Marsha Ivins’ talk.

When I told one of my friends about the Marsha Ivins talk, she said to me "I can see you have fallen in love".

"Don’t be ridiculous", I said "just because a woman is an astronaut, has 6,000 hours as a pilot, is immensely talented, talks extremely well, has a good sense of humour and a warm and friendly personality and has an IQ around 195, there is no reason why anybody would fall in love with her". I also might have mentioned a couple of phrases like "good looking" and "attractive", but if I did it was only very softly.

"Ah", she said, "I see you got it real bad".

The talk was just so enjoyable. She had some fantastic NASA slides and enlightened us with the inside information of what it is like to be an astronaut. Having flown in space 5 times in the Space Shuttle, both to the Russian station MIR as well as to the International Space station, where she was responsible for attaching a $1.4 Billion module in a hair-raising manoeuvre, she is well qualified to explain the details of space flight.

It all might seem so glamorous, but I came away thinking that I would not like to spend 4 months on the ISS. The food sounds really horrible, mixing water with some powered mush in a plastic bag. Showers and baths just don’t exist and washing is an extremely delicate operation. After brushing your teeth you just swallow as spitting is not possible in zero gravity. Toilet facilities are very awkward. And to sleep to have to zip yourself into a sleeping bag that you Velcro to a wall. You also have to Velcro your arms in and your head down otherwise they just float around. Lots of items are Velcro-ed to the walls to stop them wandering off. And you need to exercise a lot to prevent the loss of bone mass that occurs in zero-g. On the Shuttle they do at least 20 minutes a day, but on the ISS they do 3-4 hours a day. Quite demanding.

But the views out the window are just great. She said that most of the crew spent their spare time just gazing out the windows. On the ISS some crew have musical instruments and everybody takes a camera and spends a lot of time shooting pictures out the window.

Two messages she got through are these. When you look down on the earth from space, there are no lines on the continents showing where the countries are. These are artificial boundaries created by man. The other came through some pictures she showed of how we abuse and pollute this planet. Clearing of jungles, particularly in places like South America and Madagascar has resulted in soil erosion to an extent that is frightening. The earth’s atmosphere is a very thin veneer, like a coat of paint on a billiard ball and yet we continue to pollute it. We should learn to protect it.

So what did I learn from the talk? Velcro. I now have Velcro stuck all around my telescope and on the bits and pieces that I use, like a red light and the control panel.

Works like a charm.

And, yes, I will admit – she is quite cute.

Brian Fraser