Gruesome question apollo 13

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 11:15:34 -0600, Charles Buckley
wrote:

Oates certainly had some doubts about Scott's leadership and
decision to include him for the push to the pole. On the way back,
it is entirely all too possible that Oates decided he was better off
alone pushing ahead. They weren't going to make it if they camped
every day the weather was bad.

Are you suggesting that he set off alone, with no equipment?

On 19 Aug 2004 13:22:19 -0700, (dave schneider)
wrote:

Do your copy machine technical documents call out a tool list that
includes a "rentch"? Or were you trying to say "heart-vomitting"?

....Just killfile him, *please*?

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 19:42:06 +0100, Jonathan Silverlight
wrote:

Did "The Cape" consider it as a possible story? For instance, if a
shuttle had some catastrophic failure and couldn't return, would oxygen
be the limiting factor until a (hypothetical) rescue was launched, or
would something else kill them first?

....Hell, I'm still surprised Caidin didn't do a revised version of
_Marooned_ featuring a Shuttle getting stranded with a crew of seven
on board, just to see how he could have solved the problem. Get at
least one of the crew killed in the obligatory depressurization
accident, have another killed by whatever caused the Shuttle's RCS
system to fail, have two rescued by a Soyuz flown solo, and the other
three rescued at the last minute by an EVA transfer to - no, not an
orange XRV, but a resurrected Apollo!

[Disbelief_Suspension_Mode=Cryogenic]

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,

Despite bad weather, the remaining members of the party probably *could*
have made it to their next cache if they'd tried pushing on from their
last camp. But they were still a long way from safety, in bad shape with
the weather steadily worsening, and that cache wouldn't have saved them.

This talk about Scott, etc. reminds me of the Endurance. Now there's an
amazing survival story.


--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

"Jonathan Silverlight" wrote
in message ...
Did "The Cape" consider it as a possible story? For instance, if a
shuttle had some catastrophic failure and couldn't return, would oxygen
be the limiting factor until a (hypothetical) rescue was launched, or
would something else kill them first?

Actually "The Cape" did do a stranded shuttle (tile damage) episode.

OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 19:42:06 +0100, Jonathan Silverlight
wrote:

Did "The Cape" consider it as a possible story? For instance, if a
shuttle had some catastrophic failure and couldn't return, would oxygen
be the limiting factor until a (hypothetical) rescue was launched, or
would something else kill them first?

...Hell, I'm still surprised Caidin didn't do a revised version of
_Marooned_ featuring a Shuttle getting stranded with a crew of seven
on board, just to see how he could have solved the problem. Get at
least one of the crew killed in the obligatory depressurization
accident, have another killed by whatever caused the Shuttle's RCS
system to fail, have two rescued by a Soyuz flown solo, and the other
three rescued at the last minute by an EVA transfer to - no, not an
orange XRV, but a resurrected Apollo!

Unfortunately, it's been done- sort of. "Rocket's Red Glare" was a
TV movie a few years back with a bunch of teenagers who restore a
complete Mercury-Redstone as a school project. Fate provides that a
shuttle orbiter happens to get stuck on orbit, in desperate need of
some sort of spare machine part. So the lead teenage space enthusiast
is recruited to fly the spare up to the shuttle with the Mercury, the
one & only spacecraft ready to fly in time to save the astronauts'
lives.

So- not only does the antique Redstone work flawlessy, but it also
is able to deliver the spacecraft to orbital velocity. Once there, the
capsule is able to do a flawless orbital rendesvous and ease on into
the shuttle bay.

-Mark Martin

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 04:37:06 -0400, John Beaderstadt
wrote:



What an odd non-sequitur: "Someone's going to die. Have a great
day!"

Anyway, I like to argue from historical example, but history furnishes
a plethora of heros and cowards. On balance, though, I suspect no one
is going to "take a walk," the way what's-his-name did in Antarctica.
For one thing, you'd lose a lot of air by opening the hatch, which
would screw things up for the other guys; given the reason for
leaving, what would be the point? For another, I forget whether it
was Buzz or Neil who said they'd spend their last moments alive on the
moon trying to fix the LM; doing a self-flit would imply giving up
and wouldn't be in character for that particular personality profile.

And then, if you killed yourself inside the CM or LM, you'd leave a
hell of a mess for the survivors that they couldn't clean up without
using a lot of what they were trying to conserve.

Nope, in space suicide wouldn't be a noble act. It would be the most
selfish thing you could do.


A NASA monograph on EVA's says Leonov has recently revealed
he carried a suicide pill in the event he couldn't get back into
Voskhod 2 in 1965.

"Walking to Olympus: An EVA Chronology " - NASA Oct. 1997

"...Leonov recently revealed that he had a suicide pill he could have
swallowed if he had been unable to ingress Voskhod 2 and Belyayev had
been forced to leave him in orbit...." Page 2 (page 16 of the PDF
document).

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenew...fs/EVACron.pdf

What do people think? Is Leonov now being sensational or did he really
carry a suicide pill?


- Rusty Barton

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 22:08:41 -0700, Rusty Barton
wrote:

What do people think? Is Leonov now being sensational or did he really
carry a suicide pill?

....Important Question of Logic #1: How in the hell was he going to
take the damn thing?

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

In message , Rusty Barton
writes
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 04:37:06 -0400, John Beaderstadt
wrote:



What an odd non-sequitur: "Someone's going to die. Have a great
day!"


Nope, in space suicide wouldn't be a noble act. It would be the most
selfish thing you could do.


A NASA monograph on EVA's says Leonov has recently revealed
he carried a suicide pill in the event he couldn't get back into
Voskhod 2 in 1965.

"Walking to Olympus: An EVA Chronology " - NASA Oct. 1997

"...Leonov recently revealed that he had a suicide pill he could have
swallowed if he had been unable to ingress Voskhod 2 and Belyayev had
been forced to leave him in orbit...." Page 2 (page 16 of the PDF
document).

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/spacenew...fs/EVACron.pdf

What do people think? Is Leonov now being sensational or did he really
carry a suicide pill?

Hasn't the whole idea of a suicide pill for astronauts been discredited?
The problem is staying alive, not killing yourself. And if you do want
to kill yourself, there's always the method in "Mission to Mars".

In message , OM
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org writes
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 22:08:41 -0700, Rusty Barton
wrote:

What do people think? Is Leonov now being sensational or did he really
carry a suicide pill?

...Important Question of Logic #1: How in the hell was he going to
take the damn thing?

Some sort of dispenser inside his helmet - or a syringe. Standard 1950s
SF ideas, but I don't know if either was used in a real spacesuit.