- 2890 - SPACE STATION - 20 years living in space? On November 2, 2000, the first crew, Expedition 1, arrived at the International Space Station. NASA astronaut William Shepherd was the space station's first commander, paving the way for 20 years of humans living and working in low Earth orbit.
--------------------------- 2890 - SPACE STATION - 20 years living in space?
- Since that first historic mission, the orbiting lab has been continuously occupied by humans. Former astronauts Anna Fisher, Richard Linnehan, Jack Fischer and Barbara Morgan shared their experiences living and working in space.
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- There are challenges for those living in space. The space station is in low Earth orbit, meaning astronauts spend months in microgravity. However, weightlessness, or zero gravity, can have significant short-term and long-term effects on astronauts.
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- Astronauts notice big differences in their body, specifically muscles in terms of how much they atrophy in your legs. And, you have a fluid shift that occurs once you go into a micro-g or zero-g environment. The fluid in the body normally held down by gravity on Earth shifts up into an astronaut's upper torso, chest and head.
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- Everybody who goes into space feels really stuffed up. They have a massive head cold for a couple days. Eventually coming to some type of steady state, where your body adapts to that environment and you feel better and then you can go about your daily chores.
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- In the microgravity environment of the space station, astronauts float around, so "up" and "down" mean different things than on Earth. There is no up or down in space. Once your body does get used to microgravity, up is wherever your head is.
- For the first couple days in orbit astronauts are feeling upside down all the time and having no appetite. You eat only soup and drink to stay hydrated. It takes 4 days usually before finally starting to feel acclimated to the microgravity environment.
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- Astronauts also tend to experience changes to their taste buds, such that food tastes more bland, so spicier foods are preferred while in orbit. Space food favorites were the beef stroganoff and the shrimp cocktail.
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- Another difficulty of living in space is the challenge of going to the bathroom in microgravity, which the astronauts compared to sitting on a vacuum cleaner. However, the space station recently got an upgrade to its bathroom system.
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- Fischer, who logged 136 days in space with two spacewalks during his 2017 mission to the ISS, works for Collins Aerospace, the company that developed the new toilet system. Called the Universal Waste Management System, it launched to the space station on September 29, 2020.
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- The new space toilet is more efficient, lighter, and smaller than older models. It is designed to better accommodate female astronauts and support larger crews for long-duration missions.
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- Building the space station advanced spaceflight by allowing for longer missions. Over the 20-year history of continuous human habitation, NASA has been studying how living in microgravity affects astronauts in preparation for crewed missions to return to the moon and one day travel to Mars or beyond.
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- Longer space missions are known to impact the human body in a variety of ways, including triggering changes to astronauts' brain structure and function, vision, heart muscle cells and the diversity of bacteria in the gut. Living and working in microgravity for long periods of time can also cause a loss of bone and muscle mass.
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- We are trying to get better at keeping the human body and the human system working all the way to Mars and back. On a short-duration space shuttle flight, you can probably get away without doing some high impact resistant and resistive exercise, and come back to Earth and your bones are still OK.
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- If you do that on a long-duration flight, you'll come back with 20% less bone mass. So we are militant about exercising 2 to 2.5 hours and working out every day, vitamin D supplements and understanding shifts in vision."
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- Long-duration spaceflight can also be associated with feelings of isolation due to the extended separation from family and friends. Learning to deal with this as astronauts can be applied to current events on Earth, such as the shelter-in-place orders amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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- It taught me to focus on what was more important. If you have the constant contact with people and the constant barrage of news and information, you can use it almost as an excuse sometimes not to focus on the things that truly matter.
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----------------------------- 2884 - Russian SALYET space station rescue.
- Also lists a dozen more reviews on space exploration.
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- November 5, 2020 2890
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--------------------- --- Tuesday, November 10, 2020 ---------------------------
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