Afterward, we had a perfunctory safety briefing, then at last Roman, Tom and I could get our bearings. Roman had the easiest time of it, because he’d lived on the ISS for six months in 2009. Long-duration space travel is in his blood: his father, Yuri, is a highly-decorated cosmonaut who spent 430 days in space, first on Salyut 6, then Mir. Like Roman, Tom had also been on the ISS in 2009, during a 15-day Shuttle mission. In the interim more modules had been added, but both men had a better sense of the place than I did because when I’d briefly visited back in 2001, the ISS had been a construction site, very much a spaceship-in-the-making.
Now a huge, humming, functioning laboratory, the ISS is anything but open-concept; it’s not possible to take in the whole interior at a glance. The main structure is a long series of connected cylinders and spheres, only they’re square inside, not circular. At certain angles, it’s possible to see clear from one end to the other, but poking out along the length of it, like branches on a massive tree, are three Russian modules and three American ones, along with a European and a Japanese module. As you approach each one and pull yourself through the hatch, there’s an Alice in Wonderland moment where you pause to decide which way will be “up”—it’s subjective, no longer dependent on the law of gravity but rather on what you’re planning to do next. In Node 3, for example, the treadmill sticks out from the wall, the toilet and exercise machine are on the floor, and to reach the Cupola you float upside down. The whole module is the size of a city bus, so at any point you can have four people in there doing different things, each with a different understanding of which way up is.
Although the Station had grown dramatically in size since I’d last been there, I was surprised to realize, shortly after docking, that I actually had a pretty good idea where everything was—the 3-D sims back on Earth had been extremely accurate. And in some other respects, too, the place felt familiar. The smell, for instance, was instantly recognizable: clean, like a tidy laboratory, with a hint of machine. In the Russian segment there was something else, a whiff of subtle glue-y, wood-shop fragrance. There’s a lot of adhesive in there because the walls are just about completely covered with Velcro. In space, if you don’t hang on to them, things like spoons, pencils, scissors and test tubes simply drift away, only to turn up a week later, clinging to the filter covering an air intake duct. That’s why there’s Velcro on the back of just about every imaginable item: so it will stay put on a Velcro wall.
On the ISS, there’s never any doubt about whether you’re in the U.S. Orbital Segment (USOS) or the Russian segment. The latter is smaller in diameter—spread your arms and you can easily touch both sides—and the Velcro is predominantly various shades of green, which creates a not displeasing submarine-like ambiance. Being in the American segment feels different. When the first piece of it—Node 1 (Unity)—was launched in 1998, the psychiatrists who were consulted thought that soothing colors were the key to mental health, so they chose … salmon. Either they changed their minds or stopped dabbling in interior design, because the rest of the USOS is, mercifully, white. NASA views too much Velcro as a fire risk, so there’s less of it there, and most of it is off-white. Even though the cylindrical segment is 15 feet in diameter, the racks that have been installed to hold experiments and create storage space reduce the interior to a square cross-section where, arms outstretched, it’s not quite possible to touch both sides. The combination of bright lighting, no windows and white walls creates an atmosphere similar to that of a hospital corridor.
It’s noisy like a hospital, too. Without gravity, heat doesn’t rise, so air doesn’t mix and move; the fans and pumps that are necessary for comfort and survival whir, clunk and hum, a continuous blur of sound that’s occasionally punctuated by the loud ping or bang of a micrometeorite hitting the Station. (Armor protects the ISS from micrometeorites, and while we’re sleeping, metal shutters cover the windows for added safety, but none of that would be much use against a big meteorite—you’d just have to scramble into your Soyuz and hope for the best.)
That first day, we were still adapting to a new time zone—the ISS is on Greenwich Mean Time—and by 11:00 p.m., I was definitely ready to call it a night. The six sleep stations spread out between the USOS and the Russian segment are far from luxurious, but compared to the out-in-the-open sleeping arrangements on the Shuttle and Soyuz, they are cozy retreats and, though not soundproof, the quietest places on board. Each one is a white, padded, totally private container about the size of a phone booth, complete with a door and a sleeping bag tethered to one wall. On the other walls are elastic straps (I used them to trap a book, a change of clothes and a small bag of toiletries) and spots for two laptop computers, one solely for work and one for personal use. Velcro on the ceiling helps secure small items like nail clippers and a Sharpie—the preferred writing utensil on orbit since you can hold it any which way and it still works.
In zero gravity, there’s no need for a mattress or pillow; you already feel like you’re resting on a cloud, perfectly supported, so there’s no tossing and turning to find a more comfortable position. Once in my pajamas (Russian-made, long john–esque) I zipped myself into my hooded sleeping bag, which resembled a cocoon with armholes. From my Shuttle days, I knew that a dormant astronaut is an interesting sight, with both arms floating in front Frankenstein-style, hair fanned out like a mane and a facial expression of utter contentment. Turning off my little light, I was perfectly at ease in this otherworldly place, knowing that in Houston and Korolev, people in Mission Control were keeping watch as we spun through the sky and into sleep, on our journey around and around the world.
