One of the fun facts about astronauts is that many astronauts, after returning to Earth, have to literally re-learn how to walk. However, these are some of the interesting, fun facts about astronauts you never know.
Astronauts can be called one of the most courageous and purposeful people in the world. Every day they meet face to face with the unknown, risk their lives and put up with deteriorating health in zero gravity, but they move science forward.
The dream of space, which accompanies every astronaut throughout his life, becomes its very goal, and the most persistent and brave of them will forever inscribe their names in history.
20 facts about Astronauts
- During their stay in space, they consume most of the products in liquid, more precisely, gel-like form, from tubes.
- On board the ISS, astronauts constantly exhaust themselves with physical exercises on special simulators so as not to lose their shape in zero gravity.
- Since gravity is absent in zero gravity, the human spine straightens, and astronauts, while in orbit, add a few centimeters in height.
- The first person to fly into space was, as you know, Yuri Gagarin. He was ahead of the Americans, who also intended to launch a spacecraft with a man on board, by just a few days.
- Many astronauts, after returning to Earth, have to literally re-learn how to walk.
- In the United States, astronauts are called astronauts, and in China, taikonauts.
- It is often difficult for astronauts who have spent a lot of time in zero gravity to get used to the fact that objects have weight and fall if they simply release them in the air.
- Neil Armstrong was the first astronaut to set foot on the lunar surface, who trained for this purpose for about a decade.
- In the entire history of astronautics, not a single person has died directly in space. Although there were, of course, fatal disasters, and quite a few, they all happened during takeoffs, landings or tests.
- Buzz Aldrin, the second person on the Moon to set foot on its surface right after Neil Armstrong, said that astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space, because initially NASA wanted to send a monkey into space, but the space agency received a bunch of letters in defense of animal rights, and not one came to Shepard’s defense. As a result, Shepard flew.
- All the same Buzz Aldrin, already a 72-year-old astronautics veteran, once knocked down an overly annoying and impolite citizen with a blow to the jaw, who in an ultimatum demanded that he confess that he had never been to the Moon, or swear otherwise on the Bible.
- The Apollo 11 cosmonauts who returned to the Moon passed customs control, and in the customs declaration the cargo was recorded in documents as “moon dust and stones”.
- For the first time after falling into zero gravity, many astronauts suffer from space sickness, which has the same symptoms as sea sickness – dizziness and tightness.
- The Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka spent most of all in space in space – as much as 878 days in total. The previous record belonged to Valery Polyakov – 438 days.
- Due to a long stay in a state of weightlessness, the bones of astronauts become fragile, as they rapidly lose calcium.
- In a state of weightlessness, even those of them who snored on Earth stop snoring.
- The cosmonauts on board the ISS observe 16 sunrises and sunsets per standard day, so for convenience, they adhere to the conditional time.
- Astronauts have to swallow the foam from the toothpaste when brushing their teeth, since it cannot be spit out in zero gravity. Their pasta, of course, is special, and it is safe to swallow it, albeit not too pleasant.
- The first person to walk into open space in a spacesuit was the Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Grechko. He spent 23 minutes 41 seconds outside the ship, and barely managed to get back, as the spacesuit was greatly inflated in space, and he could not enter the airlock.
- The first place in terms of the number of spacewalks and the time spent there is occupied by the Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyov, who made 16 exits and spent a total of 82 hours and 22 minutes outside the spacecraft.
