Remember when you were a kid and being an astronaut seemed like the absolute coolest job you could ever have? Well, yeah, you were right, it is. While those of us down here on Earth have to play ping pong with a stupid old plastic ball (or with that old Atari we found down in our grandparent’s basement), up in space they are using balls of liquid.

In this short video, astronaut Scott Kelly shows us the never-ending awesomeness of zero-gravity life by playing a little ping pong, space-style, using hydrophobic paddles that repel water “kind of like a raincoat” (obviously they repel water; they are apparently terrified of it). With a little squeeze of a water bottle, you get a sphere of liquid that allows you to play the coolest type of ping pong in the entire galaxy.

Kelly is currently spending an entire year aboard the International Space Station as part of a very cool “twin” experiment. Kelly’s brother, Mark, also an astronaut, is remaining on earth as a type of control, and at the end of the year NASA will compare the two to test the impact of longterm effects of space travel on the human body.

Seriously, traveling to space seems ever more amazing to me as an adult than it did as a kid.

So long as Matt Damon isn’t involved, because then it becomes a whole thing.

What’s the coolest video you’ve seen about life out among the stars? Share it with us in the comments below because we can never get enough of them.

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Image: NASA/YouTube