What does weightlessness feel like?
The sensation of not having weight is amazing – it’s not like flying or paragliding, it’s like just floating there. I went up with a group of university students and everyone was laughing, except for the ones who were throwing up. We would float for 20 seconds per parabola; we did it 32 times. But when you go down, you weigh twice as much, so you can’t lift your head. So we lay flat on the ground, and then it’s like the Rapture, we all rise back up together again. Q: Did you like it? A: When it was over, I immediately wanted to do it again. I’ve never taken heroin, but I imagine that immediate craving is like that. Q: What did you learn about the life of an astronaut? A: One I met spent six years training for eight minutes in space. The real life of an astronaut is meetings, and working on the design of things. It’s really quite mundane, but I like meetings. Astronauts are like these mythic legends, but really they are just regular people, people who wear chinos. Q: What are NASA’s “re
