Written by Have you ever wondered what outer space is like? If you were to travel there, you would find the environment rather unfriendly. Conditions in space are much different from what they are on the surface on the earth.
If you were to ride in a spacecraft upward, the surrounding air would soon become so thin that you could not breathe unless your spacecraft was pressurized with its own supply of oxygen. In space there is no air at all. Many people define space as a vacuum, an area containing no air or any other matter. Space is almost pure emptiness!
Because there is no air in space, there is no friction caused by air, either. Friction is the force that resists motion. You could fire the spacecraft’s rockets for a few minutes, turn them off, and continue moving for almost forever, or until your ship ran into the sun or another planet! To slow down, you would have to fire rockets in the other direction.
As a traveler in space, you would notice some peculiar things happening. After the engines have been turned off, you would be free to float here and there about the ship as you desired. There would be no up or down, and you would feel as if you did not weigh anything. But there are some cons to this way of living. Even eating breakfast would become quite a challenge! You might find that your breakfast orange juice had left your glass only to become and orange ball, floating in the middle of the room.
If you wanted to go on a space walk outside your ship, you would have to wear a space suit. Besides furnishing you with oxygen, the suit also would protect you from extremes of temperature. If your space walk was in a sunny area, you might be scorched with a burning 200 degrees above zero! If it was in a shady area, it might be that much below zero!
