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Toyohiro Akiyama deserved better
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
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Pulled from Wikipedia.
The standard cigarettes in the UK are 20 packs of Super King size. Assuming it's the same in Japan:
At 24 hours in a day, 8 hours of sleep, that leaves 16 hours awake.
20 x 4 = 80 cigarettes
80 cigarettes in 16 hours is one every 12 minutes. Considering a cigarette takes about 5 minutes to smoke, that's almost as much time with a cigarette as without. The entire time he's awake.
And he thought he could just give that up for a jaunt in space? No wonder he hated it!
What is the cost of a pack in Japan? When I quit I was at a pack a day, costing me around 300 euro.
edit. The cost is around 5 dollar, so that's 20 dollars a day just on smokes. Holy cow
I definitely saw 500 yen packs on sale when I was there a couple of years ago, which would be about £2.30/$3.10
Given I think a 20 deck of cigs in the UK is about £12 now, it's still crazy cheap to smoke out there comparatively, so I can only imagine it was even cheaper then
Yeah it said 500-600 yen, but it converted it to 3-4 / 5-6 dollar. I just took the middle price.
Turns out it's not like 4 dollars. It's very cheap in comparison, however if you smoke that much it's still costly.
Oh yeah, 100% it's an expensive habit whatever the unit price is.
I was just taken aback a bit as someone who had quit several years prior, that they could buy cigs in 2024 for half the price I was paying as a teenager two decades ago
If that sounds like a lot, it's 12 euros in the Netherlands.
Weet ik gozer ;)
That's why kicking my pack a day habit three years ago was a wise financial decision.
You didn't count eating times or something like a shower. So he either also smoked while eating or while showering, or never went without a cigarette
I used to smoke two packs a day sometimes - usually when I was out drinking in which case I was constantly smoking and up late.
I knew a 3 pack a day smoker. He managed it by always having a lit cigarette. But sometimes he'd forget about one in the ashtray and light another one. I saw him a few times forget about the second one in the ashtray and light a third.
It honestly seemed like a compulsive lighting habit, if he didn't have one in his hand he'd light one without thinking about it before looking in the ashtray. You could get a carton (10 packs of 20) for $25 and I made around $8 an hour then.
Okay.
I guess that training was unrelated to astronaut activities.
Just because he was given training on what and what not to do, does not make him an astronaut...
Astronauts have way more training than just a crash course in how to not fuck everything up
He was trained in Zambia.
How often do you have to light up to smoke 4 packs a day? Holy shit, at my heaviest I smoked a pack and a half. Space sick sounds fucking miserable. Of course he wanted a fucking smoke.
Answering myself, I did the math and I think I did it right, you'd have to light one every 18 minutes if you didn't sleep. I'm assuming this guy sleeps sometime so he had to be a straight up chain smoker.
Chain smokers can smoke at a faster rate too though, there's a technique where you basically smoke the whole thing in a single breath, then go on to the next
Wild
Why was he chosen?
He was the backup, the primary reporter was a young woman, but she had a medical emergency shortly before launch.
If you want to know more, Failure To Launch podcast has an excellent episode on this
Ryoko Kikuchi had appendicitis a week before launch.
She did eventually make it into space however.
http://www.astronautix.com/k/kikuchi.html
Genuinely thought you were trying to troll us into watching a Matthew McConaughey movie.
Thank you, but that still doesn't explain why he was even considered.
It was a publicity stunt by his employer, a news network, to pay for a Japanese person to go to Mir.
Aaah...
After consideration, I think it’s fair he’s remembered for getting space sick and wanting a cigarette…