Astronauts Lost Tools in Space, Forced to Improvise

Ant writes "Neatorama and Popular Science share a CNN story about Russian astronauts repairing the International Space Station (ISS) with improvised tools because they lost the real ones. How? 'It's a lot like your house,' said Paul Boehm, lead spacewalk officer. 'You set your car keys down somewhere and hopefully you find them again later when you try to remember it.' Uh, yeah, but we're idiots -- you're astronauts. Nonetheless, nice to see the Do It Yourself (DIY) spirit at work in space."

Comments

My Favourite

[MichaelSmith]

Was the mudguard repair (I know, no mud on the moon but I refuse to say "fender" like an American) on apollo 17. Maps and sticky tape really came in handy that time.

uh, It's nothing like your house

[192939495969798999]

first of all, it's not like you can take something to work, leave it in the other car, etc. If it's on the station, it's on the station still. If you didn't find it in 5 minutes, then your method for looking/putting away is failing. There should be a process, etc. etc. AFter all, you can't even "set something down" in space. "Setting down" a wrench would just make it float away, and then it would smack you in the head later on.

Re:uh, It's nothing like your house

[iktos]

If you didn't find it in 5 minutes, then your method for looking/putting away is failing. There should be a process, etc. etc.

They had a process on Skylab. In the storage compartment there were 2000 lockers, on the ground there was a team of six working in shifts with a pair of redundant computers keeping track of what was put in which locker.
Didn't work either. And since (almost) everything was supposed to be secured inside something, it couldn't be found just by walking around and looking for it.

space psychology

[dalutong]

You set your car keys down somewhere and hopefully you find them again later when you try to remember it.

That's the problem with earthlings going to space -- we can't deal with space-based habits that contradict our own. On Earth we can hope to find our keys where we set them down. In space they float away.

Re:space psychology

[Mondoz]

During Bill MacArthur's flight (Increment 12), he lost his PDA for about 4 weeks. He was later doing some maintenance on some of the vents in the airlock, and it came shooting out of an out-flow vent, along with some other missing items. Apparently, it had gotten sucked into a vent somewhere, and had been sitting in a duct.
Things easily get away from you in the station if they're not tethered down or put back exactly where they came from.

They use an Inventory Management System to track inventory, but when you consider that there are over 30,000 individual items and locations onboard, it gets a little hard to manage.
It works well most of the time, but any inventory system is only as good as its data. If they forget to mark down where they put something, it could take ages to find.

When you have everything you could possibly need for living in, working on, experimenting, and maintaining a space station for six months, in an enclosed space the size of a few school buses, things can get kinda cluttered.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station /crew-12/html/iss012e12909.html
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station /crew-12/html/iss012e18578.html

Whole gallery here:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station /crew-12/ndxpage1.html

And

[Konster]

It's an interesting study on things we take for granted when people are deprived of things like the sense of gravity and of place. Couple in the fact that humans are really crappy multi-taskers, and none of this surprises me. An astronaut is deprived of a great many senses, most of which need to be compensated for with conscious effort, which leaves less brain for other stuff.

Simple tasks aren't so simple anymore when your brain is trying to compensate for input that is no longer really there. And then they have to fight off vertigo, which is hard even for people on Earth.

All this I took for granted before a little bit of brain damage, which recoverying from is a trivial little bit of recovery over a long, long time. Sadly, I remember how easy thing were before my neurons got scrambled, everything now takes a lot of conscious effort, mostly due to the fact that I don't perceive my senses as I should, and sometimes I have to really think about things, in single file to make it through the day. Forget about making internet postings and listening to music at the same time. I cannot fathom more than one task at a time, really, when I used to be able to do many. It's constant vertigo, every second of every day, and after some months, it becomes a heavy burden.

The point being is that their brains are more than likely scrambling to make sense out of the senseless, and leaving a screwdriver out in the void is probably pretty small taters, considering everything else.

Chewing gum wrapper, Swiss Army Knife, Duck Tape

[strikeleader]

MacGyver would be proud.

Article headline is ambiguous...

[GreenPenInc]

For a sec, I thought they were insulting the astronauts, calling them a bunch of tools who couldn't find their way back to Earth.

In Rod We Trust

[tehlinux]

Did they improvise with an inanimate carbon rod?

Oh, that explains it...

[corbettl]

That's why I had a slightly melted rench & racket set stuck in my windshield this morning!

DIY is part of the space program

[thewiz]

Nonetheless, nice to see the Do It Yourself (DIY) spirit at work in space."

DIY has been part of the space program since Chuck Yeager used a broom handle to close the door on the X-1 after breaking his arm in a horse riding accident. I think the best example is when the Apollo 13 astronauts rigged an air scrubber and used their lunar module as a propulsion system to get home after the service module blew up.

Nice to see the tradition being carried on.