They actually made a formal set of guidelines for practice practice aboard ISS when the first Malaysian astronaut got to go to space!

Planetes, by Yukimura Makoto

Not mentioned here is how an observant Muslim prays in space, and it is disarmingly simple:

Because Allah is pleased you are making the effort to pray, the mechanics of how you do it aren't important!

The Soviets kicked our ass in the space race its so dope "Oh you went to the Moon, yeah thats cool I guess, we got pictures of fucking Venus, you ever been to Venus? No the fuck you did not."

You know why you probably never saw these pictures during your space units in high school? It's because our educations system would be forced to admit the commies did some cool fucking shit.

(don't go off about Venus...be NORMAL about VENUS!!)

Did y'all know that these are the ONLY photos we have of the surface of Venus because it's atmosphere is so pressurized that every probe that Russia has managed to get there is DESTROYED??? Did-did you know that on Venus it RAINS SULFURIC ACID AND NOT WATER?? Ok but do you know it is so hot that the atmosphere MELTS LEAD?? Or--or that there are volcanoes that are constantly erupting BRIMSTONE??? Because its surface is basically a hellscape??

Ya know...Venus?? The Morning Star?? Lucifer??

Anyway, the fact that scientists in the fucking 60s managed to get a probe ONTO Venus is wild enough, but then they DID IT AGAIN IN THE 70S AND GOT A FUCKING PIC OF THE SURFACE OF DEATH AND DOOM!!

It's just like....like really cool. Is all. Venus is pretty cool.

we had these in school? right in the textbooks and everything, marked as taken by soviet probes.

Yep, same here.

Main reason you don't see more images from the surface of Venus? The two panoramas here are pretty much it. Because as robust as the soviet probes were, they melted shortly after taking these photos.

We are makings of a great forging and in the space between the celestial bodies, the scent of bright embers persists even in the dark.

dear diary . i no longer want to go to space because today i was informed that it smells like the interstate

there are 2 types of people

Alas, while these smell descriptions may be accurate (and they are, from what I’ve learned) their source isn’t nearly as romantic as ‘the smell of stardust’.

When visiting the vacuum of space, we do so by donning space suits then evacuating all the air from a small room -- an airlock. Once in vacuum, astronauts open the door to go cavort outside for a time. Then when done cavorting, they return and reverse the process: seal the door against the outside vacuum, pump air back into the airlock.

So when astronauts remove their helmets and take a sniff, what are they smelling?

They’re getting an intense dose of whatever the inside of the airlock is made from! Metals, plastics, rubber gaskets, wires, lubrication, chemicals. Because whenever you expose an object to vacuum it outgasses dramatically. That’s basically what New Car Smell is: all the materials inside the car emitting particles you can smell in an enclosed space.

So that ‘hot metal’ or ‘gasoline’ scent is not space... it’s whatever the spacecraft is made from. If spaceships were made of wood then 'space’ would smell like freshly cut timber.

And the moon smelling like gunpowder?

That’s because moon dust has a lot of iron in it. And iron oxidizes when exposed to our atmosphere, and rapidly oxidizing iron smells very much like spent gunpowder. 

The Apollo astronauts complained bitterly about how moondust from their moonwalks got into everything, because no matter how carefully you try, it clings to every surface and can’t easily be brushed off, so the LEM always smelled like a recent gunfight.

Additional fun fact: older moon rocks that have not been preserved in a neutral atmosphere no longer have that smell. Because they have completely outgassed and have nothing left to give.

We are makings of a great forging and in the space between the celestial bodies, the scent of bright embers persists even in the dark.

dear diary . i no longer want to go to space because today i was informed that it smells like the interstate

The scent varies depending on where the astronauts operate.

Space Shuttle astronauts report a chemical, metal, gasoline like smell upon returning from EVA. That’s probably due to outgassing forced by vacuum upon the materials that make up the space suits & airlock interior.

The ISS smells like sweat and last night’s dinner, because that’s what you get from cramming 4 to 7 people into a volume roughly the size of a large apartment over the span of 22+ years and never being able to properly air out the place.

Apollo astronauts say moon dust smells like spent gunpowder. That’s due to the composition of moon dust, which contains 15% to 17% iron, oxidizing at high speed from being exposed to oxygen for the first time in a few billion years.

You know what else contains a lot of iron? Human blood.

But you won’t hear astronauts describing the moon as smelling like blood because that’s not NASA-approved PR speak.

