April 30, 2013 • 38 mins
Emotions in Outer Space: Space madness. Freezing tears. Delirious astronauts tranquilized, duct taped to the wall and forced to listen to Phillip Glass. Yes, in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie examine the mental strains of life and space and how to address them.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
I know you have seen this video that's been making
the rounds. I know you've seen it because we watched
it together and did a whole episode of our video
(00:24):
series about viral videos about it. But we have the
video about crying in space and what that might consist of. Yeah,
it is a great video was put out by the
I S S Commander, International Space Station Commander Chris Hatfield,
and he demonstrates what it is like to cry in space.
Now he doesn't actually he doesn't. Cried a sad novel
(00:46):
and then begin you know, he's a man, he is
he is manned up to a venture into the void
and he has that he seems like a really nice guy.
But you know, he's got a mustache. He has a mustache,
He has kind of a there's a certain machismo to
anybody that goes up into space, male or female. So um, yeah,
(01:06):
So if an astronaut is going to demonstrate what it's
like to cry and space, they're going to have to
escort some water in their eyes because these there are
some hard boiled eggs. That's right, man or woman, you
are a cowboy in outer space. So but one of
the great things about this video is that it really
does pull back the curtains on what it is like.
There's rote day to day activities, including crying, right because um,
I you know, assume that there are lots of emotional
(01:29):
issues in outer space. And we've talked about this a bit.
It's a high stress environment and as we're gonna get
into in in this in another podcast, and it's a
hostile environment, and and so it's possible that that tears
could occur, and in all likelihood they have occurred. You know,
just we've joked, there's been some pretty tense moments. You know,
they locked themselves in the bathroom and just boo who yeah. Well,
(01:51):
and then also you can there are other reasons tears
can form, you know, various irritations I irritations and sinus
and whatnot. And you know that has happened. But his
work has been great because he has he has done
a really nice job in these videos of shining light
on space minutia. You know, the little tiny bits of
daily life you might not think about, like if if
(02:12):
we didn't know better, I might think that they forgot
to assign him anything to do, and he's just shooting
a bunch of videos. But of course he has plenty
of other well as well. I think that the one
of the cool things about this video is that it
also underscores this idea that, uh, everything in space, everything
in microgravity, behaves differently. So even though we bring our
portable cages with us, right, we bring our own artificial environments, um,
(02:36):
you know in the capsule on the International Space Station, Uh,
we still have to sort of relearn how to be human.
So imagine that you have this really poignant moment that
you're stirring up in your emotions, and all of a sudden,
tears begin to well up in your eyes. Well they
don't just flow down, obviously, because there's no gravity. Instead,
they just pool atop your eyeballs, growing fatter and more
(03:00):
obscenely large, until they break off into this big glob
in front of you and float off. And then somebody
could conceivably turn around and they're about to say, hey,
what are you crying about? And then the whole glob
of your tears just goes into their mouth, that's right,
and so it becomes this otherworldly experience, right, And I
imagine that the first couple of times people crying spaces
(03:20):
probably really fascinating. In fact, I bet that whatever you're
sad about, you know, that kind of no matter, it
no longer matters, right, because in front of you is
this big glob that you can play with. What if
you were missing gravity, You're crying because you miss gravity
so much, And then that just makes it all the
worse because you're like, I can't even cry, like nor
this is how I cry now. My tears mock me. Yeah.
(03:42):
As I mentioned in the video, I'd also um reminded
me a bit of Dante's Inferno. There's a bit there
where Dante and Virgil are in the on the frozen
lake of Casitas at the bottom of Hell, and these
individuals are are frozen in this lake with their heads
facing up, so that when they cry out in tears
and you know, repenting their sins or tears of anger,
(04:04):
the water pools in their sockets and freezes there. Um.
Which you know, if you start to think about it,
if you start to imagine worst case scenarios, you could
possibly envision in a situation where you're crying in space
and there's been a temperature failure in the capsule, temperatures
are plumbering, and those globs of of water in your
(04:25):
eye sockets could potentially freeesaw, so you get eyeball popsicles. Yeah. Nice. Now,
if you're exposed to the void itself, then the tears
will probably just boil off. But that's that's an entirely
different situation. Yeah, an entirely different episode as well. Uh Well,
in order for us to really talk about what it's
like to be human in space exploration, or to relearn
(04:46):
our humanness and how to deal with it, particularly emotions,
we should probably talk about space itself and then the
International Space Station, which is sort of where the grand
experiment has been playing out. Okay, yeah, Well, space itself,
the void, the great black yonder as it is, it's uh,
it's it is a very hostile environment because one of
the one of the things we always have to to
(05:07):
drive home here is that as human beings, we are
a We're an organism that is evolved to live in
a very thin layer of even our own atmosphere, in
our own environment. There are places on Earth that we
cannot live without the significant technological help. So if you
take us out of the planet entirely, then you're you've
(05:29):
taken us into a place of death. Yeah. True. I
mean we don't think about it because we don't see it.
But we are dealing with hundreds of pounds of pressure
in the air, right, We're just kind of used to
moving around in it. But in space, as we know
is that it's a vacuum. There is no air pressure.
Molecules are scant, right. But the way I like to
think of it is is think back to Star Trek.
(05:50):
You see William Schattner walking around um and he's he's
wearing his girdle, of course, and he's very he's very
confident in his in his torso because that girdle is
pressing in. And take that girdle away and he's going
to be very very self conscious, is going to be
totally put off. Nothing's going to feel right, and he's
going to have to relearn how he's doing everything around
the ship because the atmospheric pressure is kind of like
(06:12):
a girdle pressing in on us all the time, and
it becomes such a part of who we are and
how we experienced the world. We we don't even begin
to register it unless there's a significant change. And it's
funny because it's hard to divorce yourself from this uh
notion of air pressure or or even air molecule molecules
not being present because we think it there's empty air,
(06:33):
but of course air is not empty. Is it is heavy,
it is thick, it is pressing in on us and
spaces an environment where that is not present, and the
temperature space is at its coold is just the temperature
of the leftover glow from the Big Bang, the radiation
known as the cosmic microwave background based the entire universe
in the temperature of only two point seven kelvin. That's
(06:55):
less than three degrees above absolute zero or minus four
hundred and fifty five degrees fahrenheit. And of course we
have even more stats about what the environment of space
is like if you don't happen to have a space suit,
but that's a separate podcast episode. Tune in for that.
But if you do have a space suit and your
destination is the International Space Station, you are luck because
(07:16):
this is a habitable artificial satellite in low orbit space,
traveling about seventeen thousand miles plus change an hour in
order to stay in orbit, making gentle curve around the Earth.
And it's up there about two miles kios. And when
you're an orbit like that, things are waitless because they're
all falling at the same velocity. So, um, we should
(07:39):
point out that the I S S is actually in
its thirteenth year. That's right, first module went up in
we keep adding more to it. Yeah, I keep hearing
uh descriptions like frailer park or modules that snapped together,
and well, because that's the only way to do it right.
You can't take the whole you gotta bring it up
piece by piece and a symbol it there. It's kind
(08:00):
of kind of like my my bookshelf here at work.
Like if I ever lose my job, there's no way
I'll get all of them home because I brought them
in a little bit by a little bit by a
little bit. They would taking like a year to clear
all of it out. Yeah, it's just and and you know,
and that and all the other junk. But I've seen
the cost estimated at around a hundred and fifty billion dollars.
But then I've also seen people talk about the cost
of the International Space Station is really being the sort
(08:22):
of thing that you can't maybe more than the cost,
but the value. It's it's something you really can't even
put up a dollar amount on because so much work,
so much effort has gone into it. It is, uh,
it's kind of you know, we don't have much in
the way of super projects today here on Earth, but
it is. It is basically one of the modern marvels.
It is. It is like a pyramid for us. It is,
(08:43):
and there has been a ton of research conducted in
every expedition actually has certain research goals in mind. So
not only is it about maintaining that the actual I
S S, but it's also like, let's let's take a
look at how X behaves in microgravity or some other experiment.
