11:08.13 and then there's these other people on the ground who are just waiting to do anything they can do to help me.
00:11:14.11 The people that you get to work with have...to find people who share
00:11:18.14 this similar passion that you have, which is such a deep one.
00:11:22.01 Could you tell us a little bit more about the missions that you went on in space
00:11:25.03 and a little bit more about the International Space Station project?
00:11:28.06 Sure, well I flew three times. The first time Endeavor and then twice on Discovery.
00:11:34.10 The two Discovery flights were missions to the Space Station.
00:11:37.02 The Endeavor flight was kind of a combination flight.
00:11:41.25 We picked up a satellite that had been launched out of Japan,
00:11:44.17 which was the first time there had been a rendezvous with a vehicle that
00:11:48.20 had been launched from a different site so that was kind of a challenge,
00:11:51.13 and also, did a space walk to practice some Space Station techniques.
00:11:57.05 A second flight, we go to the Space Station and we're the first mission to dock with the Station.
00:12:02.06 So, there's nobody on board, it's this empty house, right? And it's brand new.
00:12:07.08 And our job was really just to bring logistics in,
00:12:10.02 basically, clothes, food, water, for the first crew to be able to come up and live,
00:12:15.00 but attaching to the Space Station meant that we had ten-times the volume
00:12:18.28 that we'd had on my first flight. Ten-times the volume.
00:12:22.22 So, now you can fly. So you take your pinky finger and you push off and you fly, like Superman.
00:12:31.12 I mean, is this a kid's dream or what, right?!
00:12:33.23 So we played Quidditch. And so then the third flight I come back and
00:12:38.08 we're delivering the third crew to live there and bringing home the second crew.
00:12:41.16 So, now, we come to this place, I was there just two years earlier.
00:12:46.20 And it's completely transformed. It's no longer this empty house.
00:12:53.25 It's somebody's home. So now, you knock on the door.
00:12:59.20 And you open the hatch and there's people there.
00:13:02.17 And they're thrilled to see you.
00:13:04.17 Guests! They don't get a lot of guests.
00:13:07.00 This transformation showed me the difference between
00:13:11.17 a space program where we work in space and a space program where we live in space.
00:13:17.15 And that's a transformation that's happened really recently.
00:13:21.25 You know, never again will there ever be all of humanity on the planet.
00:13:32.10 For the rest of the history of the species, there will be people that are off the planet.
00:13:37.16 I mean, that's just happened. That is transformative.
00:13:41.23 And not off the planet working, off the planet living.
00:13:45.18 It's a whole different perspective on how you exist in space.
00:13:48.08 So tell us a little bit more about what you're doing right now.
00:13:51.26 So, now I build robots. The robots that I build are oriented towards
00:13:58.07 assistive devices for people with disabilities because that's my medical background,
00:14:02.08 and it's also because I think it's the extent of what robots are really capable of today.
00:14:08.08 So where do you see robotics in ten years?
00:14:10.14 What are the advances that you think might happen?
00:14:12.22 There has been a huge breakthrough just in the last few months.
00:14:16.20 And that is, you know, really the Microsoft Kinect.
00:14:21.16 The $10,000 robot is now the $500 robot, just with a single change in technology.
00:14:27.06 It's an example of a disruptive technology which is transforming the field of robotics
00:14:32.10 because it allows the robotics to be done by so many more people,
00:14:35.15 which means that there's so many more people cooperating to build code, and
00:14:39.29 everyday now on the floor some says, "You're not going to believe what my robot's doing today!"
00:14:44.25 And everyone is like, "Wow! That's great." and then the next day,
00:14:47.01 "You're not going to believe what my robot's doing today!"
00:14:49.21 And so it's a really exciting time to be part of that community.

This Talk
Speaker: Daniel Barry
Audience:
  • General Public
  • Student
  • Researcher
  • Educators
Recorded: April 2011
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Talk Overview

Dan Barry talks to Sarah Goodwin about the importance of perseverance in fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut. He explains how his training in bioengineering and rehabilitation medicine helped him adapt to flying in space and he describes the thrill of seeing the Earth from space.

Speaker Bio

Daniel Barry

Daniel Barry

Dr. Barry was a professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Bioengineering at the University of Michigan when he joined NASA in 1992. He flew three Space Shuttle missions, including two to the International Space Station. He was also a contestant on the Survivor reality television show. Barry now runs Denbar Robotics and is on… Continue Reading

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