Try crossing the ocean on a liner before the days of commercial jet travel.
Even Lord Nelson suffered from occasional seasickness.
Horatio Hornblower once got seasick in port.
Charles Darwin was seasick for almost all of the entire 5-year voyage of the Beagle. That he was able to do the work he did on that trip while suffering from seasickness is pretty amazing.
Scientists like him are practically extinct! ![]()
… or get pregnant…
I think that’s the case. Having never been an astronaut nor even experienced the famous Vomit Comet™ or anything more than a roller coaster, I can only relate the few things I’ve read and related to.
Becoming weightless, or nearly so, is extremely disorienting for some short period of time, possibly just minutes – depends on the individual. The vestibular sensors in your inner ear that are attuned to motion and gravity go nuts in the absence of gravity, prompting nausea and even vomiting in some people.
There’s probably a correlation with susceptibility to seasickness. Most adjust to it eventually, as most qualified astronauts seem to, and regard floating around weightless as “fun”. But I can well imagine that some don’t.
I could get a woman pregnant in about 45 seconds. Tops.
In the days of the Shuttle, someone had pointed out that NASA typically didn’t release video of the crew in the first ~24 hours of a mission… because some of the astronauts needed time to get their stomachs settled.
He was in poor health for the remainder of his life. There have been multiple speculations as to what was wrong with him, the most common theories being Chagas’ disease, Meniere’s disease, or even a still poorly-understood disorder called cyclic vomiting syndrome, believed to be related to migraines.
Another record set during the Artemis mission:
This is a record I wouldn’t even have thought about, but it’s impressive nonetheless.
ETA: and it’s significant that the Tiangong station beat the ISS only by 60 meters.
That’s some precision locating!
Yeah, at that scale it seems in the range of a rounding error, especially for this mere EE who knows and has had to live with systematical inaccuracies when measuring things and always could cut some slack.
Umm. I think the difference was about 60 kilometers, not meters
Blockquote On April 6, as Integrity flew around the moon’s far side, it got a maximum of 260,754 miles (419,643 kilometers) from Tiangong, according to McDowell. The max Integrity-to-ISS distance, meanwhile, was 260,715.5 miles (419,581 km).
Oh, shame on me, I misread the source and was off by a factor of 1k.
1 amp, 1000 amps, what’s the difference? Close enough, this’ll hold up just fine. ![]()
That’s the spirit! ![]()
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzap!
Not sure if it’s been mentioned, but NASA has confirmed it’s working on Rise plushes (and other Rise merch) to sell to an eager public. I will be getting one.