Information on astronauts' life in space

China's first manned flight has caught the world's attention and excited the nation. At this time, people must be curious to know what astronauts eat, wear and live in space. Not long ago, we interviewed experts on the astronaut system of China's manned space program and asked them to give a detailed introduction.

Eating in space

Eating and drinking are the most common things for people living on Earth. But in the weightless environment of space, astronauts' diet becomes very complicated and marvelous. From the astronauts' nutritional needs, to the preparation and supply of food, to the way they eat, there are certain peculiarities.

What are the characteristics of spaceflight food

We call the food and water for astronauts to consume during the space mission and during the period of return to land and wait for rescue spaceflight food.

Aerospace food is essentially the same as ordinary food on the ground, providing energy and nutrition for the human body. However, since it is carried into the sky by astronauts and consumed in a weightless environment, it will have its unique consumption characteristics and technical requirements. For example, in order to save spacecraft space and launch payload, astronauts carrying space food should be as light as possible, small volume; in order to facilitate astronauts to eat in space under weightlessness conditions, to prevent food from floating around in the spacecraft cabin, space food should be processed into a bite-sized "bite to eat" food, and There should be no flowing soup in the food package.

Aerospace food must first ensure the safety of astronauts' lives, and no foodborne diseases and food poisoning can occur. Spaceflight food and packaging must be able to withstand the special environmental factors of spaceflight, such as shock, vibration, acceleration and other tests without failure.

Aerospace food must also meet the requirements of physiological changes of astronauts under weightlessness. Space flight will lead to astronauts bone calcium loss, muscle atrophy, the number of red blood cells decreased. Therefore, the nutrients contained in spaceflight food should be adjusted appropriately according to these physiological changes of astronauts.

Due to the influence of weightlessness and space sickness, astronauts' appetite will be reduced during space flight, leading to a decrease in food intake and affecting energy intake and nutritional balance. In order to overcome this situation and meet the astronauts' psychological and taste requirements, it is necessary to provide them with food they are more familiar with as far as possible, which is not only sufficient in quantity but also diversified, so that it is convenient for them to prepare meals according to their own tastes. Among the world's spaceflight foods, China's spaceflight foods are very much characterized by Chinese characteristics. Traditional Chinese food is included in space recipes as much as possible, and compared with Western food, Chinese space food is more flavorful and delicious.

During spaceflight, human tastes change unpredictably, and astronauts favor exciting foods. For example, U.S. astronauts have found that spicy German potato salad is the most popular of spaceflight foods. But before the flight, this kind of food is not so favored by astronauts.

Astronauts can eat fish and drink green tea

There is a wide variety of spaceflight food. So how would it be processed and eaten?

Taking aged beef as an example, the dish, which is an aerospace food, must be processed at high temperatures before being made into canned food for long-term preservation. Its flavor is comparable to the usual. To eat it, it is warmed up with a heater before opening the lid of the can. This kind of food is called heat-stabilized food and is packaged in metal cans or steaming bags, commonly known as soft and hard canned food. Spaceflight food is characterized not only by the normal amount of water, but also by its proximity to ordinary food in terms of taste and shape. In space life, our astronauts can also eat extremely rich Chinese characteristics of home cooking, such as fish and meat, Kung Pao Chicken and so on.

The astronauts also need a cup of fragrant tea to refresh themselves after meals, and we can solve this problem with our self-developed tea essence. Tea essence belongs to the rehydration beverage, similar to our solid drinks on the ground, such as sour plum crystals, orange crystals and so on. Astronauts need this kind of food packaging is relatively special, the rehydration of food in the package is through the package of a one-way valve will be injected into the water, add a certain amount of water, slightly kneaded bag, to be fully combined with the food and water, and then open the package to eat.

Freeze-dried food is the most characteristic food in aerospace food. It is the use of freeze-drying technology to remove all the water in the food, to maximize the maintenance of the original shape of the food and nutrients. Freeze-dried food can be eaten directly, usually fruits, vegetables and other food that do not tolerate steaming and cooking are often processed by this method.

