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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."

44 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 Cthefuture · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I was thinking the same thing. I mean it's not uncommon to use a tether on your bag while on Earth. It would make even more sense in space.

      --
      The ratio of people to cake is too big
    2. Re:I was just wondering by ILikeRed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The rope came undone. What they need is a spacesuit with a magnetic grappling gun built into the arm of the suit to grab things like this before they float too far away. (Yes, like the Samus suit - who would not want to see that in space?)

      --
      I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
    3. Re:I was just wondering by Konster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except they are not on Earth.

      You don't want a tether on a bag full of stuff in orbit because it can act in pretty unpredictable ways, flailing about and risking the life of the person that's holding the bag is the first consideration. Guys, this isn't changing the oil on your car. A stray object can damage any one of the many couplings on the suit and rendering that suit inoperable very quickly. Bad news if you happen to be that person inside the suit at that time. Failure on Earth means you pick up the wrench and go back at it. Failure up there is a dead person on a mission with a multiples of billions of dollars pricetag hung off to the side.

      Further, they are trained on instrument loss...tools floating off, et cetera. Again, this is not Earth wherein you can grasp around with complete impunity looking for whatever tool that just spun out on the garage floor. Space walkers especially are trained far more on what they cannot do than what they can do. They can reach out very slowly to try and recover something that is drifting off, but any large effort means that they may also join that tool bag on its long, lonely orbit around the Earth. In the small and large scheme of things, an astronaut is of far more value than a wrench or any multitudes thereof.

      Also, yes, NASA knows a little bit about redundancy and especially so on space walks.

      Give our astronauts a bit of credit here. Tough job. Worst pay on the planet (or near it) for the risk. Awesome view, but colossal vertigo.

      A bit of trivia: space walker's microphones are muted for the first 30 seconds of their first space walk. Reason is this: in space, no one can hear you scream. And with the mic off, neither can Houston.

    4. 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.
    5. Re:I was just wondering by DinDaddy · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Children need encouragement. If a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way he develops a good, lucky feeling." - Jack Handy

    6. Re:I was just wondering by F�an�ro · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A bit of trivia: space walker's microphones are muted for the first 30 seconds of their first space walk. Reason is this: in space, no one can hear you scream. And with the mic off, neither can Houston.

      [[citation needed]]

      Being unable to call for help if something goes wrong sounds like a major danger, no way nasa would do this.

    7. Re:I was just wondering by cowscows · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you let go of an object while in orbit, it doesn't just hover in that exact spot over the earth and wait for you to come back around. If it did, then the shuttle/ISS would likely collide with that object at a very high speed and it'd be game over. I'm not sure if that's what you're implying, but it certainly doesn't work that way

      The tool bag or whatever is orbiting the earth at the same speed as the astronaut. If I was that astronaut and I lightly pushed my tool bag away, it would mostly continue in the same orbit that it and I had before, plus it would have a small bit of momentum in whatever direction I shoved it. If I only pushed it lightly, then relative to me it would only be moving away very slowly. If it's moving away from me at one mile per hour, then after a 90 minute orbit, then it would be a mile and a half away from me, still moving away at that same speed.

      I guess theoretically, if you ignore any sort of air resistance causing orbital decay, if you shoved the toolbag in a direction that didn't change the altitude of the bag in relation to the earth, then it might eventually your path again, but it's not likely to happen.

      --

      One time I threw a brick at a duck.

    8. Re:I was just wondering by sam_paris · · Score: 4, Insightful

      1) This is a small bag of tools we're talking about, not a giant ACME anvil. Having a bag tethered to you is not suddenly going to mean chaos and carnage. Besides, it could be strapped to the spacesuit in such a way that it wouldn't be flailing about.

      2) The astronaut is not going to go flying off into space, as you suggested. 99.99% of space-walks are tethered (ie attached to the shuttle, space station etc)

      3) As another commenter says below. I would like to see where Nasa says they mute the microphones. What if there was a problem in that period of time? Something which could potentially risk the entire mission, but which could be avoided by getting information from ground control?

    9. Re:I was just wondering by tom17 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think the original poster may be correct on this one.

      He was not implying that the object would stay still, rather that after the 'shove', the object would now be in a different orbit. The two orbits initially intersect at the point that the 'shove' finishes and no more force has been exerted in changing it's orbit.

      Now picture two orbital paths around the planet, but one is at a slightly different angle to the other. They intersect at 2 points, 180 degrees apart. Therefore, the object would stop moving away, relative to you, after 1/4 an orbit. After half an orbit, the orbits would intersect again and you could pick up the spanner.