BREAKING NEWS

Jeff Bezos did not, repeat, did not explode into a giant fireball and die horribly in today’s near-space flight. His body was not torn into thousands of tiny bits nor was each piece of Jeff Bezos set on fire. He is apparently alive and unhurt, saved by the incredible pile of money that bravely sacrificed itself, bursting into flames at 9:03 am today.

Here are photos of the penisrocket that Jeff Bezos strapped himself into earlier today that flew very close to space which did not explode and kill Jeff Bezos.

UPDATE

Not-dead Jeff Bezos who, despite public expectations, did not burn to a horrifying crisp during his almost-space flight aboard his Blue Organ penisrocket has made this remarkable statement:

Amazon customers & employees, shocked that Jeff Bezos is not dead from the giant fireball visible from the ground that did not occur, have expressed sorrow and disappointment that Jeff Bezos landed safely after his sub-orbital non-spaceflight earlier today. 

The Blue Organ penisrocket, constructed entirely from hubris, was made possible by Jeff Bezos’ $196 billion dollar fortune earned in part by not letting Amazon employees go to the bathroom.

UPDATE JULY 27 2021

One week after the tragic events of July 20th, investigators are still trying to piece together what happened when Jeff Bezos flew his giant Blue Organ penisrocket into near-space then landed it without crashing and exploding into fifty quadrillion flaming bits of wreckage.

Onlookers were shocked when the burning remains of Jeff Bezos did not impact the ground, creating a massive fireball and crater. To everyone’s dismay, Jeff Bezos remains alive and well.

SpaceX declined to comment on these horrific events.

BREAKING NEWS

Jeff Bezos did not, repeat, did not explode into a giant fireball and die horribly in today’s near-space flight. His body was not torn into thousands of tiny bits nor was each piece of Jeff Bezos set on fire. He is apparently alive and unhurt, saved by the incredible pile of money that bravely sacrificed itself, bursting into flames at 9:03 am today.

Here are photos of the penisrocket that Jeff Bezos strapped himself into earlier today that flew very close to space which did not explode and kill Jeff Bezos.

UPDATE

Not-dead Jeff Bezos who, despite public expectations, did not burn to a horrifying crisp during his almost-space flight aboard his Blue Organ penisrocket has made this remarkable statement:

Amazon customers & employees, shocked that Jeff Bezos is not dead from the giant fireball visible from the ground that did not occur, have expressed sorrow and disappointment that Jeff Bezos landed safely after his sub-orbital non-spaceflight earlier today. 

The Blue Organ penisrocket, constructed entirely from hubris, was made possible by Jeff Bezos’ $196 billion dollar fortune earned in part by not letting Amazon employees go to the bathroom.

A celebration of the Space Shuttle.  Art by Robert McCall.

5 Ways the Moon Landing Changed Life on Earth

When Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the Moon 50 years ago, he famously said “that’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” He was referring to the historic milestone of exploring beyond our own planet — but there’s also another way to think about that giant leap: the massive effort to develop technologies to safely reach, walk on the Moon and return home led to countless innovations that have improved life on Earth.

Armstrong took one small step on the lunar surface, but the Moon landing led to a giant leap forward in innovations for humanity.

Here are five examples of technology developed for the Apollo program that we’re still using today:

1. Food Safety Standards

As soon as we started planning to send astronauts into space, we faced the problem of what to feed them — and how to ensure the food was safe to eat. Can you imagine getting food poisoning on a spacecraft, hundreds of thousands of miles from home?

We teamed up with a familiar name in food production: the Pillsbury Company. The company soon realized that existing quality control methods were lacking. There was no way to be certain, without extensive testing that destroyed the sample, that the food was free of bacteria and toxins.

Pillsbury revamped its entire food-safety process, creating what became the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system. Its aim was to prevent food safety problems from occurring, rather than catch them after the fact. They managed this by analyzing and controlling every link in the chain, from the raw materials to the processing equipment to the people handling the food.

Today, this is one of the space program’s most far-reaching spinoffs. Beyond keeping the astronaut food supply safe, the Hazard Analysis and Critical Point system has also been adopted around the world — and likely reduced the risk of bacteria and toxins in your local grocery store. 

2. Digital Controls for Air and Spacecraft

The Apollo spacecraft was revolutionary for many reasons. Did you know it was the first vehicle to be controlled by a digital computer? Instead of pushrods and cables that pilots manually adjusted to manipulate the spacecraft, Apollo’s computer sent signals to actuators at the flick of a switch.

Besides being physically lighter and less cumbersome, the switch to a digital control system enabled storing large quantities of data and programming maneuvers with complex software.

