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Astronaut Loses Tools While Performing an EVA

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the only-human dept.

tpheiska writes "NASA press release states that 'At approx. 3:33 p.m. EST, Piper reported that one of the Braycote lubrication guns had released grease into her toolbag. As she was cleaning the bag and wiping the tools and equipment inside, the bag floated away. Another bag carrying identical equipment is now being shared by Piper and Bowen.' Luckily they had a spare."

9 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. I was just wondering by black_lbi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why isn't the tools bag somehow linked to the suit? with a strap or something ...

    1. Re:I was just wondering by NeilTheStupidHead · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Unless the astronaut imparted enough force into the object to either give it escape velocity or cause it to reenter the atmosphere, shouldn't she (in theory) just be able to wait the 90 or so minutes till the next orbit and grab it when the two orbits intersect?

      There's always the chance the object will interact with another NEO and not come back, but if no other force acts on it, it should just intersect orbits on the next revolution since it seems like very little force was imparted to the object to change it's trajectory. At least, that's my admittedly limited understanding of orbital mechanics: if two objects in basically identical orbits exchange momentum, then their new orbits will intersect at the same place the original exchange took place.

      --
      Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
    2. Re:I was just wondering by arb+phd+slp · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Every action has an equal and opposite reaction...

      With that in mind, I'm not sure it's a good idea to be "firing" things from your space suit. Depending on the force, some dangerous things might happen.

      Full disclosure: I don't really know anything about working in space - my comment might actually be really stupid and invalid (hence, I posted as ac...)

      No, you are right. Unless you fired it directly from your center of gravity, the most likely result is that you'd end up spinning around. If it was a grappling cable (seeing as we don't have magnetic tractor beams yet) you'd get wrapped up in it. Not fun.

      --
      There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
    3. Re:I was just wondering by fprintf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How the heck is Houston going to help in the first 30 seconds anyway? Unless you have someone dressed in a space suit to immediately help, it is unlikely that voice instruction is going to do anything. Stuff tends to happen catastrophically, and those things that don't the space walker is well trained to handle.

      It sounds plausible. No idea if it is true, but who on earth wants to hear the dying gurgle of a good friend?

      --
      This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
    4. Re:I was just wondering by geobeck · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You don't want a tether on a bag full of stuff in orbit because it can act in pretty unpredictable ways...

      That's why you attach it with Velcro. Astronauts use Velcro quite a lot to attach small pouches to them while inside the ISS. It would seem to make sense to do the same thing outside.

      --
      Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
    5. Re:I was just wondering by Muad'Dave · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How about the 'Project Westford' needles?

      ...a ring of 4.8x10^8 copper dipole antennas [in the shape of] 1.78cm long and ... 17.8um diameter needles was placed in orbit...

      They were supposed to de-orbit in 3 years from launch (in 1966) - guess what? They're _still_ re-entering! I suspect that Stevenson and the military told the rest of the world what they wanted to hear. 480 million needles! Sheesh!

      --
      Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
    6. Re:I was just wondering by sideshow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And even more importantly - if something does go wrong, the dying astronaut might be able to say what it was before dying. That chance alone is move valuable than any controller discomfort.

      Very true. In "The Right Stuff", Tom Wolfe wrote that when test pilots were about to crash they would yell into the radio "I TRIED A! I TRIED B!" etc etc. to make sure that their death would yield some useful info on what happened to the plane.

      --

      Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.

  2. Time to hire space debris collectors by Carlosos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe some other people also haven seen the anime "Planetes" that is about space debris collectors because too much stuff was lost in space that it was dangerous with all the stuff flying around.
    Lets say it starts with a screw flying at high speed at a space ship that went "boom".

    It might really become a problem in the future.

  3. Death by Velcro? by ErkDemon · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Velcro is wonderful stuff for zero-gee, but do remember that it was partly blamed by some for the death of three astronauts in Apollo 1, so it's tactful not to refer to it as "safe".

    Story goes, the Apollo missions were supposed to run on reduced cabin pressure. 80% of air is just fairly useless nitrogen, so they figured, we can get away with a lower pressure but still have the astronauts breathing the same amount of oxygen, if we use a lower pressure but "up" the oxygen content to compensate.

    So the Apollo 1 training exercise used a 100% oxygen environment. But since it was done on the ground, they were using pure oxygen at atmospheric-pressure. Now as anyone who's read the regs on bus driving licences knows, pure oxygen is potentially very dangerous stuff. Velcro is deliberately made of soft flexible plastics, and has a very high surface area, and it's been suggested that hot velcro in 1-atmosphere pure oxygen might be somewhat prone to bursting into flames.

    Probably perfectly safe in the context of anchoring things in a vacuum, but ... triggers some uncomfortable memories of incinerated astronauts.

    --
    Eric Baird