Next OnQ, from western Pennsylvania to outer space.

Local astronaut Mike Fincke has just returned from six months aboard the International Space Station.

We'll talk to Mike about what it was like to spend half a year in space, and how growing up here in western Pennsylvania helped him decide to become an astronaut.

And you'll have a chance to talk to Mike, too.

We'll be taking your phone calls next OnQ.

Stay connected.

Welcome to OnQ magazine, I'm Chris Moore.

Stacy Smith is of.

Tonight, we journey into outer space with a local astronaut who made headlines last year.

Mike Fincke grew up in Emsworth, just outside of Pittsburgh along the Ohio River.

In April 2004, he and a Russian astronaut set off on a six month, 188 day mission aboard the International Space Station.

In tonight's cover story, we learn more about the expedition that he was on officially called Expedition Number Nine, in a story narrated by Fincke himself.

Start of every mission, of course, is training.

Gennady and I trained together.

That's Commander Gennady Padalka.

This is when we said goodbye to our families at Star City in April.

My wife there was expecting.

My parents were able to come and my son, whom I missed.

Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, they were rolling out the rocket.

We flew up with a European astronaut, André Kuipers.

He stayed aboard for 10 or 11 days of joint mission.

He reported into the leadership of Russian space program.

Was bussed out to our rocket and took the elevator to the top.

This is first arrival aboard the International Space Station.

I think Sasha and Mike were happy to see us.

They hadn't seen anybody for six months.

This is our handover period when Mike is transferring control over to Gennady.

Hello.

I am Crew Commander, Gennady Padalka and this is my flight engineer, Mike Fincke.

And we're going to show you our space station.

Welcome onboard space station.

Here we are in the functional cargo block FGB known as Zaria, where we bathe and take care of ourselves hygienically.

This was my crew quarters.

I didn't have a window.

It was definitely very comfortable and I enjoyed sleeping standing up.

We had canned food and kind of food packages.

Thermal stabilized.

We did not have a microwave or refrigerator, but we did have food warmers.

We worked out every day and this was really important not just for us to come home okay.

But it also helped to contribute towards the science program of when flying on board six months on the spacecraft to Mars, we really need to understand how to reduce the amount of muscle and bone loss.

Boy, she sounds upset.

My little daughter was born while I was gone.

We were nominated to this mission at the very last minute.

So special kudos again to my wife for letting me go on this mission.

One of the more fun things is we shared our adventure with kids across the planet.

It's one of NASA's missions is to to inspire the next generation of explorers as only NASA can.

And I think it's not only NASA, but it's weightlessness is certainly a lot of fun and can capture the imagination of kids, young and old alike.

This is my favorite part.

Here we are getting ready for some of our spacewalks.

We had four of them, Gennady was an outstanding leader on so many fronts, including for spacewalks.

He taught me quite a bit.

We took over 21,000 photos to show the glories of our planet.

There's a glacier in South America.

Here's Mount Kilimanjaro.

If you look carefully in the middle, you can see some pyramids in Egypt.

Well, here comes the next crew.

Six months have passed already.

Just as expedition eight seemed happy to see us, we were just as very much happy to see expedition ten.

Ringing the ship's bell, and Gennady transferred his command to Leroy.

And it was very bittersweet.

That was our last view of the space station.

We returned it at dark.

Once our parachute opened, we started smiling at each other, and by the time we landed, we were extremely, extremely happy.

4 or 5 hours later, flying into Moscow to Star City.

Here we are, you see doctor, Steve Hart, helping me down the stairs.

And here I am.

First time meeting my daughter.

Theres Renita whom I love so much.

And the little boy or big boy?

Excuse me, that I missed.

And it's a true homecoming.

You are watching NASA TV.

What a great story.

And astronaut Mike Fincke joins us now.

Mike, welcome back to the program.

Lieutenant Colonel, I got a salute.

You, man.

That was great.

