Astronauts are some of the most fascinating people on the planet; or technically, off
it.
It’s a profession most people admire, but few have the courage or desire to do.
But turns out, theres a lot of weird, somewhat uncool things about being an astronaut that
NASA doesn’t want you to know.
For example…
Being an astronaut can have an alarming amount in common with being a toddler.
Think we’re exaggerating?
Well, maybe if you also had to pull on a diaper before going out on your spacewalk, you would
believe us.
That’s right, astronauts have to wear diapers.
Why?
Well, those spacesuits that look incredibly cool can’t really easily be removed for
a quick squat.
This is great for preventing astronauts from dying in the hostile, cold black silence of
space, but not so great for bathroom breaks.
So astronauts essentially get Depends adult diapers, or their own, slightly cooler sounding
version called MAG; aka maximum absorbency garment.
No matter how they brand it, it doesn’t change the fact that these fully grown, extensively
trained, often phD holding or ex-military adults are forced to wear diapers on the clock.
If that kind of infantilization weren’t enough, rookie astronauts are known for banging
into things left and right on spaceships, like pre teens whose limbs are growing too
rapidly for their brains to process.
Most beginner astronauts find it difficult to adjust to constantly floating in space.
All the pool training in the world that astronauts undergo can’t precisely simulate, or prepare
people for true zero gravity in space.
Therefore, astronauts starting out are frequently nicknamed “bulls in China shops”, an accurate
description of the grace and ease with which they move through their ships.
This clumsiness is such a common experience for trainees that astronauts have formed their
own little rituals around smashing things.
While astronauts are training, one of the most frequent accidents involves breaking
their visors.
It’s then traditional for fellow astronauts to hold a big ceremony on the next Monday
morning meeting, where they present the broken visor to the astronaut unlucky enough to crack
it.
That’s right, just a bit of astronaut hazing.
The second most frequent accident for trainees involves getting caught in their tethers.
As astronaut Scott Parazynski says, “they push with full velocity and bang their head,
and get caught in cables and things like that, so that's a source of great entertainment”.
Astronauts: more like your least mature bros than you’d think.
These coordination issues aren’t helped by the fact that astronauts’ heights change
while in space.
That’s right!
Without the gravity of Earth holding them down, frustratingly unable to reach that top
shelf, their spine takes a nice long break to decompress and stretch.
In space, people have been known to gain more than an inch of height in less than...three
hours in space.
However, those hoping this boost will help them make their local basketball team back
on Earth are out of luck.
That extra height gets lost almost immediately upon return.
In fact, astronauts go through a full 45-day reconditioning period, in which their body
has to readjust to life on Earth.
During this time, muscles and bones painfully reacclimate to the concept of gravity, causing
severe back pain and other skeletomuscular issues while your body rebuilds muscle strength
and bone mass.
Not to mention, astronauts' sense of balance is completely destroyed.
They feel woozy, fall relatively easily, and constantly feel like they want to throw up
for their first days back on Earth.
Basically like the world’s longest, most annoying hangover.
These symptoms shouldn’t be too much for them to handle, however, as astronauts throw
up pretty frequently in space as well.
That’s right, NASA includes barf bags on all space missions, because they know each
and every one of those will probably be used.
The bags have big towels attached that astronauts can use to wipe themselves off and toss out
with the bag.
Unfortunately, there’s no such bag people can use to catch their sneezes.
Astronaut David Wolf disclosed his profession’s special sneezing technique: “aim low, off
the windshield, because it can mess up your view and there’s no way to clear it.
That’s how you do it.”
The last thing anyone wants is to wander off into space because they couldn’t see their
way back to the ship through a mucus-covered visor.
One last downside of an astronaut’s work environment?
Everything smells.
And we mean, everything.
All the time.
The environment inside the rockets, the International Space Station, the air inside their suit.
Oh that’s right; because there’s no gravity, the liquids, solids and gases in their stomachs
don’t settle in the same way, which makes burping impossible.
So what’s the only available way left for all that gas to come out?
That’s right, farting.
Astronauts fart a lot.
We can only imagine the agony of this happening while wearing a spacesuit that traps everything
inside.
But why does the shuttle smell?
Well, we really hoped this quirky video about astronauts wouldn’t involve quite so many
bodily functions, but clearly there’s no way around them.
There is one toilet in a tiny little ship, and it’s located right in the middle of
everything.
Keep in mind, missions can involve up to seven people.
Have you ever used a bathroom shared by an entire dorm hall?
Imagine that, but with no window ever open for the air to escape.
No Febreze or scented candle in the world is strong enough to handle that.
The International Space Station, a major stop for most astronauts, is better smelling, with
a couple of exceptions.
The culprit in the ISS however, isn’t toilets; it’s food.
Especially seafood.
All seafood carries a certain odor when prepared, but imagine how much worse it is in a sealed
off, closed environment like the ISS.
