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Warning: Spoiler-ish summary!

Getting ready to play “Rocket Man��. Just in case.

“If the only thing you really enjoyed was whipping around Earth in a spaceship, you’d hate being an astronaut.��
Instead, you sit in a classroom studying orbital mechanics. In Russian. You practice tricky, repetitive tasks as well as highly challenging ones to the point of exhaustion, and you’re away from home more than half the time. An astronaut is a perpetual student. There’s no such thing as over-preparation ; it’s your best chance of improving your odds. ”I was learning so much every day that I could almost hear my neurons firing.��
Trainers in the space program specialize in devising bad-news scenarios for astronauts to act out, over and over again, in increasingly elaborate simulations.
While play-acting grim scenarios day in and day out may sound like a good recipe for clinical depression, it actually pushes astronauts to develop a new set of instincts: instead of reacting to danger with a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush, they’re trained to respond unemotionally by immediately prioritizing threats and methodically seeking to defuse them. ”Rehearsing for catastrophe has made me positive that I have the problem-solving skills to deal with tough situations and come out the other side smiling.��

At Nasa, everyone is a critic. Astronauts are not just expected to respond positively to criticism, but to go one step further and draw attention to their missteps and miscalculations. It’s not easy for hyper-competitive people to talk openly about screw-ups that make them look foolish or incompetent. Management has to create a climate where owning up to mistakes is permissible and colleagues have to agree, collectively, to cut each other some slack.
For an astronaut, depersonalising criticism is a basic survival skill. When astronauts are killed on the job, the reason is almost always an overlooked detail that seemed unimportant at the time.
“Early success is a terrible teacher. You’re essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can’t do it. You don’t know how.��
The environment is also highly competitive, without the competition ever being explicitly acknowledged. Astronaut Candidates (ASCANs, pronounced exactly as you might imagine) are being evaluated and compared on everything they do - everything - and space flight assignments are based on how well they perform. So the demands are bottomless.

‘Who are you flying with?�� is the first question astronauts ask each other.
Sometimes integration is not so easy, because astronauts don’t get to pick their fellow travelers. No one wants to go to space with a jerk. But at some point, they just have to accept the people in their crew, stop wishing they were flying with Neil Armstrong, and start figuring out how their crewmates�� strengths and weaknesses mesh with their own. ”You can’t change the bricks, and together, you still have to build a wall.��
The longer the flight, the more important personalities become. When you can’t even go outside to let off steam, personality conflicts can compromise a mission or derail it altogether.
NASA looks for a certain type of person, someone who plays well with others, and who can be locked in a tin can for six months and excel, so temperament alone could disqualify you for space flight.
“A certain personality type that was perfectly acceptable, even stereotypical, in the past - the real hard-ass, say - is not wanted on the voyage when it is going to be a long one.

Astronauts are, without exception, extremely competitive. So how do you take a group of hyper-competitive people and get them to hyper-cooperate, to the point where they seek opportunities to help one another shine? ... For some astronauts, the transition is relatively painless - a relief, even, after decades of solitary striving. For others, it’s a huge shock to the system and requires a fundamental reorientation.
Astronauts do survival training, on water and on land. They learn to think of success as a team sport. It takes a few years to instill the ability to work in a team productively and cheerfully in tough conditions into wildly competitive people.
Survival training simulates some aspects of space travel really well. In both cases, a small group of people is thrown into a challenging environment with specific objectives to accomplish and no one else to rely on except each other.
Good leadership means leading the way, not hectoring other people to do things your way. Bullying, bickering and competing for dominance are, even in a low-risk situation, excellent ways to destroy morale and diminish productivity. ...
Groupthink is a good thing when it comes to risks. If you’re only thinking about yourself, you can’t see the whole picture.
“For me, the takeaway from all my survival training is that the key question to ask when you’re part of a team, whether on Earth or in Space, is, ‘How can I help us get where we need to go?�� You don’t need to be a superhero. Empathy and a sense of humor are often more important ...��
Searching for ways to lighten the mood is never a waste of time.

Time to go out, Rocket Man.

Not so fast.
On orbit, even a head cold is a big deal. Without gravity, your sinuses don’t clear and your immune system doesn’t fight back as effectively, so you feel much sicker, much longer - and in such a confined space, it’s pretty much guaranteed that the rest of the crew will be infected.
In the 1960s, astronauts frequently launched in apparently perfect health, but then, a day or so into the mission, a virus would make its presence known. But not until 1970 did NASA decide it might be a good idea to isolate crews pre-flight.

