Well, our first try to live in space didn’t go too well. But let’s not give up so fast. As we learned, a human in space without protection, isn’t a good idea. Let’s make another run. But this time, we go a bit more prepared.
So, image you are out there again, floating. But this time you are surrounded by a steel cylinder with a diameter of about 9 meters. It has a length of about 20 meters. Both ends are sealed with steel plates. Inside it contains a mixture of gases, let’s say 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen. The mixture has a pressure like at sea level on Earth. And as we have pressure, we also have temperature. Let’s say it is about 22 °C.
After you have in- and exhaled a couple of times, you realize, it’s completely dark. There is not the faintest source of light anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you open or close your eyes. There’s nothing to see and nothing you can use to orient yourself. Not even a sensation of up or down because you’re weightlessly floating. You feel completely lost.
That’s when you notice little, short flashes of light. They appear from time to time and disappear as fast as they came. The most of them are white, a couple are blue or have other colors. You think about their shape and come up with spots or streaks as words to describe it.
Well, that distracted you a bit. But you’re still lost. And you might also start to feel a bit nauseous. Before it gets too much to handle, how can we get some light inside? What about a window? Let’s image, we have one in the side of our cylinder. Small and stable enough to hold our pressure. Facing in the rough direction of the sun, so we get a bit of sunlight inside. Enough to let us see the inner walls of our cylinder.
As you have nothing else to do right now, let’s get over to that windows. But wait a second, you can’t walk, and you have nothing you can use to pull you over there. The only thing you can do, try to swim through the air. It’s working, but it’s very slow and tiering. Finally, you arrive at the window and can enjoy the view. While already starting to float off again.
Read my background post, if you want to dive deeper into the topics in this part.
There will be more stories in this series, as well as posts about the background of the stories.