The proportion of fresh food in spaceflight recipes is very small, and it is usually provided only in the first 1 to 2 days of spaceflight. Although dehydrated food is light in weight, small in size and can be preserved for a long time, it generally accounts for no more than 50% of the recipes because of its poor sensory effect.

In order to facilitate the preservation, preparation and feeding of spaceflight food during spaceflight, it is necessary to have corresponding supporting food servo devices, including food preservation equipment, such as refrigerated boxes; food heating devices, such as heaters and cooking stoves; water dispensers and plates, tableware, and so on, and there must be drinking water tanks. During space flight, astronauts drink pure water of the best quality.

How Astronauts Eat

How to eat during spaceflight activities is a considerable test for astronauts. In weightlessness, a cup full of water is placed in the same position, downwards and upwards, and the water in the cup will not float or spill out automatically. When placed on a table, the cup will fly up along with the water. Therefore, the original eating and drinking habits of astronauts on the ground are no longer applicable. When astronauts open the food package, they must hold the food in time and not let it fly away freely. In addition, attention must be paid not to make the food broken or crumbs, because the crumbs float up in the cabin, which will bring certain dangers, such as affecting the normal operation of instrumentation, affecting the astronauts' line of sight, and there is also a possibility that the astronauts will inhale the respiratory tract or fall into the eyes of the astronauts.

In the early Soviet Union and the United States of America's space flight, astronauts take the "mouth to mouth" way of eating, that is, after special processing of liquid or semi-solid food in a container similar to the toothpaste tube, eating through a catheter will be directly squeezed into the mouth of the food. With people's repeated experience and deepening understanding of the weightless environment, coupled with the application of new packaging materials and technologies, the types of spaceflight food are increasing, and the method of eating is getting closer and closer to that of the ground. Nowadays, astronauts can assemble five to six kinds of food consumed in one meal on a dinner plate, and then eat in a way similar to eating at home with tableware that has the same appearance as our ordinary tableware.

The supply of spaceflight food can be roughly divided into two kinds: one is to bring the ground food up to the sky in a supply mode; the second is to produce food directly from the raw materials on board the manned spacecraft in a self-sufficient mode. Due to the manned spacecraft launch costs are very high, about 10,000 U.S. dollars / 1 kilogram, and an astronaut to consume 1,5 kilograms of food per day, about 15,000 U.S. dollars. So so far, the United States and Russia are using the supply method to provide spaceflight food.

Wearing in space

People's understanding of clothing is limited to its function of covering the body, keeping warm and looking beautiful. When human beings enter space, they will find that the role of space suits has long exceeded the traditional scope. Because space is close to the vacuum pressure environment, extreme temperature environment, the lack of oxygen needed for life, space dust, debris and space radiation threat, etc., need for astronauts in space life and work to provide a good protection and security system of space suits. Space suits can be categorized into emergency space suits for in-vehicle use and space suits for extravehicular use according to their functions.

How to work and rest in space

Mainly adopting the weekly work system and the synchronized work and rest system in heaven and earth

The first 30-day stationary flight mission puts forward higher requirements for the astronauts' physical and mental qualities as well as their working ability, and also brings greater challenges to their health protection and life security. Huang Weifen, deputy chief designer of the astronaut system for the manned spaceflight project, said that the later it goes, the greater the likelihood that something will go wrong. This is a big challenge for the astronauts and the ground support team's ability to deal with emergencies.

Wu Ping, deputy director of the Manned Spaceflight Engineering Office, said that with the increase in space flight time, the adverse effects of the weightless environment in space on the human body will become more and more significant, especially the problem of the cardiovascular system's functional decline will become more prominent, and a certain degree of muscle atrophy and bone loss will also occur. In addition, when astronauts return to the ground, the symptoms of the gravity readaptation reaction will be more obvious, and the readaptation time will be prolonged accordingly. This poses a new challenge to safeguarding the astronauts' physical and mental health.

