Editing Mir (section)

===Crew schedule===
The time zone used on board ''Mir'' was [[Moscow Time]] (MSK; [[UTC+03:00|UTC+03]]). The windows were covered during night hours to give the impression of darkness because the station experienced 16 sunrises and sunsets a day. A typical day for the crew began with a wake-up at 08:00 MSK, followed by two hours of personal hygiene and breakfast. Work was conducted from 10:00 until 13:00, followed by an hour of exercise and an hour's lunch break. Three more hours of work and another hour of exercise followed lunch, and the crews began preparing for their evening meal at about 19:00. The cosmonauts were free to do as they wished in the evening, and largely worked to their own pace during the day.<ref name="SSSM"/>

In their spare time, crews were able to catch up with work, observe the Earth below, respond to letters, drawings, and other items brought from Earth (and give them an official stamp to show they had been aboard ''Mir''), or make use of the station's ham radio.<ref name="SSSM"/> Two amateur radio call signs, U1MIR and U2MIR, were assigned to ''Mir'' in the late [[1980s]], allowing [[amateur radio operators]] on Earth to communicate with the cosmonauts.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://users.tellurian.com/gjurrens/astrohams.html |title=Astronaut (and Former Astronaut) Hams |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061230122251/http://users.tellurian.com/gjurrens/astrohams.html |archive-date=2006-12-30 |date=2006-12-03 |first=Gerry |last=Jurrens }}</ref> The station was also equipped with a supply of [[books]] and [[films]] for the crew to read and watch.<ref name="Dragonfly"/>

NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger related how life on board ''Mir'' was structured and lived according to the detailed itineraries provided by ground control. Every second on board was accounted for and all activities were timetabled. After working some time on ''Mir'', Linenger came to feel that the order in which his activities were allocated did not represent the most logical or efficient order possible for these activities. He decided to perform his tasks in an order that he felt enabled him to work more efficiently, be less fatigued, and suffer less from stress. Linenger noted that his comrades on ''Mir'' did not "improvise" in this way, and as a medical doctor he observed the effects of stress on his comrades that he believed was the outcome of following an itinerary without making modifications to it. Despite this, he commented that his comrades performed all their tasks in a supremely professional manner.<ref name="OffPlanet"/>{{page needed|date=February 2021}}

Astronaut [[Shannon Lucid]], who set the record for longest stay in space by a woman while aboard ''Mir'' (surpassed by [[Sunita Williams]] 11 years later on the ISS), also commented about working aboard ''Mir'': "I think going to work on a daily basis on ''Mir'' is very similar to going to work on a daily basis on an outstation in Antarctica. The big difference with going to work here is the isolation, because you really are isolated. You don't have a lot of support from the ground. You really are on your own."<ref name="From Mir to Mars"/>