Space News
space history and artifacts articles

Messages
space history discussion forums

Sightings
worldwide astronaut appearances

Resources
selected space history documents

  collectSPACE: Messages
  Space Events & Happenings
  Dave Williams in NYC on 4 Dec

Post New Topic  Post A Reply
profile | register | preferences | faq | search

next newest topic | next oldest topic
Author Topic:   Dave Williams in NYC on 4 Dec
Hart Sastrowardoyo
Member

Posts: 3445
From: Toms River, NJ
Registered: Aug 2000

posted 12-02-2003 01:26 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Hart Sastrowardoyo   Click Here to Email Hart Sastrowardoyo     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Just saw on cS that Dave Williams will be in NYC lecturing on "An Astronaut's Life: Becoming, Being, and Beyond." There's a public lecture at noon and a second one for mostly students at 16.00. As luck would have it, I was planning on being in New York anyway that day, so it looks like I'll be there for the noon lecture. I talked to the press rep for same and she said, "Just show up and look for me." She didn't think there would be time for me to do an interview, as there were workshops all day, but she said she'll see what she could do for me.

According to his bio, Williams is assigned to STS-118... so I'll dig up the interview Neil and I did with Barbara Morgan and use that for possible questions.

Anybody else going?

Hart

Hart Sastrowardoyo
Member

Posts: 3445
From: Toms River, NJ
Registered: Aug 2000

posted 12-05-2003 09:06 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Hart Sastrowardoyo   Click Here to Email Hart Sastrowardoyo     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Just some quick notes on Dave Williams’ talk at Mt. Sinai Hospital in NYC before I finish my article:

He gave two talks, one on the ISS: Our Future in Space, more for the general public and hospital staff who had two experiments on STS-90, and the other on An Astronaut’s Life, for 600 (!) middle and high schoolers. Luckily, not all of them asked for his autograph… Somewhere, there were about two dozen OSS lithos of him floating around, which he signed. The kids had him sign their tickets and whatever pieces of paper they had. One girl had her blue jeans signed. I had my Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years, an STS-90 crew shot of them on the Voyager bridge, and at a second signing, a Canadian FDC already signed by McKay.

Of course, since Williams was trying to accommodate everybody, my “Dave Williams” in my book looks like a “Jake Garn” (seriously….) He added “STS-90, 118” to a few items, “Best wishes” and “STS-90” to his OSS litho, and on one kid’s paper I saw a “Reach for the stars.”

Before the talk started, they had a laptop set up which wasn't his, and he mentioned that whenever two different computers were next to each other, one of them would act funny, even if they weren't networked. I shrugged, and said, "Well, hey, as long as one of them doesn't ask you, 'Dave... Dave... What are you doing, Dave?'"

I didn’t get to interview him, but I was invited to the Q and A session with twenty of the students after his talk. He was also visiting patients at Mt. Sinai and also doing some preflight testing on experiments that will be flown on STS-118 (follow-ups to those carried on STS-90.)

Williams does have family from Wales.

He figures STS-118 is now set to launch in mid to Fall 2005.

So far, (or at least at the time of his Powerpoint presentation), 100 people have visited ISS, 17 of them for the 2d time.

He’s both an aquanaut and an astronaut, having spent time in NEEMO, an underwater habitat run by both NOAA and NASA. Long-duration crews train there (but he didn’t say he was in the running for an Expedition crew.)

There are plans for a Canadian to be part of an Expedition crew, unknown as to when though. He also sees the CSA hiring more astronauts.

Through a newspaper ad (!), 5300 applied for the Canadian astronaut call of 1992, 600 of which were kids under the age of 10. (“We have a Teacher in Space… why not a Kid in Space?” I overheard him saying.) Of those, it was whittled down to 20 semifinalists and 4 selected. “I felt like I hit the lottery.”

His most memorable experience was during FD1, when he had his head in a box, trying to track an object seen inside. With his puffy face and no visual inputs, he felt like he was upside-down. When he took his face out of the box, instantaneously he realized he was right-side up. Williams was so fascinated by the abrupt change in senses he kept sticking in and taking out his face “like a pigeon eating,” to use his words.

ISS technology has translated into telerobotic surgery on laproscopy patients in Canada. 27 of them have been treated that way.

Crickets, which have a gravity sensor, developed one in micro gravity, but there were some anomalies. So it’s not clear cut either way whether crickets will or will not have a gravity sensor in the absence of gravity.

I don’t know if they did this - it was unclear - but one of the “what woulds” that was being discussed in flight was taking a blob of water, having it float around, and then putting a goldfish inside. Would the goldfish swim in the bubble and remain in there, or would the goldfish try and get out of the bubble?

His next dream, not so much for himself but for the next generation of astronauts, is “By 50th” - That is, by the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo (2019), he wants to see humans working and living on Mars. “For those who think it’s impossible, I want you to remember a little boy in Canada, seven-years-old, who had a dream of becoming an astronaut.” He had average marks - once scored a 2 out of 50 on an intermediate algebra test and didn’t think he’d become an astronaut also because Canada had no participation in the space program at that time.


Hart Sastrowardoyo
Member

Posts: 3445
From: Toms River, NJ
Registered: Aug 2000

posted 12-09-2003 03:39 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Hart Sastrowardoyo   Click Here to Email Hart Sastrowardoyo     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
O Canada: The journey of Dave Williams
By Hartriono B. Sastrowardoyo

Dr. Dafydd (Dave) Williams was at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City on December 4 to deliver two lectures. One, “ISS: Our Future in Space,” was aimed for the public in general, and specifically for the Mt. Sinai doctors who sponsored the adult neural plasticity and vestibular experiments on board his first spaceflight, Columbia/STS-90, which carried the Neurolab spacelab.

