The romance of living in space and space travel skyrocketed as I was growing up. Post WWII. Sputnik, Disney’s Man in Space, NASA’s man on the moon, Star Trek, … classic sci-fi books …
Maybe back then millionaires dreamed of retiring in space (as a refuge from the Cold War). Now maybe some billionaires dream of extended lives in space havens.
But without artificial gravity, what’s old age like in space? NASA astronaut Don Pettit‘s missions help keep that real. What we can stomach, eh. Back to earth on his 70th birthday.
“I’ve got a few creaks and groans in my body, but basically I feel the same as I did 20 years ago, and coming back to gravity is provocative,” he said.
“I love being in space,” he said. “When you’re sleeping, you’re just floating, and your body, all those little aches and pains heal up. You feel like you’re 30 years old again and free of pain, free of everything. So I love being on orbit. It’s a great place to be for me and my physiology.”
Maybe Pettit will outlive the ISS? Rocketman forever.
• ars technica > “What’s it like to be 70 years old in space? ‘All those little aches and pains heal up.’” by Eric Berger (Apr 28, 2-25) – NASA astronaut Don Pettit did not rule out flying into space again.
John Glenn, then 77, was older when he [Pettit] went to space. But no one as old as Pettit had spent as long as he had in orbit, 220 days, on a mission. … All told, he has lived in space for 590 days, the third-most all-time among NASA astronauts.
“It’s good to be back on planet Earth,” he said. “As much as I love exploring space, going into the frontier, and making observations, you do reach a time when it’s time to come home.”
“… it isn’t about the large muscle groups [worked out by resistance training in space]. It’s about the little, tiny muscles that everybody forgets about because they’re just there and they work. When you’re in weightlessness, these muscles don’t work anymore.
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