Thanks, Chris.

It's great to be back on the show.

Thanks for inviting me.

I'm glad to be back home in Pittsburgh.

Now, what was it like to go up to the International Space Station with such an international crew?

One from Europe, one from Russia, one American?

Well, I don't know.

Pittsburgh is an international city, isn't it?

I was all set for that and I really enjoyed it.

We spoke English, we spoke Russian.

Not only Andre knew how to speak Dutch, but we really had a great mission.

We, The flight up was something that took us only nine minutes to go from 0 to 17,500 miles an hour.

- 9 minutes?

That must be an eight ticket, right?

To sit there.

How many G's do you feel going up?

Four G's on the way up.

But I had a window seat.

You had the window seat?

It looked kind of tight in there, too.

You got to get used to being in small spaces, I guess.

Well, I'm not a big guy.

I'm kind of short, so it worked out in my advantage that way.

Those other two guys were a little bit tall, so their knees were pretty much up in their eyes.

What was it like growing up here in western Pennsylvania, and what inspired you for a career in science and to become an astronaut?

Well, first off and foremost, the kids here in western Pennsylvania have it good.

I mean, it's such a great place to grow up.

There's so many neat things, a community and the system of education we have.

I mean, all the centers of higher learning, the science centers.

I mean, I used to go to the Buhl Planetarium and, and and now we have the Carnegie Science Center with the big Sky shows and everything that really inspired me.

But when I was two and a half years old, three years old, I watched the first people walk on the moon, and for some reason it just just called to me and said, hey, that's what you're supposed to do.

And last year I actually started to do something like that, and it was just absolutely amazing.

I was so happy in my heart to find what I was supposed to be doing.

What kind of background do you need?

Math?

Science?

What should young people be studying now if they want to be like Mike?

Well, I hope they do better than I do, but to to NASA and actually anyone I mean, I think there's a fundamentals in this new high technology world that we live in is that we need to know understand math, we need to understand science.

These are really important things, along with other things, you know, culture and art and language.

Language is very important too.

Did you brush up on your Russian in six months?

Did you learn it?

[Chris speaks Russian] [Mike speaks Russian] Man.

He's good.

The thing is, is that in life it's important to communicate and it's people that can communicate that are going to succeed well, and it's going to make the mission happen.

So Gennady he was 40 years old when he started studying English Wow.

And he picked it up like that.

In fact, his English kept getting better and better on the board, the International Space Station, he spoke to me pretty much in only English.

So to match him, to meet him halfway, show him that Pittsburgh spirit.

I was speaking to him in Russian the whole time, so we had the funniest conversations because he'd be speaking in English and I'd be speaking back in Russian and people would just look at us.

Okay, now that you're back, I understand you've been doing a lot of tours and back in this area.

You're speaking at CMU, at elementary schools.

You're trying to inspire kids to science.

And that's something you told me when you visited us before.

Before you went up on the International Space Station that you really want to do.

You have a passion for that, don't you?

Well, the way I see it, it's paying back to the community.

And I mean, it's also an interest of NASA and interest of good space program that we have kids who are strong in math and science, and they grow up and work, but it's also good for the workforce.

It's good for the city, good for the region.

But it's also just payback because there are a lot of people that sponsored me along the way my parents, my teachers, our neighborhood, and and so it's really nice to to go get a chance to go back and kind of pay back to, to my friends and family by going and talking to their kids or kids that I don't even know, but they're from Pittsburgh or from anywhere in the country.

Get a chance to tell them and share the joy of flying in space, because it was a lot of fun.

All right, we are going to open up the phone lines right now so that you can have a question for Mike.

Why don't you give us a call and find out what it was like for him to go up into space and to come back, or maybe how he became an astronaut.

Now, if you want to talk to Mike, give us a call at (412)683-3505.

That number again is (412)683-3505.

We await your calls.

Now.

You had a baby girl born while you up there.

