‘Per aspera ad astra’. This is the phrase adopted as a statement of intent by space agencies, both real and fictional, that originates in Virgil’s Aeneid. But exactly what kinds of hardship will the human body have to endure to colonise the cosmos?
When Scott Kelly came back to Earth after 340 days in space, it felt like his skin was on fire. Not on re-entry, but later, when he tried to sit down, get dressed or move. Spending close to a year in microgravity will do that to you; aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Kelly’s skin got used to feeling no weight and having nothing touching it.
Like other astronauts, he floated around the ISS with little need for furniture. He didn’t wear shoes and even his clothes drifted around his body instead of hanging from it. So when he came home, a shirt sleeve bearing down on his arm under the pull of Earth’s gravity was alien, painful even. As Kelly himself said in a post-flight press conference: “Adjusting to space is easier than adjusting to Earth…”
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