In fact, Expedition three five, which is right now the
(09:04):
the expedition that's in use is um being conducted by
a six person crew. Again, Chris Hadfield is the commander there,
and they are using an instrument called the Alpha bagnetic
Spectrometer two by the way, not one. It is a
state of the art particle physics detector. And recently in
(09:24):
the news there was an item about how they've gotten
a whiff of dark matter the spectrometer, which is really cool. Yeah,
So it's it's right that the I S. S is
not just a place where astronauts pretend to cry and
then take videos. It's not just a place where there
occasionally there's some sort of spat about a toilet going
off the whack. But it is a place on the
(09:45):
cutting edge of science. It is, and it is a very,
as we said, small space of cutting edge science going on.
We're talking about a living space that amounts to the
equivalent of roughly one and a half Boeing seven forty seven.
So let take a listen to what it sounds like
life aboard I S. S S and to some of the
(10:06):
ambient noises, so we can get an idea of what
sort of emotional landscape you might be butting up against
that if you are an astronaut. Now, I love that
(10:33):
because that that sounds like a lot of a lot
of music that I actually listened to. Like, I get
kind of a a pecker meets nurse with wound kind
of vibe there, a little ambient, a little industrial. It's
it's nice. Yeah, And those again we sort of take
uh quietude or you know this when we really want
quiet in our lives, for granted, because there is a
(10:53):
way that you can actually get to some sort of
total silence. Not always right, there's always going to be
ambient noise. I now a world like that, though I
would go to sleep to that, would you? I would
prefer that to absolute silence because absolute silence is just
a little loud to me. M okay. Actually, you had
a good block post about that recently, didn't you, Or
maybe it was on Facebook that you threw that up.
But there was a room that was sealed, wasn't itbook
(11:18):
Absolute Science and Silence, and people could not stand it. Correct. Yeah,
it can be a little maddening, And so I kind
like a little white noise or a little music when
I go to and go to sleep if I can
get it. I used to. I used to live in
a a living space where the bedroom is really close
to the kitchen, and so I could hear the dishwasher
really well at night, man, and I love that. If
(11:39):
it were up to me, I'd have the dishwasher in
the bedroom. Have you seen those toys that are four
babies that basically have like a white noise um sound
and it was such a sound like I guess like
the amnionic fluid rushing through I have not I have
not heard of it. And there's also a heartbeat setting.
Is there a berg noise but a digestion noise? No,
(12:01):
but there should be giddings part because they're probably they
probably identify that as a as as a friend. I'm
just trying to imagine now, um getting one of those
uh sleep CDs and it having proper green meat me
digestion noises on it. Alright, So I mean we're spiraling
off here, um, losing altitude. Must must climb back up
(12:22):
realry back in capsule. Alright. So you're on the I
S S. You're having a bad day. What might a
bad day be in space? Well, I mean, you know,
it can get really bad if you want to get
into worst case scenarios, but just thinking about like a
normal day again, you're in close confines with your co
(12:46):
workers all the time, floating up in each other's business,
having to take care that your lunches don't float into
each other, that there's nothing you know, falling off your
face or or out of your face that's going to
float into the next person. It's true, and just the
act of eating. I've noticed it reminds me of um,
like broom hockey, Like you kind of have to use
(13:08):
your hands to direct food into your mouth, you know,
the goal hole of food. Otherwise, yes, that's going to
hit your coworker in the face. Yeah. And and thecorum
kind of goes out of the out the door a
little bit with the with the with the the eating
in space like the videos you see, it's a totally
different sort of philosophy of eating. It's just kind of
sending things up and catching them and other things. You're
(13:31):
just slurping out of a little box. It's it's interesting.
Do you like that you can kind of chomp it
and catch it in your mouth? Um? But yeah, so
they're they're a little um indignities that could be visited
upon you, right, I mean not to say nothing else
of you know, things can get pretty hectic when you
have situations like oh, something might hit the station and
we all have to crowd into one capsule just in
(13:52):
case we lose the station. I mean that it can
get really stressful as well. Plus they're there are various
stages that people to to go to when they're exposed
to micro microgravity first, I mean, first of all, when
you first step into microgravity UM, you spend the first
phase of your judney, your journey just adjusting to that
cramped environment with an upset stomach, headaches, and space most
(14:15):
space motion sickness. According to NASA's Johnson Space Center, you'll
also experience a drop in sleep efficiency greatly reduced rim.
Uh so, in other words, you may experience dream deprivation
as well. So you're uncomfortable, you're sluggish, and you're still
having to work with all these people. I mean, it's
it's hard enough to deal with people when you when
(14:39):
you're just having a trouble getting a full night sleep,
much less when you have all these other factors going
on UM and path that it gets even weirder. There's
like a second stage UM where you'll you'll you'll have
like a complete adaptation they say, for about six additional weeks.
So once you passed that first slump, you have kind
of like the salad weeks there in space. But then
(15:00):
so you have a sense of euphoria. No, no, not euphoria,
you're just confident. You're like, all right, I got this.
I know how to use the bathroom, I know how
to eat peanut butter in space, Thank you very much.
I know how to move through the space without upsetting
everybody's laptops and everything else. Sleep patterns are decent. Uh,
And I mean that's a whole area. There's the sleeping,
because I've seen the One of the things you have
(15:21):
to remember is when we're sleeping, you you might touch
your face or whatnot. You might have some other kind
of sleep issues that could cause some sort of weirdness
or nightcares. But imagine sleeping and there's you have to
strap your your arms down because otherwise it'll float up
and just start pawing at your face during the night. Well,
it really is it tethered existence. And I was thinking
about this, is that you tether yourself to sleep. You
tether all the items that you need so that they're
(15:43):
available and you can find them. Otherwise everything is just
floating around. Yeah, you can't just set stuff on the nightstand.
You've got to have them to tether. Do your body
or do your bed wrappings. Well, and at this point
to presumably you have adjusted to the lack of diurnal
or nocturnal triggers rights the day and night. Um, you
are beginning to say Okay, so this is a this
(16:04):
is my brain adjusting to this lack of light, this sunlight,
and um a lack of touch as well, because this
is something that's pretty important. We've talked about this before.
It's very comforting to be touched. But obviously you are
you're with coworkers in the first place. Second of all,
it's not really you're not a situation where you would
be cuttling up presumably, And and just imagine too, like
(16:27):
so you wanted to stay cuttle up without you say,
we say you had like a nice blanket with you.
The experience of cuddling up with that blanket would be
extremely different in microgravity because it imagined like a nice
heavy blanket, how it sort of sits on you like
you wouldn't be able to You wouldn't get that because
the gravity is not not strong enough. That's true, right,
just even though the most basic thing of having that
pressure around you is removed. And so in time between
(16:50):
week six and week twelve, things start to get a
little moody, typically with people aboard the space station. Russian
observations found that a number of the symptoms were linked
to boredom and isolation. You become hyper sensitive, irritable, less motivated.
You may fly up the handle whenever a crew member
drifts into your personal space or you know, borrow some
(17:12):
of your stuff, you know, sort of you know, dorm
room annoyances uh too and uh and so yeah, you
get you get more uh sensitivity to allowed noises, uh,
your your musical preferences may change, uh, exhaustion, sleep disturbances,
loss of appetite. You might creep back into everything. It
becomes a very negative time before finally, towards the end
of your journey, you can expect to experience agitation, lack
(17:35):
of control and uh. And then it sort of culminates
with the sense of space euphoria where you finally sort
of rise above it. So you have this whole um
sort of journey through the through the various ranges of
human emotion. There's are huge ups and downs and emotion.
And of course, uh, those people who are administrating the
(17:56):
program are very cognizant of this, and obviously they try
to choose people who are the healthiest mentally. In can
kind of roll with the punches, right, because if you
slight someone, or if you're the one who's slighted, you
cannot go off the handle in this situation. In fact,
one of the crews of sky Lab, NASA's first attempt
(18:16):
at a space station, became so annoyed with their circumstances,
uh that they placed that annoyance on mission control during
their eighty four days in space, and they mutiny need
they felt, and they turned off all communication. Because again,
this is a very specific psychological situation. And if you
(18:36):
need someone to blame, you can either blame each other
or one another, or you can blame mission control, right, yeah,
I mean you can also blame inanimate objects like I.
