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Hitting the Books: The invisible threat that every ISS astronaut fears:
Despite starry-eyed promises by the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin, only a handful of humans will actually experience existence outside of Earth's atmosphere within our lifetime. The rest of us are stuck learning about life in space second hand but that's where How to Astronaut by former ISS commander Colonel Terry Virts comes in. Virts shares his myriad experiences training for and living aboard the ISS — everything from learning Russian and space-based emergency medicine to figuring out how to unpack an autonomously-delivered cargo shipment or even prep a deceased crew member for burial among the stars — through a series of downright entertaining essays.
And where many titles of this genre can become laden with acronyms and technical jargon, How to Astronaut remains accessible to aspiring astronauts of all ages. Just maybe don't read the story below about how the ISS crew thought they were all going to die from a toxic ammonia leak to your 6-year-old right before bed.
Excerpted from How to Astronaut: An Insider's Guide to Leaving Planet Earth by Terry Virts (Workman). © 2020.
For all the emergency training I went through as an astronaut, I never expected to be holed up in the Russian segment of the ISS, the hatch to the US segment sealed, with my crew waiting and wondering—would the space station be destroyed? Was this the end? As we floated there and pondered our predicament, I felt a bit like the guy in the Alanis Morissette song "Ironic," who was going down in an airplane crash, thinking to himself, "Now isn't this ironic?" This is how we ended up in that situation.
Read the rest of the fine article for a gripping tale of planning for failures -- simple and catastrophic -- and the human side of dealing with them.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by MIRV888 on Monday September 28 2020, @02:57AM (3 children)
As an inspirational act of humanity alone, it pays for itself 100x over easily.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Zinnia Zirconium on Monday September 28 2020, @03:14AM (2 children)
An inspirational act like getting kids all hopeful about growing up to be astronauts but when they realize they will never make it to space they study science instead but then they realize science is wrong, false, puffed, and misleading [soylentnews.org] and they drop out of science to pursue careers in waitering and projectioning and soapmaking with a side hustle of starting fight clubs but right then a chroma virus pandemic hits and just as they are sitting home alone in quarantine reflecting upon how much their lives suck then they drink water containing a brain-eating microbe [soylentnews.org] and die.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday September 28 2020, @04:35AM
truly, a life lived to the fullest
hold on, the Internet will tell me how (with pctures!) [wikihow.com]
or here, instead [lifehack.org]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by MIRV888 on Monday September 28 2020, @07:09AM
Science is hard.
The internet?
Actually Jesus rays in tubes.
Nuclear reactors?
Those are Holy Spirit rays. Totally different.
Light bulbs? Edison sold his soul to Satan.
They need to stop lying.