Life support in space is the most important thing. The systematic design needs to be strengthened to ensure the rationality of the work and rest system, the sensory acceptability of food recipes, and the hygiene and cleanliness, especially after exercise.

Life and work are also very different. In the past, the flights of ten days or even a few days, the time is very precious, the astronauts have a lot of tasks in space, and the work and rest are often designed by the hour or even the minute. But this time belongs to the medium-term flight, to the space station mission of the long-term flight transition, the astronaut system for the astronauts designed a combination of daily and weekly plans, mainly using the weekly work system and heaven and earth synchronized work and rest system mode, to give the astronauts greater autonomy to arrange and adjust the right.

Huang Weifen introduced that the 30-day life in the combination is in accordance with the "6+1" mode, with six days of work and one day of rest and recuperation. But the head and tail will be stationed in the Tiangong according to the situation of appropriate adjustments. For example, just stationed in the Tiangong, like entering a new home, the first thing to clean up and organize, put things. Before returning to Earth, the astronauts will also have to organize and tidy up items that need to be brought back and clean the Tiangong.

From the "Shenzhou" and "Shenyang" missions, the astronauts have been practicing a synchronized work and rest system, waking up early and going to bed at night according to Earth's time. The "Shen 11" mission, the astronauts have more rights to adjust independently. For the ground support team, the workload is not as easy as it was during the earlier flights, even though they were not required to be on duty 24 hours a day. In order to gain experience for future space station flights, this time the ground team will do a lot of counting, observing, recording and using for evaluation of the astronauts' life in orbit.

Eating and drinking are commonplace for people living on Earth, but living in space in a weightless environment makes astronauts' diets very complex and particularly marvelous. It can be said that the nutritional needs of astronauts, food preparation, supply and their way of eating have certain special characteristics, which are very different from their diet on the ground.

Aerospace food is essentially the same as ordinary food on the ground, providing energy and nutrition for the human body. However, in order to save the space of the spacecraft and the payload at the time of launch, the spaceflight food carried by the astronauts should be as light as possible,

small in size. Such as good nutritional dry cookies and dry sausage, eat with water soak, can be restored to the taste similar to fresh food. Space food in addition to withstand the impact of space special environmental factors, such as impact, vibration

movement, acceleration and other tests without failure, but also for astronauts in weightlessness under the conditions of physiological changes in the index of the dietary nutrients to make the appropriate adjustments, such as muscle atrophy requires that the food must provide sufficient high-quality protein;

Bone loss requires that the food to provide sufficient calcium, as well as the appropriate proportion of calcium and phosphorus and the appropriate calcium and phosphorus ratio and the food. and the appropriate ratio of calcium and phosphorus and vitamins.

How astronauts eat during spaceflight activities is a considerable test for them. In weightlessness conditions, a cup full of water is placed towards the bottom and upwards are the same, the water in the cup will not automatically float or spill out, such as

fruit placed on the table, the cup will fly up along with the water. So, the astronauts' original eating and drinking habits on the ground will not be applicable in space at all. Generally speaking, all kinds of food, parts and utensils are fixed

. Astronauts from the food cupboard out of food, to contain food composite plastic film bag cut a small opening, the fork and chopsticks into the pocket fork to the mouth. In order to prevent food debris flying around, affecting the normal work of the spacecraft

Astronauts or equipment, this food is often packaged in small packages, made of similar size with the mouth of the square, rectangular or small ball-shaped "bite to eat" food, eat without having to cut. If the astronauts want to drink water, eat soup,

Soup, juice, jam, directly from the plastic pocket or toothpaste-like soft aluminum tube, little by little to the mouth can be squeezed.

