NASA's first all-woman spacewalk outside ISS cancelled – due to lack of spacesuits that fit NASA's first-of-its-kind all-women spacewalk, due to take place this week, has been scrapped - in part due to a lack of spacesuits that fit. On March 29, International Space Station 'nauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch, were due to suit up and head out into the obsidian void to replace a set of batteries on the orbiting …
Moon-sized!
I'll leave it to your racial self-identification to decide if that's good or bad.
But the question which I'm sure is burning in everyone's mind is, what gender is the person who makes the suit that wasn't delivered?
Is it another failure of the patriarchy?
Was it a woman with internalized misogyny?
Or do we have absolutely zero interest in which gender is going for a walk or doing anything, unless their gender is relevant to the success of task at hand?
Shirley, you gentlemen here do know that the ISS loo does also require a certain willy size to have a proper wee? (Yep, you do have to fill the yellow funnel properly) So, how do you measure up? Think you're the right stuff?
LOL at toilet cubicle : 5 walls that look tough enough to be a spaceship in their own right and a base made for Ripley's loading suit .. but no door.
I am surprised, and a bit concerned, that they got as far as announcing the space walk before discovering they did not have the necessary stuff to do it.
I would have thought NASA would know of every item on the ISS and such a shortage should have been flagged almost instantly.
I found a couple of hints on the net: There are two medium-sized hard upper spacesuit torsos on the ISS, but only one is currently configured for EVA and the other cannot be configured in time. Also, an astronaut can prefer one size on the ground and find the prefer a different size in space.
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It may be that gravity which is an enemy to parts of female anatomy on Earth is virtually non existent in orbit, so the need to 'lift and separate' is replaced by the need to ' support and restrain.
In my defence, this suggestion is a result of consultation with my wife who has a more intimate understanding of the potential issues.
Theoretically it shouldn't, unless there is no way to know by how much she would grow before the mission was planned.
Remember the film Apollo 13 ? NASA has a reputation for having everything quantified and on record, therefor they know what suits they have on board and their size. If they know how to determine by how much a person will grow in space before launch, then they should have the whole thing planned, checked and validated before even thinking about announcing it.
Of course if, despite their extensive experience, it is still impossible to determine exactly how a given person's height will vary, then the planning stage will have to allow for an on-board check that the intended suit still fits. Maybe that is what happened.
"If they know how to determine by how much a person will grow in space before launch, then they should have the whole thing planned, checked and validated before even thinking about announcing it."
AIUI from later reports (posting 14 hours after you), she had practiced in the water tanks on the ground in both medium and large and was happy with either, but people in space tend to lose body mass and she found the large suit was now too large for her, extra height gained by the spine extending a bit notwithstanding.
I'd imagine there are more suit "clothing" parts than tech parts (such as breathing gubbins or heating/cooling bits). As a result they probably add the tech bits to the appropriate size suit as needed, allowing a choice of sizing without too much stuff in space. They have a pretty busy schedule so I guess there just isn't a window between now and the planned date to reconfigure. That said I'm sure that one of the ladies would make some time...
I read elsewhere that one of the astronauts had previously been training in both the medium and large size suit, but perhaps due to the changes that undergo the body in space, she found that the medium was more suitable - too late to reconfigure the second suit safely, and in time.
When I first read the story I thought "wtf?" about there not being the correct, fitting equipment, but after reading it did make more sense how it can happen unexpectedly.
You may have missed the critical part that she CHANGED HER MIND WHEN ALREADY IN SPACE. She decided AFTER the first spacewalk that the medium fit better.
It's NASA being nice to the astronauts and saying "Sure, you can wear that one if you prefer. We won't have enough though so you'll have to take turns this time". The women's needs were not forgotten or overlooked, they are being nicely accommodated. This is putting the humans ahead of the Stated Goals, a completely admirable act.
However, we get a clickbait headline implying something WRONG and possibly even sexist. Gah...
I am surprised, and a bit concerned, that they got as far as announcing the space walk before discovering they did not have the necessary stuff to do it.
