Talk about your back up being far away.

[Piggybank Cop]

Astronaut Stuck in Space
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:02 p.m. ET March 28, 2007

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronaut Sunita Williams is stuck in space _ at least temporarily. She flew up to the international space station last December planning to come home in early July after a seven-month stay.

When she comes back now will be a bit later than she planned.

The problem is that a hail storm that damaged the fuel tank of the space shuttle Atlantis has knocked NASA's flight schedule for the year out of whack.

Her ticket home, space shuttle Endeavour, may get off the ground several weeks later than its originally scheduled June 28 launch.

So Williams _ who got a bit of attention for her accident with wasabi which wound up on the walls of the space station _ may have to wait a little longer to go to her favorite sushi restaurant in Houston.

"We're doing things we can as best we can to make her happy, and perhaps launch some special items that will make her more comfortable for that extended period of time," said Kirk Shireman, NASA's deputy manager of the space station program. "Aside from that, there's not a whole lot that one can do."

Flight surgeon Dave Alexander said Williams' physical fitness, mental well-being and radiation exposure would be monitored carefully, but "right now, the predictions are Suni can stay up for an extended period of time."

During her longer stay in space, Williams is expected to break the U.S. record for continuous time in space. Her current crew mate, Michael Lopez-Alegria, will set that record when he returns to Earth on April 20 in a Russian Soyuz vehicle with 214 days in space.

The longest stay in space was 437 days by Russian Valeri Polyakov.

[rob84]

Dude, that shit sucks!

[bird1]

i hope they have plenty of tang up there

[jmur5074]

That sucks

Why would you want to spend 437 days in space????????????

[Ducky]

Don't know, but that sounds like one hell of a house arrest.

[keith720]

I don't care how much you clean, can you imagine the smell of that place after a while?

[conalabu]

I'd go friggin' nuts. In a hurry.

[10-42Adam]

She must be bored out of her mind. I can't even imagine what that must feel like...

[mavriktu]

Hope she has a good supply of "D" cells

[Piggybank Cop]

Space Station Crew Takes Short Trip
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:46 p.m. ET March 29, 2007

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The three crew members of the international space station took a brief trip outside Thursday, relocating a Russian Soyuz vehicle to make room for another spacecraft to dock next month.

Dressed in Russian spacesuits, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams piled into the Soyuz vehicle, which undocked from the space station and traveled about 80 feet to another docking port.

As is a standard precaution when the crew leaves the outpost, crew members prepared the space station for operating without humans in the event that they wouldn't be able to return. They docked again to the space station without any problems about 25 minutes after departing.

The relocation of the Soyuz made room for the arrival on April 9 of another Soyuz spacecraft carrying Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov and space tourist Charles Simonyi, who is paying $20 million for his 13-day trip to space.

Lopez-Alegria, Tyurin and Simonyi will return to Earth in a Soyuz on April 20.

When you’re stuck up there you rearrange the capsules.

[k-9max]

That would really suck, and they wonder why the last female astronaut went nuts, driving across country with a diaper on wanting to kill someone.
unreal!

[BEB]

Why would you want to spend 437 days in space????????????

I'd do it. 437 days of not having to deal with people? Sign me up.

I'd go friggin' nuts. In a hurry.

I'm already there.

[Cheech]

YOu could not pay me to go to space...

[Piggybank Cop]

Astronaut will run Boston Marathon - in space
/ Associated Press


BOSTON (AP) - Zooming through low-Earth orbit at 17,500 mph, Suni Williams completes the standard marathon distance every 5.4 seconds.

Good thing Rosie Ruiz never thought of that.
Williams is registered for next month's Boston Marathon, even though she'll be stuck on the international space station when the rest of the field lines up for the 111th edition of the race. So the U.S. Navy commander will run the equivalent distance on a treadmill - 210 miles above Earth, and tethered to her track by bungee cords so she doesn't float away.

Not since Ruiz hopped the 'T' to the finish line to accept the winner's wreath in 1980 has a Boston Marathon competitor relied so heavily on public transportation.

"She thought it would be cool if she gave it a try," said Williams' sister, Dina Pandya, who will run the race the traditional way. "She said, 'I'll call you on Heartbreak Hill."'

Another NASA astronaut, Karen Nyberg, will dodge the potholes from Hopkinton to Boston's Back Bay on April 16 along with Pandya and almost 24,000 other runners. Although the race starts at 10 a.m. EDT on Earth, Williams might not be able to run contemporaneously because her sleep schedule - a fairly arbitrary matter in space - is set for the arrival of a Soyuz mission.

"I'm not sure the timing will be that she'll be awake," Pandya said. "They're going to be on Russian time, so they're kind of sleep-shifting."

Williams qualified for the Boston race by finishing last January's Houston Marathon in 3 hours, 29 minutes, 57 seconds. Pandya didn't sweat the logistics when she signed them both up, but on Dec. 9 Williams took off on the space shuttle Discovery and it became clear she wasn't going to make it to the starting line.

"I considered it a huge honor to qualify, and I didn't want my qualification to expire without giving it a shot," Williams told the Boston Athletic Association, which organizes the oldest of the world's annual marathons.

The BAA offered to send an official entrant's bib and a special finisher's medal - made without lead, per NASA orders - to the space station. But when this month's launch of the shuttle Atlantis was postponed, Williams had to be e-mailed a bib that she can print out; the other souvenirs will have to wait.

Race organizers have cooperated with far-flung endeavors like the "Boston Marathon in Iraq," sending extensive packages of trophies, water bottles and even a finish line tape to the Middle East for three years running. A similar shipment is headed for Kosovo this year.

But this is the first satellite race they've ever had on a satellite.

"The Boston Marathon is the pinnacle achievement for most runners," BAA spokesman Jack Fleming said. "For Suni to choose to run the 26.2 miles in space on Patriots Day is really a tribute to the thousands of marathoners who are running here on Earth. She is pioneering a new frontier in running and in sports with her run, which will truly be out of this world."

Williams, 41, has run a handful of marathons, and she went through rigorous testing before being blasted into orbit. But three months with little gravity takes a toll on a human, and NASA requires all members of a station crew to exercise on the treadmill, a stationary bike and a resistance machine to maintain bone density and muscle mass.

"In microgravity, both of these things start to go away because we don't use our legs to walk around and don't need the bones and muscles to hold us up under the force of gravity," Williams told the BAA.

Gravity remains a problem for the world's top marathoners as they trudge up Heartbreak Hill.

But Williams has her own problems.

A "vibration isolation system" built by a NASA engineer will keep her from shaking the entire space station as she runs, but the machinery puts a strain on the runner's hips and shoulders. She also has to be ready to abort her mission.

Running a marathon is a strain under normal conditions: the first person who ran one, according to Greek legend, dropped dead when he finished. Since then, thousands of runners have sought refuge from on-course aid stations and finish line medical tents to be treated for hypothermia and dehydration, blisters and broken bones and heart attacks.

Williams won't get so much as a mylar blanket when she's done.

"That harness gets hard on her back and her shoulders or her hips. Her foot was going numb because the strap was on her hip so much," Pandya said.

"She realizes that she has to be OK (after she's finished). She mentioned the other day, 'There's no hot bath."'

[Piggybank Cop]

YOu could not pay me to go to space...

Pssst:

You’re already there; your spaceship is just bigger.

[Autumn2009]

Can you imagine being away from LEF for that long???? Lol.