The Dark Side Of Being An Astronaut

Earth-bound folk can only imagine what it feels like to go on a spacewalk — or extravehicular activity (EVA) if we're getting technical (via Smithsonian Magazine). Floating in the void, looking at the Earth below, it must feel like you're on top of the world ... literally. Still, while some astronauts feel like they are flying during this essential task — used for ship repairs, experiments, and the like — others have felt like they were dying, or at least they came pretty close. Thankfully, not a single death — out of the 30 astronauts and cosmonaut deaths that have occurred throughout the spacefaring age — happened on, or was caused by, an EVA (via Astronomy).

"In space no one can hear you scream," said the tagline of the advertisements for the 1979 hit sci-fi film Alien. The phrase offers more than a good marketing campaign — it's actually true. Sound, which is really just a mechanical wave, needs something to move through, like water or air. Space has neither of those things, so if someone screamed in space, no screech would be apparent, according to "How Things Fly" from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

There are two things about which we humans, famously, have much, much more to learn: the depths of space and the depths of the oceans. There are a lot of good reasons for this, but they generally boil down to one thing: We like to take a hands-on approach to science wherever we can, and it's either impossible or far too expensive to reach these places.

While the space race certainly led to some amazing discoveries and while getting a man on the Moon is probably the most incredible achievement in human history, what happened behind the scenes was more like a messed-up Star Trek episode. While scientists on both sides worked like crazy, their competing governments spat at each other like two swollen-headed macho men trying to prove who was boss. Nationalism ran high, pettiness was rampant, innocent animals were abused, and at one point someone even wanted to nuke the Moon. Yikes. While the human species can rightfully take pride in the scientific advances that happened during the race to the stars, it's worth remembering that some messed-up stuff went down, too.

The space program has been at the forefront of technological innovation for decades, so when you hear something about a fantastic new project or idea or discovery, it's hard not to believe it at face value. And even some of the less fantastic ideas can seem plausible, because, you know, it's NASA, and NASA has made some pretty implausible things actually happen. So the truth is we kind of all need a bit of a reality check when it comes to astronaut stuff because we wouldn't be able to die as complete humans without knowing the truth about the whole pooping-in-space thing, and some other questions of significantly lesser importance.