Unlike in baseball, crying is allowed in space. That doesn’t mean it’s overly advisable, however. Thanks to the utterly foreign physics of traveling outside Earth’s atmosphere, tears don’t fall in space. They just accumulate on the face, forming goofy blobs of water beneath the eyes that are the opposite of sadness.
Recently, Canada, and more specifically the Canadian Space Agency, decided to start making informative YouTube videos with astronaut Chris Hadfield to demonstrate how to do various activities in space. Why? Probably because it seems to be Canada’s mission to be as friendly, helpful and likeable as possible. Most of the clips have gotten a solid thumbs up from the Internet community, but this one has achieved true popularity. More than five hundred thousand viewers have taken a look in less than a week, and in the coming days, it seems likely that figure will skyrocket (pun very much intended).
Once upon a time, a high percentage of kids grew up dreaming of being astronauts. Thanks to cuts in space funding and the moon already having been explored, that dream isn’t quite as prevalent as it once was. Hopefully, videos like this will inspire future generations to think well past the troposphere and into the great beyond, or at least, all the way to Mars.
And just for the record: I could not be less surprised this dude can’t cry on command. Chop wood competently? Change his own oil filters? Convey disappointment without saying a word? I’m pretty confident he can do those last three though.