      This, of course assumes that the 'shove' only had a lateral (left/right) component. Any component of force that was up,down, forwards or backwards relative to the initial direction of traffic would complicate that a lot and I do not know how to "in my head" work that out.

      The chances of *only* giving the tool a force in the correct plane is, however, pretty unlikely, so the spanner is likely lost for sure.

      Tom...

    10. Re:I was just wondering by khallow · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

      Someone who wants to know something bad just happened and figure out what that was.

    11. Re:I was just wondering by vlm · · Score: 3, Informative

      Eventually they'll deorbit and burn up, but probably not for a while. The tools were in a stable orbit when they were dropped and they weren't thrown very hard (just enough so they were out of reach by the time it was noticed). It takes quite a bit more delta-v than that to deorbit.

      Air resistance will get it in a couple weeks at most.

      Something the size and density of a space suit takes about six weeks to deorbit due to air resistance at the ISS altitude.

      It's an interesting thing to consider, will the much smaller tool bag with its vastly inferior surface area to volume ratio compensate for the (probably) higher density of the tool bag? It is smaller, so it should deorbit much faster because it has much more surface are per volume thus more air drag. On the other hand, the metal tools in the bag are probably somewhat denser than an old space suit.

      The ISS has about a pound of force from air resistance, roughly. The toolbag has probably a thousandth the surface area, but probably only a millionth the weight. So it'll probably deorbit about a thousand times faster than the ISS. I am guessing this guess is only accurate to maybe two orders of magnitude.

      I'm heard that a hot air balloon (just the fabric canopy) would deorbit in about a revolution due to air resistance, whereas a steel I-beam, pointy end forward (good luck due to gravity gradient stabilization) would not deorbit for decades. That claim that I heard is probably off by even more orders of magnitude.

      See link below about the suitsat launched from the station, pictures, how long it lasted, etc.

      http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/SuitSat/

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    12. Re:I was just wondering by Deadstick · · Score: 4, Informative
      If you're in orbit and you push an object away, you and the object are now in two orbits that intersect at the point of departure. In principle, both of you will pass through the same point the next time round, but not necessarily at the same time.

      For example, if you push the object backward along the flight path, it will now have a slightly lower velocity which will take it to a lower altitude on the other side of the earth, and then back up to your altitude. But that orbit will have a shorter period, so by the time you get back to the start point, the object will have been and gone.

      Also, at the altitudes where the Shuttle flies, you're not truly out of the atmosphere...you're still hitting gas molecules from time to time, and every impact takes a tiny bit of energy out of your orbit, which ever-so-slowly brings it downward; that's why low-orbiting satellites don't stay up terribly long. When you eject an object backwards and lower its orbit, it will dip a little deeper into the atmosphere and incur a tiny bit more drag than you do -- which will prevent it ever getting back up to your height again. When a newly-launched satellite deploys its various antennas and stuff, it often has to eject various covers that protected them during launch, and it ejects them back along the flight path for precisely that reason.

      rj

    13. Re:I was just wondering by AigariusDebian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    14. Re:I was just wondering by bedammit · · Score: 5, Informative

      Having worked at NASA... I'd like to clarify. There are definitely difficulties when items are tethered, to a space suit or a vehicle while in space, however these are details which are resolved. Astronauts use an MMWS (modified mini-workstation tool stowage) caddy. This keeps tools from floating away as well as has tethers. You can see an image of the hooks used here. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/122027main_hooks.jpg Additionally, You can see a repair bag here. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/122016main_crack_repair_bag.jpg Note the loops and elastic bands. This is how tools are contained in a repair bag. The way the bag was lost was when astronaut Piper was pulling items out of the crew air lock bag. While searching the bag the tool bag (which was in side the larger bag) floated up and out and she lost control of it. It then floated away. I may have been missed when transferring items. In the video the bag lost looks like an MMWS. Which is sorta like a utility belt. Things like this happen... Fault or no fault.. BeDammit

    15. Re:I was just wondering by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Informative

      "A bag on a strap will come back and hit you, wrap around you, your arms, your legs, damage your suit, etc."

      For all those above with reasons why it would be a bad idea to tether the bag, it was _supposed_ to be tethered, just as all the tools inside it are tethered to the bag.

    16. Re:I was just wondering by djupedal · · Score: 3, Funny

      >Orbits are elliptical.
      /
      And gravity sucks...look up 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'.