I've certainly stubbed my toe on like coffee tables before,
and I think if I had an airlock, I would
have I would have sent the coffee table out the airlock.
I think the room bout too. The room was blameless. Really,
(18:59):
I feel like you've turned a corner with Romo, Like
you were, there were some annoyance with it, and now
there's love. I don't remember having annoyance with room. Roomba
requires a certain amount of upkeep and and and PLC
and and battery life to h to maintain its objectives.
So it's it's a much more nurturing relationship than people
tend to think when they first purchased a robotic vacuum cleaner. Well,
(19:23):
and I suppose the same thing is going on with
I F S AND's in the same way. It's kind
of like a giant room, but it's very sensitive and
you have to keep maintaining. I wonder if anyone ever
gets annoyed with a coworker and then goes and talks
to Robina about it, and they're they're just like, oh
my god, Cindy will not shut up, and about the
batter cats, and so you're just you know, completely over there,
(19:44):
just trying to robinot about it. Well, that's the thing, um,
you know, astronauts are basically trained to sort of self soothe,
and they're they're trained in conflict resolution, because the idea
is that you don't you want to be able to
board uh the I S S with as even keel
and as many tools in your toolbox and dealing with
(20:07):
others as opposed to um sort of dealing with the
after effects of that, right because because obviously somebody sulking
and turning off all communication is not really an option,
that is that is to be avoided at all costs.
And I have read to that in instances where there
are some really dire situations that that astronauts or astronauts
(20:28):
can then video sort of their complaint and send it
kind of like MTV reality, like when I think they're
the precursorvice right, um, and then mission control can review
it and sort of give feedback. But those are really
dire situations. The idea is to to board and to
try to self suthe and to correct yourself as many
(20:52):
places as possible. So to that end, another tool in
the toolbox. Uh, well, drugs, right, I mean, medication is
is certainly extremely helpful um in situations such as this,
and there are a number of them. Um. Some of
these are medications that of course deal with just the
some of the physical symptoms of of of weightlessness that
(21:13):
deal with nausea or headaches and what have you. Um.
There are also things to deal with the bone mass.
But then there are there are also various medications that
are very homed in on the mind and the mental
states moti pheno. Right, this is this is a mood enhancement,
memory improving and mood brightening psychostimulants. So this enhances weightfulness,
(21:34):
attention capacity, and vigilance, which is really important, right because
if you're trying to adjust to all of this and
you have research that you have to conduct, if you
have a space walk, you want to be alert. Yeah,
it's all about optimizing their performance, no matter how fatigued
or cranky they are. So because I mean, it comes
down to it. If there's something that really needs to
be done on I s s uh you know, and
it's you know, potentially life or death, it doesn't it
(21:57):
doesn't matter if you're tired, it doesn't matter if you're
in a cranky mood. Here, take three of these and
go do a space wall. Yeah, it's kind of the
suck it up drug. Alright, let's take a quick break
and when we get back, we are going to talk
about this psychotic contingency plan. All right, we're back. So
(22:23):
duct tape it's not just something that's super useful here
on Earth, also in outer space. It turns out, yes, now,
duct tape it comes in handy in cases of space madness. Now,
of course, space madness is one of the great tropes
of of science fiction, the idea that people will go
into space and they'll they'll go a little mad, and
(22:45):
there as we've discussed here. There's a certain amount of
truth to that. It's a it's a it's an environment
that can tax the human body and the human mind.
It can force people uh into into places in their
own minds they're maybe not used to going. Someone could
conceivably snap. So you see it all the time and
films people are always experiencing space. Man's to be it
like Sunshine or Pandorum or I mean, the list goes on.
(23:07):
People go nuts, they do crazy things, and certainly duct
tape could be helpful in this case. If you needed
to duct tape, you're saying, uh, coworkers up and then
force everyone to have a tea party on the outside
of the ship. But it's also goodly specific. But it's
also very useful according to NASA, in dealing with that
um individual before he or she makes everyone go out
(23:28):
for a teat party. It's true. So that's why. In
addition to duct tape, NASA also has tranquilizers on hand
in case anyone flies off the handle in the serious way.
According to a two thousand and seven report from the
a P Associated Press, astronauts keep a few tranquilizers on hand,
and NASA recommends binding the individual for wrists and ankles
(23:49):
with duct tapes, strapping them down with a bungee cord,
and if necessary, sticking them with that tranquilizer. That makes
me feel better, just to know that there is a
contingency plan. Yeah, because again it's a high stakes environment
and if somebody goes off the handle, there's not a
lot of room to deal with them. There's not a break.
You're gonna have to just duct tape them up and
and settle them down with some some soothing pharmaceuticals. It's true,
(24:11):
if someone flies off the handle here at hs W headquarters,
they can just go down to the little store in
our building. They can get some smarties, banana yea cool
off a bit. But yeah, outer space, you've got a
lot of money at stake and a lot of man hours,
so you can't have the craziness going on. Yeah, you
can't just go out for a stroll. I mean, you
(24:33):
could go out for a stroll, but that's because me
even more pressure. So that leads us to this next
sort of idea of how to deal with emotions in space,
how to deal with our humanness, and that is soothing
The Savage Beast with music. Yes, I mean music has
always been a part of our journeys into space. I
mean that if you've followed my Space music block series
(24:55):
at all, you'll see that. In addition to me just
sharing stuff that has very levels of connection to the
space and space exporation, I I've done a number of
posts about astronauts bringing up instruments, smuggling instruments aboard, various
music that has taken place in space or somehow involved
UM space exploration data in one way or another. And uh,
and as we've talked about before, music is a powerful
(25:17):
thing and it can It can really change your mind.
It can control the way you're feeling, it can dictate
the way you feel so and also more importantly, it
is a slice of life on planet Earth that you
can bring up with you. It's another part of our
environment that can be taken into this hostile, unreal environment
and make everything seem a little more normal. Yeah. I mean,
(25:39):
there are a raft of studies that talk about the
healing qualities of are the healing properties of music? Just
recently this week there was an item about how live music,
in particular played in neonatal intensive care units actually helped
premium babies to um sort of recover from some of
those um complications that arise from premature birth much faster.
(26:04):
So you know, imagine, yes, you are in this environment
on the I S S. You've got some sensory deprivation
going on. You're not able to cuddle all the time
and have that twenty second hug that we know releases
oxytose and it makes you feel better unless you're going
and then I don't know how how nice he hugs are,
or you have your hug shirt on. That's true. You
can have technology, can you You can. You can bring
(26:26):
that music with you, you can play it. Chris Hadfield
actually has a special guitar that he plays on board
the I S. S Uh. The thing is, you still
have to try to relearn that right because your hands
are moving differently. He says that when you're moving fast
on the neck of the guitar, you often miss the
threats because on Earth you're used to the weight of
your arm, which kind of helps you track where your
(26:47):
hand is going. But without gravity, you overshoot the mark.
So in this soothing, in this soothing version of music,
you still I'm sure have a bit of frustration getting
to that point we're like, Okay, it's going to take
the week the master playing the guitar again in space.
But when I do, boy will. What I love about
this is that here on Earth he probably doesn't even
(27:08):
rank um. Like, I mean, there's no doubt he doesn't
even rank among the top guitarists there are. There are
many great guitarists on Earth, and he's he's been an
aunt in their shadows. But take the game up into
orbit and he outclasses them all. I bet everyone else
would be just fumbling in spacey shreds. Yeah for sure. UM.
But here's the thing about musical instruments. Uh, any of
(27:31):
them can be brought up, but for safety, they all
have to meet certain standards. Yes, which instrument were, like
an organ would be kind of difficult or yeah, grand
piano would be sort of difficult to do. UM. So
for safety, the current electronic keyboard that's on the ISS
had to be tested to ensure there wasn't a significant
source of electromagnetic radiation which could throw off the instruments
(27:55):
on board. UM. And then all instruments have to be
tested for toxicity, even a trace amount to something like
an oil based chemical like benzene. Is dangerous for astronauts
to inhale an enclosed space. Yeah. Like, I think back
to when I played trumpet in high school and that
thing was just I mean, it's full of oils and spit.
