The first Canadian to live in outer space will be a physician… on bisphosphonates.
This month, Dr. Robert Thirsk will begin a six-month stay on the International Space Station when he takes off on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on May 27.
Dr. Thirsk was born in New Westminster, B.C., in 1953, and earned graduate degrees in mechanical engineering and medicine before his 30th birthday. In 1983, he left a residency program in family medicine at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital to enter the Canadian Space Agency’s astronaut training program.
As part of the first six-person crew to staff the ISS, Dr. Thirsk will serve as a medical officer, control two robotic systems including the Canadarm2, and lead or assist with over 100 medical and scientific experiments before returning to Earth in a NASA shuttle in November.
Parkhurst Exchange recently spoke to Dr. Thirsk as he prepared to leave for a final few weeks of training in Europe and Russia before travelling to the launch site in Kazakhstan.
EXPERT OPINION
Parkhurst Exchange When you were a kid, did you dream of being an astronaut, or being a doctor?
Robert Thirsk Actually, an astronaut. That was inspired by the early American space program and several of the early American astronauts, such as John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, were my heroes. In the same way that young Canadian kids know the stats on all the hockey players, I knew all the stats on all the American astronauts — and some of the Russian cosmonauts too. Actually, the dream of becoming a medical doctor didn’t occur until many, many years after, when I was already in university.
PE You have graduate degrees in medicine, mechanical engineering and business administration. Don’t you ever get tired of school?
RT [Laughs] You couldn’t pay me enough money to go back to school now. But back then, each of those degrees that I did do, I did it because I was enthusiastic, because I was passionate about a particular field of study.
PE Did you ever finish your family medicine residency, which you left to join the Canadian Astronaut Program?
RT No, I never did. I still have the equivalent of a rotating internship under my belt so I was able to practice as a GP but not as a certificant of the College of Family Physicians. I did do part-time family practice for a few years after becoming an astronaut, and then I took a sabbatical one year in Victoria, B.C., and I did medicine then, just to catch up. But I haven’t touched a patient in 10 years.
PE Your longest trip in space was a 17-day stay in orbit on the shuttle Columbia in 1996. Are you worried about being up there for six months this time?
RT Mostly no. I’ve talked, of course, with all of the astronauts and cosmonauts who have flown long-duration expeditions in the past before and asked them that question — “How did you do?” — and everyone seems to have the general answer that they were ready to come home after six months. But working in mission control as I have for the last few years, watching the downlink video, even in that fifth and sixth month I see smiles on their faces and they’re laughing and giggling all the time. So I think I’m going to be fine.
PE I suppose they do all sorts of psychological profiling so they wouldn’t let you go if they didn’t have confidence in you being up there.
RT Yeah, that’s part of the initial selection to become an astronaut and they do give us didactic training on dealing with the psychological issues of space flight. And then they put us into training scenarios — wilderness training, underwater training, winter training — where we get out of our comfort zone and come face to face with our strengths and weaknesses and the strengths and weaknesses of our crewmates as well.
PE Though that screening isn’t totally foolproof. We all heard about the Lisa Nowak criminal case. I’m sure you’ve been asked about that more times than you care to remember.
RT Yeah…
PE We can skip it.
RT [Laughs]
PE How often will you be able to talk to your wife and kids from the space station?
RT Once a week I’ll have a video conference with my family. And you may not know but there’s also an internet protocol phone on board the station, so I can call home whenever I feel like it.
PE What are you most looking forward to about being up there for such a long time?
RT A shuttle flight is like a sprint compared to a station expedition, which is like a marathon. On a shuttle flight there’s always this mad pace to accomplish all the tasks that are the objectives for that shuttle flight, and there’s never enough time just to sit back and relax with your crewmates, shoot the breeze, look out the window. So with a station expedition I think we’re going to have plenty of time.
PE How’s your Russian coming along?
RT Ochen horosho. Very good.
PE Astronauts often have some motion sickness problems at first, but what health concerns are unique to long-term space flight?
RT The problems for long-duration space flight that we’ll be experiencing are primarily musculoskeletal, ionizing radiation exposure, and the psychosocial isolation and confinement. The bone demineralization is not quite like osteoporosis, but it shares a lot of similarities. We’ll lose bone mineral from our weight-bearing bones — our lower verterbrae, pelvic bone, femur, tibia, calcaneus — one to 2% per month. And so over a six month period of time I’ll lose 6 – 12% of my bone calcium.
PE You’re a hockey player, and I’m guessing that means when you return you won’t be able to go right back to hockey?
RT No. No, absolutely not. There will be rehab for us to build up our bone mineral content and our muscle strength and mass as well. Most people regain their bone calcium but not all do. The other interesting finding is that when the bone matrix is regained post-flight, it’s a different architecture than what is natural. And the new matrix is not as strong as the naturally occurring one, so something really goofy is going on there. We’ll be investigating that. I am going to be taking alendronate, a medication that postmenopausal osteoporotic women take. In the past, to address the bone demineralization problem, we’ve taken nutritional supplements. That doesn’t stop the demineralization. We’ve spent two, two and a half hours every day in orbit doing exercises, and that helps but, again, doesn’t stop the bone demineralization. So we’re now going to start with my expedition for the first time taking bisphosphonates and see if that does the trick.
PE Would artificial gravity — like you see in science-fiction movies in which the ships are spinning around — prevent the demineralization?
RT Very good, very good, yes. And for the reason that you just said I’m expecting that the first Mars vehicle is going to be a rotating vehicle that creates artificial gravity because that will take care of a lot of things.
PE Are you angling for a spot on that mission, or on one returning to the moon?
RT [Laughs] No. Maybe if I was 20 years younger I would answer “yes” but realistically I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
PE Your former astronaut colleague, Dave Williams, who’s also a physician, left space travel to return to academia and medical research. Marc Garneau ended up in politics. What do you think you’ll do after your extraterrestrial career?
RT Well, you know, I think for a person with an interest in science and math and technology and a sense of adventure I think I have probably the best job in Canada. But there’s a price to pay for that and unfortunately it’s the family that pays the price, with the travel, with the stress. So I’ve told my wife whatever I do after this, it’s her decision. So we’ll see.
