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Living It Up in Space
What's it like to live 220 miles above Earth, flying faster than a speeding bullet through dark, airless space? We asked a space station commander!
As you read these words, one astronaut and two cosmonauts are whizzing around Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. These people are among the first to live on a giant, orbiting laboratory called the International Space Station, or ISS.
The ISS is a huge team effort. The United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Brazil, and 11 European countries that make up the European Space Agency are building the station. When completed, it will be larger than a football field and weigh up to a million pounds. Nothing that big and heavy could be rocketed into space. That's why scientists aren't putting the ISS together on Earth. The U.S. and Russia are launching more than 100 pieces of the station into space, one or two at a time, on space shuttles and Russian rockets. During the next few years, astronauts will assemble the station 220 miles above Earth. The first piece arrived in space three years ago. The last piece of the station should go up in 2006.
Inside the ISS, astronauts find protection against deadly space conditions, such as lack of air and temperatures that bounce from minus 250°F to 250°F. Still, life on a space station can get a little weird. Imagine living without the gravity that keeps you on your chair and your pencil on your desk. People on orbiting spacecraft float in microgravity. This is a condition in which the effects of gravity are greatly reduced. It's sometimes described as "weightlessness."
GETTING AROUND
Living in microgravity is fun, says Bill Shepherd, the commander of the first ISS crew. "It's like moving in a swimming pool only you're even lighter. You can push off with a fingertip and move across the whole space module," he explains. "You can look at any place on the wall or ceiling and just go there."
Shepherd spent four months on the ISS last winter. "After coming back to Earth," he says, "it took me a week to get used to walking around again."
WALL-TO-WALL SLEEPING
In microgravity there's no need for a bed. Astronauts can snooze while floating upside down in the middle of a room. But there's a chance they could "drift off" and bump against computer controls. So at night, they strap themselves into sleeping bags that hang from the walls.
"Sleeping in space is very relaxing," Shepherd says. "You're not weighed down by gravity, so you don't feel anything pressing on your skin."
NO MORE MUSHED CHICKEN!
Supply ships bring meals to the station only once a month. That means astronaut food needs to stay fresh a long time.
Foods like chicken and peas used to be kept fresh by mushing them up and sealing them in tubes. At mealtime, astronauts would squirt out the food like toothpaste.
Luckily, scientists found new ways to kill the microbes that make food rot. Some space foods, such as scrambled eggs and fruit punch, are dried out. Astronauts just add water. Others, such as hot dogs and beef stew, are sealed in microbe-blocking plastic bags. Astronauts heat the bags before mealtime. Treats like candy and gum can stay fresh for a month without help.
"I thought the Russian food was a little tastier than the American food," Shepherd says. "They had good soups—chicken and rice was my favorite. But no one was very picky."
To keep their meals from floating away, astronauts often slot food packages into special trays, then strap the trays to their legs.
BATHROOM ACTIVITIES
In microgravity, water from a shower flies in all directions. Floating water droplets could damage ISS computers. So instead of taking showers, space station residents rub water and soap over their bodies, then sponge off.
In orbit, you can't rely on gravity to tug wastewater down the pipes of a toilet. The space model works like a vacuum cleaner, using a stream of air to pull waste into sealed containers. The containers are then sent off in spacecraft that land on Earth, or in smaller craft designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.
WORK AND PLAY
ISS astronauts keep busy. You're most likely to find them doing science experiments, walking in space to connect a new module, or working out on special gym equipment. (Astronauts must do a lot of exercising. Muscles go soft quickly when they don't have to work against strong gravity.)
As the first crew, Shepherd's team had a special task: testing and repairing all the station's equipment. "We worked from 6:30 in the morning until 9:30 at night," he says.
When he could snatch a free moment, Shepherd liked to e-mail folks back home, snap pictures of Earth, read books, and watch movies. "Once we had a Lethal Weapon week. We watched all four of them!" he says.
WHAT'S THE POINT?
It will cost the United States about $39 billion to build its part of the ISS. Other countries are spending billions of dollars too. Why are countries willing to pay so much for a station in space? Without Earth's atmosphere in the way, ISS astronauts can take clear pictures of outer space. And they can snap distance shots of Earth that will help scientists track changes in pollution, rain forest destruction, and climate.
Astronauts will also conduct experiments to learn how materials and living things react to long periods in microgravity. This could help scientists create new lifesaving drugs and stronger building materials to use on Earth.
"This could be the start of an era where people don't just live on the Earth anymore," Shepherd says. "I think we could fly a mission that looked very much like the one we were just on that would get humans to Mars. I would be very interested in being a part of that mission."
Text by Nancy Finton
This article appears on pages 4-7 of our October 2001 issue.
Game: Space Ace
Heading into orbit? Earn yourself a space suit by rocketing through some ISS trivia.
Track the Space Station
Where's the ISS right now? NASA tells you.
Virtual ISS Tour
NASA gives you an inside look at the space station.
Virtual Spacewalk
Float through space and help build the International Space Station.
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