So what's the coolest part of space travel?

I've never been. Like the other 99.9998 percent of the world's population, I've been planet-bound and will likely remain so my entire life. But what about those blessed souls who somehow escape Earth's gravity and venture to the other side of the sky? What about the trip do they look forward to the most?

It's a pretty sure bet it's not the experiments although those are important. It's not the thrill of liftoff and the feeling of three G's pressing into your chest, as though like one astronaut put it the very "hand of God" was thrusting you into the sky and your body was fighting to catch up. It's probably not even weightlessness, although that would could a close, very, very, close second.

The coolest part about space travel must be looking out the window.

We all know this. Any kid who has ever scrambled for a window seat on an airliner and pressed his nose against the hard, sunlit plexiglass to watch the clouds and the cars and the humanity roll by underneath his feet, knows this.

Even the original Mercury astronauts steely eyed men hardly known for their maudlin protested that the two tiny portholes on their space capsules weren't enough, demanding successfully that a decent-sized window be added to the design.

The International Space Station has a very, very large window.

The entire module is called the Cupola, and it actually boasts seven large windows, one of which at 31 inches is the largest window ever to be used in space. Used in concert, the seven windows provide a fish-eye view of space that has never been available to astronauts before. Not without a spacesuit at least.

There's an iconic picture that made the Cupola famous: in it, astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson can be seeing, posing almost artistically with her head in her palm, her hair floating in weightlessness and her eyes staring tranquilly out at the breathtaking vista of the Earth below (that picture can be seen above.)

American astronaut Terry Virts knows all about the Cupola. In Feb. 2010, he traveled to the International Space Station aboard Space ShuttleEndeavor for a two-week mission, during which he actually installed the Cupola and its shutters were opened for the first time.

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A VIEW FROM THE WINDOW: WDRB interviews astronauts preparing for Dec. launch to International Space Station