His second, “An Astronaut’s Life: Becoming, Being, and Beyond,” was meant for the 600 students middle and high school students and was sponsored by “Defying Gravity: Embracing Life in Space,” an education and public research project sponsored by NASA and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute and hosted by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, which helps to bring spaceflight medicine to the schoolroom, and to help students understand math and science.

Williams spoke highly of the International Space Station, saying that he was “very proud of our asset,” and noted that ISS had brought nations together for the benefit of life on Earth.

“If you forgive my merging of words, there’s an ‘internationalisation’ of astronauts on board the ISS. We explore as a team. The culture of space exploration supersedes the culture of individual nations.” Williams noted that 100 people had visited ISS, 17 of them for the second time.

“I look out the window when I’m exercising. I’ll have John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ or Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World It Is’ playing and I’ll think, ‘Why is it we can’t get along?’”

One benefit of ISS that Williams noted was the use of medical robots based on ISS technology. “They’ve been doing complicated surgery like laproscopy surgery using robots, and they’re starting to do telerobotic surgery. Doctors in one part of Canada have done laproscopy surgery on patients in another part. Twenty-seven patients have been operated on in this fashion.”

By the end of 2002, 65 experiments using the seven research racks in the U.S.’ Destiny module have been done, including biomedical research, astroculture plant growth, biotechnology research, Earth observations, and others, including expanding on the research done on STS-90.

Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Williams wanted to be an astronaut since he was 7, but said that with his average marks in school, he thought he was never going to be one. As well, at that time, Canada did not participate in any space programme, Russian or American. “If I couldn’t explore outer space, maybe I could explore inner space.” Williams said that growing up, he liked exploring, and found it exciting.

And so, at age 13, he learned to scuba dive, not realizing that twenty-five years later he would utilize those skills to help practice space walks. Indeed, Williams served as a crewmember on the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO)-1, an underwater habitat mission run by both NASA and NOAA; Williams spent 7 days living there. Such underwater habitat training is now used for crews expected to serve long durations on ISS.

When the Canadian astronaut corps was formed in 1983, he realized, “Maybe I’ll be able to accomplish my dreams.” Then under the management of the National Research Council of Canada, this came about when the United States invited Canada to fly an astronaut on the Space Shuttle. This invitation led to the creation of a permanent corps of Canadian astronauts to coordinate and conduct Canadian experiments in space. Six years later, the Canadian Space Agency became an independent government agency, dealing with all Canadian space matters, not just her astronauts.

In 1992 an ad was placed in Canadian newspapers asking for a second group of candidates. 5,300 applied, included 600 from children under the age of 10. Of that number, 20 people were selected as semi-finalists, and 4, including Williams, were chosen. (The others included Chris Hadfield, Michael McKay, and Julie Payette. Of the other three, Hadfield flew as Mission Specialist 1 on Atlantis/STS-74, the second Shuttle-Mir docking, and on Endeavour/STS-100, an ISS assembly fight. On the latter, Hadfield became the first Canadian space walker. Payette also flew as Mission Specialist 1, on the Discovery/STS-96 flight, which was the first flight to dock and resupply ISS. Currently, Payette is Chief Astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency

McKay resigned in 1995 due to medical reasons without making a flight, but remained active as an engineer in the astronaut programme until 1997, when he returned to active military service with the Directorate of Space Development within the National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.)

“It’s a really cool job,” Williams said of being an astronaut. He also said that he was “very proud” to be a part of the Canadian astronaut team.

“Don’t give up on your dreams,” Williams said, “no matter where your dreams may take you. With a lot of luck, hard work, and believing in yourself, those dreams will come true.

“I was really stubborn, and never gave up on my dream since I was 7. Keep persisting and it’ll work out in the end.”

Williams’ next flight is STS-118, originally scheduled for a November 2003 launch on board Columbia. Delays in the Return to Flight mission have pushed this back to mid-to Fall 2005, he said.

His task on STS-118 is, with fellow EVAer Scott Parazynski, to install the third starboard truss segment (the S5 segment.) Williams’ visit to Mt. Sinai Hospital was also to do some preflight testing on experiments that will be carried on STS-118.

“I lost seven close friends on STS-107, and I knew them personally. I know that they would want us to continue exploring.”

Another dream of Williams is one that he gets “all fired up” on: The exploration of the universe. “Now that I’ve had a chance to fly in space, what dreams do I have left?” he asked rhetorically.

“It’s something I call ‘By Fiftieth.’ That is, by the 50th anniversary of Apollo, by 2019, I’d like to see humans working and living on Mars. I believe it’s achievable.”

Why Mars? “That’s where life may have once existed,” Williams said, citing the find of an Antarctic meteorite which some scientists believe to contain Martian bacteria. “If bacteria once lived there - who knows what else could have lived there?

“For those who say that a trip to Mars by 2019 is impossible, I submit that I no longer use the word ‘impossible.’ Let me remind you of the little kid growing up in Canada who wanted to be an astronaut.”

As he ended his lecture to the students, he closed with a quote by Henry David Thoreau: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life that you have imagined.”

All times are CT (US)

next newest topic | next oldest topic

Administrative Options: Close Topic | Archive/Move | Delete Topic
Post New Topic  Post A Reply
Hop to:

Contact Us | The Source for Space History & Artifacts

Copyright 2020 collectSPACE.com All rights reserved.


Ultimate Bulletin Board 5.47a





advertisement