About this item
Everyone wonders what it's really like in space, but very few of us have ever had the chance to experience it firsthand. This captivating illustrated collection brings together stories from dozens of international astronauts - men and women who've actually been there - who have returned with accounts of the sometimes weird, often funny, and awe-inspiring sensations and realities of being in space. With playful artwork accompanying each, here are the real stories behind backwards dreams, "moon face," the tricks of sleeping in zero gravity and aiming your sneeze during a spacewalk, the importance of packing hot sauce, and dozens of other cosmic quirks and amazements that come with travel in and beyond low Earth orbit.
About the Author
Ariel Waldman makes "massively multiplayer science", instigating unusual collaborations that spark clever creations for science and space exploration.
Ariel is the founder of Spacehack.org, a directory of ways to participate in space exploration, and the global director of Science Hack Day, a 20-countries-and-growing grassroots endeavor to make things with science. She is the author of What's It Like in Space? , a collection of stories from astronauts (Chronicle Books, 2016) .
Ariel is the co-author of a congressionally-requested National Academy of Sciences study on the future of human spaceflight. She sits on the council for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) , a program that nurtures radical, sci-fi-esque ideas that could transform future space missions. She is also a fellow at Institute For The Future. In 2013, Ariel received an honor from the White House for being a Champion of Change in citizen science.
Ariel originally grew up in Kansas where she attended art school at the Kansas City Art Institute. Never having anticipated that she would one day stumble into a gig at NASA, her mission is now to enlighten others on how anyone can actively contribute to the furthering of science and space exploration in clever new ways.
