bob haller wrote:
to bite us. Take a look at the last spacewalk russia failed to inform the US of
the suit trouble untill till the russian astronaut mentioned it on the comm
system.

You know, this is really tiresome. The USA has access to the same voice comms
and would have heard the same conversations between the crew and moscow.
Moscow even provides constant translation. And there is supposed to be a USA
person in Moscow to provide even more interface between USA and Russia.

This was a russian EVA, and russia managed the EVA allowing the USA to look
into it. If the heating problem was stable, and the crewmember was aware of it
and still felt comfortable and within the limits of EVA ops, I see no reason
for worries by the USA.

Now, had the crewmember started to complain about heat and Moscow put pressure
on him to continue with EVA, then yes, there would have been many reasons to complain.

But as it stands, I think that that EVA was conducted very professionally and
without much paranoya.

When Foale was aboard Mir, he complained that he was treated like a weak
guest, while the russians were very tough and able to rought it up. This was
an image the russians had of the USA space program.

And while NASA didn't blow this problem out of proportions, people like
hallerB seem to want to blow it out of proportions. So it seems to me that
NASA is learning to allow crewmembers to "rought it up" but some people here
don't seem to be able to do risk analysis and judge if a problem is truly life
threathening, or threathens only comfort.

This EVA was a perfect example of the russians (including crewmember)
accepting that a suit might not provide full air conditioning and that the
crew member may have to sweat a bit. And when the conditions became too
unfortable, decision was made to cancel rest of EVA and go back inside.

I think that the EVA is a VERY good example of the russians not panicking and
not being worried about what the press might say and looking at the situation
and doing a good risk analysis.