The strangeness of life in space never quite goes away. Here are some examples.
First consider something as simple as sleep. If you leave your arms out, they float free in zero gravity, often giving a sleeping astronaut the look of a funny dancer. “I’m an inside guy,” Mike Hopkins says, who returned from a six-month tour on the International Space Station. “I like to be covered up.”
On the station, the ordinary becomes strange. The exercise bike for the American astronauts has no handlebars (把手). It also has no seat. With no gravity, it’s just as easy to ride violently. You can watch a movie while you ride by floating a microcomputer anywhere you want. But people in the station have to be careful about staying in one place too long. Without gravity to help air to move, the carbon dioxide you breathe in may form a cloud around you head. You can end up with a carbon- dioxide headache.
Leroy Chiao, 54, an American retired astronaut after four flights, describes what happens even before you float out of your seat, “Your inner ear thinks you’re falling. Meanwhile your eyes are telling you you’re standing straight. That can be annoying－that’s why some people feel sick.” Within a couple days－truly terrible days for some people－astronauts’ brains learn to ignore the signals from the inner ear, and space sickness disappears.
Space travel can be so delightful but at the same time dangerous. For instance, astronauts lose bone mass. That’s why exercise is considered so important that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) puts it on the workday schedule. The focus on fitness is not only about science and the future. They should make sure that any astronaut can return home, and, more importantly, the astronauts keep strong and fit for the two and a half years or more that it would take to make a round-trip to Mars.
【小题1】What is the major difficulty to astronauts when they sleep in space?| A．Choosing a comfortable sleeping bag. |
| B．Deciding on a proper sleep position. |
| C．Seeking a way to fall asleep quickly. |
| D．Finding a right time to go to sleep. |
| A．they circle around on their bikes. |
| B．they watch a movie while pedaling. |
| C．they use microcomputers without a stop. |
| D．they exercise in one place for a long time. |
| A．how much exercise they do on the station |
| B．whether they can recover after returning home |
| C．how they can remain healthy for long in space |
| D．whether they are able to go back to the station |
| A．Strange | B．Funny | C．Violent | D．Unhealthy |
