Here on earth we’re thankful to have the pull of gravity to keep us and our favorite objects grounded to the ground. When you head a couple hundred miles up, all of that changes.

If astronauts in space were to take conventional showers, the water would go everywhere and it would be a mess. Instead, today’s astronauts use a pre-mixed soap and hot water solution which they apply to a washcloth, and wipe themselves down to keep clean.

Suggested By: , Video Credit: NASA

9.) Sitting

If you’re in a zero gravity situation and you need to have a seat, you better a tie-down harness to keep you strapped to your seat to prevent yourself from floating away. Once you tie yourself to your seat, you’ll probably have to make sure the seat itself is also tethered to something, so the seat doesn’t go floating away while you’re strapped in.

Suggested By: , Photo Credit: NASA

8.) Board Games

Unless you , the floating game pieces would get old pretty quick. It’s already hard enough keeping track of both dice, I don’t need them floating god knows where!

Suggested By: , Photo Credit: William Warby via

7.) Cocaine

Let’s face it, unless you want to make it some sort of challenge, cocaine probably won’t be your drug of choice if you’re going to be spending time in outer space. Not that we have any proof of this or anything...

Suggested By: , Photo Credit: Scarface via

6.) Knowing When To Pee

After it quickly became clear to scientists that scheduled urination breaks would be necessary when spending time in zero gravity. Because of the lack of gravity, there is no pull on the urine within your bladder, so you can’t tell that your bladder is full and you need to take a leak.

Suggested By: , Photo Credit:NASA

5.) Walking

In the early days of space travel, astronaut Edwin Buzz Aldrin was possibly the only one that was able to space walk without exhausting himself. Reader I drive an Auto - Deal with it explains how this was possible:

Thanks to the techniques he learned from scuba diving, he was able to move around in weightlessness in ways the other astronauts were just unfamiliar with. They would try to move around the spacecraft as one would if they were in gravity, resulting in exhaustion and overheating. He developed EVA training techniques that are still used to this day, and thankfully made EVAs - while still quite involved and hard to do - much, much easier than they used to be.

Suggested By: , Photo Credit: NASA

4.) Cooking

With how necessary oils and milk are in cooking, it must be impossible to put a solid meal together in zero gravity conditions. Plus, even if you were semi-successful, you would probably still burn yourself on a cloud of peanut oil with a mind of its own. Not ideal. Canned food it is!

Suggested By: , Photo Credit: NASA

3.) Fixing stuff

It must be so much fun to pull things apart when they break in zero gravity and trying to fix them. Similar to playing a board game, all the pieces would float away. You better not lose that one lock washer up there, who knows how few spares you might have. To top of that, whatever power tools that would be necessary would have to be low torque, so the tool wouldn’t spin the user like a top.

Suggested By: , Photo Credit: NASA

2.) Taking A Dump

Due to the lack of gravity in outer space, astronauts are forced to use a strategically placed vacuum system that simulates the pull of earth’s gravity to clean up their own excrement. Could you imagine attempting to use a conventional toilet in space and all the waste just begins to float everywhere? Let’s hope that’s one reliable vacuum system they’re using up in the International Space Station.

Suggested By: , Photo Credit: Smithsonian Air and Space Museum via

1.) Sexual Intercourse

Because of the gravitational complications that exist, the thrusts and other movements generally required to have satisfactory sexual intercourse would be extremely difficult to execute in zero gravity. But who knows? I’m sure someone has found a way. Maybe zero gravity adds a whole extra level of intimacy. Perhaps once NASA starts giving out the as standard issue, we’ll hear more about it.

Suggested By: , Photo Credit: NASA via

Welcome back to Answers of the Day - our daily Jalopnik feature where we take the best ten responses from the previous day’s Question of the Day and shine it up to show off. It’s by you and for you, the Jalopnik readers. Enjoy!

Top Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via