Although the ISS is all about cutting-edge technology, living there is in some respects the ultimate off-the-grid experience. It’s remote all right, and there’s no running water—without gravity, it would cohere into blobs, float away and wreck the sophisticated equipment that keeps the Station going.
The rough-and-ready, improvisational quality to life on board is reminiscent of a long trip in a sailboat: privacy and fresh produce are in short supply, hygiene is basic, and a fair amount of the crew’s time is spent just on maintaining and repairing the craft. And there’s another similarity, too: it takes us a while to get our sea legs.
Weightlessness doesn’t feel the same on a huge spaceship where you can move around freely as it does on a tiny rocket ship where there’s nowhere to go. Imagine floating in a pool without water, if you can, then endow yourself with a few superpowers: you can move huge objects with the flick of a wrist, hang upside down from the ceiling like a bat, tumble through the air like an Olympic gymnast. You can fly. And all of it is effortless.
But effortlessness takes some getting used to. My body and brain were so accustomed to resisting gravity that when there was no longer anything to resist, I clumsily, sometimes comically, overdid things. Two weeks in, I finally had moments approaching grace, where I made my way through the Station feeling like an ape swinging from vine to vine. But invariably, just as I was marveling at my own agility, I’d miss a handrail and crash into a wall. It took six weeks until I felt like a true spaceling and movement became almost unconscious; deep in conversation with a crewmate, I’d suddenly realize that we’d drifted clear across a module, much as you might gently bob around in a pool without really noticing.
The absence of gravity alters the texture of daily life because it affects almost everything we do. Toothbrushing, for instance: you need to swallow the toothpaste—spitting is a very bad idea without the force of gravity or any running water to help stuff go down the drain and stay there. Hand washing requires a bag of water that has already been mixed with a bit of no-rinse soap; squirt a bubble of the stuff out through a straw, catch it and rub it all over your hands—carefully, so it clings to your fingers like gel instead of breaking into tiny droplets that fly all over the place—then towel dry. Long, hot showers are out, obviously. Of all creature comforts, they were what I missed most; a wipe-down with a clammy cloth is a poor substitute. Hair washing invo
lves scrubbing your scalp vigorously with no-rinse shampoo, then drying off carefully to be sure stray wet hairs don’t wind up floating all over the spacecraft and clogging up air filters or getting in people’s eyes and noses. The shampoo worked, more or less, but my hair and scalp never felt the way they do on Earth.
There’s no such thing as no-rinse laundry soap, so even ineffectual cleaning of our clothes was impossible. Instead, we just wore them over and over, until they wore out. I’d never been on a long-duration mission before, and I will admit that I was a little concerned about the olfactory implications. Would life in space, um … stink? The answer, surprisingly, was no. Admittedly, my sinuses were mildly clogged throughout—without gravity, fluids accumulate in your head—but I never once smelled body odor on the ISS. The reason, I think, is that your clothes are never really in contact with your body; they sort of float next to you, loosely—and given how little we exert ourselves, I’m sure we sweat less, too. A pair of socks lasted me a week, a shirt was good for two weeks, and shorts and long pants could be worn for a month without unpleasant social consequences. When I thought I couldn’t get one more wear out of something, I’d cram it into one of the waste containers destined for a Progress, the Russian resupply vehicle that delivers cargo to the Station and then burns up on its way back to Earth.
I went through gym clothes faster than anything else, replacing them about once a week. Exercise is mandatory during a long-duration flight: we’d waste away, literally, if we didn’t do it. We have to work out two hours a day to keep our muscles and bones strong enough to handle the extreme physical demands of spacewalking and also to ensure that when we do get back to Earth, we are still able to stand on our own two feet.
Getting exercise isn’t all that easy in an environment where movement is so easy, though. It requires special equipment: a stationary bike we clip our shoes into so we don’t float away, and a treadmill with a harness contraption that pulls us down so we run on the moving track rather than through thin air. I started with a load that was about 60 percent of my body weight, but the longer I was in space, the more I increased the load to make the workout more challenging. I can’t say that running is my favorite thing to do in space: after you get used to floating everywhere, it feels odd and a little unfair to have to move your legs to go nowhere. Having a hockey game or movie to watch on a laptop while I ran sure helped. (Astronauts who are serious runners seem to mind less; in 2007, Suni Williams ran the Boston Marathon in space, which took her only 4 hours and 24 minutes.)
I also did regular sessions on an Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED), an ingenious machine that uses vacuum cylinders to apply a load of up to 600 pounds to a bar or cable, so that we have to lift against the suction. It was a lot like weight lifting in terms of both the sensation and the physical benefits, and I also used the ARED to do heel lifts, squats and other exercises that would be far too easy, otherwise. All the equipment on the ISS has vibration isolation systems; some pieces even have stabilizing gyroscopes so we don’t wind up shaking or rattling scientific experiments while we’re working out.
We also have to be careful about perspiration. When there’s no force pulling sweat downward, it just accumulates on your body like a slowly expanding liquid shield. If you turn your head quickly, that huge, wet glob of sweat might dislodge, sail across the module and smack an unsuspecting crewmate in the face. Proper etiquette on the ISS is to have a towel tucked into your clothes or floating beside you while you work out, to soak up your sweat. Later, you hang the towel on a clip so the moisture is absorbed back into the air and, along with urine, can be recycled as water.