Were you passing out one of those bubble gum cigars to your commander there?

Exactly.

We knew the baby was coming.

It turns out that we were going to be launching in October on Expedition ten.

And at the last minute, NASA switched the batting order and said, no, no, no, you're going on expedition 9 in 3 months.

Get ready and go.

And the baby was coming in the summer, so I had to.

That was a funny phone call I had to make to my wife.

Hey, honey.

Guess what?

So.

But our daughter came and she was fine.

And we had such good support from NASA.

My family, even my parents, came from Pittsburgh to come help with the baby.

It was really great.

And so it was really special.

But you know, Chris, there's a lot of guys overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan and other, other places who are going through the same thing.

And so we were experiencing what a lot of service families go through just happened to be, that this was the first time that there was an American astronaut have a baby while they were up in space.

Wow, that's so cool.

Now, you talked about the experiments that you have to do and all those plans that as they get ready to go to Mars, bone density, muscle, that sort of stuff, we saw them sort of have to kind of help you get your land legs coming down the steps of that airliner, that Russian airliner, when you're restrained like that because you're in zero gravity.

What kind of experiments are you doing about bone density, muscle mass, that sort of stuff, and living in zero gravity?

Well, one of the highlights of our science program, Chris, was we had a really neat ultrasound machine.

And so for the first time and I'm not in pregnancy.

No no, no.

All right.

Yeah.

No, no, we had it on board.

And I'm not in ultrasonography.

But with ultrasound machine not only you can see inside people's bodies using high frequency sound.

And I'm not I'm not a physician or anything.

But they trained us a little bit.

Then they put a headset on us and we actually could like telemedicine, talk to a doctor, a specialist on the ground.

And they walked us through and we were actually able to image the insides of our bodies, especially our bones.

And so we know that we lose bone mass in space.

Now, for the first time, clinical quality images of that bone changing over time.

So scientists can study that and try to come up with things to understand it and help the astronauts stop losing that bone density.

Exactly.

You know, we've made some really good progress exercise program that we have now, especially with that resistive exercise device that has like these rubber things on the inside so that we it feels like we're lifting weights even though in space, you know, weightless.

Right.

But we still feel like we get that that good workout.

We worked out 2.5 hours every day, and even then I still lost a little bit of bone.

Now, much better than we used to.

But we're still not there yet.

And you slept standing up?

I slept standing up in a sleeping bag.

When there's no up or down.

So you just close your eyes and you can't tell if you're upside down the right side up.

So it was a very comfortable way to sleep.

Like sleeping on air.

You ready to take sleeping on air?

Are you ready to take some questions?

Oh.

You bet.

Let's go to Hammer Township.

Christopher.

Hello?

Hello.

I'm sorry.

What was it like to reenter the atmosphere?

Oh, well, reentering the atmosphere, that was actually the, as we say in Air Force talk, the most sporty part of of the whole mission.

Because we started out at 17,500 miles an hour.

This is a great question.

And we had to slow down, and we didn't use rocket fuel to really slow us down.

We used just a little bit of rocket fuel just to slow us down a little bit.

But then we hit the atmosphere and we used the air to slow us down.

Now the air didn't like that too much, so it started to heat up.

I mean, just transfer kinetic energy kind of thing.

And so we made a big fireball as we were zooming through the atmosphere, and I had a window seat and I was I was just watching it and we had a really good heat shield.

The Russians put a really thick shield on it.

And so we were watching the heat shield melt a little bit like it was supposed to, and it took us 35 minutes from once we hit the atmosphere over Central Africa, and we zoomed up north into the east, and we screamed through the atmosphere and the parachutes popped out, and we landed more or less softly on the ground in Central Asia in Kazakhstan.

Why did the Russians land on the ground and we landed in the water?

usually when we were using capsules.

Yeah.

You're right.

Well, part of it is Russians don't have a lot of water around them.

