Transcript of press conference with Laurel B. Clark
The following is a transcript of a press conference with Astronaut Laurel Clark conducted on June 28, 2002. Participants include Cheryl Porior-Mayhew, Wisconsin Alumni Association, and Phillip Certain, dean of the College of Letters and Science at UW–Madison. Clark received a bachelor’s degree in zoology in 1983 and a doctorate of medicine in 1987.
CHERYL PORIOR-MAYHEW, WISCONSIN ALUMNI ASSOCIATION: [introductions]
LAUREL CLARK: OK, great.
PHILLIP CERTAIN, DEAN, COLLEGE OF LETTERS AND SCIENCE: I understand you’ve had a long day, Dr. Clark.
LC: Oh, yeah, well, these days are all long days.
Certain: We appreciate your spending the time with us. We’re all very proud of your accomplishments. So on behalf of the College of Letters and Science and the Medical School, we just want to wish you and your colleagues a safe and productive research mission.
LC: Well, thank you very much. I’m excited about this mission for many reasons, but um, and one of them is because we’re flying an experiment that’s actually from the University of Wisconsin. So, that’s just another great part of the mission.
Certain: Yes, I know you are. Would you like to say a little about that for the benefit of the radio audience?
LC: Sure, we’re gonna be flying … it’s called astroculture, a short acronym – you have to have an acronym for everything here at NASA – is ASP. Uh, it’s developed by University of Wisconsin-based research Dr. Weijia Zhou [?] is the principle investigator, and he’s looking for a couple of things. One of the things he’s looking at are some plants growing in root trays. Actually it’s a commercial venture, looking at the potential for plant uses for fragrances and flavors that they put out while they’re growing. The second thing is really exciting is uh an experiment looking at gene transfer in plants. For some reason that no one understands yet, gene transfer is 40 percent higher in plant in space as it is on the ground. And, as many readers can understand, gene transfer is actually a potentially incredibly important thing. You can take characteristics – beneficial characteristics – from plants and transfer them to plants so that they’re resistant to disease or very different environmental conditions.
Certain: That’s really interesting, It continues a tradition, of course. There’ve been some earlier Wisconsin biology experiments in space. Wisconsin Fast Plants in space, of course, and also the so-called Spuds in Space was a Wisconsin product. So we’re glad that we’re continuing to … uh, we’re an agricultural state, and we’re glad that we’re continuing to send plant experiments into space.
LC: I believe that there’s ongoing work on the International Space Station as well.
Certain: That’s great. I was very excited when I saw your graduation date of 1983, because I figure you probably took Chemistry 103 in 1979, and I’m a chemistry professor also, and I taught Chemistry 103 in the fall of ’79.
LC: Wow, your name does sound very familiar.
Certain: Well, but you had Dr. Shakhashiri.
LC: I was gonna say, I knew exactly it wasn’t you, because his name is hard to forget.
Certain: That’s right. Well, he’s still teaching freshman chemistry.
LC: That’s great, because he was a great teacher.
Certain: And we hope we can have you back in Madison sometime in the fall or sometime soon anyway, so that we can all learn about your adventures in space and get to know you again.
LC: I’m very hopeful as well. I really haven’t been able to visit Madison as much as I would like to. I was back for my 10-year reunion for Medical School, and that’s the first time I’ve been back to Madison [garbled] Madison since I left in 1987. I’m actually very much looking forward to coming back and sharing with people there some of the places I’ve been and some of the things I’ve done.
Certain: Have you gotten our teddy bear yet?
LC: Oh, yeah, we’ve got the bear, he’s all vacuum-packed up for flight.
Certain: Great. And uh and the medical school medallions are on their way. They’re being fabricated.[garbled]
LC: I already have them.
Certain: Or maybe you already have them.
LC: I have the medical school medallion, and it’s all turned in. We have to process things on a timeline, and those things were turned in about a month ago in accordance with our July 19th launch date. So it’s all safely tucked away, and it’ll be going up into flight with us.
Certain: Great. I’m almost one talking now, as I’m going to let the reporters ask you some questions.
LC: OK.
