And so, inside the elevator, the human party continues oblivious, the riders flirt and complain and mix zero-G cocktails, or chase bewildered zero-G leaf-cutter bees.
It was a programme that included engineering familiarisation, medical, survival and robotics training as well as microgravity or "zero-g" flights and sessions in a giant pool practising spacewalking.
Membership will make it much easier for British scientists to propose experiments and to get access to facilities like a zero-G plane, which generates short periods of weightlessness by flying a series of parabolas in the sky.