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Space Station Crew Prepare For Emergency Spacewalk
astroengine writes "After the discovery of an ammonia coolant leak supplying one of the solar arrays on Thursday (video), International Space Station managers have decided to plan for an unscheduled spacewalk on Saturday to repair the problem. The final decision about whether to go ahead with the extravehicular activity will be made late on Friday. 'Good Morning, Earth! Big change in plans, spacewalk tomorrow, Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn are getting suits and airlock ready. Cool!', tweeted the Space Station's Expedition 35 Commander, Chris Hadfield, on hearing the news an emergency EVA may be required of his crew. 'The whole team is ticking like clockwork, readying for tomorrow. I am so proud to be Commander of this crew. Such great, capable, fun people.'"
You can't use a wrench, because conservation of momentum means you rotate around the bolt.
Unless you have something to hold you, like the Canadarm, or hold onto something to stop your rotation. Using a wrench is space is more complex but not impossible.
You just made my point.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
A little bit off-topic, but worth mentioning, Chris Hadfield has been recording interesting short videos from the ISS about how's life over there: http://www.youtube.com/user/canadianspaceagency
He's joking or trolling, but he is correct about ISS dropping XP on their laptops...
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-space-station-switches-from-windows-to-linux-for-improved-reliability
Because the spacesuits use pure O2 at very low pressure to remain flexible.
Inflating a spacesuit with "normal" air at normal pressure would make it very
stiff and require big forces to bend, making for very expensive balloon animals
and not much work done by the astronaut contained within.
The "pre-breathing" is required to adapt the human physiology to such an atmosphere.
Just using normal air at very low pressure isn't an option, because the partial pressure
of Oxygen would be too low to breathe (same as very-high-altitude air on Earth).
Making a useable spacesuit is suprisingly hard. One of the challenges for example
is that the suits internal volume should always stay the same, even when bent.
Otherwise the pressure would change (and by quite a bit too) every time it is deformed,
annoying the hell out of or even injuring the astronaut.