In honor of Rufus’ and Ruby’s space shuttle ride on STS-112 to the International Space Station in October, 2002, each cabin was invited to ask a space related question that would be sent to Astronaut Ed Lu currently in residence on the International Space Station.  Three cabins, and one group of counselors accepted the invitation.  The questions were sent to Ed via email mid-session and his response was received two days later.  Below are both the questions and the resulting answers from Ed.  Thank you, Ed!

Whispering Pines ask:

WP:  How do you drink water without it flying away?

Ed:  That's a good question, because sometimes water can fly away up here, and you end up having to clean it off the walls.  What we do is drink water (and juice and milk and tea) out of plastic pouches that have a straw that goes in through a hole.  You have to remember to pinch off the straw if you are not drinking out of it, or the liquid can sometimes flow right out!  When it does it forms a ball of water that just floats away!  If it is grape juice it usually ends up heading right for your shirt.

Mountain Laurels ask:

ML:  How many stars can you see on a clear night in space?

Ed:  There are an unbelievable number of stars you can see.  I have no idea how many, but you can get an idea of what it is like if you have ever been to a dark mountaintop at night.  The view is something like that, only of course better.  Lately, I've been watching the planet Mars, which is really bright right now because it is at it's closest point to Earth.  If you look outside at night now, you should be able to see it too.  It looks like a really bright red star, but with powerful binoculars or a small telescope you can see that it is a round planet.  It's quite beautiful.

Mighty Oaks ask:

MO:  What percentage of the ISS is being made by the US?

Ed:  The Space Station is a project of 16 different countries.  The two biggest contributors are the United States and Russia.  The United States has built about 50 percent of the station, Russia about 35 percent, and everybody else adds up to about 15 percent.  To give you an idea how big it is now (and it is not yet finished), the length of the station is about half the length of a football field right now, so when I fly from one end to the other it takes about 30 seconds.  I can fly faster, but if I do I usually end up running into something.

Counselors from Whispering Pines and Steel Magnolias:

WP/SM:  How is human waste disposed of on the ISS?

Ed:  Our toilet attaches to aluminum containers that the waste goes into.  When they are full, we close them up and attach a new collection container.  All of the full ones are placed in a space freighter called a Progress, that is then sent to vaporize in the atmosphere (like a shooting star).  We are loading up two of these freighters now, and they will be undocked and sent to burn up in about 3 weeks.  Other than human waste, we recycle everything else up here.  Water from humidity in the air is condensed and purified and we use that for drinking water.

Please tell all the kids down there at Camp Carefree that I'm glad to

get a chance to interact with them, and that maybe one day one of them someday will get a chance to come up here and try living life "off the Earth"!  I hope so.

I hope the weather clears up so you can see us go overhead!

Ed Lu

NASA Astronaut

Expedition 7 - International Space Station