Mission Journal 25 - Craig McKinley: Mission Day 4: Thursday, October 14, 2004

To attempt to describe the experience I had today is like trying to describe fatherhood. Unless you are a father, it is difficult to understand the joy of fatherhood. My thinking about the dive today is similar in that I am at a loss for words. I do have a de ja vu feeling about attempting to explain what I experienced today and it is similar to trying to explain to some one who is not a father what fatherhood is like.

I would say that I felt somewhat surreal. As I was performing my task today, it slowly became dark. I could see the light of the habitat at a distance and it was my home. Logically, I knew the surface of the water column existed, but it was beyond what I could experience and so I had a sense that I had left one world and was living in another. Beyond the top of the water column was an outer world, and I was living in an inner world. And in my world, a push with my hand sends me floating across the landscape, and a kick of my feet moves me through a 3 dimensional space I cannot access if I were above the water column.

And the birds in my world can hover motionless, and the plants in my world have a 3 dimensionality than can only exist in neutral buoyancy.

At the end of the dive, I returned to Aquarius with a different perspective. For me, Aquarius had become an outpost, a safe haven, and a place I consider home.

When I returned to the habitat, I asked Cady Coleman one question. "Is this like being in space?" Her answer was "Yes".