Former NASA Astronaut Explains How Sleep Is Different in Space | WIRED

so the ultimate freaky wakeup is in space and it's just kind of eerie kind of lighting and people are floating around nothing my god what has happened and there oh yeah that's right I'm in space I'm Mike Massimino and this is how sleep is different in space I was an astronaut a NASA astronaut for 18 years I flew in space two times two missions on the space shuttle both of those missions were missions to the Hubble Space Telescope where I was a space Walker so I got the spacewalk four times in my career at NASA I think the most extraordinary thing you can do in life is to get outside of the spaceship and spacewalk I really felt like I was a real spaceman when I was out there you can look in any direction you're not just constrained by the window so you see this gigantic wall taking up your field of view and it's it's magnificent sleep is very important for your health and there's no doubt about it people generally I think don't get enough sleep that's what we hear and I think that that's true and even in my case here on earth I think at first it's a bit harder to sleep in space because you're trying to get used to it but for me once I got used to it after a couple days it was probably the best sleeping I've ever had on earth in your bedroom you most likely sleep in a bed with the pillow behind your head and warm covers on and maybe the rooms a little cooler usually it's a good idea for it to be dark maybe a glass of water by the bed in case you get thirsty access to the restroom as you get older that's more and more important that's a whole nother issue you have it set up so you'd come for you can get a good night's rest in space it's different so on the Space Shuttle we did not have a separate bedroom we had a flight deck in a mid deck usually the commander and the pilot slept on the flight deck and the crew slept on the mid deck and we would set up our sleeping bags in different places so then you rolled up the sleeping bag when you were done sleeping in the morning and enrolled it back out at night and the shuttle there really isn't that much privacy you do have some privacy when you use the the hygiene compartment the toilet and so on there's a curtain that you can pull you can draw clothes and have privacy so that's important and everything else you do is kind of out there with your friends so when you're sleeping and when you're making a meal or whatever it is you're probably have someone else close by on space station it's a bit different being in space for only two weeks it's kind of like a camping trip everyone's kind of in the same room not a problem kind of fun but if you're gonna be up different six months like my friends up on the space station you want a little more privacy than that so they actually have a sleep station a bedroom which is kind of like a closet it's not really like a room is more like a closet they'll have their sleeping bag already mounted they don't worry about rolling it up they can put some of their clothing in there they can put a computer in there their music pictures of their family and you're in there and you've got your privacy to sleep comfortably so that's like your own little bedroom in space on the space station so you sleep in a bed what you wear is up to you you know I kind of like my Snoopy pajamas well you might whatever you feel comfortable and wearing or not you can control the temperature so you can put on the air-conditioning if you need to if it's too hot or you can turn the heat up I usually have a glass of water next to my bed I don't use a sleep mask or earplugs or anything like that and generally works pretty well in space on the space shuttle we didn't have beds so I would have to set up my sleeping bag our sleeping bag is not like your regular sleeping bag that you would have on a camping trip it was more like a bed roll and you could get in inside of it didn't have much of a of a blanket was more like a canvas sleeping bag it had a lot of straps and hooks on it so you could hook it to things so you know when to get on your sleeping bag and float around the cabin and wake up your friends and knock your head so you would attach it with these various hooks to different things that you could hook it to so I set up my sleeping bag on the ceiling so I could sleep up there like I was a bat I thought that was kind of cool and other people slept different but it's like a big slumber party and I would use those hooks to set it up and then I would open up the two pieces of canvas sort of and get inside of it it's pretty comfortable and then once you get inside you're kind of in there and then you're floating around with it I mean you're not floating all over the place but you're still floating within that sleeping bag which is pretty cool and your arms naturally in space will just rise up like this like on earth you know we don't necessarily walk around with our hands up all the time and a little tough on your shoulders to do that all day but in space it's just they don't have any weight to them so you even you actually hands are kind of like just kind of floats you see people like this when I've heard this I thought this is a little crazy but it works really well it was so used to using a pillow on earth the pillow is attached to the sleeping bags kind of integrated right with Velcro so you can take it off if you need to and then there's a band more or less attached to it that you wrap around your head and it's very