Zombie Planetfall

Starblog 1

Hello all. They told me they wanted me to blog from space so that you guys can know how it is for a kid to be up in space. Maybe if you end up liking my blog you can leave all kinds of questions in the "comments" section and I can answer them if I can. But I've never blogged before so I don't really know what to be talking about. They say that one thing you can blog about when you don't know what to blog about is to just blog about the fact that you don't know what to blog about. So that's what I'm doing, because otherwise I don't know what to write.

Anyway, I've been up here on Proserpina Station for one week now, but I've been hanging out with space people for the last three months after I won the contest. They needed to make sure I was going to be able to handle being up in space. They had me doing all kinds of crazy exercises and tests and stuff. It actually kind of sucked and I'm glad I'm finally up here.

Proserpina is like double the size of the International Space Station (ISS) was before it was de-orbited, the astronauts tell me. Double the size but much more efficient energy-wise. It's lighter because most of the modules are actually blow up modules, if you can believe it. A private company makes them. Cheap to launch. They're like balloons, but tough as hell. I'm basically in a balloon as we speak, but you'd never know it just looking around. It looks exactly like the inside of a space station. The balloon material is tougher than metal, Wescott tells me. Sometimes I think he's kidding, but Citro says he's not.

For me, it's been very hard to get used to all the floating around. Sometimes I feel a little sick and Astronaut Citro comes flying out of nowhere with a barf bag and hangs out with me for a while. We just float there waiting for something nasty to happen. The station does have a gravitation wheel that spins around and creates gravity somehow, but it's a very narrow place to be. It's like a test gravity wheel, not a full one like you see in some science fiction movies. A starter wheel. Haha. Nobody really likes going in there because it's so narrow. But yes, you can stand up straight and walk . Most of the time we're in the non-spinning part of the station, floating around and bumping into things.

One of the cool things about being up here, besides being up in space in general, is getting to hang out with George Wescott. It's so cool learning about him in school and then actually getting to float around with him. Sometimes we play a game where we hold a bucket and the other guy tries to float something into it from way on the other side of the nexus module, which is the biggest module. I can say for a fact that he's a nice guy. He jokes with me that he's the first man on Mars, and I'm the first kid in space. We're like brothers he says. He's the commander of the mission, with Allan Rowan the next guy up.

Rowan's a little uncomfortable around kids though. He talks to me the least out of everybody. Actually, I don't feel bad though because he doesn't talk much to anyone except Bob Rehearsal. That's like his only friend. Everyone else he just talks to when they're doing science stuff and engineering stuff. He doesn't tell jokes, in other words.

Then there's Florence Citro. She's the only girl up here. Not a girl though. A woman. I like her a lot (but not like that, lol) She's very nice to me. She acts like she's my mom sometimes. Like, when the guys are poking fun of me somehow for being a kid, she tells them to cut it out already. All the guys are super nice to her. They like hold the hatches open for her like gentlemen. Space gentlemen.

Anyway, Citro just told me I need to shut down my computer and prepare for bed. They basically strap you up to the wall in a little sleeping bag. It's very weird and I haven't been able to sleep without the pills they give me, but they say I'll get over that soon. And btw, going to the bathroom really sucks, but I'll talk about that in a later post. It'll have its own post, I think.

So how was that for my first starblog? I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions or anything. Please remember to give me a like if you liked this. And please share on social media!