This is the absolute truth, and something to think about as you watch the Space Shuttle Atlantis make its scheduled return to Earth on Thursday. After our first five years here at MLBAM -- the interactive arm of Major League Baseball -- the next logical progression with MLB.com was to take it to fans in outer space.

Michael Lopez-Alegria, a NASA flight commander and devout Red Sox and Astros fan, was the true Captain Kirk of this enterprise. He was aboard the International Space Station from last September until finally landing back on terra firma this April 21 -- spanning a period from the hot pennant races of one season into the days when the next year's stats and standings were just starting to matter.

Lopez-Alegria epitomized today's modern baseball fan in many ways, requesting the capability from MLB.com to uplink audio game feeds while conducting science experiments aboard the ISS. MLBAM and NASA coordinated to provide him with that regular capability. And then when he got back home, one of the first things he said he did was subscribe to MLB.TV to watch the games live and catch up.

So as you are enjoying that live Major League broadcast over your computer with MLB.TV or Gameday Audio (which is essentially what he used in space), just consider what you have in common with fans who spacewalk for a living. And if you aren't such a subscriber, then see why it is now most certainly out of this world. MLB.com caught up with "Michael L-A" back on Earth in this Q&A:

MLB.com: How did your space subscription to MLB.com game broadcasts come about in the first place?

Lopez-Alegria: I'm a baseball fan. We launched in September, so I missed basically from all of August and most of September while I was in Russia and Kazakhstan before launch, and by the time I got there, it was playoff season. My teams are the Red Sox from my mother and, being from Houston, the Astros. Neither had much of a role by the time I got locked in.

I'm still a baseball fan, though, no matter who was in the playoffs. They had a deal where they would send up the audio, and I would listen to the games while I was doing my normal work stuff. But none of my friends would tell me what would happen, because I wasn't able to usually listen in real time. That worked real well, although one friend blew the World Series. A friend is a Cubs fan, and I don't know if he wasn't paying attention, because NASA is pretty good about sending out a list, so that they know who can email us directly. But it was 3 to 1 (Cardinals won in five) when he blew it, so I knew where it was going.

MLB.com: How would you describe the actual experience of listening to baseball games while on the Space Station?

Lopez-Alegria: There are some things that aren't compatible. When you're doing a spacewalk, you can't have it piped into your headset. But inside, some of it is routine maintenance, things we've done more than once, experiments, and it plays on a laptop that can be in the background, with a nice set of speakers.

It came up to me as an audio file, and I got them for Red Sox and Astros games. They're not able to send one up every day, they send a couple up each week and I listen to every one of them. It was a great feeling -- you know, what it feels like when spring rolls around while you're up there. That, combined with knowing I could come home after seven months in orbit, it was a nice feeling.

MLB.com: Were there bandwidth issues with being able to actually watch a full game broadcast?

Lopez-Alegria: They can send a video, but they have to send it up in 500-megabite chunks, and that ends up being pretty restrictive. It's probably about 25 minutes worth of video, so they (Houston flight command) would have to send up that many videos, and they wouldn't be happy with that.

The stuff that we're using in this (application) is pretty routine, just a file. We can actually get live video up -- we watched the Super Bowl, believe it or not. That's kind of a midget compared to the giant of what sort of information technology is out there these days. It's phenomenal what you can do in broadcasting, especially in hi-def. We did the first HD link on that mission, so that we sent it live from up there and you could see it down here. We have great capability. Today's digital technology is hard to keep up with.

MLB.com: The Astros connection is obvious, considering that NASA is based there in Houston. How did you become a Red Sox fan?

Lopez-Alegria: I was born in Spain, but my mother was born and raised in Boston. We lived three years there, when I was ages 2 to 5, then I grew up in California. She was always a Red Sox fan and would tell me stories about Fridays -- this was back in the 1920s -- being Ladies Day. She would skip school to get into Fenway for free. It's part of the lore, I guess. I have to admit, I took great pleasure in watching the '04 ALCS.

MLB.com: There have been some good October memories for you in recent years with the Red Sox and Astros. What do you remember about 2004?

It was Game 5 for both League Championship Series, and one was right after the other on that same day. I had tickets to Minute Maid Park to see the Astros against the Cardinals in what wound up being our final home game. I was watching Red Sox-Yankees outside a bar, it went to extra innings, and all the local coverage switched to the local Astros game. I couldn't find any bars that had Sox-Yankees. The only place I could see it was on the concourse at Minute Maid Park, inside the ballpark. We're watching this game, in the background is a really great defensive struggle going on, and we had a small group watching Red Sox-Yankees.

I'll never forget, probably in the 11th inning, when they brought in (Esteban) Loaiza to pitch for the Yankees, one Yankee fan says: "I guess the homeless guy wasn't available." I thought that was pretty harsh. He did pretty well, I have to say. But what a game. That's when (Tim) Wakefield was in there, and they didn't want to take (Jason) Varitek out. I watched the end of that game, a Red Sox victory, went up to my seats in time to see the Astros get out of the top of the ninth, I think 1-2-3 with (Brad) Lidge, and then (Jeff) Kent hit the walk-off homer to win it. I have a buddy on the Astros and he sells me extra seats when the players have extras. I had written a check to Jeff Kent that day for his seats, which he never cashed.

MLB.com: While you were aboard the Space Station over our winter back here, were you able to follow the Hot Stove buzz about Daisuke Matsuzaka leaving Japan to sign that huge contract? It was all the rage here.

Lopez-Alegria: I almost flew with a guy named Dice-K. There were three seats on the Soyuz, and Russians were in the habit of selling the third to a tourist. The plan was a guy named Dice-K, a 31- or 32-year-old Japanese businessman. At the very last minute, he had a medical problem and couldn't come. I never knew any other person could be called "Dice-K." I was pretty excited. I think I heard his first game from your audio -- the Red Sox's third game -- and he did really well in that game.

MLB.com: What was it like to find Major League Baseball again when you got back to Earth -- and especially to see how well Boston started?

Lopez-Alegria: We landed on April 21, in Kazakhstan, spent the first three weeks in Russia, and arrived May 12 in the States. I got a subscription to watch a month's worth of MLB.TV in Russia. We have a little NASA compound inside the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, outside Moscow, with high-speed Internet.

We have a conferencing center, so I got to watch a few games. I'm pretty happy with the Red Sox, not so much with the Astros. This (month) hasn't been so great, as I am frankly concerned with the Yankees, as any good Red Sox fan should be. Despite still being many games back, they're obviously on a roll. (Bobby) Abreu is coming out of it and now (Roger) Clemens is with them, and A-Rod is on fire. I'd like to see Manny (Ramirez) get a little hotter, I'd like to see Dice-K get a little more consistent. (Curt) Schilling's been a pleasant surprise."