I mean, the spit valve is pretty nasty and disturbing
(28:18):
here on Earth. Imagine an orbit, whereas just you, it's
just I don't even know where how it would collect.
I would have to I have have not researched it.
But now I'm suddenly really interested in trumpet playing in orbit.
I'm sure someone's brought one up. I bet they got
a stink I if they played it, though, right, you
probably have to go in the bathroom cry there and
then play your trumpet there. Um. Another way that I
(28:42):
think is really important that we've seen emerge out of
the I S s UM is this idea of documenting
your experience is a way to sort of cope with
the realities. Yeah. This has been a part of NASA's
plan for a mental stability and space from pretty early on.
You know. Yeah, And I think that it's even just
(29:02):
that these wrote things. This minutia, I think, to me
sort of gets at least me excited about space exploration.
Because it really does pull back the curtain. So not
only does Chris had Feel regularly tweets stunning photos of Earth,
which in and of itself is glorious to behold. Um,
he's got his SoundCloud samples as we heard at the
(29:25):
top of the episode, of just various things in space
or on the I s s that you hear. And
I think that's one interesting because it's sort of like
a soundtrack tor raiser Head, which has lots of crazy
ambient noises to it. But two really does give you
insight into to what that existence might be like. So yeah,
(29:47):
it might just be uh, you know, some sort of
insight into like how do you deal with fingernail clipping
in space? But still that is is something that you're like,
you know, I never thought about that. I never thought
that just clipping my nails with fly off into the
face of coworkers, or that you'd have to have a
special process for that. Well, if you've ever been hit
in the face by a fingernail flying off of clippers,
then you know that it can be extremely dangerous. Well,
(30:09):
you already know how I feel about fingernail clipping in
the office, so I think you can imagine the sort
of tackles that would be raised for me if I
were an astronaut next to someone who was clipping their fingernails.
But again, this drives home this idea that nothing is
sort of normal or just wrote or boring in space,
because everything has to be rethought, relearned and thought about.
(30:31):
You know, if I can come back to media board
I S S for a minute. A few years back,
they actually released a list of the various books, DVDs
and albums that were available up there, and I imagine
it's changed since then because now everything is even more
and more digital. It just doesn't make sense for there
to be a bunch of physical albums or physical books
located on the I S S. But some of the
musical options included, um The Age of Aquarius by the
(30:54):
Fifth to mention, there was the album American Patriot by
Lee Greenwood. Are was Woven in Time by Steve green
There was a College that you could also listen to,
College Fight Songs Volumes one, two and three, Beethoven Symphony
Number nine, the Very Best of Staying in the Police
Elephant by the Black Eyed Peas. It was a pretty
(31:15):
interesting list. And then when you weren't listening to those musics.
You could watch a DVD of a brother where art
thou uh Serenity Sea Lab and you could you could
also read the likes of Isaac Asimov's Foundation, and so
that reminds me that it's not just that their astronauts
up there doing things um in a very autonomous way.
(31:35):
There is a sort of big brother figure, I guess
you could say, in the form of mission control making
sure that things are going smoothly. And I thought it
would be interesting to bring up that they are keeping
an eye and ear out. In fact, it was a
Russian support staff remember that spotted that the canary in
the coal mine during a mission is the cosmonauts speech rhythms,
(31:58):
because this will tell you early signs of strain. So
even just monitoring the speech patterns gives mission control an
idea of what is going on. And in the case
of the Russian supports staff member, they actually would arrange
surprise gifts when they heard attention in speech patterns like
hidden on the on board already in supply ships. Yeah,
(32:23):
and then then they would arrange for cheery telephone calls
from celebrities or you know, from family members, just to
try to keep everybody's spirits up. Interesting, yeah, the man
behind the curtain. Yeah. And then there's this idea that
you can keep your spirits up by focusing on the
wonder and the awe of it all. Nicole Stott is
an astronaut, and she said I believe that she was
(32:45):
in a two thousand and ten mission. She described the
sense of wonder and awe by saying that one of
the most interesting things to me is that while I'm
still in floating, I can feel the reaction or maybe
better described as a motion through my body from something
as slight as my heart beat. My heart beats, and
I can actually feel like this space station is moving
(33:06):
around me because of it, when in fact it's really
my whole body gently moving in response to it, and
not the station motion at all. Well, there you have it,
life and space, crying in space, emotion and space. Um
that it does make you think. So let's call over
our own Robinot to provide us with a little listener mail.
(33:28):
This first one comes to us from Murphy. Murphy rights
ten and says, Hi, Robert and Julie. I go to
school in Boston, and so I ride the elevators every
day when I ride with other people, I tend to
act with normal elevator behavior, but when I ride them alone,
things get a little strange. After the door closes, I
like to kneel on the ground, then as the elevator
starts to lift, I stand up on one foot, knee out,
(33:50):
elbow in, and one arm in the air. I kind
of hope that if anyone was watching me with X
ray or something, it would look like I was a
superhero leaping up off the ground with amazing drink. Sometimes
I just pay some circles as I go up, and
other times I face with my back to the door
and turn around dramatically after it's full open. I love
the show dirt Pad and stuff. I love everything about that,
(34:14):
including the sign off being on an elevator alone. It
does sort of I don't know if there's anything particularly
weird I do. I guess I'm more prone to to
move around and sort of bob and weave a little
bit if I'm caffeinated. Sure, I think all of us do,
maybe maybe do some personal grooming if there's a mirror, right.
Sometimes I feel like like when you know when the
door opens and you don't think anyone's on and then
(34:35):
you go on. And then but if somebody's already aboard
and they're like and and so there's this awkward moment
where they're like, I'm trying to get off, and then
you're like, I'm sorry, I should have been rushing on
board the elevator. But then like I kind of judge
them too, because I feel like you were hiding in
the shadows or something, you know, like where did you
come from? You should have been more clearly visible. Why
weren't you standing right at the door. I challenge you
next time that happens, to have that discussion with that
(34:58):
person and be like, you know, I have got to
talk you about something. Can I pull you aside and
talk to you about how I feel like you're doing
this intentionally and hiding in the shadows and what that's
doing to me emotionally. Al Right, here's another one. This
one comes to us from Eric, who writes into us
pretty regular and says, when I was a kid, my
dad was part owner of a small plane. We were
(35:18):
flying at night and I noticed a faint blue ring
where the prop was. My dad took his hand and
put it close to the windshield, and tiny bolts of
lightning shot out of his fingers. I tried it too
and felt a slight tingling, but it was fun to
pretend to be Emperor Palpatine. I know St. Almo's fire
isn't lightning, but it was still cool. I've never been
struck myself, but it's a subject that fascinates me. There
(35:40):
was actually a televised soccer game that was struck by lightning.
It was strange because several players were hurt while several
were not. Some of the injured players were much farther
away from where the lightning struck the field than players
who were not hurt. It was later discovered that only
the players with both feet on the ground were the
ones hurt. Eric This just reminded me that one of
our was Sures I'm very fond of, was was asking
(36:02):
about us doing an episode on Tonitas, and recently there's
a news item about the connection between Tonitas and lightning.
So perhaps something that we want to explore the sort
of after effects, and we did explore a bit in
terms of migraines as well. But any who cool, All right, Well, hey,
you guys know the uh the speel If you would
(36:23):
like to talk to us about any of this if
you have some comments about elevators, comments about lightning, comments
about the the I S s about weightlessness in reality
or in fiction, your expectations of life in orbit, or
what do you think about these cool SoundCloud files of
of ambient noise aboard the I S. Would you be
(36:44):
able to sleep through that? Or you, like me, would
you prefer to sleep through that? We'd love to hear
from me. You can find us on Facebook. You can
find us on tumbler. We are Stuff to Blow your
Mind on both of those. You can also find us
on Twitter, where our handle is below the mind. Also
find us on YouTube, where we have of all these videos.
