Airline passengers have to deal with a lot these days, getting bumped from flights and losing luggage on top of the general anxiety that nervous passengers always feel.
Then the craft's reentry went wrong. The guidance system failed and they had to steer manually, bumping down in a snowy forest 1,600km from the landing site.
The channel is at least 19 nautical miles of open water, often with big swells, power tides, ships and ferries plowing up, down and across, but recently much smaller vessels have been crossing too.
And that’s not all. Their capsule failed to detach – or separate – from the spacecraft’s equipment module, and this sent them tumbling through space towards Earth.
Just imagine what will happen to astronauts if after a series of jolts the once safe stations collapsed and people find themselves in disastrous conditions unsuitable for life.
On day 12, we arrived at the niger river where we had to take a ferry across to Timbuktu, you don't know how uncomfortable a four-wheel drive can be until you've bounced around in one for four days.