Moderately lengthy piece on what living and working on the International Space Station is like. [...] What’s it like to live in zero‑G? asks Sandra Magnus, who took three spaceflights, including 130 days on the station, before her recent retirement from the astronaut corps. It’s a lot of fun, she says, then bursts out laughing. I learned to carry things with my knees—tuck them between my knees and shove off. That way I had my hands free to propel myself. The thing is, in space, Newton’s laws rule your life. If you’re doing something as simple as typing on a laptop, you’re exerting force on the keyboard, and you end up getting pushed away and floating off. You have to hold yourself down with your feet. Magnus developed calluses on her big toes because she used them continuously, in stocking feet, to navigate and position herself. [...] Magnus liked to cook for her colleagues on the station, finding new dishes to make with the food NASA supplied, especially with the delivery of, say, a fresh onion. It takes hours, so I could only do it on the weekend, she says. Why hours? Think about one thing: when you cook, how often you throw things in a trash can. How can you do that? Because gravity lets you throw things in the trash. Without gravity, you have to figure out what to do. I put the trash on a piece of duct tape—duct tape is awesome—but even dealing with the trash takes forever. [....]
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 05:06:26 +0000
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