Question: Have You Ever Actually Been In Space?

Andrew Winnard answered on 4 Dec 2015:

Only in simulators!! When I worked at the astronaut centre I got to go in sim to have a go at driving the same spaceship Tim will be using! One thing I found really fun is that you cant actually see out the front through any windows! Instead its a bit like a submarine and they have a periscope that sticks out the bottom. So you have to remember your looking out a little scope from the bottom of the ship and that your actually higher up than you think! I alsmost crashed into the space station a few times when I forgot that. Because there are not many windows, it was also easy to loose track (and sight in the periscope) of where the space station was, so I nearly got lost in space too! Luckily Tim will have had much more practice in the sim than I did before he flies his spaceship for real!

If any of you play Elite Dangerous the computer game – flying the real spaceship is quite a lot like flying the elite spaceships with flight assist turned off and using a periscope to see out!

It is practice for going to space that makes astronauts good at what they do! Thats why space sims are so important!

Fianlly – I’d love to goto space if I could!