Esittelyssä parastronautti John McFall: "Kaikki olemme avaruudessa vähän liikuntarajoitteisia"

I just noticed that the Paralympians' opening ceremony also had an astronaut with them. John McFaul, a reserve astronaut of the European Space Agency, was the second one to carry the Paralympic flag. Someone might ask, at least in your mind, how can there be a retired astronaut? They must be in excellent health. More on that in this quick video. The most important thing here is that McFaul is in excellent health and is a sportsman. He is even a former Olympic athlete, but all he lacks is a small piece of his foot. In space, in fact, feet are more of a nuisance than useful. In weightlessness, you usually move with your hands, grab hold of the straps on the wall, and either crouch a little forward or backward, or wherever you want to go, or just hold on when you're in place. The greatest joy of feet is actually that with them you can hold on to something, when your hands are free to work or what you just have to do. These pictures in the background show very well how to move in space. And indeed, you don't really need feet for that. So you could really imagine that different foot prostheses would be even useful, because they could be designed for space use. They could have straps that would allow you to hold on to yourself even better than with your feet. Some hook or something else like that. Astronauts exercise for a couple of hours a day on long-term flights so that they stay in good shape for return to Earth and later on for life on Earth. In space, muscles and muscles begin to adapt to the conditions of space as soon as a person reaches weightlessness. And that's basically just great if you were going to stay in space. A person is wonderfully adaptable to different conditions, and space is no exception. For example, muscles begin to weaken and bones to fray, because you don't need them in the same way as here on the surface of the Earth, where there is actually quite a lot of gravity. I don't notice it now, but we do quite a lot of work against gravity all the time. But there is one but. Is it possible to get sick from a prosthesis when it comes back during the descent process and especially if there is a dangerous situation where there is no time or otherwise a possibility to adjust the prosthesis or the prosthesis would even come off. Most of the astronaut training goes into teaching different emergencies and emergency situations and preparing for them. So this is really the big question. Is it possible for a prosthetic user to function properly even when something unusual happens? And to find out, the European Space Agency decided to invite the youngest astronaut group, the so-called para-astronauts. When the application was opened in 2020, ESA stated that if a person does not mind working as an astronaut, then also the elderly can very well apply. The previous criterion was, if a little general, a perfect person. And, for example, the use of a prosthesis was completely no-go. It was not possible. When the youngest astronaut group was announced in 2022, John McFaul was there. Officially in November 2022, when the information was released, a professional astronaut was selected for the ESA's actual astronaut group and a first-time project astronaut for the reserve astronaut group. In addition, a participant was included in the para-astronaut research project, in which it was found out exactly how a slightly old person can function as an astronaut. And the answer was yes. But let's go back to November 2022, when I was there at the Paris event where the new astronauts were announced, and then I met John McFaul very briefly, and here are a few pieces of my interview. Here is John McFaul. But when you look at really the fine detail of what you're required to do in microgravity, you use your limbs in different ways. So the real answer is we don't know whether being an amputee is a benefit or a disadvantage. And do you wear a prosthesis or do you not wear a prosthesis? So this is the whole reason why we're doing this feasibility project, is to work those sorts of things out. After that event, John McFaul participated in the same training as the reserve astronauts, that is, a kind of light version of the astronaut training. They didn't go through the whole training, but only participated in a few essential parts of it. And already during that training, it was quite easy to see that he was just like everyone else. McFaul is British. He was born in 1981, and from a very young age he was a sportsman. He ran and played football, among other things. In 2000, he was on his way to Thailand after school. He had a little free time and then went to Thailand, among other things, and there he got into an accident. He drove a moped and apparently went too fast into a curve, and the moped started to slide. He tried to maintain balance on his feet, and whoops, the moped fell on his foot and damaged it so much that the foot had to be amputated just above the knee. That is, the right side of the foot. At home, after the treatment, he began to ride a bike and climb, among other things. And when he got a proper prosthesis, he also started running again. At the same time, he studied to become a doctor, and when his running prosthesis was a little bad, he then participated in his studies, medical studies, and with his experience, one of the first people to have a new kind of moped prosthesis, a kind of stick that comes down from the knee and hits the ground. That changed his training. He got excited and actually got his first international medal, surprisingly in Finland, in Espoo, in the 2005 Paralympic Games. For that medal, he was able to get sponsors and focus on training to the extent that he eventually won bronze in the Beijing Paralympic Games, and of course he has many other medals and achievements. When Esa got astronauts, he decided to try and eventually got a choice. Now in June, the Para Astronaut Research Project announced its official end date, according to which foot prosthesis does not really interfere with the activity of an astronaut. Now he belongs to Esa's astronaut reserve, i.e. is available if a suitable flight opportunity comes. That kind of thing is not yet officially visible, but unofficially it is. Last year, the UK Space Agency, UKSA, announced that their goal is to make a fully British space flight with the help of SpaceX and the Axiom Space Company. That is, where all the flight attendants would be British. Now in June, Axiom announced its hiring of British astronaut Tim Peake as an official advisor, but it is easy to see where this is leading. So Tim Peake is the astronaut of the European Space Agency, who is no longer actually an active astronaut, but still fully capable of making space flights. Axiom Space has made three space flights so far, in which SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft has been used, and those flights have been scheduled for about a week to the International Space Station. The previous flight, i.e. in January, was accompanied by Markus Bandt, a Swedish ESA project astronaut. Markus was indeed John McFaul's classmate, so to speak. The next flight of Axiom is accompanied by a Polish ESA project astronaut. Axiom has two former NASA astronauts commenting on these flights, Michael Lopez-Alegría and Peggy Whitson. Tim Peake could very well also be such a commenter with them, because it is very important that the person, this commenter, has received a perfect astronaut training, has been in space properly and also knows how to operate at a space station. Not really. It takes a lot of imagination. Let's assume that Tim Peake would act as that British commenter, and three other British astronauts would take part, project astronauts or real ones, whichever. One of them would certainly be John McFaul, and in addition to him, the ESA astronauts at the moment are Rosemary Coogan, who is a member of the actual astronaut group, and has now officially also received her astronaut training. And then there is Megan Christian, who is a project astronaut like McFaul. And there we would already have a ship full of British. Well, John McFaul is in any case very likely the first bambino in space, and it seems that a small prosthesis does not hinder the course. In fact, he has often said that a leg amputation was probably the best thing that has happened to him, because it helped to see things in a new way, to focus better, and also gave a completely new kind of energy. But now thank you for watching the video so far. If you want to comment on the matter, put it under there, and if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, you should do it right now. As I have already mentioned in previous videos, half-finished videos are already a huge amount to wait for, as soon as I can edit them all, but my problem is a bit that I want to put them together a bit too well. Scars in place and pictures and so on, and that takes time. That's why this video is a kind of test. Would this kind of faster video also be okay? If so, comment. If not, comment. In any case, news topics would be enough as a background, no matter how many of them could be made into such short videos. Although this short video is a bit worn out now, but in any case. Now thank you and goodbye.