Raw Story has an
article about Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who sang Bowie's "Space Oddity" while floating aboard the space station. I'll always love him for that. Apparently he has a
book out, and the article recounts some of what he says. Here are a few tidbits from the article.
Space food can be bland; to season it, they use pepper suspended in
olive oil, so it doesn’t fly up and scatter, and make everyone sneeze.
And there is no washing of clothes in space; water doesn’t function as a
cleaning agent the way it does on Earth, so they wear their socks and
underpants until they fall apart, then burn them.
That's
just how I do it! He added this:
“How did they make all that look so good? Of course, when you come out
of your spacesuit, you’re not wearing a tank top and shorts. Sandra
Bullock looked really good in those! We wear a diaper and a liquid
cooling garment. We don’t look nearly so good.”
And much to my delight (thought perhaps that's not the correct word) he answered my
recent question about suffocating in space:
Spacewalking isn’t how it looks in the new blockbuster Gravity;
it’s so dangerous, Hadfield says (a leak in the suit would result in
ruptured lungs, burst eardrums and rapid loss of consciousness)...
So:
not a pleasant way to die. Check out the article to read lots more. He seems like such an interesting man. I wish I knew him.
3 comments:
OK, so bring me back in then - I decided I don't want to die in space after all.
Good choice!
The story got even cooler when I saw Hadfield in an interview and he told that his son wrote the words to Space Oddity and encouraged him to record it. I've grown rather addicted to it myself.
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