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Dropped Shuttle Toolbag Filmed From Earth
cathector writes "An article at spaceweather.com reports that the toolbag dropped during Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper's spacewalk has been recorded on film from earth: 'When Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped her toolbag during a spacewalk on Nov. 18th and it floated away, mission controllers probably figured they'd seen the last of it. Think again. Last night, Nov. 22nd, veteran satellite observer Kevin Fetter video-recorded the backpack-sized bag gliding over his backyard observatory in Brockville, Ontario. "It was easily 8th magnitude or brighter as it passed by the 4th magnitude star eta Pisces," he says. Spaceweather's satellite tracker is monitoring the toolbag.'"
The actual loss of the bag was filmed, too; reader Kagura links in a comment on the original story to this YouTube clip of the bag's escape.
I mean I live in the Southern US, home of the redneck troglodyte... and I dont know anyone who feels that strongly about this, but evidently somewhere there exists a serious reserve of "brefoot pregnant in the kitchen shut up and get me a beer, honey you need to be quiet the menfolk are talking" types.
Chuck
Exactly what I said as I dropped a bolt today and it rolled away under the car. :-)
I suppose something of this incident will go down in history and become the origin of some common expression like Murphy's Law in the distant future. Maybe feature in a future episode of Star Trek?
cue stream of XKCD links in 3....2....
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
It probably would be cheaper just to have the astronauts make sure the bag is continually tethered to something.
Well, a woman dropped an expensive toolbag. An organisation comprised predominantly of men oversaw the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia...
If you're keeping score, I think women might be in the lead for some time yet ;)
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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NASA funniest home videos?
Seriously though, I feel sorry for this woman. One minor slip up and because the media latched onto it this is all she'll ever be remembered for. NASA astronauts risk life and limb and while the humour's good we shouldn't forget the effort and sacrifice they make should not be dismissed lightly.
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at least there when you screw something down there you dont have the whole world watching you
How, exactly, do you *drop* something in space?
It's a very dark ride.
Have no fear, language has this wonderful ability to evolve giving words new meaning. Definitions of words are not set in stone.
An organisation comprised predominantly of men oversaw the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia...
Yeah, and those same men built the fucking space shuttles, and oversaw a hundred-something successful launches, which means absolutely nothing.
</wastedtime>
Let's put aside any blame, mistakes, whether the media is being unfair...for just a moment.
Seeing that bag just drift off, only a few feet away from the station and then a few days later we see it pass by in orbit from Earth is just amazing. I'm always impressed with whatever we do in space.
Was it my tax dollars that paid for that lost bag? Still worth the money.
She fumbled, in a high-stress enviroment under high-stress circumstances, but it's not her fault. I actually instantly saw the flaw with something/somebody else when I read this the first time.
what in heavens name is up with a space grease gun leaking grease were it's not supposed to? Were does Nasa get these? At the local hardware store for 10 Dollars a piece or what? This stunt actually went quite well. Imagine her not being able to do her job (or get back to the airlock) because a grease gun explodes all over her helmet visor or something simular.
Say what you want, but somewhere some Nasa engineering team has to get back to the drawing table ASAP and design a greasegun that actually works relyably - Nasa style wise. Or something simular with no moving parts at all. Maybe get a vaseline can and a spatula tied to a string or something - that's probably how the russians do it.
I'd actually be super-pissed at gear that goes haywire on me 7 hours into a stressy EVA. I do climbing - imagine your backback shedding mission-critical gear at 300 meters in the vertical or something simular. Multipling that by a thousand hints the scale of issues we're talking about.
Way more people than just the astronaut are responsible here.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Ironically, if the grease gun had been manufactured to a higher standard, we probably wouldn't be talking about this now.
Chill, friend - just a joke, aiming to highlight that it's silly to raise the fact that a woman did it, because men aren't exactly robots :)
Disclaimer: I am a guy and therefore also not a robot.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Your first mistake was reading the comments on a Youtube video.
I wonder, will she catch any flak for this? Does she get docked salary for letting it slip?
More importantly, why wasn't this extremely expensive bag tethered to something? If it can't be tethered to her for safety reasons, how about a magnetically secured line attached to the work surface?
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Look, we've been separating the intelligence and wisdom stats since the late 70's at least.
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Don't forget, this is how it works.
http://www.xkcd.com/385/
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Compared to the cost of the whole mission the toolbag costs next to nothing. And people make mistakes and errors. This is a small but slightly annoying one. I think she's punished enough by having her mistake crawling all over the web.
-- Cheers!
I think the AI for having something reach out and fetch stuff in 3D would be complicated. Even on land-based mazes, this is supposedly pretty hard.
I do think that space provides a lot of black background (if the AI can filter out the stars and planet in its field of view). The problem comes with judging distances.
But maybe, the military lock and missile firing mechanisms have already solved part of the Identify-and-track mechanism. I mean, those clips where you see little squares locking onto tanks and things... well, the problem is that NASA is a US-endeavor. Space is international. If NASA somehow works out "opening" government AI algorithms, they will become usable by potential enemy scientists.
And imagine having lock-on technology that could be expanded to work from outter space down to ground targets. Well, far-fetched now, but advanced technology is sufficiently like magic, to paraphrase the saying.
And those bags don't even come with a full set of Allen Keys.
A Snap-on 22 piece ratchet kit is over 500 bucks. Hell a tool box from them is over $300!
I didn't believe you so I checked.
http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/tools.asp?tool=all&Group_ID=103&store=snapon-store
Direct from manufacturer you're looking at $348.65 for the 20 piece and $610.80 for the 34 piece. I now believe there could be a 22 piece set that I couldn't find thats around $500 with shipping, as you claimed.
I knew they were outrageously expensive but I didn't expect $20 per socket level of expense. They better be made of solid silver for that price. For that kind of money I don't just expect a socket set, I expect the Chinese guy whom made it to fly out here and pull the wrench for me.
My first metal lathe was about $500. Somehow I think I get "more" out of that than I would out of a 34 piece socket set.
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//I do not think that word means what you think it means...