Flipped Upside Down

Authors Note: 

This is an essay talking about the difficulty astronauts have living in a micro-gravity environment for long periods of time. Please notice my use secondary sources noted at the bottom. 

Imagine the world is floating, every task you try to do your weightless, your whole world is literally turned around. This is what it is like for people living on the international space station also known as the ISS. Everyday tasks become a challenge like eating, brushing your teeth, working out, and even going to the bathroom because they all require special equipment and skills.

The ISS is an important feature to the exploration to the atmosphere around us.  On the ISS they can find ways to predict weather more effectively, see where to clean up pollution and oil spills, and find lots of ways to improve our life on Earth. (The Space Operation Learning Center). In total, more than 400 scientific experiments in fields such as biology, human physiology, and physical and materials science,  have been conducted on or in the space station over the last decade. (Is the International Space Station Worth $100 Billion?) They also use this facility to see how peoples body’s adapt to living in a microgravity for long periods of time.

Now getting to how people live on the ISS, when they wake up the first thing they do is get up and go to the bathroom and brush their teeth, seams simple but it’s really not. To brush your teeth on the ISS, you first take a sip from a bag with a straw but don’t swallow,  then grab your tooth brush and your tooth paste and you brush, when it’s time to spit you have to do it differently. If you spit into a sink your spit would just float everywhere in the air so instead you spit into a  Kleenex then throw the Kleenex away. (The Atlantic, How to brush your teath on the international space station). Since there is no gravity to either hold a toilet bowl full of water in place or pull a humans waste down, the toilets are much different in space. Although it is designed to be as much as possible like those on Earth, there are a number of changes. Straps are there to hold feet against the floor, and pivoting bars swing across the thighs ensuring the user remains seated. There is a hose, which can be used in a standing position or can be used sitting (Space/Astronomy).

Although getting up, brushing your teeth, and going to the bathroom are all a key point in life you need food to survive! On the ISS there isn’t a refrigerator and since you’re in space for a long time the food you eat can’t perish you have to eat a special kind of food. The food they eat is like the food you would take camping for a long time. It has to be something that can cook by just adding moisture. According to Irene Klotz of the Discovery Channel website, some of astronauts favorite foods include Japanese takeout, Sweetish meatballs, yogurt, chicken  soup, tortillas, shrimp, hot sauce, M&Ms, dried produce, and mystery meals. If you want salt or pepper on any of those meals you can but they are only available in a liquid form. This is because astronauts can't sprinkle salt and pepper on their food in space, the salt and pepper would simply float away and that causes a danger that they could clog air vents, contaminate equipment or get stuck in an astronaut's eyes, mouth or nose (The Space Operation Learning Center).

There are many reasons why you must work out in space. Since astronauts are in orbit around the earth they don’t feel the effects of gravity there for they don’t have to use their muscles as much doing normal everyday things (Rothstein). Because of that they have to work out with special equipment to prevent muscle atrophy, a condition astronauts experience after long periods of inactivity (The Space Operation Learning Center). Muscle atrophy is a decrease in the mass of the muscle; it can be a partial or complete wasting away of muscle (Merrian-Webster).  So because of that astronauts exercise two hours per day. Lifting 200 pounds on Earth may be a lot of work, but in space it is easy, the 200 pounds appear to weigh nothing. Therefore, exercise equipment needs to be specially designed for use in space so astronauts will receive the workout needed.

One way they prevent muscle atrophy is by using a piece of specialized equipment call an Advanced Resistive Exercise Device or aRED for short. This device acts like a weight machine but it doesn't use weights at all, instead it has a system of vacuum cylinders; canisters with air that have had a vacuum suction that provide  up to 600 pounds of weight (Landau). When you’re using this device it is kind of like a bicycle pump only in reverse. So if you squat the vacuum compresses and then when you stand back up the vacuum sucks air into it and as a result puts strain on you as you try to stand back up making it a effective workout (Landau).

Every kid in the world had a dream occupation they wanted to be weather it was a fireman, a police man, or a doctor but in 2013 it was reported that astronaut was the second highest ranked dream job of kids across the world (Share Ranks). For all the kids and adults out there that want to be an astronaut just remember that you could live on the ISS and help the development of space exploration.

Bibliography

Is the International Space Station Worth $100 Billion? (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2013, from Space.com: http://www.space.com/9435-international-space-station-worth-100-billion.html

Landau, E. (n.d.). CNN health. Retrieved April 18, 2013, from www.cnn.com: http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/diet.fitness/11/18/exercise.in.space/index.html?_s=PM:HEALTH

Merrian-Webster. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2013, from http://www.merriam-

webster.com/dictionary/atrophy

Rothstein, D. (n.d.). Curious About Astronomy. Retrieved April 19, 2013, from curious.astro.cornell.udu: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=367

Share Ranks. (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2013, from Most Popular Careers Children Want when they Grow Up: http://shareranks.com/4780,Most-Popular-Careers-Children-Want-when-they-Grow-Up#b

Space/Astronomy. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2013, from Potty Training - How To Go To The Bathroom In Space: http://space.about.com/cs/spaceshuttles/a/bathroominspace.htm

The Atlantic. (How to brush your teath on the international space station). Retrieved March 26, 2013, from http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-to-brush-your-teeth-on-the-international-space-station/262046/

The Space Operation Learning Center. (n.d.). Retrieved March 26, 2013, from What does the ISS do: http://solc.gsfc.nasa.gov/kids3/kids3_what_does.html