You can find us there is mind Stuff show, but
also I think Stuff to Blow Your Mind redirects to
(37:06):
that as well. And hey, we have a website. You
can find us there at www dot stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Yeah, and uh yeah, that shows
us in the talkies in those videos which we talk um. Also,
if you if you don't mind sharing, let us know
what thing you would miss the most. If you are
on my s S, you can shoot us an email
(37:27):
at blow the Mind at discovery dot com for more
(38:11):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
I know you have seen this video that's been making
the rounds. I know you've seen it because we watched
it together and did a whole episode of our video
(00:24):
series about viral videos about it. But we have the
video about crying in space and what that might consist of. Yeah,
it is a great video was put out by the
I S S Commander, International Space Station Commander Chris Hatfield,
and he demonstrates what it is like to cry in space.
Now he doesn't actually he doesn't. Cried a sad novel
(00:46):
and then begin you know, he's a man, he is
he is manned up to a venture into the void
and he has that he seems like a really nice guy.
But you know, he's got a mustache. He has a mustache,
He has kind of a there's a certain machismo to
anybody that goes up into space, male or female. So um, yeah,
(01:06):
So if an astronaut is going to demonstrate what it's
like to cry and space, they're going to have to
escort some water in their eyes because these there are
some hard boiled eggs. That's right, man or woman, you
are a cowboy in outer space. So but one of
the great things about this video is that it really
does pull back the curtains on what it is like.
There's rote day to day activities, including crying, right because um,
I you know, assume that there are lots of emotional
(01:29):
issues in outer space. And we've talked about this a bit.
It's a high stress environment and as we're gonna get
into in in this in another podcast, and it's a
hostile environment, and and so it's possible that that tears
could occur, and in all likelihood they have occurred. You know,
just we've joked, there's been some pretty tense moments. You know,
they locked themselves in the bathroom and just boo who yeah. Well,
(01:51):
and then also you can there are other reasons tears
can form, you know, various irritations I irritations and sinus
and whatnot. And you know that has happened. But his
work has been great because he has he has done
a really nice job in these videos of shining light
on space minutia. You know, the little tiny bits of
daily life you might not think about, like if if
(02:12):
we didn't know better, I might think that they forgot
to assign him anything to do, and he's just shooting
a bunch of videos. But of course he has plenty
of other well as well. I think that the one
of the cool things about this video is that it
also underscores this idea that, uh, everything in space, everything
in microgravity, behaves differently. So even though we bring our
portable cages with us, right, we bring our own artificial environments, um,
(02:36):
you know in the capsule on the International Space Station, Uh,
we still have to sort of relearn how to be human.
So imagine that you have this really poignant moment that
you're stirring up in your emotions, and all of a sudden,
tears begin to well up in your eyes. Well they
don't just flow down, obviously, because there's no gravity. Instead,
they just pool atop your eyeballs, growing fatter and more
(03:00):
obscenely large, until they break off into this big glob
in front of you and float off. And then somebody
could conceivably turn around and they're about to say, hey,
what are you crying about? And then the whole glob
of your tears just goes into their mouth, that's right,
and so it becomes this otherworldly experience, right, And I
imagine that the first couple of times people crying spaces
(03:20):
probably really fascinating. In fact, I bet that whatever you're
sad about, you know, that kind of no matter, it
no longer matters, right, because in front of you is
this big glob that you can play with. What if
you were missing gravity, You're crying because you miss gravity
so much, And then that just makes it all the
worse because you're like, I can't even cry, like nor
this is how I cry now. My tears mock me. Yeah.
(03:42):
As I mentioned in the video, I'd also um reminded
me a bit of Dante's Inferno. There's a bit there
where Dante and Virgil are in the on the frozen
lake of Casitas at the bottom of Hell, and these
individuals are are frozen in this lake with their heads
facing up, so that when they cry out in tears
and you know, repenting their sins or tears of anger,
(04:04):
the water pools in their sockets and freezes there. Um.
Which you know, if you start to think about it,
if you start to imagine worst case scenarios, you could
possibly envision in a situation where you're crying in space
and there's been a temperature failure in the capsule, temperatures
are plumbering, and those globs of of water in your
(04:25):
eye sockets could potentially freeesaw, so you get eyeball popsicles. Yeah. Nice. Now,
if you're exposed to the void itself, then the tears
will probably just boil off. But that's that's an entirely
different situation. Yeah, an entirely different episode as well. Uh Well,
in order for us to really talk about what it's
like to be human in space exploration, or to relearn
(04:46):
our humanness and how to deal with it, particularly emotions,
we should probably talk about space itself and then the
International Space Station, which is sort of where the grand
experiment has been playing out. Okay, yeah, Well, space itself,
the void, the great black yonder as it is, it's uh,
it's it is a very hostile environment because one of
the one of the things we always have to to
(05:07):
drive home here is that as human beings, we are
a We're an organism that is evolved to live in
a very thin layer of even our own atmosphere, in
our own environment. There are places on Earth that we
cannot live without the significant technological help. So if you
take us out of the planet entirely, then you're you've
(05:29):
taken us into a place of death. Yeah. True. I
mean we don't think about it because we don't see it.
But we are dealing with hundreds of pounds of pressure
in the air, right, We're just kind of used to
moving around in it. But in space, as we know
is that it's a vacuum. There is no air pressure.
Molecules are scant, right. But the way I like to
think of it is is think back to Star Trek.
(05:50):
You see William Schattner walking around um and he's he's
wearing his girdle, of course, and he's very he's very
confident in his in his torso because that girdle is
pressing in. And take that girdle away and he's going
to be very very self conscious, is going to be
totally put off. Nothing's going to feel right, and he's
going to have to relearn how he's doing everything around
the ship because the atmospheric pressure is kind of like
(06:12):
a girdle pressing in on us all the time, and
it becomes such a part of who we are and
how we experienced the world. We we don't even begin
to register it unless there's a significant change. And it's
funny because it's hard to divorce yourself from this uh
notion of air pressure or or even air molecule molecules
not being present because we think it there's empty air,
(06:33):
but of course air is not empty. Is it is heavy,
it is thick, it is pressing in on us and
spaces an environment where that is not present, and the
temperature space is at its coold is just the temperature
of the leftover glow from the Big Bang, the radiation
known as the cosmic microwave background based the entire universe
in the temperature of only two point seven kelvin. That's
(06:55):
less than three degrees above absolute zero or minus four
hundred and fifty five degrees fahrenheit. And of course we
have even more stats about what the environment of space
is like if you don't happen to have a space suit,
but that's a separate podcast episode. Tune in for that.
But if you do have a space suit and your
destination is the International Space Station, you are luck because
(07:16):
this is a habitable artificial satellite in low orbit space,
traveling about seventeen thousand miles plus change an hour in
order to stay in orbit, making gentle curve around the Earth.
And it's up there about two miles kios. And when
you're an orbit like that, things are waitless because they're
all falling at the same velocity. So, um, we should
(07:39):
point out that the I S S is actually in
its thirteenth year. That's right, first module went up in
we keep adding more to it. Yeah, I keep hearing
uh descriptions like frailer park or modules that snapped together,
and well, because that's the only way to do it right.
You can't take the whole you gotta bring it up
piece by piece and a symbol it there. It's kind
(08:00):
of kind of like my my bookshelf here at work.
Like if I ever lose my job, there's no way
I'll get all of them home because I brought them
in a little bit by a little bit by a
little bit. They would taking like a year to clear
all of it out. Yeah, it's just and and you know,
and that and all the other junk. But I've seen
the cost estimated at around a hundred and fifty billion dollars.
But then I've also seen people talk about the cost
of the International Space Station is really being the sort
(08:22):
of thing that you can't maybe more than the cost,
but the value. It's it's something you really can't even
put up a dollar amount on because so much work,
so much effort has gone into it. It is, uh,
it's kind of you know, we don't have much in
the way of super projects today here on Earth, but
it is. It is basically one of the modern marvels.
It is. It is like a pyramid for us. It is,
(08:43):
and there has been a ton of research conducted in
every expedition actually has certain research goals in mind. So
not only is it about maintaining that the actual I
S S, but it's also like, let's let's take a
look at how X behaves in microgravity or some other experiment.
