Turns out astronauts still drink Tang, or something like it. Weightlessness feels sort of like flying upside down. And there isn’t much time to be bored on the international space station, as the average work day lasts about 14 hours.
Capt. Scott Tingle is one of a very select group of people who have seen the earth while floating above it. The NASA astronaut spent six months aboard the international space station.
Tingle told this to several hundred school children at his alma mater UMass Dartmouth . He also talked about the joys and difficulties of space flight. He encouraged the students to consider a career that could bring them to space.
“My message is to follow their heart,” Tingle said. “If they’ve have something they want to do, they should just set their goals and then work towards it, and keep that in focus.”
“Everything else that’s stopping them is noise, they just need to get through that barrier or go around it.”
Tingle acknowledged that becoming an astronaut is incredibly difficult. Of the more than 10-thousand applications NASA could receive for astronaut training, only a handful will likely be selected. He says being an astronaut remains an important job.
“Humans in space is part of our evolution, its happening as we speak. And in another 10,000 years we may be living somewhere else, you never know. Looking at that big picture, anything we can do to make that happen is really rewarding,” Tingle said.
The future of space exploration according to Tingle? Private commercial flights to space, a return to the moon, and eventually a mission to Mars.