In the United States, I guess we have a great naval power, and we have oceans on both sides of us and Russians.

Russia has always been more or less kind of stuck in Central Asia, the whole the whole landmass there.

So they so they, they used they used their resources, what they can do.

And it was we didn't get hurt at all during the landing.

Lieutenant Colonel Mike Fincke is our guest.

He was on expedition nine on the International Space Station.

If you have a question or comment for us, why don't you call us now at (412)683-3505?

That's (412)683-3505.

Now we're talking about our spaceship space missions resuming with the space shuttles.

What's that going to be like?

What's the preparations at NASA?

Yeah, this is really big for us.

Last time I talked to us, right after the Columbia disaster when you invited me out here.

And since then, we've worked really hard.

We've analyzed everything that went wrong on that mission.

We analyzed everything that we think could possibly go wrong in future missions.

And we've taken solid steps based on this Columbia accident.

Accident.

Heat shields, and the tiles and the foam on the booster.

That's the main thing.

We're making sure that the foam isn't going to go anywhere and break our heat shields again, our tiles on the orbiter, we got a great crew.

This mission is called STS 114.

Eileen Collins, a colonel in the Russian Air Force, a commander.

She's the right, right woman for the job, and she's going to lead that team to go up and resupply the space station, because the space station, we haven't had any supplies from the US from, from, from through the space shuttle for over two years now.

And we're looking for this shuttle to bring up some more supplies and to bring down a whole bunch of cargo.

You get hungry on that space shuttle dont you?

you can't order a pizza.

Well, I would have paid a couple hundred dollars for a pizza.

All right, let's go to Rachel in Pittsburgh.

Hello, Rachel.

How did you become an astronaut?

Well.

Hi, Rachel.

I became an astronaut.

I studied hard in in school, and I went to went to college and studied engineering, and I joined the Air Force.

Now, not every astronaut is in the Air Force.

About half of us are in the military, and half of us come from civilian life.

Whether it's an engineering, engineering and a company or being a scientist at a university.

There's even a guy who's a veterinarian.

We're hiring a school teachers now, too.

We have educator astronauts, so we have a lot of astronauts.

You have any talk show host astronauts?

Not yet, but we're taking names.

I volunteer.

Okay.

All right.

Put my name in that part.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

And and so we applied to NASA and NASA every two years or so, hires a new group of astronauts and about 3500 people each, each application cycle apply, and then they only hire about ten.

So, yeah, the odds are against us.

But you got to be the best of the best.

Absolutely.

And NASA is really looking for high quality people to go fly in space.

And you have to be really medically fit to because space is a harsh environment on our bodies.

Jay Apt, a former astronaut, has been a guest on this program, a science contributor in the early years of OnQ.

And he told me the first two times that he applied, he was turned down, but that really says something about his stick to this, that he really pursued it and wanted to do it so, so much that he really was admitted to the program and flew several times.

Well, Chris, that's a that's a message for everybody in all walks of life, in every phase of life is that if it's a real dream, if it's a dream of your heart, don't give up on it.

Never give up.

Keep going for it and you'll be surprised.

Someday it might happen.

All right.

Let's go to Bill in Armagh.

Hello, Bill.

Hi.

How are you doing tonight?

Okay.

I've got a question.

How old are you and how long have you been an astronaut?

Well, Bill, I'm 38 years old.

I just turned 38.

I was the youngest guy so far.

And I hope there's a younger people to live aboard the International Space Station.

I was 37 years old when I flew aboard the space station.

I became an astronaut in 1996.

I was 29 years old.

Usually people were about 34, 35, and I just happened to get in a little bit early.

I think they they circled the wrong name or something.

But no, no, you were the best.

That's why they picked you.

I waited eight years for my first mission.

And that was just just this one that we were talking about.

It was a great.

It was a great mission.

It was worth the wait.

I'm hoping to stay in the program.

I'm healthy.

