Nasa Delays ISS Spacewalk Due To Astronaut's Medical Issue (theguardian.com) 39
Nasa is delaying a spacewalk at the International Space Station because of a medical issue involving one of its astronauts. From a report: Officials announced the postponement on Monday, less than 24 hours before Mark Vande Hei was supposed to float outside. Vande Hei was dealing with "a minor medical issue," officials said. It was not an emergency, they noted, but did not provide any further details. Vande Hei, 54, a retired army colonel, has been at the space station since April and is expected to remain there until next spring for a one-year mission. This is his second station stay.
Pinched nerve (Score:3)
Another source says the "minor medical issue" is a pinched nerve in the neck, and cites this twitter post: https://twitter.com/Astro_Sabo... [twitter.com]
sources here: https://phys.org/news/2021-08-... [phys.org]
and here: https://www.space.com/astronau... [space.com]
and https://kutv.com/news/nation-w... [kutv.com]
he's got the shits? (Score:1)
Re: he's got the shits? (Score:3)
Re: he's got the shits? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not usually, no. He's likely been training for this EVA for more than a year. They aren't simple procedures. The other person that knows how to do the EVA is probably on Terra Firma right now.
Re: he's got the shits? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: he's got the shits? (Score:2)
Re: he's got the shits? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let’s say you’re a leading bomb expert and I tell you that a patient at a nearby hospital has a Hollywood-style bomb in their brain—impossibly tiny, impossible to remove while armed, and practically impossible to defuse—but that you alone possess the skills necessary to defuse it. I then tell you it would take a brain surgeon with decades of experience and a plethora of tools you’ve never seen or heard of at least a half day to safely reach the bomb under ideal circumstances, and that if you do the steps wrong there’s the possibility that you’ll not only kill the patient, you’ll also blow up everyone else in the OR, including yourself.
How long does it take you to master the surgeon’s tools, learn the vocabulary, develop muscle memory, get a sense for how things are supposed to feel, and understand enough so you can deal with the inevitable things that aren’t exactly according to the script? You’re not just learning that one operation’s script: you’re having to get a crash course on decades of neurosurgery experience so that you can deal with anything that might come up.
Now pretend that the night before the surgery, someone was rushed in with a “similar” situation, but instead of their brain it’s in their heart, and instead of a bomb it’s an alien parasite. You happen to be available. How long does it take you to train?
Trick question! You must be an idiot if you don’t feel up to the task of extracting an alien parasite during open heart surgery with minimal training. Alternatively, heart surgery is clearly a badly designed, over-complicated system, and those surgeons who developed the procedures for removing alien parasites from hearts should be ashamed for making them so complex. Clearly that’s the problem here, rather than the obviously unrealistic expectations. /s
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Re: he's got the shits? (Score:2)
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Are the other members of the mission even trained for EVA? Perhaps they are, but not everyone is, so suggesting they could just hop in a suit and make something happen might be like suggesting a member of the pit crew replace their F1 driver. Sure, they're a skilled expert, but their expertise is inapplicable.
What's the proper path to reach the work site? For each and every step, where do your hands and feet need to be and what arc do they take to reach there so that you don't tangle cables, kink tubing, or
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To answer my own rhetorical question:
What are you even working on? You assume it's nothing more than bolts and standard connectors, but I haven't seen any reporting to suggest that's the case. Is it an ISS repair or upgrade?
It was an ISS upgrade. The walk was apparently intended to deploy the next part of the IROSA modification (i.e. ISS Roll Out Solar Arrays, newfangled solar panels that roll out of a canister). These new solar arrays take roughly half the space of the old ones because they're roughly twice as efficient, but they're being installed on top of the old ones so that they can use the existing sun-tracking motors. That said, the old ones are being kept in service as well: for th
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I guarantee you he won't be out there with wire strippers splicing connections. There would have been custom made tech that you simply unplug the old one and connect it all together. Perhaps there's some knowledge on digging through panels of hardware to find the correct crap to replace. That's a good reason to watch the equivalent of a couple of youtube videos on what needs to happen. The guy has ground support too, they'll
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I mean, it's doubtful it took a year to train him specifically for this walk, but a year to get the training he needs for all of the walks he'll be doing? Not at all unreasonable. That'd even seem extraordinarily low to me, given how long he'll be up there. The earlier poster who said he's been training for a year for this walk likely didn't mean exclusively training for this walk for a year, but it's entirely reasonable that his training for it could have taken a year or more of calendar time, mixed in wit
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Sure. But this astronaut is also spending a year in space, so...
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Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to (Score:1)
[to the tune of Sloop John B]
He shits when he wants.
He shits when he waaaants!
Vande Hei,
He shits when he wants.
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Crabs
You did mean to say Space Herpes didn't you? /s
Periodâ¦. (Score:1)
It's a pinched nerve (Score:5, Informative)
https://twitter.com/Astro_Sabo... [twitter.com]
Pinched Nerve (Score:3)
Vande Hei posted his status on Twitter. It's a pinched nerve.
the truth (Score:1)
In actuality, he ingested two Viagra instead of two aspirin and he now has an issue zipping up his space suit.
Obviously, he can't just call his doctor if an erection lasts more than 8 hours...
Probably Coronavirus (Score:2)
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And here I am without mod points...here's a virtual golf clap.
Well played, Ed!
speculating (Score:2)
May just be some nasal congestion. Breathing problems can escalate rapidly when you're sealed in a suit and outside the station. Remember that "water dispenser malfunction" awhile ago where water started getting into the helmet of one astronaut. It might look like not a big deal, but breaking is something we take for granted down here on earth!
And one good sneeze could send him back to the airlock pretty easily, imagine what that does to the clear helmet. There's no covering your mouth when you've got a
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s/breaking/breathing
"NASA" not "Nasa" (Score:2)
Guys, it's NASA (all capital letters) - it's an acronym, not a proper name.
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Yeah. This really frustrates me. But if you look at the original article, it also says Nasa. In fact, try to find a single British publication that gets it right. The BBC almost always uses Nasa.
I don't get it.
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In fact, try to find a single British publication that gets it right. The BBC almost always uses Nasa.
I don't get it.
Neither do I.
Guess I'll start referring to it as the "Bbc" then.
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Thanks for digging this up. At least there is a stated standard and some reasoning - even if I don't like it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyl... [bbc.co.uk]
Neat! (Score:1)
Cool - that means we can each define our own "style guide" and butcher others' names whichever way we want.
And I'll go with Sebby's suggestion of doing my own capitalization, to "bBc", and my pronunciation of it will be "bitches".
He got Covid (Score:2)