Thoughts from the International Space Station

I have seen the sun rise 86,000 times. When you orbit the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour—that’s almost eight kilometers a second—you see the sun rise every 90 minutes. Sixteen times a day, 5,840 times a year: It’s breathtaking.

            But it gets lonely out here. I’m the only permanent, inhabited satellite in the Earth’s orbit. My friends Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour used to visit, but they don’t make the trip anymore. And I can’t blame them. At 424 kilometers above the sea level, I’m a bit out of the way.

            There are always little, squishy creatures inside me. Ever since I was—um—born in ’98, they’ve been messing around. They fill me up with air like a common party balloon, the nerve! After a while, 14.7 pounds of pressure per square inch starts to hurt, you know¹. One of them—he had a red leaf on his suit—even did a cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” (See Above). I tell you, these animals are weird.

¹And you would know, because that’s the atmospheric pressure at sea level.