The doctors have given me a clean bill of health after six months in space, and I'm hoping to get a chance to fly again.

Now, President Bush just last year has said, we're going to go to the moon and Mars, and I'm looking forward to helping with that.

And maybe I'll even have a chance to go to the moon.

Would you be the next man to walk on the moon, man?

Well, the first to walk on Mars.

Well, for the for the moon.

I don't care from the next or the 38th guy to walk on the moon.

The 100 for go.

Yeah.

And I'll be thinking about Pittsburgh.

I'll tell you what.

When I'm up there.

No, the first person to walk on Mars, NASA has done some calculations and we're looking at how things are going.

We think the first person walk on Mars is like in middle school right now.

You know, junior high school somewhere.

And that's why I tell the kids, hey, look to the person next to you.

They might be famous someday as the first person on Mars.

Well, maybe it'll be Kaylee in Pleasant Hills.

Hello, Kaylee.

Hi.

I just want you.

You came to my school, and?

And it was really fun.

Thank you.

Oh Kaylee I'm really glad to have come to your school.

And it's my duty to come back and go to the community and and share this flying in space.

And just to share the benefit of letting you know that study hard and you can go everywhere.

I mean, the opportunities on this planet right now are outstanding.

Good luck to you, Kaylee.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you for your call again.

The number is right there on the screen for 412-683-3505.

If you want to ask Lieutenant Colonel Mike Fincke, our home boy made good.

He's been up in space.

He's come back.

What's the plan now, besides all the public appearances that you're doing and inspiring young people to go into science and engineering, those kinds of things.

What's the plan for you now?

Well, the worldwide post flight tours just about over, and I'm going to go back to the astronaut office and I'll get a technical assignment so I won't be flying or training to fly for a little while.

Just we'll we'll see how long it could be.

A couple of years.

Could be shorter, could be longer.

But in the meantime, I'm going to support those who are flying because there's a lot of things to look out for.

And I think I'm going to go back and and help with our safety committee and be in charge of our safety branch to help keep things safe so that people fly.

They can feel safe at home.

All right.

Let's go to John in Pittsburgh.

Hello, John.

Hello, John.

Hello, John.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

What's your question?

My question is, how much fuel do you have in your spaceship?

Oh, that's a great question.

We went up not on the space shuttle, which is really big and heavy.

We went up on this smaller Russian Soyuz rocket.

Now, the Russian Soyuz rocket actually weighs about eight tons.

In order to get eight tons into orbit, we actually have to have about 40 tons of gas.

Not gasoline, but it's actually kerosene and liquid oxygen to to get us going.

So you're riding a big bomb, aren't you?

Well, you need to think of it like the control.

It's a controlled explosion, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yes, indeed.

Yes, indeed.

It must be a thrill.

It must be exciting to ride that Roman candle stick up there.

Oh, boy.

It was.

It was my dream come true.

So my heart was soaring along with our our body as we were zooming up into space.

That was the surprise thing.

I knew it only took nine minutes, but I was so surprised when it was over, I was like, that's it?

And the first view of the planet was outstanding.

In fact, I got to show Andre the view of the planet because he had a window seat, too.

But the Earth was outside my window and I said, hey, look at this.

And I just watched his face as he saw the planet for the first time.

I'll never forget it.

All right, let's go to Michael.

Hello, Michael.

Hello.

Go ahead.

What's your question?

What courses would you take?

Coming up through middle school and high school to become an astronaut.

Oh, well.

Michael.

Astronauts need to be good at everything.

Now, of course, math and science and a technical field really helps.

Helps a lot.

But like I said earlier, we have astronauts who are educators, teachers.

We have astronauts who studied, like, a lot of biology and became doctors or veterinarians.

And we have astronauts like myself who really liked aerospace engineering and and astronomy and geology.

So whatever you can take, take it.

Get good grades, study and understand it.

And if you find that's in your heart, then keep going on it in college and beyond.

