Ioonos

Upside down the blood rushes to the head, but without a wrinkle; the body in space

IOONOS: How do you feel when you arrive in space?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: The first feeling is that you don’t feel your body because of the Weightlessness" >weightlessness. This can bring on vertigo, the beginnings of the well-known space sickness. Whatever is not fixed to the walls floats away in the air! Suddenly the inner ear – whose “spirit level” gives us the feeling of uprightness – sends wrong signals to the brain that contradict the visual senses. The sense of balance is upset, which turns into “space sickness”, which discourages us from moving and protects us from impossible falls. So during the first 3 days it’s best not to move too much until our brain adapts by short-circuiting the information from our inner ear!

IOONOS: Does the body undergo other changes?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: During the first days in space an unpleasant physical phenomenon makes the blood go to the head: since there is no longer any weight, the blood is no longer pulled naturally down to the legs, and since the heart is closer to the head the blood flows there more freely and the blood pressure rises. All of a sudden, the face tissues swell, you get nice red cheeks and not a single wrinkle, it’s amazing! Everything gets congested, and you have the feeling you have a cold. To alleviate this movement of fluids, some astronauts tie the top of their legs with straps to stop the blood rising too much. But that doesn’t get rid of the headache completely. It’s best to wait a few days until the brain’s sensors pick up the high blood pressure and instruct the metabolism to reduce the mass of liquid through urine. Suddenly the blood gets thicker, which reduces the blood pressure throughout the body.

IOONOS: Why do people do a lot of sport in space?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: For the body to be in a state of Weightlessness" >weightlessness is a bit like lying for weeks in a hospital bed. The muscles and bones that do the carrying are no longer called upon, they no longer need to bear the body and so they quickly start dissolving. Bones lose 1% of their density every month! That’s why we have to do at least two hours of sport on the machines every day.

Eating and sleeping, you’d better be attached

IOONOS: How does one sleep in space?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: It’s a bit like camping, you sleep in a sleeping bag. Since there’s no up and down, you sleep “standing”! What’s important is to be attached, secured to the craft’s wall, where there’s some space. That’s why the sleeping bags are covered with straps. A wide, elastic belt can be used for those of us who need to keep their spinal column straight, to avoid back ache. That’s also for those who, like on earth, need to feel the pressure of a surface against the body and the artificial sense of gravity in order to sleep better. On long missions you can sometimes get a small, private area where you can put out your sleeping bag. And you mustn’t forget to put your hands in the bag, otherwise they’ll be dancing around all night!

IOONOS: What is the food on a space station like?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: Eating in space is one of the things that has greatly improved with time. Right at the beginning the food was freeze-dried, that’s to say dried and turned into a powder so it would take up less space and weight and could be kept at ambient temperature; or in a tin. Since then, the menus have improved and become more varied. Nowadays the food is less repetitive and the foodstuffs are often vacuum packed like fast food available in the shops. The International Space Station has enough energy to use a freezer and an oven, which Mir" >MIR didn’t have. What cannot change, however, is the consistency of the dishes, which all contain a binder to stop the food flying off all over the Station. The quality of the dishes is essential for the mental and physical health of the crews on these very long voyages.

IOONOS: Only dishes in sauce?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: Without gravity*, any food that can crumble is potentially dangerous: in a station, dust and crumbs do not fall to the floor; they float for ever and risk blocking the air filters or getting into the lungs when breathing! That’s why every dish has to be sticky with sauce, to prevent particles flying off. In space you can’t eat crisps or drink fizzy drinks. By the same token, the plates have to fixed to the tables with strips of Velcro…

IOONOS: And washing up?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: There’s very little water, so there’s no washing up! You throw away all the bags and tins that had held food, from which you eat directly, taking care to avoid contamination. It’s all compacted into boxes that are then sealed hermetically.
Washing and dressing for extreme living

IOONOS: And how do you wash?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: It’s pretty Spartan, but we are always very clean! We basically clean ourselves with flannels that have been made damp with warm water. Some are soaked in cleaning product and then we rinse ourselves off with other towels. When you leave on a space mission you have to think of taking everything with you, including water. Did you know that to send 1 kg into orbit, you need 200 times the mass on earth! In the Mir" >MIR station we were entitled to 5 litres per person per day (which represents 1 ton of fuel per person per day of the mission without recycling!). So there has to be very strict control of water use and regeneration of part of it. For the rest, you have to wash your hair dry, and NASA even invented edible toothpaste! Right at the beginning of Mir" >MIR there were showers, but they used up too much water. As for flushing the toilets, it’s a sort of vacuum cleaner! Urine is simply pumped to compensate for Weightlessness" >weightlessness. If you use it properly it works pretty well: you have to be very thorough. You always have to be careful about contamination, but it’s hygienic enough! The object isn’t to have home comforts…

IOONOS: Is the water fully recyclable?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: All the vapour produced by the astronauts’ activity, especially sport, is recovered in the condensers of the air conditioning system and is used in preparing the food. On Mir" >MIR there were even machines for recycling the urine. The water recovered was used to produce by electrolysis part of the oxygen breathed. But urine is corrosive and it clogged up the instruments. There were frequent breakdowns, which meant repairs that endangered the hygienic conditions on the station. Nowadays, the International Space Station gets rid of this type of waste, it was just all too complicated!

IOONOS: Let’s talk about spacesuits.

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: It’s really a personal spacecraft, made up of 14 different layers of materials, assembled in 18 parts, the whole thing weighing 114 kg (on Earth, because it weighs nothing in space). It fulfils two main functions. It protects us from the vacuum in space by letting us breathe (it’s equipped with an oxygen supply and a unit to regenerate air) and it provides resistance against extremes of temperature: facing the Sun it is +150oC and away from the Sun –150! So it is both sealed and rigid. This rigidity makes every movement very exhausting throughout a spacewalk that can last up to 7 hours. Every movement requires a huge effort: going out of the space vehicle is the equivalent of playing two football matches one straight after the other! Usually you lose several kilos because it gets so hot. The spacesuit is also equipped to get rid of this body heat and to control the internal temperature. Once you’ve got it on there is no longer any question of sneezing, unless you lower the jaw as far as possible, because you cannot clean the helmet’s visor (which luckily is ventilated and coated with a demister)!

Keeping yourself busy and dreaming in area the size of a bus

IOONOS: What entertainment do you have in space?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: The experience of my first flight in 1993 let me think about the things I would bring along on the second flight, in 1999. I was allowed 1.5 kg of personal items. I took my saxophone, CD ROMs, a teach yourself German, something to write with, to take photos, to program my computer, as well as a couple of books, From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and A Thousand and One Nights. I also had an amateur radio so I could communicate with a lot of people on Earth, including my wife.

IOONOS: How did it help you to do so many things?

Jean-Pierre Haigneré: It kept me quite busy, it gave me a life of my own on the spacecraft, and that’s very important when you have so little living space (400 m3, which is the equivalent of a bus and a half) for 3 people! To do things without having been explained and without having a choice drives me crackers. My entertainment kept me balanced and allowed me to handle quite a lot of situations. I knew my two Russian crewmates well, having spent 8 years in Russia and having prepared for the flight for 8 months at their side. We ate and worked together, but we greatly respected each one’s private moments and space. I can say that I loved writing articles for the French newspaper, Le Figaro, taking photos and having fascinating discussions with people from all over the world by using my amateur radio. Since it only takes one and a half hours to circle the Earth, at least once or twice a day you pass the same spots and the people are there, they are just waiting to link up!