Space Station Crew Prepare For Emergency Spacewalk 95
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.'"
Everything is hard in space (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't have regular solar panels; you need ammonia-cooled solar panels. You can't simply walk out and fix it, there's no air. You can't use a wrench, because conservation of momentum means you rotate around the bolt. And after all that and you fix it, a piece of junk from a Chinese satellite killer takes you and your new solar panel out.
This is why we're still whizzing around in LEO. Imagine doing this crap 100 million miles away when you can't "just" get more ammonia if you really needed it.
P.R. (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it amusing that the best P.R. man NASA has had in recent years (Chris Hadfield) is not American.
Re:Unscheduled != Emergency (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, in an emergency there is no checklist
Hey Anonymous Coward, there sure as hell is. The whole point of a checklist is you remain calm and 'work the problem.'
If you're in the cockpit of a 747 and the engines flame out at 35K feet the first thing you do is grab your checklist.
Re:Unscheduled != Emergency (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, jklovanc is getting hammered by the mods, but he has a point. We really aren't ready for space until you can actually do that sort of thing without a three week simulator run.
This is EXACTLY why we need to keep going round and round in LEO until it's really, really boring and second nature*. If we plan on getting past the moon, we have to develop technologies and procedures that allow us to fix things promptly.
* This is not to imply that the ONLY thing we should be doing is the ISS. We should be funding lots of other space related programs.