JOHN ALLEN, WAA: Uh, Dr. Clark, this uh, this delay, how’s that affecting your preparation for space flight? Um, You must have been mostly ready to go for July 19 …
LC: Right. Well, uh, we’ll, it’s somewhat disappointing, as you might imagine. I liken it to my family and friends as kind of training for a marathon. And you actually run the marathon, and you’re in the middle of the marathon, and the finish line is only a bout a mile away, and suddenly they tell you oh, no, we moved the finish line, it’s actually ten miles away. You have to kind of regroup and re-pace yourself so you can finish the whole marathon. So um, I think that, uh, it’s obviously disappointing. At the same time, we have been on this marathon, on this treadmill, and it’s been getting steeper and steeper, especially over this last month. In spite of the fact that it’s disappointing, it’s um it’s now that it’s happening for sure, it’s a little bit of a relief, ad now that it’s happening for sure, we’re going to have to take a big breath and you know, take stock of what’s happened over the last month and go into the mission even more prepared than we would have been. … Are you still there?
LINDA DIETRICH, UW HEALTH PUBLIC AFFAIRS: Dr. Clark, I’m with the Medical School. Could you describe the medical experiments that you’ll be performing there?
LC: Well, we’ve uh, got different life science experiments. We call them that. Some of them were what you think of as traditional medical experiments. But we’re doing things that go all the way from very basic, fundamental biology and behavior of cells up to organ systems and the interaction between cells to um up um ourselves as human subjects. Some of the ones that are most exciting, as a physician, are ones which involve calcium genetics, or the uptake and the uh travel of calcium through our bodies, and the uptake or non-uptake in the bone and how that relates to bone loss in space. And, of course, bone loss is very prevalent here on Earth. And in that same experiment, there’s a related thing where we’re looking at the turnover of protein in muscles, and we have muscle atrophy or loss of muscle while we’re in space, because of the lack of gravity. And we’re looking at all of the different hormonal signals and understanding the fundamental processes of muscle loss and why that happens. And so, in order to do that, we’ll be drawing blood samples from each other and also injecting each other with tracers that we’ll do time-select draws afterwards and saliva samples as well as urine samples in orbit. The other medical experiment that we’re doing that’s very applicable is that uh, we’re doing, I’m very involved in something that … in a rotating chamber, PDS [?] particle reactor development system. We’re going to be growing prostate cancer development cells together with bone stromal cells, and the investigator is trying to understand some of the reasons behind and the factors – the biochemical factors – and signals behind prostate cancer metastasizing or moving from the prostate to bone cells so early and so aggressively. If we understand what kind of signals take place, and why that movement occurs, we can go a long way toward developing some sort of counter-measures or treatment for people. And, uh, prostate cancer itself is not lethal at all, it’s uh it’s the bone cancer that kills people.
LD: Fascinating, Thank you.
WIBA reporter: You’ve obviously been extremely successful. A lot of young people dream of going into space someday, I guess, what’s your advice for young people who have that dream?
LC: Well, my advice, then, and I get asked just as often by young adults as I do by kids, and my advice to all of them, regardless of their age, is to work their hardest, and to do their best at whatever it s they’re doing at the time. Um. And many of us, including myself, my very first job, other than babysitting, was working at McDonalds. And um and I think, and I think whether you’re – and I was a lifeguard for five years after that, and then various other different jobs. And I think it’s important that you do the best you can, be responsible, take … take responsibility for your actions. Be precise, Be caring, and communicate well what you need, and listen to what other people need. And – ad I also tell people to find what you like and do what it is that you love to do, because the realities are that you may or may not be able to do exactly what you want to do. Not everyone’s in luck to be an astronaut. And certainly not everyone who wants to be an astronaut gets to be an astronaut. But if you do what it is you love to do – whether that’s flying in airplanes or cell-science research, or uh, being a physicist – and you’ll do a really good job at it, because you love it, and you’ll be doing something that you love. So, you know, you’re not disappointed if end up not doing what it was you dreamed of or what you thought you dreamed of. Other people change their minds. They think all their lives they want to be an astronaut, and in the end their life takes a different turn. I myself never thought about being an astronaut until I was in my thirties. It was something that came about much later, and uh, I feel fortunate every day that I’ve been chosen to do what I’m gonna go do. And uh I I think that sometimes life takes you in very unexpected ways.
Certain: Dr. Clark, I have two daughters in medical school, and uh I’m sure they’d be interested in knowing what was the path that led you from medical school to the astronaut corps. Sounds as though it was not something you had in mind when you graduated.
