I’ve heard floating in a pool as being something similar, but in my opinion that misses many aspects. Flying on the “zero-gravity” airplane or in the newest amusement park rides that create very short weightless moments also give hints to what spaceflight is like. Looking outside from maneuvering high-performance jets, like what the Blue Angels fly, can also look like one is “outside” of the Earth, that the Earth can be above oneself, not only below.

I have to say, the moviemakers have done a pretty good job on representing the space experience. Even the hokey “slo-mo” simulation of moving around in weightlessness is a pretty good approximation of what is going on. Novices, at least, always seem to move up there in slow motion, worrying about gathering too much momentum and smashing into things.

On Earth, when people doze off at the computer or while sitting and reading, there is a “head bob” that wakes them up immediately. In space, there is no pull on the head down, so there is no bob. People can actually fall asleep while at work. It is very funny.

As far as the ISS software is concerned, I thought the inventory management system could be improved. Even though it is already a very good quality system, it is used so frequently and the time of the astronauts is so valuable, that further improvements that save use time could be justified. But the costs of doing so are prohibitive today. This is why my company, Intentional Software Corporation, is working on bringing the costs of just such software down to reasonable levels.

Karoly

The Soyuz, although much smaller, can prepare you for these inside sensations. One peculiarity of the Soyuz is that its “floor” is not stable with respect to the Earth; instead, the Soyuz rotates once every 3 minutes, so looking outside, one has the illusion of being in a giant wheel that rolls on the surface of the Earth.

I am a “spaceflight participant” (участник космического полета) officially. I am also a cosmonaut, which is not an official title but a generic name for someone who has been trained for spaceflight on a Russian spacecraft. I agree that private and government titles should not be distinguished; however, professional- and amateur-level training is appropriate to distinguish.

As to the health requirements, they are pretty flexible. The tests are very strict so that the doctors know exactly what problems exist, if any, but then a problem can be evaluated with respect to the specific flight requirements. But it is clear that one has to be pretty healthy and in good physical shape to do just the basic tasks with the spacecraft and the space suit.

The physical experience is not dissimilar from a thrill ride, but it is more intense; the accelerations and the forces are quite a bit greater in the spacecraft.

An interesting part of being on the station was to watch the light change. When the station structure was bathed in brilliant sunlight but the Earth below was dark, I knew that people below could see us as a bright light. A few minutes later, we were also in the shadow, and people below probably thought the light must have been suddenly turned off.

I felt fine after landing given that I followed all the doctors’ advice: I did not try to stand and minimized head movement. This explains the stiff gazing looks of the returning cosmonauts.

Thanks for the question!

There is plenty of gravity in orbit, which is only 200 miles or so above the surface. There is gravity all the way to the Moon, and beyond. So how come we can feel weightless there? It turns out that our bodies do not feel gravity by itself; they only feel force. What you call feeling “gravity” here on Earth is really the force of the chair that you are sitting on acting on your behind, or the force of the floor that you are standing on acting on your feet. So if I could pull the chair out from under you, then the floor from under you, then the air from “under” you that would still push against you, you would feel weightless. We cannot do that in reality (or at least we cannot do it longer than about 20 seconds, as in the weightless training airplane), but it is possible to do that in space. When the third stage of my rocket shut down, nothing was pushing against me; I was still in gravity, but no one can feel that, and there was no force against me, which I could have felt had there been any. I became weightless.

My feeling of weight returned with a vengeance when on return we hit the atmosphere. The dense air started to support the spacecraft and pushed it against my body. I felt 4 g’s—that is, four times the normal force of gravity. Remember that the gravity has not increased at the place of reentry; just the forces acting on my body changed.

Strange stuff? Yes, but it is real.

The Soviet Mir station that was the predecessor of the Russian segments actually had a small cabinet that could be used as a shower and as a sauna (there is plenty of solar energy on the station). I am much in favor of doing something like that on the ISS to increase its livability. I like to remind people that one difference between Amundsen and Scott (Antarctic explorers) was that Amundsen had a sauna in his base camp.

Having said that, I think that once access to space is more open, all kinds of extreme sports will emerge. The human body needs exercise to survive, especially in space. Sports can satisfy this survival need without drudgery. And space offers incredible new possibilities for sports: things that are hard on Earth—like flips or jumps—are easy there, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t figure out some fun and hard stuff, and it will be spectacular.

Talking about sports, I am now a proud member of the ISS Golf and Leisure club and carry membership certificate #1 signed by club president Misha Tyurin, cosmonaut and space golfer. We will soon have pictures up of me wearing the club’s exclusive orange jacket.

(Note after return: I did some reading and what I saw was definitely not “zodiacal light” which is solar light reflecting from interplanetary dust. But my description of the light was accurate and I will have to find out what it was, maybe a weaker form of northern lights after all.)

En nem lattam meg, Suni mondta hogy o latott zold eszaki fenyt amikor ursetan volt. De ma en lattam egy masik jelenseget: az alatovi fenyt. Eloszor azt hittem hogy felhok lennenek, de amikor lattam hogy a csillagfeny atsut rajtuk, rajottem hogy en a legmagasabb legretegeket latom. Error a tunemenyrol majd olvasnom kell amikor hazaerek.

Cosmonautics Day was extraspecial because we consumed the Alain Ducasse dinner that I got from the European Space Agency and Mike L.A. contributed some Spanish delicacies. I will publish the exact menu in the blog after I return. The only thing missing was a candle on the table—and maybe some fine wine.

As to getting the costs way down, that will take time. But there may be surprises. The other day, floating in my sleeping bag, I had a chuckle while reading Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. In this book, the Moon was already populated, there were miners mining ice underground, farmers growing wheat in tunnels, and many other fantastic things. Yet when the hero asks the artificially intelligent central computer for some file storage, he gets, according to the book, 10^8 bits, a little more than 10 megabytes. This number must have looked to Heinlein as fantastic as all those other things, yet in today’s reality, 10 megabytes is so pitiful, you can’t even buy so little. So things can change!

The most difficult thing is keeping things fixed all the time. When you work with more than two or three things, for example, paper, pencil, camera, and lens cap, you cannot always hold all of them and you have to secure the ones you put down. The next most difficult thing is to secure yourself. If your feet are not locked into something—typically a handrail—you cannot do anything useful.

When I think of the money as a contribution to the space programs, it would have been worth it even if I could not have flown at all. This incredible, incomparable experience is really a bonus on the top of that.