Space sickness, food, trash and yoga... French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who has flown to space twice, shared how life is like in space... 😮 🚀
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00:00Next time you see a shooting star, think it's astronaut trash.
00:03You feel like you're floating and your brain is sending you emergency signals like,
00:08you're gonna die, you're gonna die, you're gonna die, you're gonna die.
00:16You float all the time. You can't walk on a space station, you can walk on the moon
00:22because on the moon there's some gravity. The only thing you can do is actually go from...
00:27so it's only action-reaction, right? I push here, I'm gonna go the opposite direction until
00:32something blocks me, right? So you have to anticipate your trajectory and thank god there's
00:36not a big volume like this on the space station because if there was, you could be stuck in the
00:41middle, right? The only thing you can do is push, push, push, redirect yourself, grab a handle,
00:46pull, push. That's how you're doing it and that's why all vehicles are small. I would say it's
00:50really easy to do yoga in space because you can, you know, you can do all the moves. You can float
00:55and it's even better. Once you get to space, you can be space-sick. Space-sick is just like
01:00seasick. It's the same kind of sickness and what it is, it's a sensory conflict between different
01:05senses. So your eyes are telling you, okay, I'm straight and level but your otoliths in your
01:13inner ear are floating now suddenly. So they're sending contradictory information. It's the same
01:19on a boat. Your eyes are telling you something, the acceleration that your body is feeling is
01:24telling you something different. One of the very, also that cracked me up, especially the second
01:28time when you're a veteran, right? Because you're more used to it and if I want to throw you
01:34something, if I want to throw you a ball here on earth, I'm actually aiming above your head because
01:40my brain is computing that gravity is going to pull on the ball. So it's not going to be a straight
01:45line, right? It's going to be a curve when you do a pass. So on the space station, 99 times out of 10
01:51when you have a new beginner, a new flyer, like, hey, can you send me the food or whatever? They're
01:56like, yeah, sure. And it's two meters above your head. It's too funny because your brain,
02:02and the guy's trying to pass the food to you, but he still has an earth brain, not a space station
02:07brain. And once you get the space station brain, then you're used to it. The first time I didn't
02:12know what to expect. So when you have no preconceived idea, I was trying to look at my
02:19crewmates and see how they're reacting. Like, they're not freaking out, so everything must be
02:23fine. But honestly, I was just discovering the feelings. There's an element of, you know,
02:30being squashed, of the vibrations, the noise, the shaking, sometimes the stage transition between
02:36the different stages of the rocket. What was I thinking? My thoughts were, I'm gonna die.
02:42I'm kidding. I'm kidding. So you have to really learn how to do everything in space. Your hygiene,
02:49there's no running water. So you take a towel with some soap, and then you humidify the towel,
02:57you wash yourself with a wet towel, things like this. And so you sleep, you're in a sleeping bag,
03:03you're attached to the wall, right? Or the ceiling, it doesn't matter. But you're floating,
03:08right? And the first time, I remember the first time you wake up, actually your arms take that
03:12relaxed position. So you wake up with a hand in face of you. It's like, oh, what is this? It's
03:17actually my arms. And you can move, I don't recommend doing this, but you can move people
03:22in their sleeps, right? If you want to play a joke on them, right? You can move them during
03:25their sleep. Eating space food is dehydrated, but mostly it's just cans, cans of food. You
03:31warm them up, or aluminum pouches as well that you can warm up, military rations, things like
03:39this, some commercial products. I mean, you can have whatever your favorite cookie from the ground,
03:45NASA or ESA is going to send it up for you. That's how we burn our trash, by the way, on the ISS.
03:50You send it down in a vehicle on a return trajectory without a heat shield. It's going
03:54to burn up very clean, really nice. Next time you see a shooting star, think it's astronaut trash,
04:01because honestly, there's a chance it's true. You're leaving your family behind, right? You're
04:04leaving your friends behind and anything can happen, right? That was my biggest scare on
04:09the space station. What if something happens to the persons I love? You cannot come back.
04:15They won't bring you back. There's no way. So you're going to have to continue the mission,
04:19right? No matter what.