Memories of Mir - “The stuff of dreams…”

A Metaphor Equation Micro-blog

Zero-G On the way to the launch Mir

The overlap of fact and fiction: where does the real world end and science fiction begin? Samantha Harvey’s prize winning novel Orbital could almost be an account of a real life space mission, so remarkably convincing is this fictional tale of a small group of astronauts and the time they spend in low Earth orbit. Helen Sharman did it all for real back in 1991 when she became the first Briton to fly into space.

In her memoirs Seize the Moment, Helen reported that for her “living and working in a state of weightlessness was completely natural and instinctive,” and that zero-G created a pace of life that was “easy and pleasant,” despite the endless checklists and experiments she was required to give her attention to. Very different perhaps from the more debilitating and insidious effects of a longer stay in space, as Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore might attest to in more candid moments away from all the media cameras and the microphones.

Even so, Helen apparently experienced none of the space sickness that others had. But what of home sickness? Were there moments of that as she gazed at the Earth through the viewing ports with a sense of longing and nostalgia, feeling the emotional undertow of the planet’s gravity? Or was the eight day sojourn too brief? Was she conscious that she would be back again all too soon. To live out the rest of her life in the more punishing environment of a full 1-G. Her time on Mir no more than the stuff of dreams...

Part one of our interview with Helen appears in the July issue of Odyssey – the arts and culture magazine of the British Interplanetary Society

More details can be found here:

www.bis-space.com/publications/odyssey/