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Earlier this week, he dropped off a space toilet at the Museum of Flight. Going to the bathroom in space is quite a bit more complicated than sleeping there, and Simonyi is enthusiastic about sharing all the personal, yet technical, details with anyone curious. He even made a video about the mechanics of bodily functions in zero gravity. Sleeping is actually easier in space than on earth, Simonyi said. "You can sleep anywhere in any position -- vertical, horizontal or at an angle," he said, adding that he slept in a room where the Russian space suits were kept. "It was out of the way and pretty quiet. I enjoyed it very much." Thanks to Simonyi, the museum also has one of the Russian Soyuz space capsules he used to ride back to earth from the space station. Simonyi gave $3 million to the museum to help build the space gallery, and has given the Soyuz capsule, a space suit, space toilet and other artifacts to the museum on a long-term loan.
Eventually the small cone-shaped capsule will sit beside the giant U.S. space shuttle trainer, for which the hangar-sized gallery was built. Simonyi said he never felt claustrophobic on the space station or in the Russian ships to or from the station. "I find the spacecraft very comfortable, very cozy," he said. Nothing about the experience was scary, he said, even though he doesn't consider himself much of a daredevil. He is a pilot, flying both jets and helicopters. He compared the experience of dropping back to earth in the Russian space capsule to snow skiing, from the s-turns the capsule makes as it falls through the atmosphere to the whooshing sound it makes as the air and heat blast off the surface. Conversely, the idea of riding in a submarine miles beneath the surface of the ocean
-- like James Cameron did recently -- that gives him the willies. "That takes guts," he said.
[Associated
Press;
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