You Can Always Go Home Again (Unfortunately)
An interesting article over on ABC News website, explains that most cosmonauts love their job so much they actually don’t look forward to coming back to earth.
"’The hardest thing is coming back to Earth,’ [Cosmonaut Vladimir Dezhurov] said. The problem is not so much the mundanity of earthly existence — bills to pay, food to buy, chores to complete.
‘The muscle fabric degrades very much. It’s hard to walk. You have to learn how to walk again, like a small child.’
Astronauts train daily aboard the orbiting space station to prevent the atrophy of their legs and feet which are under-used in weightlessness. It takes several weeks under medical supervision to recover from a long stay in space.’"
What might be interesting for those of us who know a little more is the information the article provides about Star City, Moscow’s tightly secured 1960s area Cosmonaut space center and the surrounding community, as seen above.
While supposedly time has kind of stopped in area, most cosmonauts never really feeling the full-effect of the collapse of the Soviet Union, what has changed is who is doing a lot of the blasting off in the environs… most notably in the increased presence of tourists.
While we all saw Stephen Hawking have a zero-g experience last week, in Star City, Russia the zero-g experience has you (and for just $3400-4000).
