"Pearson, Martin - So You Want To Be A Space Flier" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pearson Martin)

Because, every now and then, you forget and move just a little too fast, then
slam bang into something. No matter how careful you are, after a few days you're
a mass of bruises.
Everything that isn't battened down floats. A roll of microfilm hanging near the
cook stove, a caged frying pan floating along near the porthole, pillows
drifting around in an orbit by the light, old shirts and gadgets. At first, you
decide that this thing won't happen; you'll put everything away, fix it so you
won't have to worry about its drifting loose. After a few days, your outlook has
changed on that. Taking things out and putting them away, as often as you have
to do it, is gruelling labor. The slightest slip of muscles and you're darting
in one direction while the object shoots off in the opposite direction.
And then there's debris. Little crumbs of food; like globules of liquid. You'll
be careful, you think; you won't spill anything, eh? Think carefully: ever see
anyone eating back on Earth who didn't spill something, or drop something,
somewhere during the meal? Just a crumb, or a little drop of water, perhaps. But
that, buddy, is all you need to spill or drop in space. These crumbs, these tiny
droplets of water, don't fall to the tablecloth; they don't fall at all.
They float. They form into perfect little globes, if they're liquid, and take up
an orbit, perfect little planets. If they're crumbs of food, then they become
miniature meteors or planetoids.
Cooking has to be done in the single room allowed for living in your space ship.
Even though your food is mostly canned stuff, concentrated, there's enough that
isn't. Water keeps escaping from you; hot coffee is murderous. You have to keep
it in a closed container while it's boiling; you have to leave it there until it
cools sufficiently to drink. Then you suck it out through a drinking valve in
the pot, directly into your mouth. You can't pour it, because it won't pour in
space. If it got loose, you'd have a big ball of coffee, boiling hot; it would
drift around, wetting and scalding everything it touched. And you'd run into
plenty of grief trying to capture it.
Now re-picture the space ship, ten days out. Dozens of globes, tiny, oft-times
virtually invisible, of water, crumbs, food, etc., floating about, getting in
your eyes, your nose, your hair. Then, a final touch is added by the
ventilation. You see, there isn't any.
The air is purified and re-purified as in submarines. Chemically, it's still
breathable and that's all the designers wanted to know. But, to put it crudely,
the air stinks. The air is foul and it stays foul. The smell of everything
you've cooked remains in full strength. Living there doesn't help the
atmosphere, either.
AFTER FIFTEEN days in a chamber like this, you are sick. You have a case of BO
and halitosis such as no Listerine advertiser ever dreamed of in his palmiest
days. Your digestion is shot to pieces; your muscles lack exercise, and your
eyes are bleary from too much reading, or too much looking at the practically
unshielded glare of the stars outside.
Then there's the little matter of temperature. As a rule, there are two kinds of
temperature on a spaceship. Too hot or too cold. The outside of the ship is half
black and half mirrored. You regulate the temperature by juggling the gyroscope
in the engine room until the ship has swung one of those sides to the sun. If
it's the black side, then you absorb heat; if it's the mirror side, then the
heat is reflected away. By varying you should get your norm--should,
theoretically. Actually, you don't. Not as a rule. You think you have things