comfortable I thought it would I thought it sounded crazy but it works it's usually pretty cold in the in the spacecraft being a few degrees colder than normal so I would wear gym shorts and a t-shirt socks we'll have to keep your head warm and if you need a little extra you put on sweatpants or sweatshirt so that was my basic pajamas that's about it you know you shut off the lights and you try to make it quiet and cool and comfortable and and try not to make too much noise and have everyone try to get a good night's rest [Music] on my first flight I wore an act watch I was a Harvard University study from what I remember somehow they collected data with that thing to give us an idea of our activity you know sleep cycles and so on he had to keep a pretty good log about when you were going to sleep and what you were doing with that and I think I was pretty conscientious about that on my first flight my second flight I wasn't as conscientious and I forgot to wear the watch for a couple days and they told me I didn't work for I forgot to put it on a stand like okay we won't be able to use your data but they do they do track that or there are sleep studies there really is no training to actually sleep because the basic idea is the same close your eyes and go to sleep however you get a lot of information about how you can do that more comfortably in the different environment of space so for example using earplugs I don't normally use earplugs when I'm trying to sleep on earth but in space there's a somewhat of a constant whir of machineries and sometimes a little crackle of the comm system or something like that so it could be a little noisy so you use earplugs also you always kind of keep a light on in case you wake up you can get way tippy me get to the restroom or do something so I wore sleep masks in space against something I normally don't wear when I'm on earth so one of the best things about traveling to space is that you don't have to pack your own luggage we have professionals to do that for you because there's a lot of things you need you don't want to forget anything I'm sure I would have forgotten some important things it's kind of a fun day where you pick out what you're gonna take for your personal hygiene items you know do you want a an electric razor or do you want to shave with shaving cream with a regular razor and so those sleep items are picked out in the same way what kind of ear plugs you might want to use what kind of sleep mask you might want to use if you have a special one from home that you want to bring you can hand those in and they'll fly those and then you keep them afterwards or they can supply it for you and I did use a little bit of mild sleep medication on my first two nights in space I really wanted to get my rest I was concerned about not being able to fall asleep so I did use a little bit of sleep medicine for my first two nights and then I felt like I didn't I needed but it was really important to get my rest if you want to bring your teddy bear you can I did bring my Snoopy with me I had a toy Snoopy that I brought with me mission comes first and if the teddy bear is gonna make you feel more comfortable to get you better rest I would say that's an essential item on the Space Shuttle the way we woke up was you would be woken up by wake-up music they would rotate the wake-up music by crew member based on what was going on that day the family usually picks that out your wife or your kids or someone will pick that out for you and you can try to guess whether or not it's it's your song my first flight I heard Frank Sinatra's fly me to the moon come on I was convinced that was gonna be my song but it wasn't I got the Mission Impossible theme I think it was a lack of confidence on a part of my family for that one well in Space Station it's more like an alarm that is set that'll go off but the ground will make sure you're you're awake and ready to go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] on earth and we have a 24 hour day we have a morning and an evening I generally get up early morning go to bed not too late try to do that space it's not gonna work like that because you're travelling around the planet at a very high speed 17,500 miles an hour which means you're gonna make an orbit of our planet in an hour and a half in about 90 minutes you still maintain a 24 hour day you have eight hours sleep period getting ready for bed but call it pre sleep before that a little bit of time after we call post sleep or you're getting ready to start your day and then you more or less work in between that but as you're going around the planet like this half the time it's it's dark half the time it's right every 45 minutes you go through that transition you get 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in a 24 hour period and so if you are trying to plan your sleep schedule around that you'd have to go to sleep and wake up every 45 minutes it's not going to work so you don't tell time necessarily by whether it's it's light light outside or dark outside you go by the clock and in the shuttle flights it was by mission elapsed time that period while that's going on those eight hours when you're sleeping you're zipping around the planet still and it's light outside and it's dark outside so the darkness would probably be okay you wouldn't necessarily wake up because of the darkness but the bright sunlight it is so bright the Sun is the brightest light I've ever experienced it's almost like a pure white