Marcos Jaramillo | My life in a blog

Would you go to outer space?

I was reading BBC’s website today (because I don’t trust getting my news from the communist news network) I ran across an article about today’s launch. Not only is Endeavour bringing the new Leonardo module to double the living space on the space station, they are also bring a water regeneration system. This new system distils, filters, ionizes and oxidizes wastewater into fresh water for drinking. So basically the astronauts are recycling their piss into drinking water, which after all the reverse osmosis is perfectly safe it reminds me of my two favorite questions I get about working at NASA.

Whenever I meet someone new they always ask me the same questions:
1. What do I do at NASA and 2. Would I ever want to be astronaut/go into space. I just combine those questions together because I think they are essentially the same thing. I will answer the first question when I have more time and you can check out my portfolio for a more formal answer. So this brings me to my second question, would I ever want to go to space? From all my experience working here he answer is simple. I most definitely would not want to fly in space. Don’t get me wrong it would be awesome to experience living on the moon and mars for a few days, maybe a few weeks but I would miss everybody I knew back home on earth. Not to mention you would barely have any leisure time. You would constantly be checking and rechecking all the equipment making sure everything is working correctly (life support, guidance, propulsion). The food would always be room temperature because there is no refrigerator and no microwave. It is super noisy with all the computers and machines running and above all you have a water shortage. Now I think that if I had to I could get over drinking my own pee to survive. But now I ask you… would you be able to drink someone else’s pee? They say that you can taste of smell anything but I’m sure it’s still hard to swallow knowing where this water came from.

Reply