With the development of rocket technology, astronauts can bring more food from the ground. For example,

wet food or semi-moist food with juice turkey, beef, etc., they have the same moisture content as the normal food eaten on the ground. Astronauts are now able to use microwave heaters to bake food in the capsule. This microwave heater

is different from the heaters used on the ground. It has special recessed compartments on top. To prevent the food from floating up when heated, the food to be heated must be fixed in these small compartments, and after plugging in the power supply,

the food can be heated up to a delicious level in a short time. With it, astronauts can savor hot, fragrant braised beef, scrambled eggs, pork chops and other foods that don't taste much different from the ground.

But it's not easy for astronauts to urinate and defecate in space. Because water doesn't flow downhill in space, they have to use a "pumping toilet" that relies on air currents to carry their urine and feces away.

The toilet

has a hole about 10 centimeters in diameter in the center. The lower end of the hole is equipped with an extractor, open the extractor can be drawn from the toilet, but also make the air inside the toilet trembling. The fluttering of the air in turn causes the formed

part of the stool to break up and then be pumped into the collection bag at the bottom of the toilet. When using this type of toilet, the buttocks must be pressed against the rim of the toilet so that the inside of the toilet is completely sealed. If the seal is not tight, the airflow inside will not be able to carry the feces away.

Feces and urine are collected separately inside a flush toilet. The toilet is connected to a plastic sleeve, and the rubber valve has to be closed quickly after urination and defecation so that the stool is directed by the airflow into the airtight rubber pockets, and then into a special bin; urine is directed into the urine storage tank.

Astronauts must be specially trained to poop in space, and to aim their anus at the central hole to pull the poop out, or the poop could float out of the toilet and fly all over the capsule, becoming a disaster. Through training, astronauts must remember where their buttocks are relative to the seat of the toilet.

U.S.

American space shuttle astronauts use a harness to hold the person and the potty tightly together when they urinate and defecate, and a special device is used to collect the urine and feces. In the event of a malfunction of the continence device, a spare continence collection bag can be used. On the 12th flight of the U.S. Space Shuttle

Aircraft, the six (five men and one woman) astronauts on board were almost in trouble because of ice on the exit of the urinal device in the bathroom on the Shuttle, which blocked the toilet. After consulting the ground command system, it was decided that, except for one female astronaut who could continue to use the original toilet, the other five would use the spare urine and feces collection bag for urination and defecation. This brought great inconvenience to the astronauts' lives. They were most worried about getting their urine and feces

into space, so they were careful at all times. The incident left a deep memory in their minds.

Now, the space shuttle has a new type of toilet. There is a cylinder underneath, and a plastic bag for poop is automatically placed inside the toilet before the astronauts use it. The bag is automatically sealed when the astronauts are done using the toilet, and a piston with a lever

pushes the bag to the bottom of the cylinder. At the same time it is automatically replaced with a new bag for the next use. When the cylinder is full of poop bags, it is automatically replaced with a new cylinder. The cylinder is sealed so that odor cannot escape

so it is more hygienic and suitable for use.

Personal hygiene---trouble

Tooth brushing Americans initially used a special kind of gummies after fully chewing inside the mouth instead of brushing, and Soviet astronauts used their hands wrapped in a towel to massage and scrub inside the mouth instead of brushing. Both methods were simple, but the bacteria in the mouth

were not easy to remove. Later, experts asked astronauts to brush their teeth with electrophoretic toothbrushes and special toothpaste. But it wasn't until the invention of treating water with a sealed suction method that made it possible for astronauts to clean their teeth and mouth

cavities more thoroughly.

Each astronaut has a hygiene kit containing various hygiene items such as a toothbrush, nail clippers, soap and deodorant. Astronauts use special mouthwash cups and spit waste water and foam from brushing their teeth onto toilet paper or towels.

Astronauts shaving is also not a pleasure, because scraping down the beard ballast to fly up, once inadvertent beard ballast fall in space is very difficult to clean up. So they use a sealed razor, which is connected to a vacuum cleaner through a sealed tube, which sucks the beard into a waste disposal bin.

