Some simple safety tips for space travel.

Always Velcro your spoon to the table (you never know when it will float off), turn on the space toilet fan (remember gas is a natural propellant), tie a bungee cord to fasten your sleeping bag to the wall (otherwise you never know where you’ll wake up) and don’t scream or jerk back if you find a rubber rat in your sleeping bag (remember for every action there is an opposite and EQUAL reaction.)

These were just some of the fun facts that NASA astronaut Dr. Peggy Whitson shared with the students at St. Mark’s Lutheran School in Hacienda Heights on Wednesday. The affable space traveler developed an amazing rapport with the kids at the local Christian school.

The 54-year-old astronaut shared many stories of her journeys to the International Space Station. But more importantly, Whitson inspired the students, showing them that you really can accomplish anything.

“Who would have thought a farm girl from Iowa could become an astronaut?” the former Chief of the Astronaut Corps asked.

Whitson was 9 years old when she saw a man walk on the moon. “I thought that was such a cool job!” she remembered.

When she was 10, her father got his pilot’s license. And when she graduated from high school, NASA selected its first female astronauts.

“That’s when I made it my goal,” Whitson added. “You have to expend effort to achieve your goal, but be sure to have some fun along the way.”

So Whitson studied hard, earning a doctorate in biochemistry at Rice University in Houston. And she began to work at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The rest, as they say, is history. Whitson spent 377 days in space, the most for any woman. She also took six spacewalks, totalling almost 40 hours.

And she delights in sharing her love of spaceflight.

“I stayed on the International Space Station for six months at a time,” said Whitson, a NASA science officer during her first stay, conducting 21 experiments in life sciences and microgravity. She became station commander for Expedition 16 in 2008, supervising an expansion of the station’s living and work space.

Of course, life on a station hurtling through space has its ups and downs. Or to be more precise since there is no gravity, life is like floating in a dream.

Which led to many interesting questions from the students. Like how do you cut your hair in space?

“Well, if you’re not careful you’ll be coughing up a lot of fur balls,” Whitson laughed. “You hook a vacuum cleaner up to collect the hair clippings.”

How do you eat in space?

“Just think about it, a glass of water will float away. So we use special straws with clamps. Your spoon has to be velcroed to the table or it will fly away.”

One of her biggest complaints was the lack of variety in the food, which comes dehydrated or in cans.

“I loved the chicken fajitas, but the MREs (military ready to eat) were the best.”

Did you fly to the moon?

“No, I did not go to the moon… But my neighbor is John Young, one of the Apollo astronauts who drove the lunar buggy on the surface of the moon.”

How do you use the restroom?

“Well, everything floats in space,” Whitson noted as the whole gym burst into laughter. “And it’s very important that the fans are working.”

Actually, Whitson said the solid waste is stored in special containers, while the liquid waste is recycled.

“We drink it, but obviously we clean it with filters first,” she explained to the disgusted students.

What does a launch feel like? Whitson said she flew on both the Space Shuttle Endeavor as well as a Soyuz capsule.

“It takes 8 1/2 minutes to go from 0 to 17,500 miles per hour. There’s little G-force, we get up to 3 Gs. That feels like three people sitting on your chest.”

Did you ever crash?

“No, but a Soyuz landing is kinda like a car crash,” Whitson noted, pointing out that the Soyuz hits 8 Gs. “That’s eight dudes on your chest.”

Did you play pranks on each other?

“One of the guys was prankster, who brought a rubber rat that he put in the toilet room,” Whitson recalled. “I was a little surprised but didn’t scream. Later, we hid it in his sleeping bag and he screamed like a little girl.”