Let's go to Ethan in Pittsburgh.

Hello, Ethan.

Hi.

Hi.

Good to know.

Listen to the TV.

You've got to listen to me.

Go ahead and go ahead and ask you a question.

Yes, I want to know.

You want to know what?

Well, sorry, but I know my Mike Fincke came to my school today.

So, I want to ask, what was it like to sleep if you could sleep at all?

Oh, well, I was great to sleep because we worked really hard every day.

And even though we were standing up in a physical position, standing up once we closed our eyes.

We couldn't tell we were standing up or upside down or right side up.

Now I'm a guy on the planet who loves his pillow.

And in space.

I didn't have a pillow.

Pillow?

No.

Well, you know what?

I tried to make one once, but it kept floating away, so I forgot about it.

And so after a while, I got used to sleeping without a pillow.

But since I came back, since I got two little kids at home, I'm getting.

I got much more sleep up in space than I do here on the ground.

Did you have to zip yourself or strap yourself to keep yourself from floating away?

Exactly.

The sleeping bag was tied onto the walls.

We had some little rings tied on the walls.

We just tied the sleeping bag on the walls.

And then once you got in the sleeping bag, you just kind of zip it up.

The problem is, is that I don't like my feet covered, so I had to figure out a way to unzip the sleeping bag at the bottom and zip it up in the air so we didn't float away anywhere.

Wow.

Now, as a flight engineer, when you go in space again, if they go to the moon, if they go to Mars, does that mean you'll be the guy that has to stay with the orbiter?

Or will you get to go down to the surface of the planet?

Well, that's a good question.

And they haven't we haven't figured out how we're going to do it now in Apollo.

We had one guy to stay on in orbit, and all the and two other guys went on the planet.

Now, I don't know which part I'd be most qualified for because I'm not a real pilot.

But on the other hand, I have four, four extravehicular activities, four spacewalks.

So maybe I'll be good on the ground, but it doesn't matter.

As long as I go, I'll do whatever I can to help out.

I know what you mean.

Let's go to Carroll in Munhall.

Hello, Carroll.

Hello, Mike.

What is your opinion of the NASA scrapping the Hubble telescope?

Oh, Carroll.

That's a great question.

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of humankind's greatest scientific achievements.

And everybody is really proud of what we've done with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Especially us astronauts.

Because when the space telescope was first launched, it turns out there was a defect in its optics and it had really blurry vision.

And so we fixed it as astronauts.

We're really proud of that now.

Now we're talking about with with our budget and with our future.

What are we going to do with the Hubble Space Telescope?

Previously we at NASA, we said, well, we have another space telescope and sometimes we press forgets to mention this.

We have another space telescope coming up in a couple of years.

So do we spend a lot of money, like almost half $1 billion to send another space shuttle up to fix this one, to get it going for another two years?

Or do we just wait for a little while?

Save our money, invest it wisely, and put it on to a new space telescope.

Now we have a new administrator, and he's revisiting that decision to scrap the telescope, and we'll see what comes out.

All right, well, you talk about pride in that telescope.

Let me tell you what pride we have in you around here.

Mike Fincke, Lieutenant Colonel, we again salute you.

Thank you for coming back on the program.

I hope you'll come back and visit us again.

Oh, great to be here.

And I love being home.

As they said in The Wizard of Oz there's no place like home.

All right, thank you.

Mike.

And before we go.

Here's a quick look at what's coming on tomorrow.

It's time to take apart the news again.

Every Friday night OnQ is OffQ.

Tomorrow night, join OffQ regulars Alan Cox, Fred Hans Berger and Ruth Ann Daley, along with this week's special guest.

Allegheny County Recorder of Deeds Valerie McDonald Roberts.

It's the OffQ weekend review tomorrow night at 7:30 here on TV 13.

Stay connected.

Thanks for watching.

Join us tomorrow night for OffQ.

Stay connected.

Good night.