Swimming Lessons
Astronauts had to swim before they could walk.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- AirSpaceMag.com, August 11, 2009
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NASA
Just a few weeks before their launch date of April 24, 1990, STS-31 astronauts Bruce McCandless and Kathryn Sullivan practice space walking in the Weightless Environment Training Facility at the Johnson Space Center. McCandless (left) works with a mockup of the shuttle's remote manipulator arm, while Sullivan manipulates Hubble Space Telescope hardware on the support system module forward shell. The main purpose of the shuttle mission was to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope.
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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