Added 1 new A* page:A reader pointed me to this recent NASA video in which departing commander Sunita Williams gives an in-depth guided tour of the International Space Station. It's by far the best video guide to the ISS that I've seen. Some of my favorite parts:- Space hair! Long hair does fun stuff in zero gravity ("microgravity" for you pedants :p), and Sunita's got a good crop on her head.
- And she's even wearing a necklace! Necklaces don't know how to lay down in zero-g. This is a wild woman!
- One minute in, she demonstrates--not that she points it out, she just does it while talking about other stuff--how the low handlebars mounted on nearly every surface inside the station can serve as toeholds just as well as handholds, so you don't just do drifting around and bonking your head on things like a noob. All in all it's just fun to watch her glide and hover expertly around inside the station's narrow, twisting confines. She even does a very convincing "Superman" flight right into the camera at one point. :)
- She shows and describes in detail the important stuff: bedrooms and bathrooms, including the wide variety of toiletries at hand: "We have gloves just because sometimes it does get messy."
- We also get to see the very cramped interior of the Soyuz crew capsule she would take back to Earth twelve hours later. It's interesting to see how the inward-opening hatches of the Soyuz partially block access, even when they're fully opened. And earlier, from the station's cupola, you can see not just one but *two* docked modules--the other is a Russian Progress module, to be filled with garbage and released to burn up in the atmosphere. (Actually there's a third docked module visible there too, an ESA ATV, but its silver cylinder looks more or less like just another piece of the space station proper.)
- "I haven't sat down for six months."
- We get to see their exercise equipment, including their impressive vacuum-resistance weight machine.
- The Russian food is in the red containers. :)
|
