CALGARY - Canada's first astronaut to blast off for a six-month sojourn into orbit says he's ready for life in cramped conditions that will slowly wear down his body and mind but could also help secure the future of manned travel to the moon and Mars.
Robert Thirsk knows the challenges that come with months on end folded with five others into an area the size of a small house, living with weightlessness that goes against everything the human body is built for.
"Living aboard a space station is not like staying at the Palliser Hotel," Thirsk said Tuesday in Calgary. "It's like living aboard a nuclear submarine."
Yet the knowledge gained on the trip could help with future manned space missions as well as provide answers to hundreds of scientific questions about life down here on earth.
"This first Canadian expedition is going to be something completely different than we've ever done before."
Thirsk chose the University of Calgary, where he received his first degree years ago, for his final media briefing before his May departure from Kazakhstan aboard the Russian Soyuz capsule.
He's counting on two and a half years of intense training to see him through whatever challenges the solar system can throw at him.
Thirsk has spent time in Russia and Houston learning the ins and outs of the complex machinery he'll need to operate, as well as memorizing every detail of how the station works and learning how to speak Russian.
In addition, he'll be the medical officer, the mission specialist for an experimental facility and in charge of a number of research projects.
"That's my biggest challenge. Incorporating all this information into my brain is like drinking from a fire hose," he said. "I wouldn't have it any other way, though."
Thirsk is coming to the space station at an important point in its history, he said. While previous astronauts have been focused on getting the station up and running, his group will have much more of a chance to dive into its research on microgravity.
Thirsk will spend more than 12 hours a day running experiments on topics such as human perception and the growth of wood in space. He'll also perform maintenance and take pictures that will examine the impact of climate change on the globe.
He's personally most worried about a tricky task that will come a few months into his mission -- using the Canadarm 2 to help connect a Japanese vehicle to the station.
He'll have one chance to reach out and deftly grasp the vehicle once it turns off its engine and begins free-falling away from the station -- and he doesn't want to screw up.
"When you send it to free drift, it starts to tumble, and so it's a bit of a goose chase to go after this thing and capture it properly," he said.
"It's sort of like trying lasso a bucking bronco."
Some of the most important experiments will be run on Thirsk himself.
Astronauts experience such high levels of bone demineralization, as well as muscle loss and circulation problems, that they often can't stand upright when they come back to earth.
As long as that's the case, humans will be stuck close to home, he said.
"We're not ready to go further into the solar system until we solve some of these medical problems."
Thirsk is taking part in a study that will see astronauts swallow the same pills used by post-menopausal women in an effort to stem the rapid bone loss. He'll be monitored while in space, as well as for months upon his return.
Thirsk, who grew up in B.C., Manitoba and Alberta, knows his assignment in space is an opportunity not many Canadian astronauts will ever get.
Canada is the smallest partner of the five groups that run the space station and has the most experience with robotics, but few Canadian astronauts get called upon to serve.
Thirsk's one other stop in space was a 17-day stint aboard a space shuttle in 1996, which gave him a taste of weightlessness.
He said it was a little like the scene in the movie "Peter Pan" that sees Peter teaching the children to fly.
At first they're "all elbows and knees, crashing into everything," but they learn.
"That's a little bit what it's like to be an astronaut. For the first few days on orbit, we're very awkward. My body and my life is adapted to this 1G environment here on earth, so it's a strange environment living and working in space.
"But after a period of time, it feels like you were born there."
