6. They Can’t Even Sleep Like Normal People

The next point on our list of things you can’t do in space (properly) is catching some very necessary Zzz…

After a long day of doing whatever astronauts do there, you would think they could just crash into their space beds and get a well-deserved rest, right? Well, not quite. Sleeping in space is a serious matter and we will try to answer some of the most pressing questions on how do astronauts sleep in space, what they sleep in exactly, and how they manage to keep their minds under such adverse circumstances.



How Do Astronauts Sleep in Space?

Sleeping is a little different in space – there is no up and down, and everything is weightless, so astronauts have to adapt to these conditions if they ever want to not get psychotic due to sleep deprivation.

In early missions, astronauts could sleep anywhere, as long as they attached their sleeping bags to a wall or ceiling to avoid floating around the cabin and bumping into each other.

On the International Space Station, there are six private sleeping quarters – little larger than phone booths – to provide a quiet place for each crew member to hang their sleeping bag.

How Many Hours Do Astronauts Sleep?

The schedule says 8 hours, but many cannot sleep more than six. After all, the resting conditions are less than ideal and astronauts have plenty of things to worry about even when they nap.

Despite this, in his book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Chris Hadfield describes the weightless sleep of microgravity as “a whole new type of comfortable.” With no gravity pushing you downward, your entire body is perfectly relaxed.

Zero gravity and the prospect of suffering concussions are not the only things that astronauts need to consider.

The sleeping quarters have to be very well ventilated. Why? Thanks to the lack of gravity, astronauts can wake up air deprived, as the exhaled carbon dioxide can hang around in the air, forming bubbles around their heads.

If you let one rip, well, you got a major problem on your hands, as the gas lingers in the air, annoying everybody and inadvertently causing a situation stupid enough that even Jackass didn’t think of turning into a prank.

So, How Do You Sleep in Space?

Very carefully, it is all that we are saying. We would recommend some space sleep music to ease you into that zero G comfort Chris Hadfield was describing, but you may be among the lucky ones that can sleep anytime and anywhere when they are tired. We personally are not among those select few.

To return to more serious facts about sleeping in space, the European Space Agency reported that astronaut hibernation (suspended animation) is doable under certain conditions. Of course, a science-fiction trope so popular it is not even considered a cliche in space travel movies or books is still hard to achieve in real life, but the E.S.A. is hopeful and confident. As you can easily guess, suspended animation could help astronauts travel for unprecedented distances into space and reach not only Mars, for instance, but other galaxies far, far away as well!