Diving with NASA

It might be hard to imagine an exhilarating dive in a swimming pool—but this is no ordinary swimming pool! The Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston is 1/3 the size of a football field and 40 feet deep. Within it: a full-sized mock-up of the International Space Station. Here they train astronauts how to “space walk” and scuba divers are a huge part of the training and safety team. Jonathan Bird is one of a small group of outsiders that have been allowed to dive in the NBL. In this fascinating presentation, Jonathan will share what it is like to dive the NBL, and how the astronauts are trained, using a combination of video and still photography.