Astronaut: Living with gravity a drag
By Irene Klotz |
May 26, 2013, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
BACK on Earth, Canadian astronaut and cyberspace tweeter Chris Hadfield is getting a rough re-introduction to gravity after a five-month stint aboard the International Space Station.
Hadfield became a social media rock star with his zero-gravity version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and continuous commentary on Twitter about life in orbit.
But living without gravity for five months has left him dizzy, weak and prematurely aged, the former commander told reporters during a video webcast from Houston. A veteran of three space flights, he wears a pressure suit under his clothes to help circulation as his body re-adapts to getting blood back to his brain.
"Without the constant pull-down of gravity, your body gets a whole new normal, and my body was quite happy living in space without gravity," Hadfield, 53, said in a video conference call with Canadian reporters on May 13, three days after returning to Earth.
The video conference was posted on the Canadian Space Agency's UStream channel.
"Right after landing I felt the weight of my lips and tongue ... I hadn't realized I'd learned to talk with a weightless tongue," he said.
He is suffering overall body soreness, particularly in his neck and back, which are again having to support his head after months in weightlessness.
"It feels like I played full-contact hockey, but it's getting better by the hour," Hadfield said. "The subtle things and the big things are taking time and they are coming back one by one."
Hadfield, who is the first from Canada to command a space station crew, NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko landed in Kazakhstan last Monday. He and Marshburn were then flown to Houston to begin rehabilitation.
As a departing finale Hadfield created a music video rendering of Bowie's classic "Space Oddity," which as of May 16 had 13 millions hits on YouTube.
Hadfield, the lead singer and bass guitarist in the all-astronaut rock band Max Q, said it is too early to think about what he will do next.
"I'm still trying to stand up straight. I have to sit down in the shower so I don't faint and fall. I don't have calluses on the bottom of my feet yet, so it's like walking around on hot coals."
It usually takes about three weeks until a returning astronaut can return to driving, according to the Canadian Space Agency.
"We're sort of tottering around like two old duffers in an old folks home," Hadfield said, referring to his crew mate Marshburn.
Hadfield's orbital odyssey ended with a parachute descent of their Soyuz space capsule onto the steppes of Kazakhstan.
"We hit the Earth just like a car crash," Hadfield said. "There was wind so we rolled up on our side. I was the guy hanging from the ceiling. Our first true sense of being home was a window full of Earth dirt and the smell of spring and the grasses in Kazakhstan wafting in through the open hatch."
Hadfield became a social media rock star with his zero-gravity version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and continuous commentary on Twitter about life in orbit.
But living without gravity for five months has left him dizzy, weak and prematurely aged, the former commander told reporters during a video webcast from Houston. A veteran of three space flights, he wears a pressure suit under his clothes to help circulation as his body re-adapts to getting blood back to his brain.
"Without the constant pull-down of gravity, your body gets a whole new normal, and my body was quite happy living in space without gravity," Hadfield, 53, said in a video conference call with Canadian reporters on May 13, three days after returning to Earth.
The video conference was posted on the Canadian Space Agency's UStream channel.
"Right after landing I felt the weight of my lips and tongue ... I hadn't realized I'd learned to talk with a weightless tongue," he said.
He is suffering overall body soreness, particularly in his neck and back, which are again having to support his head after months in weightlessness.
"It feels like I played full-contact hockey, but it's getting better by the hour," Hadfield said. "The subtle things and the big things are taking time and they are coming back one by one."
Hadfield, who is the first from Canada to command a space station crew, NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko landed in Kazakhstan last Monday. He and Marshburn were then flown to Houston to begin rehabilitation.
As a departing finale Hadfield created a music video rendering of Bowie's classic "Space Oddity," which as of May 16 had 13 millions hits on YouTube.
Hadfield, the lead singer and bass guitarist in the all-astronaut rock band Max Q, said it is too early to think about what he will do next.
"I'm still trying to stand up straight. I have to sit down in the shower so I don't faint and fall. I don't have calluses on the bottom of my feet yet, so it's like walking around on hot coals."
It usually takes about three weeks until a returning astronaut can return to driving, according to the Canadian Space Agency.
"We're sort of tottering around like two old duffers in an old folks home," Hadfield said, referring to his crew mate Marshburn.
Hadfield's orbital odyssey ended with a parachute descent of their Soyuz space capsule onto the steppes of Kazakhstan.
"We hit the Earth just like a car crash," Hadfield said. "There was wind so we rolled up on our side. I was the guy hanging from the ceiling. Our first true sense of being home was a window full of Earth dirt and the smell of spring and the grasses in Kazakhstan wafting in through the open hatch."
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