Lost (Dignity) In Space
©2004, Gordon Kirkland

Space may be the final frontier where people take one small step for man in a galaxy far, far away, but after spending a day at the Kennedy Space Center, I think I will let other people take those small steps. Seeing everything about the space program up close – and at times a little too personal – took some of the luster and glamour from the life of an astronaut.

The people at the Kennedy Space Centre invited me for a visit to help with the research I am doing for an article about accessibility for the disabled at tourist destinations. They have put a lot of work into making the visitor center more accessible, and they let me try to prove it by opening the doors to the whole facility for me. I had a thoroughly enjoyable day there and found that the accessibility was better than I have found at other venues.

Despite all of that, it made me quite glad that NASA will not likely ever invite me to go for a ride into that final frontier.

TV has tried to tell us that we can travel through space in comfort and joy. Kirk and Picard needed elevators to move from one part of their ships to another. I had a close look at the capsules that took man into space in the race to the moon. One thing was clear.
John Glen would have needed a shoehorn to move far enough to scratch his butt.

Spacecraft are not very big. A Volkswagen Beetle looks like a Hummer beside the tin cans these guys took to the moon. I’ve been in car pools that started to smell bad after a couple of stoplights. Can you imagine what these capsules would be like after a week or so in space?

I can only hope that they never sent up freeze dried chili for their space meals.

If the concept of long-term claustrophobia wasn’t enough to put me off signing up for the astronaut program, my lunch with John Fabian certainly did. John was aboard two shuttle missions in the early Eighties, after an Air Force career that saw him pilot ninety combat missions in Viet Nam.

His description of attempting bathroom functions in space was not something NASA could use in a recruitment video.

I’ll keep you from having to read the details of what can happen when a $50-million toilet malfunctions, but let’s just say it wasn’t something you’d want to hear while eating a desert containing chocolate chips and nuts.

I may never look at a chocolate chip or a peanut the same again.

John also said that the single onboard toilet caused another problem during the early hours of the flight. Apparently in zero gravity the water in the body moves up to the top third of the body. This, in turn, causes the brain to tell your kidneys and bladder to get rid of it. As a result, for the first few hours of every Shuttle flight there is a line-up of astronauts waiting to use the facilities.

I would imagine that it is hard to cross your legs and keep them crossed in space, so if you ever get the chance to go, grab the seat closest one to the toilet, and follow your mother’s advice and go before you leave.

He also told me about the problems astronauts face with a form of motion sickness in space. Surprisingly, the people who suffer from motion sickness on Earth don’t feel it in space. The ones who don’t get it down here, have a real problem when they get into space. NASA, like all good government agencies, had to come up with a unique name for the problem. They call it Space Adaptation Syndrome.

“Astronauts,” said John, “Just call it vomiting.”

See what a fun guy he is to share a meal with?

I’m not a big fan of fear. I could quite happily go through my life without ever experiencing anything remotely close to sitting on a launch pad in the final seconds before liftoff. John tried to put it into a perspective I could understand. He said that in comparison with being married for forty-two years, the fear experienced during a Shuttle liftoff was nothing.

Maybe so, but I don’t think I could handle the combination.