The Exquisite Boredom of Spacewalking

Ask astronauts what spacewalking around the International Space Station is like, and they get a dreamy look on their face almost instantly. They might say something about how the view “just takes your breath away.” Or that the experience “is what it truly feels like to be on top of the world.” That “nothing compares to being alone in the universe; to that moment of opening the hatch and pulling yourself outside into the universe.”

But without the surreal view of Earth, spacewalking isn’t much more than hours of maintenance work in a sweaty spacesuit. Follow the script laid out in . Listen to detailed instructions from mission control, carry out the task without screwing up, repeat. After a while, the magical becomes the