In fact, Expedition three five, which is right now the
(09:04):
the expedition that's in use is um being conducted by
a six person crew. Again, Chris Hadfield is the commander there,
and they are using an instrument called the Alpha bagnetic
Spectrometer two by the way, not one. It is a
state of the art particle physics detector. And recently in
(09:24):
the news there was an item about how they've gotten
a whiff of dark matter the spectrometer, which is really cool. Yeah,
So it's it's right that the I S. S is
not just a place where astronauts pretend to cry and
then take videos. It's not just a place where there
occasionally there's some sort of spat about a toilet going
off the whack. But it is a place on the
(09:45):
cutting edge of science. It is, and it is a very,
as we said, small space of cutting edge science going on.
We're talking about a living space that amounts to the
equivalent of roughly one and a half Boeing seven forty seven.
So let take a listen to what it sounds like
life aboard I S. S S and to some of the
(10:06):
ambient noises, so we can get an idea of what
sort of emotional landscape you might be butting up against
that if you are an astronaut. Now, I love that
(10:33):
because that that sounds like a lot of a lot
of music that I actually listened to. Like, I get
kind of a a pecker meets nurse with wound kind
of vibe there, a little ambient, a little industrial. It's
it's nice. Yeah, And those again we sort of take
uh quietude or you know this when we really want
quiet in our lives, for granted, because there is a
(10:53):
way that you can actually get to some sort of
total silence. Not always right, there's always going to be
ambient noise. I now a world like that, though I
would go to sleep to that, would you? I would
prefer that to absolute silence because absolute silence is just
a little loud to me. M okay. Actually, you had
a good block post about that recently, didn't you, Or
maybe it was on Facebook that you threw that up.
But there was a room that was sealed, wasn't itbook
(11:18):
Absolute Science and Silence, and people could not stand it. Correct. Yeah,
it can be a little maddening, And so I kind
like a little white noise or a little music when
I go to and go to sleep if I can
get it. I used to. I used to live in
a a living space where the bedroom is really close
to the kitchen, and so I could hear the dishwasher
really well at night, man, and I love that. If
(11:39):
it were up to me, I'd have the dishwasher in
the bedroom. Have you seen those toys that are four
babies that basically have like a white noise um sound
and it was such a sound like I guess like
the amnionic fluid rushing through I have not I have
not heard of it. And there's also a heartbeat setting.
Is there a berg noise but a digestion noise? No,
(12:01):
but there should be giddings part because they're probably they
probably identify that as a as as a friend. I'm
just trying to imagine now, um getting one of those
uh sleep CDs and it having proper green meat me
digestion noises on it. Alright, So I mean we're spiraling
off here, um, losing altitude. Must must climb back up
(12:22):
realry back in capsule. Alright. So you're on the I
S S. You're having a bad day. What might a
bad day be in space? Well, I mean, you know,
it can get really bad if you want to get
into worst case scenarios, but just thinking about like a
normal day again, you're in close confines with your co
(12:46):
workers all the time, floating up in each other's business,
having to take care that your lunches don't float into
each other, that there's nothing you know, falling off your
face or or out of your face that's going to
float into the next person. It's true, and just the
act of eating. I've noticed it reminds me of um,
like broom hockey, Like you kind of have to use
(13:08):
your hands to direct food into your mouth, you know,
the goal hole of food. Otherwise, yes, that's going to
hit your coworker in the face. Yeah. And and thecorum
kind of goes out of the out the door a
little bit with the with the with the the eating
in space like the videos you see, it's a totally
different sort of philosophy of eating. It's just kind of
sending things up and catching them and other things. You're
(13:31):
just slurping out of a little box. It's it's interesting.
Do you like that you can kind of chomp it
and catch it in your mouth? Um? But yeah, so
they're they're a little um indignities that could be visited
upon you, right, I mean not to say nothing else
of you know, things can get pretty hectic when you
have situations like oh, something might hit the station and
we all have to crowd into one capsule just in
(13:52):
case we lose the station. I mean that it can
get really stressful as well. Plus they're there are various
stages that people to to go to when they're exposed
to micro microgravity first, I mean, first of all, when
you first step into microgravity UM, you spend the first
phase of your judney, your journey just adjusting to that
cramped environment with an upset stomach, headaches, and space most
(14:15):
space motion sickness. According to NASA's Johnson Space Center, you'll
also experience a drop in sleep efficiency greatly reduced rim.
Uh so, in other words, you may experience dream deprivation
as well. So you're uncomfortable, you're sluggish, and you're still
having to work with all these people. I mean, it's
it's hard enough to deal with people when you when
(14:39):
you're just having a trouble getting a full night sleep,
much less when you have all these other factors going
on UM and path that it gets even weirder. There's
like a second stage UM where you'll you'll you'll have
like a complete adaptation they say, for about six additional weeks.
So once you passed that first slump, you have kind
of like the salad weeks there in space. But then
(15:00):
so you have a sense of euphoria. No, no, not euphoria,
you're just confident. You're like, all right, I got this.
I know how to use the bathroom, I know how
to eat peanut butter in space, Thank you very much.
I know how to move through the space without upsetting
everybody's laptops and everything else. Sleep patterns are decent. Uh,
And I mean that's a whole area. There's the sleeping,
because I've seen the One of the things you have
(15:21):
to remember is when we're sleeping, you you might touch
your face or whatnot. You might have some other kind
of sleep issues that could cause some sort of weirdness
or nightcares. But imagine sleeping and there's you have to
strap your your arms down because otherwise it'll float up
and just start pawing at your face during the night. Well,
it really is it tethered existence. And I was thinking
about this, is that you tether yourself to sleep. You
tether all the items that you need so that they're
(15:43):
available and you can find them. Otherwise everything is just
floating around. Yeah, you can't just set stuff on the nightstand.
You've got to have them to tether. Do your body
or do your bed wrappings. Well, and at this point
to presumably you have adjusted to the lack of diurnal
or nocturnal triggers rights the day and night. Um, you
are beginning to say Okay, so this is a this
(16:04):
is my brain adjusting to this lack of light, this sunlight,
and um a lack of touch as well, because this
is something that's pretty important. We've talked about this before.
It's very comforting to be touched. But obviously you are
you're with coworkers in the first place. Second of all,
it's not really you're not a situation where you would
be cuttling up presumably, And and just imagine too, like
(16:27):
so you wanted to stay cuttle up without you say,
we say you had like a nice blanket with you.
The experience of cuddling up with that blanket would be
extremely different in microgravity because it imagined like a nice
heavy blanket, how it sort of sits on you like
you wouldn't be able to You wouldn't get that because
the gravity is not not strong enough. That's true, right,
just even though the most basic thing of having that
pressure around you is removed. And so in time between
(16:50):
week six and week twelve, things start to get a
little moody, typically with people aboard the space station. Russian
observations found that a number of the symptoms were linked
to boredom and isolation. You become hyper sensitive, irritable, less motivated.
You may fly up the handle whenever a crew member
drifts into your personal space or you know, borrow some
(17:12):
of your stuff, you know, sort of you know, dorm
room annoyances uh too and uh and so yeah, you
get you get more uh sensitivity to allowed noises, uh,
your your musical preferences may change, uh, exhaustion, sleep disturbances,
loss of appetite. You might creep back into everything. It
becomes a very negative time before finally, towards the end
of your journey, you can expect to experience agitation, lack
(17:35):
of control and uh. And then it sort of culminates
with the sense of space euphoria where you finally sort
of rise above it. So you have this whole um
sort of journey through the through the various ranges of
human emotion. There's are huge ups and downs and emotion.
And of course, uh, those people who are administrating the
(17:56):
program are very cognizant of this, and obviously they try
to choose people who are the healthiest mentally. In can
kind of roll with the punches, right, because if you
slight someone, or if you're the one who's slighted, you
cannot go off the handle in this situation. In fact,
one of the crews of sky Lab, NASA's first attempt
(18:16):
at a space station, became so annoyed with their circumstances,
uh that they placed that annoyance on mission control during
their eighty four days in space, and they mutiny need
they felt, and they turned off all communication. Because again,
this is a very specific psychological situation. And if you
(18:36):
need someone to blame, you can either blame each other
or one another, or you can blame mission control, right, yeah,
I mean you can also blame inanimate objects like I.
I've certainly stubbed my toe on like coffee tables before,
and I think if I had an airlock, I would
have I would have sent the coffee table out the airlock.
