Andy Thomas discusses recreation on Mir, 2008

Transcript of sound recording

There were three of us on board the whole space station, so we actually had quite a lot of room. The biggest challenge is that you don't have a lot of options of things for recreation. And the things that you normally might do for recreation, like going out, going to restaurants, visiting people, going to a sports game or something like that, are not something you can do up there, so you have very limited resources of recreation. So you need to learn to use what's available creatively so that you can have good recreation and have a good balance of work and recreation. And once you do that, the experience actually becomes really enjoyable, almost kind of tranquil actually, in a way. You're never bored. If you're bored, you just go to the window and you'll always see something new and exciting that you haven't seen before, and there's never a dull moment.