Launch News SpaceX: Inspiration4 mission.

Urwumpe

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Ah, yeah, I guess it's just what it is: "commercial" spaceflight. Never got enthusiastic about Netflix. If the scientific and institutional part is missing, it somehow gets out of my focus ? Seems I am boring ? But I liked the series of Skott Kelly about his one year in space by the Time magazine. Difference though...

Oh, I decided to watch it as preparation for the mission. It isn't that bad at all, just a bit too much home story and too little spaceflight. The narrative is that "normal people" are going into space for the first time, but well, it achieves the opposite. It feels far from normal.
 

N_Molson

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I guess it's because they are not really trained to be astronauts in terms of profession. Actually they are "just" tourists onboard an autonomous spacecraft. Astronauts are even trained for public relations. I guess tourists are not.

I'm not taking any chances with the "being sick" part : 50% of the "professional" astronauts/cosmonauts suffer from motion sickness. Floating in 0g is a bit too much for the human brain, even with some training. Pills and experience seem to help a bit.
 

Urwumpe

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I'm not taking any chances with the "being sick" part : 50% of the "professional" astronauts/cosmonauts suffer from motion sickness. Floating in 0g is a bit too much for the human brain, even with some training. Pills and experience seem to help a bit.

Its the same kind of motion sickness as sea sickness. And yes, even the most salty pirates in the seven sees can become seasick. There is little you can do against it, except taking your pills and taking time to adapt.
 

MaxBuzz

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things that money cannot buy, such as when you are not related to aviation and feel sick in a confined space :sick: ?
 

N_Molson

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Its the same kind of motion sickness as sea sickness. And yes, even the most salty pirates in the seven sees can become seasick.

Yes, and it is worse. The organ that manages the sense of balance is the inner ear, and it relies on a liquid, and that system entierely relies on gravity (that makes the liquid settle down inside the spiral of the inner ear). It doesn't work at all in 0g : the liquid behaves like water and probably makes bubbles inside the ear, which makes the whole system useless and sends messy signals to the brain. Space is hard, in many ways our body isn't made for that environnement.
 

Urwumpe

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Yes, and it is worse. The organ that manages the sense of balance is the inner ear, and it relies on a liquid, and that system entierely relies on gravity (that makes the liquid settle down inside the spiral of the inner ear). It doesn't work at all in 0g : the liquid behaves like water and probably makes bubbles inside the ear, which makes the whole system useless and sends messy signals to the brain. Space is hard, in many ways our body isn't made for that environnement.

No bubbles without air. And unless you had some serious ear damage, there should be no air there, contrary to what was thought in the middle ages...

The organ tracks accelerations. No acceleration, no pressure on the sensing membrane and no sense of acceleration.

And yes, the human body is not made for this. We have only two sensors for translational accelerations, and have a build-in assumption, that there is always gravity pushing two our feet, making the sensor for the vertical acceleration more specialized than the one for horizontal plane accelerations.
 

TheShuttleExperience

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Imagine...

you just got propelled into space. This is your first ride. You are still impressed by the launch and acceleration during ascent. Felt better than take off run in a commercial passenger jet plus all the shaking and awesome noise at ignition, which was way more violent than expected and what one could imagine by just watching videos of rocket launches. So, your spacecraft just reached orbital speed. The engines cut off and from one second to the other you and everything else onboard becomes weightless. Feels a little bit like vertigo and going downhill in a roller coaster for the first few seconds, after being pressed into the seat at variable g-loads for about ten minutes...

Rationally you knew what was and is going to happen. And you’re already familiar with this due to the training you got by those parbolic flight campaigns. For now everything is fine. Big joy. Everyone is smiling. You can't even really believe you just made it into space. It got quiet, except the environmental control system, cabin fan, electronics and voice comms from mission control. You could barely gather a look through the capsules window since you are still strapped to your seat. All you can see from your angle is very bright sunlight shining into the capsule, and the blackest black you never saw in the night sky before. And you still got your helmet on, but the visor is open. You doff your helmet and gloves and now you get unstrapped, finally, after several hours.

So you move out of your seat. It's your first free float in orbit. Feels strange that zero gravity is not going to end after about 20 seconds. This time it is continous, and stays for the rest of your flight until deceleration during entry and parachute deployment. Somehow you start to feel a little bit uneasy, because you get the impression that you could "fall over". Because there is nothing below your feet and this is not going to end, unlike during parabolic flights, where you get the airplane's floor below your feet and body regularly. Every move you do causes your body to slightly move and rotate until you counteract by using your hand and/or feet to hold somewhere. It's a little bit like skating after you haven't done so for many years - a little weak-kneed. You realize you have to train your sense of balance to become used to this new kind of motions. You stretch out your arms and legs, maybe that makes this "falling over"- impression disappear. You feel almost like a mouse in a zero-g experiment.

But now it gets really weird. Your body is telling you that you are upside down, while your eyes are telling you: nope, you still got the proper orientation in the capsule. This is due to the missing weight force that counteracts gravity when you are standing or lying on the surface of the earth. Your organs are not pulled down anymore, and also your blood gets distributed differently in your body, especially in your upper body and head. It even acts on your skin, especially your face. You can feel that your veins on your neck seem a little bit thicker than usual, and also your face feels slightly puffy. So it's very obvious that zero gravity isn't only acting on your body but even inside you entire organism.

You now do your first backflip; a half one. Now your eyes are telling you that you are upside down in the capsule. Your crew-mates are all oriented differently while moving around. One next to you is also upside down, in relation to the capsule. You look at him/her and it seems very strange that he/she is not upside down in relation to you, but you both are upside down in the capsule together. And no matter how you re-orient your body in the capsule, the physiological impression in your body of being upside down just doesn't disappear. And every new orientation via a flip also causes a slight vertigo for a fraction of a second. Uuuuh. You do realize that it might take a while to get used to this new crazy environment which actually has no up and down at all. And that's the point where you start to become a little bit uncomfortable. A slight cold sweat, and a slight nausea which hopefully doesn't get too strong... ?

Damn! And you thought you would be a real man that can handle it for sure, of course ? Although rationally you knew that anyone can suffer form it ?

I remember the second and last flight of German Astronaut Hans Schlegel, STS-122. He obviously got really sick. He consulted the flight surgeon a few times afair. I think that's why his wife chosed the German song "Maenner" (men) for the wakeup call on FD4.

 
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TheShuttleExperience

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Oh, I decided to watch it as preparation for the mission. It isn't that bad at all, just a bit too much home story and too little spaceflight. The narrative is that "normal people" are going into space for the first time, but well, it achieves the opposite. It feels far from normal.
I might have a look. Sounds interesting. In "First Man" there also was a little bit too much home story. But the space flight scenes were awesome. The replica they built were perfect. The trip of Scott Kelly to the ISS also was accompanied by a home story. But it was actually nice to watch and not too much. After all he is a "true" astronaut with quite a career. I liked how thoughtful he said to his wife that the environment onboard the ISS is always exactly the same. You got an idea what it actually means being up there for one year. The jump into his pool while still wearing the blue NASA overall when he came back home was epic, right after opening a beer in the kitchen.
 
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