Back in 1962, Parade magazine asked American women about the sexiest professions for a potential partner to have. Doctor topped the list. And somehow writer came in second. But astronaut came in a very respectable third place. Which got us thinking: is being an astronaut today more or less sexy than it was during the build up of the space race?
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I’ve never seen the International Space Station at "night," when astronauts and cosmonauts go to sleep, so when I saw that I immediately though "that’s so damn cool!" "The dots near the hatch point to Soyuz if we have an emergency," says astronaut Mike Hopkins.
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It’s not the visuals. Awesome astronaut Chris Hadfield told Conan that Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity perfectly captured the spectacular beauty of space. This is a man who actually spacewalked, people! We gotta trust his opinion since we’ll probably never see space. But one thing that wasn’t realistic? Sandra Bullock’s underwear.
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In a planned mission, three ISS crew members took their Soyuz out for a ride around the ISS. Why? Did they want to show Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity how it’s really done? Not exactly. Instead, it’s actually the astronaut equivalent of moving your car out of a parking space so your roommate can park his. Only we’re dealing with Soyuz spacecrafts as cars. And the ISS as your apartment. And oh yeah, space.
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In order to prepare for the human exploration of the furthest reaches of our solar system, space agencies often run experiments to see how our bodies can cope with long periods of sedentary behavior. And my, it looks boring.
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Today I found out that the first man to walk in space almost got stuck out there. That lucky individual was Alexei Leonov, who was born in the Soviet Union on May 30, 1934. He was one of the twenty Soviet Air Force Pilots to be chosen for the first cosmonaut group.
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Gravity looks pretty damn terrifying. Most philosophers would tell us that for a film to really be chilling to the bone, it must call to mind a real-life existential fear that’s buried within our souls. So Gravity is tugging at some deeply held fears we’ve got, then, right? Well, according to real astronaut Michael Massimino, the movie is a bunch of bull.
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While exciting in some ways—homecoming, yay!—the trip home from the International Space Station is a scary enough journey even when everything goes right. Now imagine doing it with no height sensors to tell you how far from the ground you are and when to brace for impact. That’s exactly what happened earlier week.
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If you’re ever curious about the exact number of people who are in space right now, the single-serving site aptly named how many people are in space right now? will tell you. The answer is 6. The lucky 6 who are currently living every kid’s dream? Americans Chris Cassidy and Karen Nyberg, Russians Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and Fyodor Yurchikhin and Italian Luca Parmitano. Three of them have been up there 91 days, the other three 152 days.
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A lot of things are falling into place for NASA’s inevitable moonshot to Mars. (Mars-shot?) However, one of the original challenges remains one of the more elusive ones: How do you get the astronauts to live on a spaceship for six months without going crazy? You put them to sleep, that’s how.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