I think the room bout too. The room was blameless. Really,
(18:59):
I feel like you've turned a corner with Romo, Like
you were, there were some annoyance with it, and now
there's love. I don't remember having annoyance with room. Roomba
requires a certain amount of upkeep and and and PLC
and and battery life to h to maintain its objectives.
So it's it's a much more nurturing relationship than people
tend to think when they first purchased a robotic vacuum cleaner. Well,
(19:23):
and I suppose the same thing is going on with
I F S AND's in the same way. It's kind
of like a giant room, but it's very sensitive and
you have to keep maintaining. I wonder if anyone ever
gets annoyed with a coworker and then goes and talks
to Robina about it, and they're they're just like, oh
my god, Cindy will not shut up, and about the
batter cats, and so you're just you know, completely over there,
(19:44):
just trying to robinot about it. Well, that's the thing, um,
you know, astronauts are basically trained to sort of self soothe,
and they're they're trained in conflict resolution, because the idea
is that you don't you want to be able to
board uh the I S S with as even keel
and as many tools in your toolbox and dealing with
(20:07):
others as opposed to um sort of dealing with the
after effects of that, right because because obviously somebody sulking
and turning off all communication is not really an option,
that is that is to be avoided at all costs.
And I have read to that in instances where there
are some really dire situations that that astronauts or astronauts
(20:28):
can then video sort of their complaint and send it
kind of like MTV reality, like when I think they're
the precursorvice right, um, and then mission control can review
it and sort of give feedback. But those are really
dire situations. The idea is to to board and to
try to self suthe and to correct yourself as many
(20:52):
places as possible. So to that end, another tool in
the toolbox. Uh, well, drugs, right, I mean, medication is
is certainly extremely helpful um in situations such as this,
and there are a number of them. Um. Some of
these are medications that of course deal with just the
some of the physical symptoms of of of weightlessness that
(21:13):
deal with nausea or headaches and what have you. Um.
There are also things to deal with the bone mass.
But then there are there are also various medications that
are very homed in on the mind and the mental
states moti pheno. Right, this is this is a mood enhancement,
memory improving and mood brightening psychostimulants. So this enhances weightfulness,
(21:34):
attention capacity, and vigilance, which is really important, right because
if you're trying to adjust to all of this and
you have research that you have to conduct, if you
have a space walk, you want to be alert. Yeah,
it's all about optimizing their performance, no matter how fatigued
or cranky they are. So because I mean, it comes
down to it. If there's something that really needs to
be done on I s s uh you know, and
it's you know, potentially life or death, it doesn't it
(21:57):
doesn't matter if you're tired, it doesn't matter if you're
in a cranky mood. Here, take three of these and
go do a space wall. Yeah, it's kind of the
suck it up drug. Alright, let's take a quick break
and when we get back, we are going to talk
about this psychotic contingency plan. All right, we're back. So
(22:23):
duct tape it's not just something that's super useful here
on Earth, also in outer space. It turns out, yes, now,
duct tape it comes in handy in cases of space madness. Now,
of course, space madness is one of the great tropes
of of science fiction, the idea that people will go
into space and they'll they'll go a little mad, and
(22:45):
there as we've discussed here. There's a certain amount of
truth to that. It's a it's a it's an environment
that can tax the human body and the human mind.
It can force people uh into into places in their
own minds they're maybe not used to going. Someone could
conceivably snap. So you see it all the time and
films people are always experiencing space. Man's to be it
like Sunshine or Pandorum or I mean, the list goes on.
(23:07):
People go nuts, they do crazy things, and certainly duct
tape could be helpful in this case. If you needed
to duct tape, you're saying, uh, coworkers up and then
force everyone to have a tea party on the outside
of the ship. But it's also goodly specific. But it's
also very useful according to NASA, in dealing with that
um individual before he or she makes everyone go out
(23:28):
for a teat party. It's true. So that's why. In
addition to duct tape, NASA also has tranquilizers on hand
in case anyone flies off the handle in the serious way.
According to a two thousand and seven report from the
a P Associated Press, astronauts keep a few tranquilizers on hand,
and NASA recommends binding the individual for wrists and ankles
(23:49):
with duct tapes, strapping them down with a bungee cord,
and if necessary, sticking them with that tranquilizer. That makes
me feel better, just to know that there is a
contingency plan. Yeah, because again it's a high stakes environment
and if somebody goes off the handle, there's not a
lot of room to deal with them. There's not a break.
You're gonna have to just duct tape them up and
and settle them down with some some soothing pharmaceuticals. It's true,
(24:11):
if someone flies off the handle here at hs W headquarters,
they can just go down to the little store in
our building. They can get some smarties, banana yea cool
off a bit. But yeah, outer space, you've got a
lot of money at stake and a lot of man hours,
so you can't have the craziness going on. Yeah, you
can't just go out for a stroll. I mean, you
(24:33):
could go out for a stroll, but that's because me
even more pressure. So that leads us to this next
sort of idea of how to deal with emotions in space,
how to deal with our humanness, and that is soothing
The Savage Beast with music. Yes, I mean music has
always been a part of our journeys into space. I
mean that if you've followed my Space music block series
(24:55):
at all, you'll see that. In addition to me just
sharing stuff that has very levels of connection to the
space and space exporation, I I've done a number of
posts about astronauts bringing up instruments, smuggling instruments aboard, various
music that has taken place in space or somehow involved
UM space exploration data in one way or another. And uh,
and as we've talked about before, music is a powerful
(25:17):
thing and it can It can really change your mind.
It can control the way you're feeling, it can dictate
the way you feel so and also more importantly, it
is a slice of life on planet Earth that you
can bring up with you. It's another part of our
environment that can be taken into this hostile, unreal environment
and make everything seem a little more normal. Yeah. I mean,
(25:39):
there are a raft of studies that talk about the
healing qualities of are the healing properties of music? Just
recently this week there was an item about how live music,
in particular played in neonatal intensive care units actually helped
premium babies to um sort of recover from some of
those um complications that arise from premature birth much faster.
(26:04):
So you know, imagine, yes, you are in this environment
on the I S S. You've got some sensory deprivation
going on. You're not able to cuddle all the time
and have that twenty second hug that we know releases
oxytose and it makes you feel better unless you're going
and then I don't know how how nice he hugs are,
or you have your hug shirt on. That's true. You
can have technology, can you You can. You can bring
(26:26):
that music with you, you can play it. Chris Hadfield
actually has a special guitar that he plays on board
the I S. S Uh. The thing is, you still
have to try to relearn that right because your hands
are moving differently. He says that when you're moving fast
on the neck of the guitar, you often miss the
threats because on Earth you're used to the weight of
your arm, which kind of helps you track where your
(26:47):
hand is going. But without gravity, you overshoot the mark.
So in this soothing, in this soothing version of music,
you still I'm sure have a bit of frustration getting
to that point we're like, Okay, it's going to take
the week the master playing the guitar again in space.
But when I do, boy will. What I love about
this is that here on Earth he probably doesn't even
(27:08):
rank um. Like, I mean, there's no doubt he doesn't
even rank among the top guitarists there are. There are
many great guitarists on Earth, and he's he's been an
aunt in their shadows. But take the game up into
orbit and he outclasses them all. I bet everyone else
would be just fumbling in spacey shreds. Yeah for sure. UM.
But here's the thing about musical instruments. Uh, any of
(27:31):
them can be brought up, but for safety, they all
have to meet certain standards. Yes, which instrument were, like
an organ would be kind of difficult or yeah, grand
piano would be sort of difficult to do. UM. So
for safety, the current electronic keyboard that's on the ISS
had to be tested to ensure there wasn't a significant
source of electromagnetic radiation which could throw off the instruments
(27:55):
on board. UM. And then all instruments have to be
tested for toxicity, even a trace amount to something like
an oil based chemical like benzene. Is dangerous for astronauts
to inhale an enclosed space. Yeah. Like, I think back
to when I played trumpet in high school and that
thing was just I mean, it's full of oils and spit.
I mean, the spit valve is pretty nasty and disturbing
(28:18):
here on Earth. Imagine an orbit, whereas just you, it's
just I don't even know where how it would collect.
