Major Tom speaks

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.

Dying in space is lots of fun

In a Der Spiegel interview with German astronaut Ulrich Walter, he was asked about the veracity of the movie "Gravity". Were the depictions of danger accurate?

Walter had a lot of praise for the movie but he also said they got some things wrong. For instance, he said that running out of air in space can be a really enjoyable episode in your life. The last episode, but what can you do?

When you're slowly running out of oxygen, the same thing happens as does when you're in thin air at the top of a mountain: Everything seems funny. And as you're laughing about it, you slowly nod off. I experienced this phenomenon in an altitude chamber during my training as an astronaut. At some point, someone in the group starts cracking bad jokes. Our brains are gentle with us. A person who dies alone in space dies a cheerful death.

So, great. If this should ever happen to you -- don't worry, be happy.  There's also a side conversation that was amusing. He was asked if anything bad occurred while he was aboard the space station:

Walter: It did, but it was something harmless. Our toilet's urine tank broke. So we collected our urine in a plastic bag instead and poured it outside through an airlock. As soon as it contacted the vacuum of space, it formed a lovely cloud of urine snow and drifted away. 

SPIEGEL: Creating new space debris. 

Walter: Don't worry. Those frozen pee flakes were very light and fluffy -- they weren't dangerous.

Once again, no problema. The urine flakes sound delightful.

I do worry that he got it wrong about suffocating, though. It can't be fun. It just can't. On the other hand, he's talking about suffocating while there's still an atmosphere to breathe. Sure, it's CO2, but it's not like someone taped your mouth and nostrils shut. There's probably a huge gulf between these two experiences. Common sense says this is true. Out of the two possibilities, I'd definitely choose to suffocate in space. But I think I'll stay down here and breathe the air until China succeeds in making it unfit for life.