Space engineers have to rethink and redesign everything that they plan to put up into space. Not just motors and fuses and rocket engines but all the simple objects we take for granted on Earth-a bed, a toilet, a shower. A pen. A saltshaker! Without gravity, the simplest human acts have to be relearned: how to cross a room, how to cat soup, how to wash your hair. NASA has planes that fly in a way that creates the experience of floating weightless without gravity. They have a giant swimming pool with replicas of the International Spaces Station submerged in it, so that astronauts can float around in the water wearing space suits and practicing their space walks. There are replicas of space capsules and space bathrooms and a giant simulator that lets astronauts practice parking a space capsule at 17,000 miles per hours. By visiting these places and things, it's possible, in a way, to visit space without leaving Earth.

And that's what we're going to do. Book jacket.