    17. Re:I was just wondering by SleptThroughClass · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Hello, I'm Clippy.
      Are you trying to hit the Earth?
      Try firing your rifle directly opposite the direction of your ship's orbit.
      You would get faster results if you upgrade your rifle to one which can fire at the same speed as your ship's speed."

    18. Re:I was just wondering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny
      This is why, if you're a carnivorous spacemonster attached to the hull of a spaceship, it's important to eat the first emerging astronaut within thirty seconds of them emerging from the airlock.

      You get bonus points and extra helpings. They send out a second astronaut to see what happened to the first, and then a third to see what happened to the second...

    19. 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.

    20. Re:I was just wondering by Kagura · · Score: 5, Informative

      Found a video of the astronaut losing the tool bag. After it got out of reach, there was simply no going after it.

    21. Re:I was just wondering by greyhueofdoubt · · Score: 4, Informative

      >>99.99% of space-walks are tethered

      You either greatly overestimated how many spacewalks have taken place or you you are planning for the future:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacewalks_and_moonwalks

      We've done 7 untethered spacewalks, so your percentage should probably use 2 or fewer significant digits.

      -b

      --
      No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
  2. Laurel & Hardy? by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    Do we have any humorous black & white silent space footage of this skit?

    Seriously, NASA's gotta come up with financing somehow ... add some hokey 1920's ragtime music to the it, speed it up just unnaturally fast and they just might be sitting on a viral video here!

    Come on, it practically writes itself:

    Setting: Exterior of shuttle.
    A lanky beanpole Bowen discovers that grease has been dispensed into her bag. Not wanting to alert the portly Bowen and face his wrath, she quickly empties the contents of the bag to wipe them off. As she cleans each tool, she sets it back down on the shuttle but soon realizes that they merely float back up. She rotates through each tool, setting it back on the shuttle but forgets about the bag! Bowen hears the heavy breathing in his earpiece and turns around in time to see the bag floating away while Piper is pre-occupied with the tools. He scowls and makes a move for the bag but slips on grease and tumbles out into space, tethered only by his life support ...

    --
    My work here is dung.
  3. And THIS is why by falcon5768 · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Enterprise was built on the ground folks. If highly trained astronauts cant hold onto their tools, you think a bunch of steel workers can?

    --

    "Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."

    1. Re:And THIS is why by Tisha_AH · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Pieces, parts and tools have been lost on a very large number of space missions since humanity first went into space. In zero G, if an object has the slightest amount of velocity and it is let go, it quickly is beyond your reach and irrecoverable.

      Of course it goes without mention that men lost all of the previous items (including a spatula used to apply a test filler material for the shuttle tiles).

      The misogyny of most of the posters to this article helps illustrate an earlier /. article on why fewer women are entering the computer sciences fields in university. Many ego-centric professionals (I use that term loosely) in the IT field still can see no use for a woman in their profession, unless we are staffing a help desk.

      EVA missions during space travel are the most challenging and difficult activities of anything that NASA does. "Tim the Toolman" does not have a caddy of accessories to keep his stuff in place. Imagine how difficult it is to be standing on the end of a boom, attached to the shuttle. You have no visual frame of reference, the balance mechanisms in your ears are telling you one thing, your training is telling you something else. Now try to overhaul a bad rotary joint on one of the solar panels.

      Ignorance is clearly bliss to several of the posters to this article.

      --
      Tisha Hayes
  4. damn it whats wrong with me by ionix5891 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "guns had released grease into her toolbag ..."

  5. Typical woman by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Funny

    More interested in cleaning stuff than getting on with the job! :o)

  6. Re:color me unsurprised by Daetrin · · Score: 4, Funny

    "that's why I don't trust my bag to any woman"

    Not even when it's coated with lube?

    --
    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
  7. Advertisment by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 3, Funny

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    --
    Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  8. Footage of the incident by rawagajah · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7736996.stm

    1. Re:Footage of the incident by Media+Tracker · · Score: 5, Informative

      Longer version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flZRps0pBEo

  9. Luckily? by holophrastic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Luckily they have a spare? Umm guys, not luck, planning. Not an accident, not for the grace of a god, simply a good thing. Give credit where credit is due: someone planned well.

  10. If life had taught her anything... by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Never go back for your bag.

  11. What about the EVA retriever robot? by Robotbeat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    NASA had a robot in development JUST FOR THIS SORT OF THING. In the early 1990s/late 1980s they were working on an autonomous robot that responds to voice commands that would fly around in space near a space station to retrieve tools or astronauts and such. It would be released and lock on to the tool or whatever and fly to it and fly back to the station. I have a picture of it in a kids book about robots, but I can't find one online.