Yes, water. Drinking water, actually. Until 2010, water on the ISS came in large, lined duffel bags delivered by the Shuttle or resupply vehicles, but now an onboard purification system helps us reclaim about 1,600 gallons a year. Using filters and a distiller that spins to create artificial gravity and move waste water along, we’re able to turn sweat, water we’ve washed with and even our own pee into drinking water. That may sound disgusting (and I’ll admit that I didn’t like to dwell on the pee part while enjoying a tall, cold pouch of water) but the water on Station is actually more pure than the stuff that comes out of the tap in most North American homes. And it tastes exactly like … water.
Shortly after we got to the ISS, I started making brief videos about these only-in-space aspects of everyday life, which the CSA posted on its website as well as on YouTube. Making the videos was easy for me—I’d just press “record” on an HD video camera and demonstrate something, such as how to use the treadmill or wash your hands. It was more time-consuming for the CSA editor on the ground, who added fun, space-y music and graphics, but the effort was worth it: some of the videos went viral and were viewed millions of times. It turns out that people are genuinely interested in the ins and outs of, say, space haircuts (a crewmate does the deed, armed with an electric buzzer, a.k.a. a Flowbee, attached to a vacuum cleaner that catches all the little bits).
The CSA recognized that we had a golden opportunity to generate interest in the space program, and we put together more than 100 videos while I was on orbit. Educational outreach is part of an astronaut’s job, but it’s a particular passion of mine. For 20 years I’d been speaking about the space program in tiny town halls, elementary schools and Rotary Clubs—anywhere that would have me, basically. In 2010 I set up a program called “On the Lunch Pad,” where I talked with school kids via Skype during my lunchtime.
I have found it frustrating at times that so few people know what the space program does and, as a result, are unaware that they benefit from it. Many people object to “wasting money in space” yet have no idea how much is actually spent on space exploration. The CSA’s budget, for instance, is less than the amount Canadians spend on Halloween candy every year, and most of it goes toward things like developing telecommunications satellites and radar systems to provide data for weather and air quality forecasts, environmental monitoring and climate change studies. Similarly, NASA’s budget is not spent in space but right here on Earth, where it’s invested in American businesses and universities, and where it also pays dividends, creating new jobs, new technologies and even whole new industries.
The motive could not be more ambitious: exploring our solar system, discovering what else is out there. The desire to explore is in our DNA. It’s what humans have been doing since the first dissatisfied teenager left the family cave to see what was over the next hill. Most people believe it’s worthwhile to discover, as we have in the past 10 years, that 2,000 planets are revolving around other stars in our galaxy. Currently, vehicles are driving around on other planets to find out more about them, orbiters are circling almost every planet in our solar system and robotic probes are expanding our understanding of our own atmosphere and the magnetic field that protects Earth from radiation.
These were the kinds of things I explained when I did outreach work, but I’d learned that before you can persuade people that the space program is a good investment, you have to get their attention. Suddenly, on orbit, that was much easier: thanks to the Internet, we could show people what it’s like to be in space, in real time. They not only paid attention, our expedition became a social media sensation. The reason is simple: people are inherently interested in other people. They care about the big picture, yes, but they’re enthralled by the human aspects of space exploration, the minutiae of daily life on board the ISS. Understandably, then, the most popular videos we made were the ones about everyday space oddities.
Luckily, there was no shortage of them. For instance, after a few months, the soles of my feet were nearly as smooth as a baby’s and free of calluses—they only bore weight when I ran. Meanwhile the tops of my feet had become callused from rubbing against the footholds that prevented me from floating off while conducting an experiment, say, or taking a photograph. I noticed, too, that my eyes stung slightly, because the moisture that is normally dealt with by gravity simply sat there on my eyeballs; those hard litt
le bits of sleep that I used to wipe away only in the morning built up during the day, too, sometimes threatening to stick my eyes shut, so I blinked a fair amount.
I think one reason people like hearing about these sorts of things is that it helps them see the world slightly differently, perhaps even with a sense of wonder. On Earth, it’s just a given that if you put a fork on the table, it will stay there. But remove that one variable, gravity, and everything changes. Forks waft away; people sleep on air. Eating, jumping, drinking from a cup—things you’ve known how to do since you were a toddler suddenly become magical or tricky or endlessly entertaining, and sometimes all three at once. People like being reminded that the impossible really is possible, I think, and I was happy to be able to remind them.
What we do in space is serious, yes, but it’s also incredibly fun. It’s not just about the epic EVA but the M&Ms dancing merrily inside the package, colliding colorfully in weightlessness. Life is full of so many small, unexpected pleasures, not just in space but right here on Earth, and I think I see them more clearly now than I used to because microgravity insists you pay attention. Weightlessness is like a new toy you get to unwrap every day, again and again—and it’s a great reminder, too, that you need to savor the small stuff, not just sweat it.