D’oh! Ten Goofs in Space
There are some situations even astronauts can't train for.
- By Paul Hoversten
- Air & Space magazine, November 2011
Asif Siddiqi collection/NASA
They are among the most highly trained people on Earth, working with some of the most complex machinery ever invented. But astronauts and cosmonauts are only human, and sometimes—whether through faulty equipment, operator error, or just plain bad luck—things can go awry in space. Although almost every U.S. and Russian space mission over the past half-century has been successful, a few are remembered for what didn’t go right.
The world’s first spacewalk, for example, nearly ended in tragedy. On March 18, 1965, Alexei Leonov (pictured above) spent just over 12 minutes outside his spacecraft, connected to it by a 17-foot-long tether. When he tried to come back in, he found that his spacesuit had overinflated, and he was unable to fit through his capsule’s airlock. Finally, Leonov opened a valve that released some of the pressure, and was able (barely) to get back inside.
See the gallery above for more space goofs.
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Comments (8)
I have never understood the fuss over Armstrong's missing article. I was paid for a long time to enforce spelling and grammar for people who were paid to know how to use both, but I never saw the way Armstrong said his famous words as anything other than a little bit of poetry and drama, pleasing to the ear and entirely appropriate to the situation. And every anniversary, some little hotshot of a journalst thinks he or she is the first to write about the moon man's grammar. And even if Armstrong committed a grievous sin against grammar -- he was on the MOON when he said it. Grammar gurus, where have YOU been?
Posted by Don Lee on September 21,2011 | 10:46 PM
The lost tool bag from STS-126 may not have been all that bad after all. Spaceweather.com turned this event into a learning experience for my students and most likely students worldwide. The website provided tracking information for the tool bag which enabled my students to go outside with their binoculars and try to spot the tool bag under clear, dark skies. Prior to this event, most of my students were not even aware that the ISS and satellites could be seen with their naked eye from their back yards. Seeing the tool bag and the ISS really turned my students on to the space program and many of my former students still actively track the ISS using apps for their smart phones. Isn't it great when adversity can be turned into opportunity?
Posted by Walt Bilous on September 26,2011 | 03:53 PM
I don't get it. How can you not hear the "a" in "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind."? Listen to the recording carefully and the say it, out loud yourself, with that same American accent. Notice how the "a" hides itself in plain sight in the crappy recording over 300,000 km? EDITORS' REPLY: Armstrong himself admits that he left off the "a."
Posted by Martin Nyberg on October 21,2011 | 05:15 PM
That's the Russian right stuff! It would be neat to see a show on what the cosmonauts did to complete their missions and stay alive during the early space program.
Posted by Peter laager on October 26,2011 | 04:43 PM
Armstrong admits that he himself left off the "a" in his prepared statement. I believe he was unaware that he had done so until he was told that he did and after listening to the recording had no choice but to admit to the error.
Posted by Thomas Williams on October 26,2011 | 07:54 PM
The year Apollo 12 was on the moon, I was a physics teacher at the high school across the street from the Westinghouse Research Labs, where the camera was built. I can remember Al Bean banging on the camera with a hammer in hopes of getting it to work after he had pointed it at the sun, but he didn't seem to know that he had already destroyed it a few seconds earlier. A year later, when I was working at the Labs for the summer, I had a chance to talk with the engineers who had developed the camera, which was the first color video camera in space. They recalled that they could not believe that anyone could be so careless as to point a camera at the sun, and were completely horrified that it had happened. The next version had an automatic shutter that would close if the camera was pointed toward the sun, but I don't believe that it was ever needed after Apollo 12.
Posted by Robert Chilcoat on October 27,2011 | 04:31 PM
Why does this particular picture remnd me of something similar in the movie, "Space Cowboys" concerning an IKON satellite with 6 nukes onboard?
The only differences are that it's Mir (not IKON); there's no nukes on Mir (we hoped), and that it's a Russian cargo ship instead of a Space Shuttle.
Posted by James on May 12,2012 | 05:35 PM
I was a tech at the NASA tracking station Guam and we were watching on video when he tripped over the ALSEP cables. It was greeted with howls of laughter by all.
Posted by Randall Robinson on July 8,2012 | 10:03 PM