Vomit in orbit warning for celebrity space tourists

THE dream of boldly going where only a few have gone before has inspired hundreds of people to sign up with space tourism companies such as Virgin Galactic.

But Anna Fisher, the Nasa astronaut who was the first mother in space, has warned many are unprepared for the toll it will take on their bodies.

Dr Fisher said she was sick for the first two days of her mission on the Discovery space shuttle in 1984 and said she was concerned that people paying hundreds of thousands of pounds did not fully appreciate what might happen.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, she said: “The one thing I am concerned about is people thinking you can just get on a rocket and go into space. It’s not like riding a commercial aircraft… and I can see all these problems with people up there and throwing up and messing up somebody’s flight that they paid $250,000 for.”

Dr Smith Johnson, flight surgeon for Nasa, said: “It’s a dangerous business. The bottom line is every system of the body is affected by microgravity, whether it’s kidney stones, receptor touch, fluid redistribution, inner ear changes, losing ten times your bone mass. We also get ten times the radiation. Sometimes astronauts come down and look like a boneless chicken.”

People who have already bought tickets include the actors Angelina Jolie, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, and Stephen Hawking was planning to fly with Virgin Galactic before his death earlier this year.