My friend Gerry (of Teulon, Manitoba), whom I visited today, is an astronomer and "space geek." The very moment I pulled into his driveway, he accosted me and pointed upward and said, "there goes the International Space Station, just in time to see it!"
Sure enough, the glowing object was passing directly overhead, zooming along. To my uninformed eyes, if I'd seen it without that introduction, I'd have thought it was just some airplane.
Anyway, a little bit later we were talking about the ISS because it showed up in the news on the television that we were sitting and watching, in his living room. And he was complaining about NASA's shortsightedness in wanting to end the program and shut it down. He was talking about the Russians having showed interest in taking it over and continuing to maintain it, if the US gave it up, and he explained the Russian perspective memorably, saying, "… but the ashtrays aren't even full, yet!" That sounded so stereotypically Russian, and it made me laugh very hard, conjuring up the image of a bunch of Russian cosmonauts sneaking cigaratte breaks on the space station when those uppity Americans finally weren't around.
Hmmm, aside from the fire and health hazard, are there other possible issues with smoking in space?
["back-post": posted 2009-11-20]