Before Apollo, there were no digital computers to control airplanes either. Working together with the Navy and Draper Laboratory, we adapted the Apollo digital flight computer to work on airplanes. Today, whatever airline you might be flying, the pilot is controlling it digitally, based on the technology first developed for the flight to the Moon.

3. Earthquake-ready Shock Absorbers

A shock absorber descended from Apollo-era dampers and computers saves lives by stabilizing buildings during earthquakes.

Apollo’s Saturn V rockets had to stay connected to the fueling tubes on the launchpad up to the very last second. That presented a challenge: how to safely move those tubes out of the way once liftoff began. Given how fast they were moving, how could we ensure they wouldn’t bounce back and smash into the vehicle?

We contracted with Taylor Devices, Inc. to develop dampers to cushion the shock, forcing the company to push conventional shock isolation technology to the limit.

Shortly after, we went back to the company for a hydraulics-based high-speed computer. For that challenge, the company came up with fluidic dampers—filled with compressible fluid—that worked even better. We later applied the same technology on the Space Shuttle’s launchpad.

The company has since adapted these fluidic dampers for buildings and bridges to help them survive earthquakes. Today, they are successfully protecting structures in some of the most quake-prone areas of the world, including Tokyo, San Francisco and Taiwan.

4. Insulation for Space

We’ve all seen runners draped in silvery “space blankets” at the end of marathons, but did you know the material, called radiant barrier insulation, was actually created for space?

Temperatures outside of Earth’s atmosphere can fluctuate widely, from hundreds of degrees below to hundreds above zero. To better protect our astronauts, during the Apollo program we invented a new kind of effective, lightweight insulation.

We developed a method of coating mylar with a thin layer of vaporized metal particles. The resulting material had the look and weight of thin cellophane packaging, but was extremely reflective—and pound-for-pound, better than anything else available.

Today the material is still used to protect astronauts, as well as sensitive electronics, in nearly all of our missions. But it has also found countless uses on the ground, from space blankets for athletes to energy-saving insulation for buildings. It also protects essential components of MRI machines used in medicine and much, much more.

5. Healthcare Monitors

Patients in hospitals are hooked up to sensors that send important health data to the nurse’s station and beyond — which means when an alarm goes off, the right people come running to help.

This technology saves lives every day. But before it reached the ICU, it was invented for something even more extraordinary: sending health data from space down to Earth.

When the Apollo astronauts flew to the Moon, they were hooked up to a system of sensors that sent real-time information on their blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate and more to a team on the ground.

The system was developed for us by Spacelabs Healthcare, which quickly adapted it for hospital monitoring. The company now has telemetric monitoring equipment in nearly every hospital around the world, and it is expanding further, so at-risk patients and their doctors can keep track of their health even outside the hospital.

Only a few people have ever walked on the Moon, but the benefits of the Apollo program for the rest of us continue to ripple widely.

In the years since, we have continued to create innovations that have saved lives, helped the environment, and advanced all kinds of technology.

Now we’re going forward to the Moon with the Artemis program and on to Mars — and building ever more cutting-edge technologies to get us there. As with the many spinoffs from the Apollo era, these innovations will transform our lives for generations to come.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

How A 10-Year-Old-Boy Helped Apollo 11 Return To Earth

This story is part of the StoryCorps series of conversations.

A half-century ago, America’s dreams were realized in space. The power of U.S. innovation and spirit took the Apollo 11 crew to the moon and back.

That mission was possible because of a diverse team of engineers, astronauts and mathematicians. It was also possible thanks to the help of one 10-year-old boy who was in the right place at the right time.

In 1969, Greg Force lived in Guam, where his father, Charles Force, worked as the director of a NASA tracking station that helped connect the capsule with NASA Mission Control for voice communication.

“I loved it,” Force told his daughter, Abby Force, in a StoryCorps interview. “I looked up to him a huge amount. Not only was it a prestigious job, but he was very good at it.”

Read the full story here

The kid literally helped fix a giant communications antenna. Cool story. 

[OC] The LRV in the technology museum Speyer, germany.

Germany went to the moon and STOLE our lunar rover just so they could put it in a shitty museum. Sign this petition to demand it’s immediate return to America!

delicious space paste for Valentina Tereshkova

The first one is actually the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), and only held two crewmembers for the actual moon landing. There are no seats; the pilots stood... since the G-forces experienced are negligible as compared to the other vehicles shown. 

The part of Apollo that carried all three was the Command Module and it looked like this:

Astronauts laid on their backs to better withstand the massive G-forces of launch and later, re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere -- just like Dragon V2.