Steven Swanson, Astronaut 03/10/23
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My existence happens to coincide with a number of very interesting
human achievements, not the least among them space travel. I recall
watching the challenger explode on TV at school; they had let us all
out of class to watch in a central area where they could setup a set.
To be honest, that was the last I really paid attention to space
travel, outside of science fiction.
And while I'm being honest, I'm sort of ashamed of my inattention. We
reach for the stars and actually touch them, and then we go about our
business. Or worse, we make an international competition out of
reaching for the stars, and then punish one another with our tech. For
me personally, the age of home computing was more interesting than
space. I guess a few things are, to this day, more interesting to me.
To get to the point: I was needing to see the inside of a space
station the other day, as a reference for a drawing that I was helping
my daughter with. I looked about on the image search engines, but
wanted more of a feel for the inside of a space station, and so I
turned to YouTube. I located an old video that claimed to be
the absolute best tours of the International Space Station. Well,
specifically it claimed:
"ONE OF THE MOST DETAILED ISS TOUR!!"[1]
The video has been viewed almost 8mil times and has been online for
six years, and they haven't fixed the singular "TOUR!!" yet. Or maybe
they added "ONE OF" or something. I guess it adds charm.
Ashamed again, I admit that I've never bothered to look at a photo or
a video of the inside of the ISS. I've read about it, looked at how to
track it, and generally kept it in the corner of my consciousness, but
I've never looked inside! What is wrong with me? Am I the only one, or
have you also never looked?
Well, for multiple reasons, I'm extremely glad that I watched the
video. First, the ISS is absolutely stunning. The entire feat, from
start to finish. It's beautiful, really. And who doesn't enjoy
watching people floating in zero gravity? Plus, the toilet--don't we
all want to know how the most fundamental human tasks are performed in
the darkness outside our firmament?
I was taken aback by something, which I didn't quite realize until the
very end of the video. The astronaut giving the tour, Steven Swanson,
seems to be a sort of naturally gifted, unobtrusive optimist.
Everything he looked at in the video, he looked at through a lens of
gratitude. Well, maybe not every single thing, but overwhelmingly the
man is positive.
How many people are we around each day who are overwhelmingly
positive? Heck, even when I'm alone all day long I'm with a guy who
complains a bit more than he should, and I'm making efforts! It seemed
to come naturally to him, way up there dangling over Earth.
Just one little example: at the very end of the video, he's showing
viewers the Soyuz that he arrived in. It has a tiny control room, and
a slightly larger room connected to that. If you read about his last
mission[2] you'll see that what was supposed to be a 6 hour flight to
the station turned into a multi-day flight. In the video, he describes
being stuck in the little capsule for that time, much longer than
anticipated at takeoff. And yet he says something along the lines of,
"but, you know, the good thing is we made it" ... or something of that
nature. Just endlessly positive.
I do want to re-watch, but I wanted to talk about it with gopherspace
too. If you're looking for some really humble positivity to lighten
your mind, and a cool tour of the ISS, you can't go wrong with this
video.
[1]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvTmdIhYnes
[2]
gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Steven Swanson
