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WEIGHTLESSNESS

[can't train for it, can' experience it on the ground--unless you have the misfortune to be in a falling elevator...people sometimes compare it to skydiving, but we have no sense of falling]

Weightlessness starts as soon as the main engines cut off--only 8 1/2 minutes off the launch pad. Since I was still strapped in my seat, I didn't start to float immediately--[floating off seat, gently held by my harness] but I couldn't resist the temptation to let go of my pencil to see whether it really would float in front of my nose.

The first few hours in weightlessness can be fairly frustrating. When I first unstrapped my seat belt and shoulder harness and began to try to move around, I felt very inefficient. My arms and legs weren't where I expected them, and my movements felt uncoordinated at best. Even opening lockers, pushing buttons, and changing clothes were new experiences: when I pulled on a drawer, it didn't move, I did; when I tried to make an entry on a computer keyboard, the reaction sent me floating backwards across the room; when I tried to take off my pants, they wouldn't drop to the ground-- and as I tried to pull my legs up out of them, I went somersaulting backwards across the middeck. Early in a flight astronauts do a lot of flailing, like would-be gymnasts struggling to stay on the balance beam. It's easy to go out of control--feel like a living example of unstable