Reminds me of the time at Chicago O'Hare when the plane next to ours boarded. The gangway was roped off then after ten minutes they all had to come back off. The reason given was that the plane was not suitable because the runaway was too short. Still - at least they realised that well before starting the approach...
:-/
How is this a pioneering moment?
I thought astronauts were space walking for decades. Is there some fundamental difference between male and female astronauts that means having 2 female ones outside at the same time is some critical issue?
Do they have special powers that when combined bend the laws of physics?
Whats the reasoning behind this? I saw 3 women in a car yesterday! One of them was driving! I remember once seeing a couple of women, again in a car, changing a flat tire. OMG why wasnt this in the news? Such pioneering moments lost to the mists of time.
As for the equipment that doesnt fit issue. Looks like a market there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RbELQQdBW4
"Because it hasn't happened before?"
Loads of things haven't happened before though. It's not the first female spacewalk, or the second, it would have been the first time two happened to take place at the same time.
Unless the previous astronauts were being helped around by the man, having both of them being women is something minor.
Just do the damn job. Let history sort out that something was the first, or somehow important. NASA got it right when they said: "When you have the option of just switching the people, the mission becomes more important than a cool milestone," NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz told the New York Times.
Darwin award candidates. Or, if you prefer, stupid fucking idiots.
Here's a somewhat safer/saner way to do it:
There is no need to waste conditioned space on a potentially hazardous item with a long life span that can handle living outdoors. Where do you keep your gas/petrol, diesel, household fuel oil or propane? How about your battery, if you've gone solar or otherwise have a "whole house" UPS? Going outside with spares once a decade or so is a lot less costly than the engineering involved when using such things as part of the furniture.
Why would you want access from the inside ? To swap the battery with the one in your back pocket ?
It's more likely that a replacement battery would initially be OUTSIDE, so it's far easier to put it into an external door than somehow get it inside the suit to use an internal door.
"Inside the passenger compartment....??? So when you go to refuel it, you put the hose in through a door or window? No wonder the downvotes."
Not unheard of - many years ago my father owned an earlier model Landrover (Series 2, I think) in which the fuel tank was the support for the driver's seat - refueling involved lifting the seat, removing the filler cap and adding petrol from the hose which was either passed through the window, or, more conveniently, through the driver's door.
Apart from the minor issue of pressurised (inhabitable) volume being at a premium.
At least until Bigelow get to put a few large balloon modules up there and not just the toy one that's bolted on at the moment.
I wonder if the free flying ones can be captured, reorbited and attached?
One a serious note, I thought there were enough space suits (that fit?) for every member on board at any given time.
If there was an emergency (air leak via meteor strike), wouldn't SOP dictate that everyone suits up? What - the women would draw straws?
This seems like more than just a casual oversight.. In fact I would suspect that NASA is likely just putting on a good face while much more serious discussions are taking place privately.
SOP is that they get into the Soyuz capsules. https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-evacuation-plan-on-the-ISS-in-case-of-an-emergency-Are-there-any-drills-performed-on-the-ISS-for-an-evacuation
In the event of the station becoming uninhabitable an EVA suit isn't going to help you much.
The film, Gravity, contained a crucial error of physics.
When Bullock and Clooney (can't remember the character names) are orbiting the Earth, holding on to each other by a rope, Bullock eventually lets go, dooming Clooney to oblivion. BUT, if they were in orbit together and one let go, their speeds would not change - so Clooney would have stayed exactly where he was relative to Bullock, instead of being whisked away like in the film.
Minor issues aside (the most trifling of them being the small matter of heat shielding) what you actually need to do to re-enter the atmosphere is slow down, so you should aim backwards along your orbit and fire thrusters. Whether a suit has the delta-V to make a dent in your orbital velocity, timing the burn to descend towards a spot of your choice, and calculating the altitude at which you will burn up before reaching it are exercises left to the reader.
SOP is that they get into the Soyuz capsules. https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-evacuation-plan-on-the-ISS-in-case-of-an-emergency-Are-there-any-drills-performed-on-the-ISS-for-an-evacuation
Yes, and it takes a long time to get into a space suit, usually with two unsuited people helping you in. One could help at a stretch, but who helps the last one into his/her suit?
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