Commanders are especially rankled by the presence of seafood gumbo.
Astronaut Clayton Anderson explains, “eating a fish dish often produced the most pungent
odor, especially the US version of seafood gumbo.
It might take a couple of hours to “purge” that smell from the airflow of the ISS.”
The smell is so bad that commanders will actually ban gumbo and other seafood dishes from even
being made on board.
Apparently, after a long time in space, even the car-exhaust-laden atmosphere of Los Angeles
must be, quite literally, a breath of fresh air.
We’ve heard about the smells, the lack of coordination, the farting, the diapers; everything
that makes us want to avoid space forever, in addition to the general constant threat
of space debris ripping apart your space ship.
Now let’s take a look at a couple of surprisingly sweet and fun things about being an astronaut.
Every morning, the crew members of the International Space Station will get customized wake-up
music to wish them a pleasant day.
The sounds are often picked by crew members’ family and friends, and can be anything from
songs to famous movie or TV show dialogue.
This offers a sweet little memento from loved ones, and a much needed reminder of life back
home.
Unless an astronaut's partner just found out about their secret bank account and mistress,
in which case we assume they get woken up by the Apollo 13 soundtrack piped in directly
from Earth.
However, this thankfully hasn’t happened so far.
Also, there’s no denying that astronauts, while having to function a lot like kids in
space, also get to have fun like kids as well.
People have always looked up to the brave men and women who fly off into space to learn
about our universe and help expand the boundaries of modern science; but there’s plenty of
downtime while they find themselves floating through the air, so who can resist a little
entertainment?
Chris Hadfield got famous for entertaining people from thousands of miles above the Earth’s
surface.
His rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, sung while floating and circling
the planet in a shuttle, was uploaded to YouTube and quickly went viral.
South Korean astronaut Soyeon Yi said she and her fellow astronauts would sometimes
hold relay races while working in the ISS.
They would break off into two teams, fly from one end of the space station to the other,
and return to send the next person racing off.
A kind of interstellar Field Day, but with no teachers to ever stop the fun.
Meanwhile, pranks abound on board a spaceship.
For example, thanks to the weightlessness of space, some crew members like to sneak
up on their crewmates and loudly ask questions right next to their ears.
Since there are no steps or stair squeaks, they can’t hear anyone else approaching
while their back is turned.
Astronaut Jerry Linenger fondly recalled a few of those pranks, saying "I'd keep a straight
face and I'd go to the other module and I'd just start laughing about how the guy got
totally scared.”
Overall, there are definitely some gross parts and plenty of fun parts to being an astronaut,
but maybe it’s time to talk about some more serious effects astronauts experience after
their trips into space that are rarely talked about.
First of all, some astronauts initially find life back on Earth a little difficult.
And not just because of the aforementioned back pain and spinal cord shenanigans.
After silently barreling through the majestic expanse of our solar system, life on Earth
can seem noisy and full of distractions.
There are no passing ambulances or drunk sorority girls screaming late into the night in space
- we assume.
But even simple things like the sound of constantly passing cars and wildlife can seem overwhelming
after a long time away.
So many, though not all astronauts, have trouble adjusting back to their previous daily life.
However, astronauts also definitely take nothing on Earth for granted after a long mission.
Linenger once shared how something as simple as the color green struck him when he returned
home.
He said, “it’s just such a beautiful, soothing color and I could just sit in my
backyard and just look up at the trees and the wind blowing and just be totally content."
Perhaps the most universal and profound experience all astronauts feel in space is a deep humbling.
They realize the tiny place the planet they call home occupies in this universe.
And everything we take for granted - even the atmosphere and oxygen around us - are
suddenly not seen as givens anymore.
Chris Hadfield described the experience of seeing a shooting star in space, and the intense
emotion and fear it gave him.
"If you want to just talk raw fear, to watch a shooting star from the other side of the
sky is a humbling thing to see, because it's no longer just a pretty sparkler like a free
firework in the sky.”
Meanwhile Lininger experienced a complete paradigm shift in his time up in space while
experiencing the carefully controlled and closed “ecosystem” of the space shuttle.
As he said, “you look down at the Earth, you see the same basic thing — you're a
closed ecosystem.
That perspective shift is probably the greatest gift that I received being in space.”
It made him and many of his fellow astronauts realize the fragility of our own ecosystem
right here on Earth.
Astronauts have fascinated us for decades; possibly because space is a relatively newly
conquered frontier and space travel is something only a select group of people will ever get
to experience in their lifetimes.
However, there are many aspects to being an astronaut - the great, the bad, and the flat
out weird - that most people don’t think about.
What surprised you most from the facts they don’t tell you about being an astronaut?
Comment below!
And if you’d like to keep discovering more weird and fascinating things you haven’t
been told, we’re here to share all those secrets!
So click on this video here, or this one instead!