Have you ever considered what it might feel like to be floating hundreds of miles high in space, or submerged below sea level for a whole two weeks? Well engineer and former NASA astronaut, Garrett Reisman has, and in a 2020 podcast with Joe Rogan he sat down to discuss his own experiences of exploration within space and the open sea. After earning his masters and doctorate from Caltech between 1992–97, Reisman worked as an aquanaut during the NEEMO 5 mission in 2003, where he would stay on the Aquarius Underwater Laboratory for 14 days. On his first space journey, STS-123, an ISS assembly mission that began on March 11, 2008, Reisman would stay as an ISS crew member where he lived 95 days on the station, 254 miles high in space.
For a man who has pushed the boundaries both below and above the Earth’s surface, one could certainly wonder what he finds most beautiful and terrifying about space and the sea based on the journeys he has experienced within both. In Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, in episode #1425, he sat down with Reisman to discuss his career as a former NASA astronaut and current Professor at USC. At one point in the discussion they begin discussing Reisman’s time during the NEEMO 5 mission, where Garrett describes the experience of staying underwater for a long period of time. He explains the dynamics of how you are actually able to stay in the underwater lab for longer periods of time, versus diving which requires resurfacing from depths of 60ft after 1 hour periods. However, staying at a 60ft depth for 2 weeks accumulates nitrogen build up in the body that takes a day-long decompression in the lab just for the experts to be able to resurface out of the water without literally dying. From this point in the discussion Rogan asks the burning question to Reisman about what he finds to be more terrifying, to be at the bottom of the ocean, or up in space?
In one of the coolest stories I’ve ever heard, Reisman explains how space is more surreal with the grandeur and views of Earth, but the open blue is a vastly different ball game, with the sea life you experience first hand in and out of the underwater lab. In one telemedicine experiment where Reisman was interacting remotely with two Texas doctors from the the Aquarius, he was searching the water for a placed Kidney they were planning to work on (likely to do with the underwater pressure effects on the Kidney), to which he looked out of the lab window to only to see a six foot Hammerhead Shark, keeping in mind they had another scientist diving in the open water at the same time. Reisman was luckily safe from the comfort of the lab’s walls, however he then begins describing the process of using the bathroom in the lab to Joe, something that sounds straight out of an underwater horror story.
In order to use the bathroom in the Aquarius, to go #1 you simply would go into the pool that also serves as the air pocket entrance to the underwater lab. Pretty simple and not scary, given that they are still inside the lab. However, going number 2 entails actually leaving the lab, swimming underwater to another air pocket enclosure 10–15 ft away with NO scuba gear. That means that for any time Reisman and his crew mates had to do their business, they had to swim into the open Atlantic Ocean with no air, until they reached that source of oxygen in an underwater gazebo that would still leave the bottom portion of their bodies exposed to the open ocean and nature of the sea. Reisman explains how fish actually grow accustomed to these routines and then see their bathroom excursions as a feeding time, to which they will flock around the air pocket and feast as the scientists use the underwater restroom. Definitely disturbing to some degree, but that is also nature. What is really terrifying, Reisman says, is of course having to do this at night in the pitch black open sea, where anything and everything could be a possibility. All of these scenarios run through your mind he describes, especially thinking of movies like Jaws and The Meg. On one instance when he went to use this restroom at night, Reisman completed his restroom duties and began to make his way back to the lab when he was greeted by a melon sized eyeball that belonged to a Goliath Grouper staring unbothered right at him.
In space, these experts are alone, solely accompanied by the crew mates on their missions. No big fish and no sharks, just a vast incredible emptiness and loneliness that separates them from the Earth, life, and civilization, a reality that is pretty terrifying in its scope. They wouldn’t have to be concerned about sharks during their restroom breaks, or swimming out in the open sea at night. They would however, have to deal with the reality that they are separated from everything that is natural to humans. Gravity, bone strength, food, casual social interaction, and more. Deep space and the open sea are two completely different environments that also parallel one another in the beauties and dangers they pose to the experts willing to study those differing surroundings. From the discussions from Joe Rogan’s podcast with Garrett Reisman, it could be argued how being in the ocean is more terrifying considering the nature and life experts are consistently exposed to underwater. However, some might find beauty in that, similar to those who may perceive the views of deep space as gorgeous, but also scary in the idea that being in space means astronauts are fully disconnected from everyone and everything they know as home.
So I would encourage you to watch the full Joe Rogan Podcast with Garrett Reisman where you can listen and learn more about space and ocean exploration and study, to where you can ultimately answer the question of what you find to be scarier- space, or the open sea?