5 Frightening (But True) Space Stories
There are no aliens in these stories from NASA and the Soviet space program, just true tales of how being an astronaut is no picnic. Decompression? Landing in the wrong place? Using the toilet without a toilet? Not pleasant!
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard wet his pants aboard Freedom 7, but Apollo bathroom facilities would get a lot worse before they got any better. I don’t think I’m the only guy to find something fundamentally frightening about a urinal that consists only of a “condom-like fitting,” a valve and the empty void of outer space. I keep thinking about that scene from “Goldfinger.”
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NASA’s Lost Female Astronauts
NASA introduced the idea of female astronauts much earlier than you might realize. After all, the Soviets had launched a female cosmonaut!
In the late 1950s, the United States government contemplated training women as astronauts, and newly released medical test results show that they were just as cool and tough as the men who went to the moon.“They were all extraordinary women and outstanding pilots and great candidates for what was proposed,” said Donald Kilgore, a doctor who evaluated both male and female space flight candidates at the Lovelace Clinic, a mid-century center of aeromedical research. “They came out better than the men in many categories.”
The times being what they were, the program was scrapped, and US women did not make it into space until 1983. Link
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Reflections in a Sliver of the Moon
A rock named Blue Genesis was brought back from the moon by Apollo 16, the final moon mission, in 1972. Moon rocks remain rare and precious for that a single reason – because we never went back for more.
The astronauts brought it and 200 pounds of other rocks back to Earth as the bounty from Apollo 16. At the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston, scientists ascertained that Blue Genesis, as it was once called, weighed 12 pounds, and they cut it to pieces to send out for study. Geologists estimate that it could be 4.23 billion years old.
Since 1981, a sliver of that rock has resided like a wedge of old cheese — a light gray speckled filling inside a dark rind — at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.
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Drinking Coffee In Space
Who knew how scientific just drinking coffee is when it takes place in space? You learn something new every day.
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