Tight Space

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "janet_baker76"
wrote:
>
> Dear space nuts,
> Would you indulge me again with a little help on the next fiction
> piece I'm working on?
>
> The protagonist will be a young priest who has just found himself
> consecrated bishop--of the universe! He will go on the Regina
Coeli,
> the ark introduced in the first piece. He is in Rome awaiting this
> consecration.
>
> But he has a problem: he has all his life been terrifed of close
> spaces. (I shall have to think of one other problem, something
> more "personal;" no character can go into an adventure with only
one
> problem! And don't say celibacy, it's a blessing, neither easier
nor
> harder than monogamy in marriage. Something else. No, he's gotten
> further than that.)
>
> Do you know of any web sites that discuss this problem, like
perhaps
> among astronauts or wanna-bees?

Don't know of any sights to counsel on the problem but I do know of a
number of tricks. 1, Enebriation, which I advise against except under
extreme circumstances. 2, find a window and focus outward on the wide
open spaces. Outer space and great vast distances can be focussed
upon to keep the mind in balance by envisioning oneself among the
open area. 3, Sleep.

Personally, I am not fond of tight spaces. Though I would not mind
traveling in a tank, a submarine like the Hunley under water is not a
place I would be comfortable in.

>
> Would you yourself be reluctant to put yourself in a tight space as
> one can imagine (from seeing the pics and videos) what the interior
> might be like, what breathing might be like, not of the colony but
> of the ships that would carry say the first generation to the
> colony, evacuating Earth, say, in an emergency situation and packed
> to the gills?
>
> I know I will find stuff under claustraphobia if I google it, but
> you might know a site just right for the question.
>
> The last one, the story of an overweight girl who will end up on
the
> colony because of her medical specialty,who gets raped, but first
> gets a litany of excuses from her attacker that are identical to
the
> excuses she uses to overeat (and gets at the heart of our present
> cultural stagnation, in my humble opinion). This causes her to
> confront her own philosophical assumptions, just as she gets the
> call: she's being evaculated--Earth is at war and the not-quite
> finished Colony is a pawn in the terrorist game. (She will go on to
> found the first religious order in space. It's really the old West,
> updated. And she loses weight, and you already helped me design her
> habit.) If anybody wants to read it, email me. No title yet.
There's
> quite a lot of apocolyptic stuff about life on earth, robot cops,
> constant snoopers, Dangerous Ideas laws, but not as much about the
> colony yet, which was the setting for the first story.
>
> Do you know there is a web site devoted to trading tips on conning
> overweight women into sex? How's that?

Don't know of any sights on this either.