When astronauts type in orbit, does microgravity mean they have to do
extra work to return their fingers to the keys? Or does gravity play
only a minor role in touch-typing?
This could be partially tested on Earth by arranging a keyboard in a
vertical or inverted position; the problem is that your arms would
fatigue in that posture.
I ask because microgravity affects many common postures: You sleep
against a firm slightly-padded board, not a mattress. You stand to
eat, feet strapped down, with your knees naturally bent; sitting is
uncomfortable. Most gross-motor activities without gravity involve
twice the effort.
(Disclaimer: this was true in the early 1980s, since I'm referencing a
book on the Shuttle Experience written then. NASA and its cosmonaut
equivalents may have discovered differently in the past 20 years.)
***
This is the sort of thing that people could ask astronauts on blogs,
if they had blogs. Do blogs constitute part of NASA's astronaut
outreach nowadays? Sort of, but they're undated:
<http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/astronauts/journals_astronauts.html>
Given limited orbit-to-ground bandwidth, text blogs would be an
efficient way to communicate; but given the hyper-planned schedule of
an STS or ISS mission, astronauts probably don't have the luxury of
composing reflective blog entries. And they'd want to use a local
server, then mirror the completed entries to the ground, to avoid
excess HTTP traffic.
Wait, here's one from Ed Lu of Expedition 7. Also undated, ugh.
<http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp7/luletters/>
***
<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/launch/sts-121/launch-vlcc_070106.html>
"NASA's Launch Blog - Mission STS-121 07.01.06"
If you didn't already know that the STS-121 mission was in July 2006,
how could interpret that datestamp? Is it ordered as mm.dd.yy
(American style), dd.mm.yy (European), or yy.mm.dd (computer)?
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