Astronauts Often a Bit Woozy

We all know about carsickness and seasickness—but spacesickness? NASA is cagey about its vomiting astronauts, but about half of the 500 who’ve been to the final frontier suffer from “space adaptation syndrome,” reports Ned Potter for ABC News. So it comes as no surprise to Potter that when a German aboard the orbiting shuttle Atlantis was replaced on a recent spacewalk, it was for an undisclosed “medical issue.”

NASA’s guardedness is not without reason: While space programs are publicly funded and transparent, the privacy of individual astronauts is still mandated by law and propriety. The European Space Agency is a little more talkative; its website reports an update from one of their doctors stating that, while not life threatening, its spaceman’s condition was “not compatible with a spacewalk.” Whatever that means. (More Atlantis Space Shuttle stories.)