This evening, about thirteen of us at NYU were granted a Q & A period with Astronaut Garrett Reisman, who is at the International space station. We spoke to him via a video feed at NASA.

The big news, the International space station's toilet is broken, according to Garrett, it has been for five days already. He is there with two Russian cosmonauts who are working daily to fix the toilet problem. In the meantime they are using the toilet from the get-away ship. The Discovery will hopefully leave earth this Saturday and bring toilet parts in it's cargo, along with components of Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory.

Some insight we gained is that the astronauts sleep in a standing position without pillows. I asked him about his dreams, I wondered if they have changed since living in space. He said that his dreams have been pretty earth bound, but he did have a dream that he was on earth floating.

I then asked him what the differences were in his six hour space walk to when he was part of the NEMO 5 crew and spent six hours scuba diving and living beneath the sea. He said mostly the views, that space was much more exciting!

They orbit the earth about every hour and a half. They witness around 15 sunrises and sunsets in one day. They are using England's time zone to live by.

His most often used line was "that is a very good question".

Conference room to space...

We were given about twenty-five minutes to ask questions. His outfit consisted of shorts and a long sleeved shirt.




All in all he seemed in very good spirits and said that every day was filled with activity. All the books he read to prepare for isolation and vast darkness deemed unnecessary in his life there. During his space walk, one of the thrills he encountered was watching a wild lightning storm over New York.