Thursday, July 23, 2009

Suit Malf could have been 'naut's last first....

Ok, so I opt for a cheesy head line, but the thing is that the more people become blase about the ISS and space walks etc....the more we are reminded just how hostile the environment these people work in and just how close to the edge they are ever second. Here is what happened.

Astronaut Chris Cassidy on his first space mission during his first E.V.A. had something happen that very well could have been his last, anything.

For us oldtimers that experienced the ill fated Apollo mission number 13 know just how insidiously dangerous excess CO2 can be. Not only did that crew have to experience a mission ending explosion, lack of power and near freezing temperatures, they also faced slowly suffocating in their own exhaled waste due to lack of capacity and system incompatibility. The insidious part is that if someone had not been on their game, that crew would never even known it was happening until it was too late.

And that was almost what happened to astronaut Cassidy. His lithium hydroxide CO2 scrubber broke, allowing the lethal gas to build up to dangerous levels. What's more, Cassidy didn't notice any apparent effect, but the spacewalk came to a sudden ending after Houston noticed that things weren't right at all inside his suit. This according to a recent article in Gizmodo.

For the complete Gizmodo article click here

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