Astronauts return from orbit physically intact but psychologically unmoored—trapped in a dissociative state that persists long after landing, watching their own lives as if from behind glass.
The hardest part of a six-month space mission, according to the people who’ve flown them, isn’t the launch. It isn’t the confinement, or the recycled air, or the two hundred sunrises a week.
It’s the part nobody films: the weeks after landing, when t... [6493 chars]