Space travel tips from one who went there – Minneapolis Star Tribune

One of the first tourists to travel in outer space found it to be a bit of a buzzkill. Sure, he loved every minute even if he was physically miserable part of the time. The next wave of space tourists will need a high tolerance for discomfort.

If all goes according to plan, Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies will send two paying civilians around the moon and back sometime next year. "My advice to them would be to medicate early and often," says Richard Garriott de Cayeux, the video game developer and entrepreneur who paid $30 million to Russia's Space Adventures to spend 12 days aboard the International Space Station.

The microgravity that permits what Garriott de Cayeux describes as "joyous, free-feeling" motion we associate with astronauts also takes a serious physiological toll. "Body fluids stop flowing normally, which is why, in space, people's faces look puffy, and they generally have somewhat bloodshot eyes," he says. "It feels sort of like lying on a children's slide, head down. In the first days, you get very stuffed up and have a bit of a headache." These symptoms can be easily remedied with common drugs, such as aspirin and Sudafed.

Link:

Space travel tips from one who went there - Minneapolis Star Tribune