5 things astronauts do for fun while in space

A regular deployment for our troops down here on Earth gets pretty boring while you're off-mission. It becomes challenging to find new ways to fill your downtime. Maybe you'll swing by the MWR and play some video games. Maybe you'll watch a movie or two — that is until you've watched everything on the deployment hard drive twice.

Realistically speaking, the life of a astronaut in space is probably similar. Even the whole zero-G's thing and watching the Big Blue Marble has got to get boring after a while...

Thankfully, through the power of social media, astronauts can record themselves and upload their shenanigans to the internet for the world (and beyond) to see. No judgment here; whatever takes the edge off while being stuck in the same, tight confinements for nine months at a time...

Playing music

The great musicians here on Earth have written countless tunes about space and astronauts. These songs are then copied and repeated ad nauseam by that one guy at the party who thinks he can play.

But when David Bowie's Space Oddity is played by someone who's actually in space... It doesn't matter if he's not on the level of the late, great Ziggy Stardust — it's awesome on its own level.

Play with toys

There was a challenge a few years back for gifted children to design toys usable in space. The constraints were simple: It had to be fun and not involve plenty of lose pieces that could float around and potentially cause a Homer-Simpson-level disaster.

Since astronauts are generally pretty stand-up people, we can assume they actually accepted the toys and used them instead of letting the kids' efforts go to waste.

Exercising in zero gravity

As awesome as it is to live in weightlessness for an extended period of time, it can wreak havoc on your body. Your bones will deteriorate and your muscle mass will shrink.

To make sure that their bodies aren't completely crushed by an inevitable return to normal gravity, astronauts need to exercise a minimum of two hours per day. That's when things get interesting since they can't just hop on a normal treadmill or grab some free weights.

Fun experiments (for science, of course)

Although space tourism has expanded in recent years, for the most part, astronauts who were sent up by their respective countries are there to do science. They'll plan objectives for years, like maintaining the Hubble Telescope in case of emergency or documenting the effects of micro-gravity on an extremely fast spacecraft.

But, sometimes, astronauts get bored writing the same equations and the same formulas only to yield nearly identical outcomes. Sometimes, they just want to see how many zero-G backflips they can do before throwing up. I mean, who could resist a few childish experiments if you spent all those years dreaming of going to space?

Watch movies

For the most part, you have to be pretty nerdy to make it far in NASA's space program. And there's nothing nerds love more than some nerdy pop culture.

Astronauts watch everything from Gravity (which I assume they critique like soldiers did The Hurt Locker) to The Simpsons to even Star Wars.