“I’ve seen the peak of Mount Everest about 25 times,” boasts Dr Don Thomas, former Nasa astronaut, talking about his experiences in space; “I call it the lazy man’s way of seeing Mount Everest.”
Although he may have chosen to see Everest without enduring a gruelling mountain-climb to do it, he had to persevere to achieve his goal of going into space, and was only selected after his fourth application.
“I’ve seen the peak of Mount Everest about 25 times,” boasts Dr Don Thomas, former Nasa astronaut, talking about his experiences in space; “I call it the lazy man’s way of seeing Mount Everest.”
Although he may have chosen to see Everest without enduring a gruelling mountain-climb to do it, he had to persevere to achieve his goal of going into space, and was only selected after his fourth application.
Speaking at the Guy Butler Theatre on Monday 1 August, Thomas enthralled his audience with first-hand accounts of the dangers and adventures of being an astronaut.
On the morning of his first space mission he felt it was the moment he had been waiting for his whole life, and called it a humbling and awe-inspiring scene: “You stand at the base of the shuttle and look up, and it was then that I really got the first butterflies in my stomach, knowing where I would be in a couple of hours.”
“It’s a bit disorientating seeing your chair on the wall, but we’re trained for this,” recalled Thomas, describing the sight that met him when he entered the shuttle.
As for the moment of take-off, he said that besides being nervous and excited, the actual feeling is “like someone has their hand on your back and is pushing you up into the sky.” In two minutes the shuttle was speeding at 3000km/h, and “everything is rockin’ and rollin’ at take-off.”
It takes eight and a half minutes to get up into space, and his first reaction to seeing the earth was marvelling at how beautiful it was. Thomas must have been the envy of the room when he described how all the pictures one sees on TV can’t do the view justice: “you just gasp the first time you see the earth.”
Orbiting the earth at 27000km/h, (that’s 8km every second), Thomas has seen some of the planet's greatest landmarks such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Brazilian Rain Forest. He also watched a sunrise and sunset every 45 minutes.
While up in space the astronauts were observed to see how the human body is affected by living in zero gravity, and “humans lose muscle and bone density and are more exposed to radiation,” said Thomas. It is vital that they exercise on a bicycle for at least an hour every day while aboard the shuttle, he said, in order to maintain muscle condition.
So "never give up," Thomas said, and “don’t be afraid of hard work." He attributes his success to hard work, perseverance and determination that finally lead to him be chosen by Nasa to be an astronaut.
He hopes to inspire people of all ages to pursue their dreams, and left his audience with his motto: "It’s worth it; work hard and it will pay off for you.”