    Here's a fact sheet on the project:

    http://cd.textfiles.com/spaceandast/TEXT/STATION/STF_EVA.TXT

    EVA RETRIEVER FACT SHEET

    Johnson Space Center (JSC)

    March 25, 1988

              The EVA Retriever concept is an autonomous free flying robot
    for retrieving equipment or a spacewalking astronaut drifting in
    separated flight near the Space Station. The device combines the
    proven manned maneuvering unit (MMU) with a robot latched in
    where an astronaut normally would be. The MMU was flown eight
    times from the Space Shuttle's cargo bay in test flights and for
    satellite repair spacewalks.

              Responding to voice commands from the Space Station crew,
    the EVA Retriever would activate and check itself out, search for
    and lock onto the "target," thrust toward, rendezvous with and
    grapple the target -- automatically avoiding any obstacles en
    route such as Space Station structures. After grappling the
    target, the EVA Retriever would search for the Space Station and
    finding it, return home.

  12. Wow by IceCreamGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think this might be the most sexist slashdot discussion I've ever seen.

  13. Sleep time by edgr · · Score: 3, Funny

    The crew is due to go to sleep tonight at 11:55 p.m. CST and will wake up at 7:55 a.m. tomorrow.

    Man, that's a pretty damn regimented sleep time. I guess there's no quickly checking /. before bed.

  14. Wait a second... by Shaltenn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OK I understand that the grease gun went off in the bag and covered the tools with goo and what not.

    But... why not go inside before attempting to clean the stupid things off? I mean, the tools are still usable, if a little gunked up...

    Kudos to NASA for having two sets of tools, one for each astronaut. ... Wait... You say they only have those two sets? No backups? ... ... -_-

    --
    If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
  15. Uhm ... what? by Errtu76 · · Score: 3, Funny

    "lubrication guns had released grease into her toolbag"

    Am i really the only one who thought of porn when reading this? I hope not.

  16. 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.

  17. Wow.... by RulerOf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know about you, but if my woman was at home making babies while I'm out on a space walk, I'd be pissed.

    --
    Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
  18. And in today's episode of "learning the internet" by clone53421 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Google or Wiki, Ctrl-F, "astronaut", Enter.

    --
    Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
  19. Gr*sr by Linker3000 · · Score: 3, Funny

    So can we look forward to a sentient grease gun arriving back in Earth orbit some time in the future demanding to speak to the head mechanic?

    --
    AT&ROFLMAO
  20. Well, exept it already did by Moraelin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Because it wouldn't happen to a guy. :P

    Except, say, to the Russians repairing the ISS with improvised tools, because they lost the original tools. Or that guy Ed White, the first spacewalker, who lost a spare glove. Or Piers Sellers who lost a spatula. Or those intrepid souls in 2006 who lost a couple of bolts while connecting an addition to the ISS. Or let's hear it for Jerry L. Ross on STS-88, who managed to lose an anchor socket and a panel into space on the very first spacewalk, then a thermal blanket on the second spacewalk. Etc.

    (Though, in all fairness, more fun than guys losing tools was when an Indonesian sat got hit by feces. Literally. That's when NASA stopped dumping their shit in space.)

    Or on Earth, you have such fine specimens as Dr. Wesley Meyers, the dentist who managed to kill a patient by dropping a too down his throat (and into his lung.) A second time.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  21. Radio silence by ErkDemon · · Score: 5, Funny
    You don't want the world listening in to a conversation between a bunch of macho guys who've just realised that they're all alone in a sealed capsule with nothing to lose, no chance of escape and a few hours left to live.

    Mission Control:
    "And so, the world waits and listens, as the brave astronauts consider how to spend their last few hours of precious life. We can no longer communicate with the heroic crew, but we have one last audio feed still working. We can hear them, but tragically, they can't hear us ... "

    Audio feed:
    "Chuck?"
    "Yeah, Tony?"
    "We're gonna die, ain't we?"
    "Yeah, Tony. We are."
    "Is there anything you really wished you'd tried, just once, when you had the chance?"
    "A few things, Tony. Yeah. A few."
    "Have you ever wondered what, like, it'd be like to 'do it' with another guy? Because ..."

    Mission Control:
    "Aaargh! Aargh! Noooooo! Turn it OFF!"

    --
    Eric Baird