Swimming Lessons
Astronauts had to swim before they could walk.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- AirSpaceMag.com, August 11, 2009
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NASA
In 2003, with his STS-116 shuttle flight still almost four years off, astronaut Robert Curbeam, Jr., practices space station assembly tasks underwater. The Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory pool is 202 feet long, 102 feet wide, and 40 feet deep. It holds more than 6 million gallons of water, and it took more than one month to fill the pool. Astronauts will spend seven hours in the water, training, for each hour they plan to spend in EVA.
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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