LC: No, actually not. It was somewhat circuitous, although it was in the works before I graduated, unbeknownst to me. I uh was – while I was in medical school, my very first year, it seemed evident that I was using up every bit of savings that I had, and everything I could make during the summer, um and I was looking at some very large loans for medical school, as most of my classmates were, and I got something in the mail from the navy, and talked to the [inaudible]. And purely for financial reasons, I joined the navy, so they would pay for medical school, fully intending to only stay the three years they required and immediately get out. Um. Of course, my life took different, unexpected pates may times subsequently, and um, after my internship training in pediatrics at Bethesda, in the military, um, at the time, you were required to pay back those three years in the military, or part of those three years as a general medical officer, and then you could go on and do your medical specialty training. There were other options other than just being a general medical officer, that would be getting specialty training either as a flight surgeon or as an undersea medical officer. I chose at the time undersea medicine, although at the time I was very interested in both areas. After I finished my undersea medicine tour – and it was actually during that time that I met someone who actually knew about the mission specialist program and said, you know, you’re somebody with your background and what you’ve done that would be a good candidate for the astronaut program. And, um, I didn’t really think that that was really true at the time, but when I finished my undersea medicine tour, I thought this is a great opportunity to go do the other thing I wanted to do, which was flight surgery. And I was in my flight surgery tour, I decided that it certainly didn’t hurt to ask the question, so I would filled out the many many pages of paperwork to become an astronaut. And I wasn’t accepted right away. I was interviewed the first time and not accepted. They always interview many more people than they need. And then the second time I was interviewed I was accepted. So to sum up, it was circuitous, and there were several different factors – luck, and uh kind of I think wherewithal and just sticking with it.
Certain: Do you expect to make more flights than just this one?
LC: I certainly hope so. Um, we’ll just have to see what um comes down the road. We have uh fewer flights on the manifest than we had planned at the time when my class was chosen six years ago and um, there are several astronauts who are waiting to fly, so I fully expect to have to uh get back in line and wait my turn for a certain period of time, but I am very hopeful that I’ll fly again.
Certain: NASA must have invested a lot of money in training you, though …
LC: Oh, they have, and I have every confidence that they’ll take advantage of that again. So. Because I certainly learned an incredible amount of things, um, training for the first go that I’ll be able to apply to subsequent flights.
JA: Um you described of your experiments earlier. How did you uh how did you get matched with these experiments? Was that something that NASA scheduled independently of scheduling the astronaut crew? Or was that tied specifically to the astronauts on this flight?
LC: Oh, well, um, it’s a little bit of both, but, but really the uh, the mission is put together long before the crew is put together. In this case a lot of the experiments I talked about in physiology and bio uh biochemistry were put together because they dovetail so nicely. Each of them needs blood data, blood chemistry data as well as the urine results and the other things. So we’re – we’re a package together on one flight. Because if you’re gonna draw somebody’s blood and freeze it and bring it home and do all those [inaudible], you certainly want to get as much information as you can. And there are a lot of other different experiments, really much more than just life science. All of these things were put together onto this flight. It was also talked about during our press conference – I don’t know if you heard any of that, but um since we’ve been concentrating so much on the International Space Station, and we’re starting to do research of the space station, but still, we haven’t had too many research-dedicated flights, or any research-dedicated flights for quite some time. So they had as many experiments as they could possibly fit on the flight. After they put all that together and figured out what would work together on the flight, ad could actually fly and fit in the lockers and all that sort of stuff, then they assign a crew. They do look at – when they’re assigning a crew, they certainly look at your backgrounds and your abilities to accomplish that mission. Um. So, there is no – there’s not a coincidence [?] that we have two physicians on this flight and we’re doing a lot of blood drawing and … and uh intravenous [inaudible] infusions, but um, and then once we were assigned to the flight, the [inaudible] commander knew all the different [inaudible] we had to work on, and he asked if we had any requests or anything we preferred to work on. He couldn’t honor all those requests, because there’s a lot of different – it’s a delicate ballet he’s put together for the two shifts to make everything work out. But I did specifically ask to work on astroculture, because I knew it was sponsored by the University of Wisconsin. And other than that, the four of us that were the uh involved in the life science as subjects knew that we’d be part of [inaudible], so …
JA: Will you also be working on the physical science experiments, in addition to the life science?
LC: Yeah. I can answer that, ad then they’re telling me I have to go. But I’m actually working on one very interesting called VCG, which is an acronym for violite [?] crystal growth, which is uh, they’re basically chemicals that are used for a lot of commercial chemical applications, they’re used for catalysts, and in fuel processing, process, they’re used as coatings on paper and film, and uh, they have various different chemical applications, so it’ll be uh mixing the crystal solution solutions together and then putting them in a [inaudible] so they can grow into crystals, and there’s a fair amount of judgment needed to decide when the crystals when the solutions have been mixed enough but not overmixed.
Certain: Well, of course I’m glad you finally got back to chemistry. Thanks for your time. That’s really great of you.
LC: Well, you’re welcome and good luck to all of you.
Certain: Good luck to you.
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