You may think leaving Earth is the ultimate liberation, but ISS astronauts face strict rules prohibiting booze, bread, and even a quick shower.
If you’ve ever dreamed about being an astronaut, it isn’t all spacewalks and big-blue-ball views. There’s intense training, repeated rejection, rigorous medical exams, and psychological evaluations, to name but a few. Then there’s the cruel irony of being told you’re not allowed to celebrate your success with a cold beer while putting your feet up and running a watchful gaze over the Earth. In fact, there are many things you’re not permitted to do in space, and by extension, the International Space Station (ISS), and they range from the obvious to the oddly specific. They’re not all put in place because of safety concerns, either. Politics and plain old practicality are the source of some of them.
The ISS has been continuously occupied for over two decades, and if you look up at the night sky at certain times and under certain conditions, you might catch sight of it. It orbits Earth 16 times a day and passes over 90% of the planet’s population. The vast majority of us won’t even notice or might even pass it off as an airplane or satellite. However, if you do catch it, instead of filling your heart with wonder about how amazing it must be up there with all that peace and tranquility, spare a thought for the poor astronauts who must follow a rigid set of rules and regulations — many of which you probably never realized. Here are five activities that are big no-nos on the ISS.Drinking Alcohol
Alcohol is completely banned on the International Space Station, but not for the reasons you might think. Before you imagine astronauts chugging on beers, smashing whiskey, and getting rowdy on multi-billion dollar infrastructure, the real reason for the ban is simple: it can damage the station’s water recovery system. That means it’s not just Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker, jungle juice, and jello shots that are banned; everyday items containing alcohol, like mouthwash and aftershave, are also prohibited.
That’s because ethanol evaporates faster than water, so just opening a bottle releases fumes into the air. This threatens the filtration system that recycles all that sweat, breath, and urine back into drinking water. Aside from that, the public may not feel too reassured knowing NASA’s astronauts are not fully cognitive when whizzing around up there at 17,500 mph (which is just one interesting fact about the ISS). Alcohol consumption is banned a full 12 hours before their flight has even launched.
There is also the cultural minefield that could flare up social tensions with non-drinking astronauts who could be religious abstainers or teetotalers. It’s a landmine that NASA would prefer to avoid altogether, and despite stories of unofficial consumption and NASA testing alcohol in space for scientific purposes, there has been no official story of ISS inhabitants breaking the rules as of yet. Anyway, with zero gravity messing with stomachs, the result would likely be wet burps (or worse) floating around in microgravity, something that even the boldest beer-loving astronaut should never experience.Consuming certain foods and drinks
Unlike on Earth, gas bubbles don’t separate from liquids in microgravity.
