Nov 20 2008
There’s a spider on the loose in Space!
Spacewalks aren’t easy. Yesterday’s news was testimony to that.
Ask astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn Piper.
She was doing her seven-hour spacewalk to do some repairs outside the International Space Station when… Ooops…. slippery fingers!
She let go of her tool bag momentarily while cleaning a greasy mess made by a malfunctioning tool. The 13-kg tool bag just drifted into space…
Now when it’s lost in space… it’s really lost… but when the reports came out initially, there were worries that the bag might come back and hit the ISS (International Space Station) and cause more damage - I guess like a boomerang effect in space?
Never heard of it… but hey you never know what happens up there, it’s an unknown universe. Apparently, the crew had spotted a screw floating by earlier in their mission but were too far away to catch it. They had no idea where it came from…
Anyway, I got a little curious since I know little about space. I was thinking ” if it was slowly drifting away, why couldn’t she just reach out and grab it… like you would with a balloon that just slipped away…” Well, it’s not that simple obviously. I watched this clip and it made everything much clearer to me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7737250.stm
Astronaut Heide had to constantly be holding onto something or SHE would have been ’lost’ as well I suppose. Forces of space would pull her away. I guess it’s really like when you’re underwater.
Imagine you’re fixing a nozzle at the bottom of the pool. To stay there, you need to hold onto something or you’ll float to the top. So when one of your tools floats away to the top (even though this happens at a slow-motion pace) you become helpless once the tool is just even an inch out of reach… Interesting… I learnt something there.
Oh and another trivia which I found very amusing. A spider runs amuck in Space! haha
Two spiders were taken to space with the crew as part of a science experiment aimed at generating interest among students grades K-12 ( hey, they got me interested too!) They wanted to see and study how spiders weave their webs without gravity.
Well pity the space spiders and the webs they weave… because obviously the spiders fought a battle with weightlessness and lost. The web turned out to be just a tangled mess, a far cry from the elegant symmetrical creation that we see here on earth.
Take a look at the photo made available courtesy of NASA. This is what the web looks like…
Spiders are confused? Deranged?
According to a spacewatcher… it seems one of the two spiders grew irritated at its habitat and its helplessness, so it broke free and is now nowhere to be seen. Maybe it’s having artistic troubles and is looking for a good place to drown its sorrows?
Or maybe… it’s just camera-shy.
When the spiders come home at the end of its 15-day mission later this month… boy, will they be relieved…
But funny incidents aside, the men and women involved in space exploration and science are carrying out incredible missions and collecting invaluable information on what awaits men in space. Space study is about our future and you’ve got to hand it to them to take such unknown risks in the name of science. 
Indeed. I do see space exploration as an important chapter of mankind and we are pushing into uncharted waters.
Interestingly, I had a rather “heated” discussion yesterday with a friend from the US on the need for space exploration and the allocation of budget for the NASA program. He’s in his 60s and feels that space exploration does not translate to any direct economic gains and benefits - thus ‘A waste of valuable resources”.
However, my take seemed to be a little more optimistic. I guess we need to first understand the unknown before knowing how to derive any real benefits from the expeditions. I did tell him “America wouldn’t be what it’s like today, if not for a crazy guy by the name of Christopher Columbus who tried to find Asia by sailing westward!”.*
*On that note, we went into a whole chapter of historical debates! - That’s how the afternoon was spent!
Good insights.
Cheers.
Eric
hi suzanne.. just watching you on tv now.. i think you look fabulous.. have you been working out? nice..
anyway.. space exploration is indeed the last frontier before we find a greater extra-terrestrial presence? that’s the interesting and perhaps irritating habit of mankind.. we instinctively like to probe.. perhaps that explains why as we gain so much knowledge and all at the same time we also see so much degeneration of our precious habitat.. where man goes, he dumps his droppings.. in this case inadvertently of course.. (the toolbag).. if only we could be satisfied and be content in our little caves.. and not come out and innovate so much.. haha..
well the good thing about polluting space is.. is that it doesn’t belong to anyone specifically.. there aren’t any boundaries that the space marshal can come by on his space horse and summon you a fine.. so in a sense you can dump your rubbish in space.. (hmmm.. maybe some folks on earth are already doing that by heaping all their garbage into huge rockets and pumping them into space).. who knows.. that might be a viable option in the near future especially when we finally establish a colony on a nearby planet.. all that waste can then be transported there.. and thereby protecting our environment that we love so much..
I watched you this morning too and I agree with Dan, you’re certainly looking prettier and prettier! What’s your secret?
going back to the point of being underwater…ironically, we’ve yet to explore most of our own planet which is underwater and we’re spending billions going to outer space..guess it is just the fascination of the unknown..
I feel bad for the spiders too…poor things! Its already hard enough building a web with gravity…
Hi all you space explorers! I think it’s premature to react on the space program other than concerning the safety of astronauts, equipment, atmosphere, planet and universe. Just imagine if a human being on a space walk, lets go of contact with the space craft, her or his body would for ever float in space, unless what! I feel it’s too dangerous not to have an attatchment to the space lab, or a means of recoiling an astronaut back into the space module, if fatigue or whatever causes loss of grip on the spacecraft. Why oh! why not?
It is really puzzling that Human would waste billion of cash & resources to explore the space when they know little about our blue planet, earth. Sad indeed…..
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