lights that light gets filtered a little bit through the window and or if it gets filtered a lot by our atmosphere so we don't get the same but even on a very bright clear sunny day it's nothing like being in space so we have window shades so staying up late on the Space Shuttle to look out the window really wasn't an option because our commander would block the windows with these window shades so it would remain dark and then the window shades would come out during the during the day in the morning now Space Station you have your own little space of sleep in so you close your little door and shut off the light and it's dark and there's no real need for window covers there because they can come they can get light and dark outside of your room and you're not gonna notice on earth we have our different senses to tell us where we are visually we know we're upside down right side up but more subtly maybe we also have our vestibular system which works on gravity our inner ear that tells us if we're lying down and we're standing straight up or we're upside down or whatever it is we're moving accelerating and so on in space your vestibular system is telling your brain nothing your eyes are saying moving around but the inner ear was telling you perfectly still and it can lead to nausea which happened to me on my first flight but your brain gets used to that and after a couple days you can you can be standing on the ceiling having a conversation and you're fine that's pretty cool and that's why you can sleep on the ceiling you're floating up there and close your eyes and your brains okay with it snoring is something I do on earth I think it's unclear still of whether or not you snore in space or as much I always thought you didn't snore in space that you know the net position that we're on an earth and the way gravity works in space you're you're kind of floating there so I did not think that I snored in space however I was told that one of the later days during our flights that I was actually snoring and one of my crewmates had heard a trick to get you to stop snoring was to grab the person by the ankles I don't know if this works on earth I don't know how she found this out but apparently I was snoring and one of my crewmates got out of her sleeping bag and grabbed me by the ankles I don't know if that woke me up or not but it stopped the snoring maybe that's a hint something to remember if you're ever in space in your crewmates snoring I have not had any nightmares related to space I've dreamt a lot about space though when you go to bed at the end of a day in space I remember closing my eyes and thinking about all the wondrous things I had seen that my eyes had really seen some cool stuff and I would kind of dwell on that I have this you know this recurring dream that I'm back in space and we're going back to fix the telescope one more time like there was one more time ago and I'm up there with my crewmates and we're doing different things up there we were trying to fix oh I do dream about going back to space a lot sleep in space has kind of evolved over the years right at first they didn't sleep at all the first couple missions were fairly short then they started longer and longer and people needed to sleep and then we made a big leap with the space station in people living there in meaning their own little place to sleep and the next step might be much longer missions where people are going to Mars for six months or in the future hopefully we're going much further than that and you're still going to need to sleep having a private area might need to be a little bit larger maybe your crew quarters needs to be a little bit larger this idea for very long for voyages of having like just cryo sleep that you see in the movies I'm not so sure about that you know I don't know if I'd feel like I'm gonna go sleep for five years but maybe that's the way to do it I think we have time to figure that out at this point I think we've we've determined a couple things I think having a private area where you can feel comfortable like you are comfortable in your bedroom when it's time to go to bed I think we're pretty good about knowing and it needs to be quiet knowing about shifting you do need your eight hours a day so I think all these things that we learned have led us to where we are now with space travel and so I think we're all ready to go in these longer voyages that will be happening and sleep is gonna be a big part of that I think to counteract that we should find a better propulsion system so you can get places a lot more quickly then you don't have to worry about that as much I think that eventually will come as well but sleeping is really important it's important for us here on earth for our health and well-being and in space it's it's just as important maybe even more so because you want to be on the top of your game during a mission [Music]

Channel: WIRED

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Keywords: astronaut, sleeping, space, space station, nasa astronaut, mike massimino, mike massimino interview, mike massimino astronaut, sleeping in space, space sleep, mike massimino space, mike massimino sleeping, how astronauts sleep, sleeping nasa, how to sleep in space, how they sleep in space, astronauts sleeping, sleeping astronauts, astronaut sleep, space sleeping, sleep, outer space, outer space sleep, international space station, iss, iss sleep, wired

Id: gJBt92DHyFI

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 08 2019