what is it like to be inside a rocket to space
Dan Winters
There's no way to anticipate the emotional impact of leaving your dwelling planet. Y'all look downwardly at Earth and realize: You're not on it. Information technology's breathtaking. Information technology'southward surreal. Information technology's a "we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto" kind of feeling. But I've spent a total of 55 days in space, over the course of five missions for NASA, and I've learned that being out in that location isn't just a series of breathtaking moments. Information technology's a mix of the transcendently magical and the securely prosaic. It can exist crowded, noisy, and occasionally uncomfortable. Space travel—at least the mode we do it today—isn't glamorous. Merely you lot can't crush the view!
Anybody imagines that when y'all're sitting on the launchpad atop 7 million pounds of explosive rocket fuel, you're nervous and worried; but the truth is, there isn't much to do for those ii hours after you climb into the shuttle. Many astronauts but take a nap. You're strapped in like a sack of potatoes while the system goes through thousands of prelaunch checks. Occasionally y'all have to wake up and say "Roger" or "Loud and articulate." Simply the launch itself is a whole other affair—from the pad to orbit in 8.5 minutes, accelerating the entire time until you lot reach the orbital velocity of 17,500 mph. That is a ride.
It turns out that once you're actually in orbit, zero-k has some upsides. Without gravity, actual fluids motion toward your caput. It'southward a great face-lift. Your stomach gets apartment. You feel long, because you grow an inch or 2. (I thought, "Oh cool, I'll be tall," only of form everybody else was taller likewise.)
Dan Winters
But naught-k also has some disadvantages. Every bit that fluid shifts north, you get an enormous headache. Your body compensates and loses almost a liter of fluid in the first couple of days—you substantially pee the headache away. And a lot of people get nauseated. The style to feel better is to "lose up," to convince your visual organization that "up" is wherever you betoken your head and "down" is where your anxiety are. When you lot tin practice that, and go headfirst or earlobe-first wherever you want, then y'all're getting adapted to goose egg-g. On each flight this accommodation happens more speedily—your body remembers having been in infinite. But it tin take a few days before your stomach finally settles downwardly and says, "OK, what's for lunch?"
I didn't eat much on whatsoever of my flights. I don't have a big appetite even on Earth, but between the lack of gravity and the shifting fluids, things tin can taste different in space. I'd bring cracking chocolate with me and information technology would taste like wax—it was very disappointing. Simply you lot don't get to infinite for the gourmet dining. There'due south no mode to cook, on the shuttle or on the ISS. Infinite food is already cooked and and so either freeze-dried and vacuum-packed—and then you add water and put it in the oven to warm upwardly—or information technology'south thermo-stabilized, like a military MRE. With no refrigerator on board, fresh food won't keep. Then on the shuttle we'd have to eat annihilation fresh—usually fruit like apples, oranges, and grapefruit—early on in the mission.
One of the strangest experiences in space is one of the simplest on World: sleeping. On the shuttle, you lot strap your sleeping bag to the wall or the ceiling or the floor, wherever you desire, and y'all arrive. Information technology's like camping. The pocketbook has armholes, then you stick your arms through, reaching outside the handbag to zip it upwards. You tighten the Velcro straps effectually you to brand you feel like you're tucked in. Then you strap your head to the pillow—a block of foam—with another Velcro strap, to allow your neck to relax. If you don't tuck your arms into the bag, they drift out in front of you. Sometimes you lot wake upwardly in the forenoon to run into an arm floating in front of your confront and remember, "Whoa! What is that?" until you realize it's yours.
Astronaut Marsha Ivins on board the space shuttle Atlantis in 2001, her fifth mission. NASA
On most of my flights, I slept in the airlock, in the middeck of the shuttle. Nobody worked in there when nosotros weren't doing an EVA (extra-vehicular action), so it was similar my own individual bedroom. The downside? It was also the coldest role of the shuttle by about 20 degrees. I would tuck my arms into the bag and wear four layers of dress; sometimes I'd warm upwards a package of food in the oven and throw it in my sleeping handbag like a hot-water canteen. On the last ii nights of my final flight, I slept on the flying deck, my sleeping handbag strapped beneath the overhead windows. The position of the shuttle put Earth in those windows, so when I woke upwardly the whole world was out at that place in front end of me—in that moment, merely for me lonely.
The nigh astonishing thing almost my spaceflights was how relaxing they were. New astronauts get and then worried nearly fulfilling their duties that they sometimes get hours or days into a mission before stopping to picket the sun rise, fifty-fifty though it happens 16 times a day on orbit. Shuttle flights were always busy—experiments, daily maintenance, EVAs, robotic operations. Information technology was incredibly hard work, stressful in its own way, and scary—if you screwed upwardly, you screwed upward with people all over the world watching. But at the same time I institute it all very relaxing. When you travel on Globe, you're almost never out of touch. Anyone tin reach yous if they need to. But going to space, you lot are really out of reach. You accept comm with the basis and electronic mail, sure, but there's not much you can do about those everyday worries: Did I pay the bills? Did I feed the dog? I felt like everyday things simply stopped at the border of the atmosphere. I was totally liberated from World. But all those earthly concerns reattached as soon equally nosotros reentered. By the time I landed, my brain was mapping out a to-do list.
I never got ill going to space, but I never felt cracking coming home. When you return, your inner ear—which keeps you lot balanced on World and which has been essentially turned off for the duration of your trip—feels a little gravity and becomes unbelievably sensitive. Your balance is off and you have to relearn how to move in a gravity field. If I turned my head, I would fall over. Muscles yous haven't used in weeks have to reengage to help you do everyday stuff like walk, stand, and hold things. Information technology can take days or weeks to get your Earth legs back.
It was hard, it was exciting, information technology was scary, it was indescribable. And yes, I'd go back in a heartbeat.
Source: https://www.wired.com/2014/11/marsha-ivins/
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