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Astronauts
The NASA term for a spacecraft crewmember is an Astronaut, originally this was applied to pilots, but now it includes scientists and payload specialists. Over 80 crewed missions were carried out to the end of 1991. The longest flight duration was 84 days by the Skylab 4 crew. Fifteen US women had flown in space; and 10 astronauts had lost their lives in accidents directly related to spaceflight. By the beginning of 1993, the cumulative crew time in space was over 2700 crew days. The Russian term for a spacecraft crew member is cosmonaut. The Soviet (later, Russian) space programme to the beginning of 1992 carried out over 70 manned flights, including three women (one British). The longest flight duration by two individuals was that of Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov, who spent 366 days in the space station Mir (Dec 1987Dec 1988). Cosmonauts (some paying customers) have included numerous individuals from other nations. By the beginning of 1992, the cumulative crew time amounted to over 8000 crew days. Four cosmonauts have lost their lives as a direct result of spaceflight-related accidents. During their time in Space Astronauts have to eat, sleep, and drink in a microgravity environment. Scientists do not like to call it zero- gravity because unless you are exactly at the centre-of-gravity of the spacecraft going around Earth in "free fall", there are always unavoidable forces, from tiny accelerations and tidal effects acting on you even if they are extremely small, in the order of one millionth of Earth's gravity. That's why scientists use the expression microgravity. |
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