Swimming Lessons
Astronauts had to swim before they could walk.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- AirSpaceMag.com, August 11, 2009
NASA
During the Gemini 9 EVA in 1966, handrails, Velcro pads, and foot restraints failed to help astronaut Gene Cernan control his movements. In Walking to Olympus: An EVA Chronology, authors David S.F. Portree and Robert C. Trevino noted that Cernan spent half his time outside the capsule just maintaining his position. “As he struggled, he broke off an experimental antenna mounted on Gemini 9 and tore the outer layers of his suit…. After returning to Earth, Cernan conducted underwater neutral buoyancy simulations of his EVA in the Weightless Immersion Facility pool…. He reported that neutral buoyancy simulation nearly duplicated actual EVA conditions, helping to validate it as an EVA training tool.”
By the time Cernan returned to space, as the lunar module pilot of Apollo 10, underwater simulations were the norm. Nor was that the astronauts’ only water training. In this image from August 1968, he and crewmate John Young (in the raft) exit their Apollo Command Module trainer—practice for an ocean splashdown.
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Comments (1)
This is a great photo, in part because it documents a little appreciated facet of the Skylab program. Before it was Skylab, it was AAP--the Apollo Applications Program. To gain support, NASA offered to fly some military technology experiments on the Orbital Workshop. One is shown in this photo: the inflatable airlock developed by the US Air Force (that roundish white object to the right of the Apollo Telescope Mount). The USAF wanted to evaluate an inflatable, collapsible airlock for use in its future space vehicles. What I didn't realize was that the Air Force inflatable airlock was still (apparently) in evaluation as late as November 1970, when this photo was taken.
Recall also that Alexei Leonov made humanity's first space walk through an inflatable airlock, but (as far as I know) none have ever been used since then.
Posted by John Charles on August 28,2009 | 01:36 PM