- As we went around the planet
at 17,500 miles per hour, you saw this green glow
when you were in the Southern Hemisphere.
And in the Northern Hemisphere
you would see these purple and yellow
and blue lights just popping from the particles
hitting the atmosphere.
Every orbit the sun rises and sets every 45 minutes
so as you go around the planet and you see this setting
and then another 45 minutes later the rising of the sun.
On my first mission I was told
that cosmic rays would come through
the vehicle and hit your optical nerve.
It would make you think you were seeing
flashes of light even though that's not
really happening.
The flashes were like a sunburst
of different colors.
You would see this streaks of color
popping in your eyes and in your head.
Sleeping in space is pretty incredible
because you're floating inside your sleeping bag,
but then you had this whole den
of pumps and motors and things whizzing
around you and so it's almost like
you're in a factory, in a mechanical kind
of sounding automation going on.
My dreams were so vivid from all the stimulus
from the day.
I saw blues, greens, whites whether they came
from the ocean, whether it came from the sun,
whether it came from flashes in my head
from these high energy particles.
The colors were intertwined into my dream state
and I saw, sometimes, alien forms.
The green aurora australis is moving
and dancing so, you know, you think
of little green men on Mars.
There was one point in the mission
where I started dreaming about an inside-out cheeseburger
with the most grease and just chomping
into this hamburger.
It's something that we cannot have in space
and also big slice of pizzas.
I think because I've had these experiences
and I've seen these incredible things
in the universe, all of it's now incorporated
into my dreams now so I constantly
dream about lights flashing
and colors and velvet pitch-black night sky
and these little white lights coming through.
My name is Leland Melvin.
I'm an astronaut and a great big storyteller.