I would have to I have have not researched it.
But now I'm suddenly really interested in trumpet playing in orbit.
I'm sure someone's brought one up. I bet they got
a stink I if they played it, though, right, you
probably have to go in the bathroom cry there and
then play your trumpet there. Um. Another way that I
(28:42):
think is really important that we've seen emerge out of
the I S s UM is this idea of documenting
your experience is a way to sort of cope with
the realities. Yeah. This has been a part of NASA's
plan for a mental stability and space from pretty early on.
You know. Yeah, And I think that it's even just
(29:02):
that these wrote things. This minutia, I think, to me
sort of gets at least me excited about space exploration.
Because it really does pull back the curtain. So not
only does Chris had Feel regularly tweets stunning photos of Earth,
which in and of itself is glorious to behold. Um,
he's got his SoundCloud samples as we heard at the
(29:25):
top of the episode, of just various things in space
or on the I s s that you hear. And
I think that's one interesting because it's sort of like
a soundtrack tor raiser Head, which has lots of crazy
ambient noises to it. But two really does give you
insight into to what that existence might be like. So yeah,
(29:47):
it might just be uh, you know, some sort of
insight into like how do you deal with fingernail clipping
in space? But still that is is something that you're like,
you know, I never thought about that. I never thought
that just clipping my nails with fly off into the
face of coworkers, or that you'd have to have a
special process for that. Well, if you've ever been hit
in the face by a fingernail flying off of clippers,
then you know that it can be extremely dangerous. Well,
(30:09):
you already know how I feel about fingernail clipping in
the office, so I think you can imagine the sort
of tackles that would be raised for me if I
were an astronaut next to someone who was clipping their fingernails.
But again, this drives home this idea that nothing is
sort of normal or just wrote or boring in space,
because everything has to be rethought, relearned and thought about.
(30:31):
You know, if I can come back to media board
I S S for a minute. A few years back,
they actually released a list of the various books, DVDs
and albums that were available up there, and I imagine
it's changed since then because now everything is even more
and more digital. It just doesn't make sense for there
to be a bunch of physical albums or physical books
located on the I S S. But some of the
musical options included, um The Age of Aquarius by the
(30:54):
Fifth to mention, there was the album American Patriot by
Lee Greenwood. Are was Woven in Time by Steve green
There was a College that you could also listen to,
College Fight Songs Volumes one, two and three, Beethoven Symphony
Number nine, the Very Best of Staying in the Police
Elephant by the Black Eyed Peas. It was a pretty
(31:15):
interesting list. And then when you weren't listening to those musics.
You could watch a DVD of a brother where art
thou uh Serenity Sea Lab and you could you could
also read the likes of Isaac Asimov's Foundation, and so
that reminds me that it's not just that their astronauts
up there doing things um in a very autonomous way.
(31:35):
There is a sort of big brother figure, I guess
you could say, in the form of mission control making
sure that things are going smoothly. And I thought it
would be interesting to bring up that they are keeping
an eye and ear out. In fact, it was a
Russian support staff remember that spotted that the canary in
the coal mine during a mission is the cosmonauts speech rhythms,
(31:58):
because this will tell you early signs of strain. So
even just monitoring the speech patterns gives mission control an
idea of what is going on. And in the case
of the Russian supports staff member, they actually would arrange
surprise gifts when they heard attention in speech patterns like
hidden on the on board already in supply ships. Yeah,
(32:23):
and then then they would arrange for cheery telephone calls
from celebrities or you know, from family members, just to
try to keep everybody's spirits up. Interesting, yeah, the man
behind the curtain. Yeah. And then there's this idea that
you can keep your spirits up by focusing on the
wonder and the awe of it all. Nicole Stott is
an astronaut, and she said I believe that she was
(32:45):
in a two thousand and ten mission. She described the
sense of wonder and awe by saying that one of
the most interesting things to me is that while I'm
still in floating, I can feel the reaction or maybe
better described as a motion through my body from something
as slight as my heart beat. My heart beats, and
I can actually feel like this space station is moving
(33:06):
around me because of it, when in fact it's really
my whole body gently moving in response to it, and
not the station motion at all. Well, there you have it,
life and space, crying in space, emotion and space. Um
that it does make you think. So let's call over
our own Robinot to provide us with a little listener mail.
(33:28):
This first one comes to us from Murphy. Murphy rights
ten and says, Hi, Robert and Julie. I go to
school in Boston, and so I ride the elevators every
day when I ride with other people, I tend to
act with normal elevator behavior, but when I ride them alone,
things get a little strange. After the door closes, I
like to kneel on the ground, then as the elevator
starts to lift, I stand up on one foot, knee out,
(33:50):
elbow in, and one arm in the air. I kind
of hope that if anyone was watching me with X
ray or something, it would look like I was a
superhero leaping up off the ground with amazing drink. Sometimes
I just pay some circles as I go up, and
other times I face with my back to the door
and turn around dramatically after it's full open. I love
the show dirt Pad and stuff. I love everything about that,
(34:14):
including the sign off being on an elevator alone. It
does sort of I don't know if there's anything particularly
weird I do. I guess I'm more prone to to
move around and sort of bob and weave a little
bit if I'm caffeinated. Sure, I think all of us do,
maybe maybe do some personal grooming if there's a mirror, right.
Sometimes I feel like like when you know when the
door opens and you don't think anyone's on and then
(34:35):
you go on. And then but if somebody's already aboard
and they're like and and so there's this awkward moment
where they're like, I'm trying to get off, and then
you're like, I'm sorry, I should have been rushing on
board the elevator. But then like I kind of judge
them too, because I feel like you were hiding in
the shadows or something, you know, like where did you
come from? You should have been more clearly visible. Why
weren't you standing right at the door. I challenge you
next time that happens, to have that discussion with that
(34:58):
person and be like, you know, I have got to
talk you about something. Can I pull you aside and
talk to you about how I feel like you're doing
this intentionally and hiding in the shadows and what that's
doing to me emotionally. Al Right, here's another one. This
one comes to us from Eric, who writes into us
pretty regular and says, when I was a kid, my
dad was part owner of a small plane. We were
(35:18):
flying at night and I noticed a faint blue ring
where the prop was. My dad took his hand and
put it close to the windshield, and tiny bolts of
lightning shot out of his fingers. I tried it too
and felt a slight tingling, but it was fun to
pretend to be Emperor Palpatine. I know St. Almo's fire
isn't lightning, but it was still cool. I've never been
struck myself, but it's a subject that fascinates me. There
(35:40):
was actually a televised soccer game that was struck by lightning.
It was strange because several players were hurt while several
were not. Some of the injured players were much farther
away from where the lightning struck the field than players
who were not hurt. It was later discovered that only
the players with both feet on the ground were the
ones hurt. Eric This just reminded me that one of
our was Sures I'm very fond of, was was asking
(36:02):
about us doing an episode on Tonitas, and recently there's
a news item about the connection between Tonitas and lightning.
So perhaps something that we want to explore the sort
of after effects, and we did explore a bit in
terms of migraines as well. But any who cool, All right, Well, hey,
you guys know the uh the speel If you would
(36:23):
like to talk to us about any of this if
you have some comments about elevators, comments about lightning, comments
about the the I S s about weightlessness in reality
or in fiction, your expectations of life in orbit, or
what do you think about these cool SoundCloud files of
of ambient noise aboard the I S. Would you be
(36:44):
able to sleep through that? Or you, like me, would
you prefer to sleep through that? We'd love to hear
from me. You can find us on Facebook. You can
find us on tumbler. We are Stuff to Blow your
Mind on both of those. You can also find us
on Twitter, where our handle is below the mind. Also
find us on YouTube, where we have of all these videos.
You can find us there is mind Stuff show, but
also I think Stuff to Blow Your Mind redirects to
(37:06):
that as well. And hey, we have a website. You
can find us there at www dot stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Yeah, and uh yeah, that shows
us in the talkies in those videos which we talk um. Also,
if you if you don't mind sharing, let us know
what thing you would miss the most. If you are
on my s S, you can shoot us an email
(37:27):
at blow the Mind at discovery dot com for more
(38:11):
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.