“Time-honored astronaut traditions make us feel we’re part of the tribe , and there were plenty of them during our final hours in quarantine. Some were less picturesque than others. The night before we launched, we gave ourselves an enema, followed , after a suitable interval, by another one. While this did not feel like my finest hour in space exploration, it was definitely preferable to soiling my diaper the next day. Afterward, a doctor took swabs of all parts of my body - behind my ears, my tongue, my crotch - to see if I had any infections, then rubbed me down with alcohol just in case I did.��

These days, the purpose of quarantine is as much psychological as it is medical: an enforced time-out ensures the astronauts transition to a new kind of existence and go into a high-pressure situation feeling calm and fully prepared.

Some version of the Soyuz has been flying for more than 45 years. As rocket ships go, it’s one of the most reliable and durable in the world, and can safely launch in just about any weather. Fifty percent of the risk of a catastrophic failure during a long-duration space mission occurs in the first 10 minutes after liftoff.

“The Soyuz is so small that it makes the Shuttle seem almost cavernous. A Dodge Caravan has about 163 cubic feet of space; the Soyuz has 265 cubic feet of living space - theoretically. In reality, a lot of that space is taken up by cargo and gear that’s been lashed down and secured for launch. In any event, it’s not a lot of space for three full-grown adults to share for a few days. But during launch, we even have less elbow room because we are confined to the re-entry module, which is also the only part of the Soyuz that survives the return to Earth. On our way home we jettison the other two: the service module, which houses the instruments and engines, and the orbital module, which provides additional living space once we are on orbit.��

Unlike the Shuttle, which was powered by fuel cells, the Soyuz is solar-powered; to keep its solar arrays pointed at the sun, the vehicle spins like a chicken on a rotisserie barbecue. Outside the window, then, what you see is Earth, tumbling over and over, which is hard to look at when your stomach is unsettled.

“And as my vestibular system adapted during our day of downtime, I started to be able to look out the window for longer and longer periods of time. The world was rolling by underneath, every place I’d read about or dreamed of visiting streaming past. There was the Sahara, there was Lake Victoria and the Nile, snaking all the way up to the Mediterranean. Explorers gave their lives trying to find the source of the Nile, but I could detect it with a casual glance, no effort at all.��

Opening the hatch always takes longer than anyone would want, because first the crew has to ascertain that the impact of docking hadn’t damaged the Soyuz. It bumps into the Station with reasonable force and speed; they need to check all the seals to ensure there isn’t a slow leak. Only when we knew the vehicle was intact could we change out of our Sokhols and into regular blue spacesuits, which, like all Russian space clothing, have straps that go under your feet to pull the pant legs down. That’s helpful in zero gravity, where there’s nothing to prevent the hem of your pants from migrating well north of your ankle.��

The ISS is a one-million-pound spaceship that’s the size of a football field, including the end zones, and boasts a full acre of solar panels. It’s so big, with so many discrete modules, that it’s possible to go nearly a full day without seeing another crewmate. It’s an awe-inspiring international project, this mammoth co-op in the sky.
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.
The Cupola, an observatory module built by the European Space Agency, had been installed on the Station. It is a thing of beauty, a 360-degree dome of windows on the world. There are trapezoidal windows on all six sides and, on top, directly facing Earth, a round, 31-inch window, the largest ever on a spaceship. It’s the ultimate room with a view, but highly functional, too: its command and control workstations enable astronauts to guide operations outside the Station, including controlling the robotic arm.

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.
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.
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 resembles 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.��

The absence of gravity alters the texture of daily life because it affects almost everything the crew does. Toothbrushing, for instance: you need to swallow the toothpaste. Hand washing requires a bag of water that has already been mixed with a bit of no-rinse soap. Long, hot showers are out, obviously. You just do a wipe-down with a clammy cloth. Hair washing involves 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.
There’s no such thing as no-rinse laundry soap, so cleaning of clothes is impossible. Instead, the crew just wears them over and over, until they wear out.
Preparing meals is not laborious on a space station. All liquids, including coffee and tea, come in pouches; most are powdered, and you simply add water, then sip through a straw. The majority of the food on board is dehydrated, so again, you just inject hot or cold water directly into the packages using a kind of needle, then cut open the packages and dig in. There’s a lot of sticky stuff like oatmeal, pudding and cooked spinach, because it clumps and is therefore easier to trap on a spoon and get into your mouth without having to chase it all over the place.
“Many astronauts, myself included, crave spicy foods after a while, because the congestion that comes with weightlessness means that things taste pretty much the way they do when you have a head cold. Everything is just a bit more bland.��

Exercise is mandatory during a long-duration flight. Astronauts have to work out two hours a day to keep their muscles and bones strong enough to handle the extreme physical demands of spacewalking and also to ensure them when they get back to Earth, they are still able to stand on their 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 the astronauts clip their shoes into so they don’t float away, and a treadmill with a harness contraption that pulls them down so they run on the moving track rather than through thin air.

“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.��

In space, things happen to your body that may or may not be bad for your long-term health. So far, there’s no evidence that astronauts have a significantly increased risk of cancer or cataracts, but they do absorb more radiation than they would at sea level, and it’s worth figuring out what to do about that.
Other anatomical changes associated with long-duration space flight are definitely negative: the immune system weakens, the heart shrinks because it doesn’t have to strain against gravity, eyesight tends to degrade, sometimes markedly (no one’s exactly sure why yet). The spine lengthens as the little sacs of fluid between the vertebrae expand, and bone mass decreases as the body sheds calcium. Without gravity, you don’t need muscle and bone mass to support your own weight, which is what makes life in space so much fun but also so inherently bad for the human body, long-term.
About half of the scientific experiments the crew does is related to investigating what is happening to their own bodies in space.
“A lot of times the work isn’t glamorous, but that’s okay. The workplace itself is, after all, in a pretty great location.��

Undocking is a peaceful contrast to the fiery pageantry of launch. It takes about three minutes for the giant hooks and catches to release. Gradually, little springs push the Soyuz away and it drifts off. At first, they travel slowly, but after three minutes, the engines are fired and they start to pick up speed. They need to get a safe distance from the ISS before lighting the engines again, or the exhaust and spattering of waste fuel would batter her big solar arrays. This puts them on a slightly different trajectory than the ISS as they orbit the Earth.
After about two and a half hours it’s time: they turn the ship tail-first and set up for deorbit burn. There’s a critical moment during the burn when there’s no turning back; they’ve decelerated so much that they’re committed to falling into the atmosphere. What follows is a wild 54-minute tumble to Earth that feels more or less like 15 explosions followed by a car crash.��

“We try to catch our breath, weak after the multi-axis disorienting tumble, the wildest of amusement park rides. To complete the effect, our seats suddenly slam upward, rising automatically to the top level of their shock absorbers to cushion us from the brunt of what’s about to happen. The crush of acceleration helps us tighten our straps. We know the moment of impact will be bad; the seats’liners were custom-built to mold to our bodies so that our backs don’t break. Just before impact no one says anything ... We’re all clenching our teeth, lightly, so we don’t bite through our tongues.��

They’re back on Earth, at last. A normal landing, right on target.

“I’m smiling, doing my best to impersonate a person who doesn’t feel disoriented and sick. But my arms feel so heavy I can barely lift them, and I stay motionless, to reduce exertion. Every part of my body feels sore or shocked, or both. It’s like being a newborn, this sudden sensory overload of noise, color, smells and gravity after months of quietly floating, encased in relative calm and isolation. No wonder babies cry in protest when they’re born.��

In fact, it isn’t over: every flight is followed by months of rehabilitation, medical testing and exhaustive debriefing with everyone from the top administration at NASA to the people who resupply the ISS.

“After the empowering environment of space, where I could move a refrigerator with one fingertip, it seemed... well, unfair. Despite exercising two hours a day on the ISS, I was, back on Earth, a weakling.
A lot of what happens to the human body in space is really similar to what happens during the aging process. In post-flight quarantine, in fact, Tom and I tottered around like two old duffers, getting a preview of what life might be like if we made it to 90. Our blood vessels had hardened; our cardiovascular systems had changed. We had shed calcium and minerals in space, so our bones were weaker; so were our muscles, because for 22 hours a day, they’d encountered no resistance whatsoever.��

Endings don’t have to be emotionally wrenching if you believe you did a good job and you’re prepared to let go. I view my retirement the same way. I did the best I could and I served my purpose, but the time has come to move on. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned as an astronaut is to value the wisdom of humility, as well as the sense of perspective it gives you.