Bathing astronauts usually wash their faces with a wet towel, so they can only wash thoroughly when they shower. In the U.S. "Skylab", the Soviet Union's Mir space station has a "shower room". It's a large circular shower

cylinder that astronauts enter and spray with a handheld nozzle. There are holes in the bottom of the canister through which water can be sucked out of the shower canister, which would otherwise fill the entire canister. Before taking a shower, the feet must be secured to the

floor with restraining straps, otherwise the body will roll over in the shower, even with the head down and feet up. The lid of the shower canister should also be closed so that water does not spray outside the canister. However, because showering equipment is too large to be installed on the shuttle or the ISS, astronauts usually use a wet towel and a shampoo that doesn't have to be rinsed with water.

Cleaning Because the spacecraft cockpit debris, dust will not fall automatically, but

flying everywhere, floating, so cleaning in addition to using a vacuum cleaner, but also have to use a wet cloth to wipe the walls of the cabin and objects on the dust. If water droplets, beard, food ballast, and even feces and other garbage accidentally flew into the cabin space, you have to

major cleanup. The astronauts have to put on masks, gloves and smocks, vacuum and wipe with a wet cloth to get rid of the trash.

Exercise is the astronauts' favorite part of life in space, not only for recreation, but also to give the muscles of the whole body a chance to contract and move to maintain their strength. They run on a treadmill, use spring tensioners to build arm

strength, and ride bicycle power meters for "off-road" races. Astronauts also like to wear what's known as a "penguin suit," which puts your muscles under tension and requires you to exert yourself just to move, thus building your muscles

.

How do astronauts sleep in space?

The astronauts are provided with a sleeping bag, and when they sleep, the astronauts must put their arms into the bag and bunch their hands in front of their chests so that they don't inadvertently touch the switches of the instrumentation.

Sunset and sunrise at one time during space flight, the length of the day and night cycle varies because it is related to the height of the orbit of the spacecraft around the Earth. The Shenzhou series of spacecraft in space flight about 90 minutes a day and night cycle, the longest black

night is only 37 minutes. Therefore, the astronauts' work and rest schedules can't be formulated like "working at sunrise and resting at sunset" on the ground, but can only be arranged according to the biological rhythm of human beings and the needs of the flight mission.

According to the flight program,

The astronauts in the 24-hour crew can sleep for 6 to 7 hours each in turn.

Astronauts in space sleep is also very special, anyway, in the weightless environment does not distinguish between up and down, standing and lying sleep are the same. Sleeping bags are usually fixed to the bulkheads inside the spacecraft so that they are as comfortable as sleeping in a bed. So astronauts can either stand straight up and sleep against the bulkhead, or they can sleep against the ceiling, in short, they can sleep however they want.

China's manned spaceflight engineering astronaut system commander and chief designer, China's aerospace medical engineering disciplines and space flight training simulation technology direction of the academic leader Chen Shanguang said, we specifically to provide astronauts with a sleeping bag,

people sleep in the sleeping bag inside, but the sleeping bag is hanging on the bulkhead of the orbital module. "Shen five", the astronauts have more heavy tasks, Yang Liwei only slept for a few hours. But "Shen6" is not the same, we are on the ground

The test, their work and rest time has been scientifically arranged, the operation of the task of the gap arranged for them to take the necessary rest, a day to sleep at least six or seven hours.

When sleeping, the astronauts must put their arms into their sleeping bags and bunch their hands in front of their chests to avoid unintentionally touching the switches of the instruments and equipment. At the same time, due to the weightlessness of the environment, sleeping people will have the feeling that the limbs are detached from the torso. A Soviet cosmonaut once put his arms outside his sleeping bag as a "monster" floating toward him in a haze, breaking out in a cold sweat.

These are just a few examples of how astronauts live in space.

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