Orange or Blue? For the first four Shuttle missions in our nation’s history, astronauts wore the trademark orange SR-71 Blackbird spy plane type pressure suit. After the four test missions were completed, astronauts wore a blue un-pressurized coverall. It was only after the Challenger disaster that astronauts went back to the bulkier, but safer, orange suits.
What a bargain. During an EVA, astronaut Joe Kerwin cut loose a damaged solar panel on the Skylab space station with a pair of everyday landscaping clippers. The pair was purchased from a company in Missouri for 75 dollars.
Now or later? Oddly enough, Russian tradition states that a person may only be called a cosmonaut until he or she finishes their first space flight. This is different from the American custom, which gives a person the astronaut title as soon as they are finished with training. A bi-product of the American tradition is that several people have finished training, earned the title and never flown in space!
20/20 vision. The early days of space exploration were often crude and unreliable by today’s standards. In the early 1950’s the best way to determine if a rocket was able to liftoff once it ignited was for an experienced German scientist to observe its’ flame. If the flame was an appropriate color, the rocket was launched.
What a view? Alan Shepard’s Mercury 7 capsule was the only manned American spacecraft not to have a window for viewing.
I’ve got a secret. Because it was unknown how a human might react in spaceflight, Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok capsule had onboard what is called a “logical lock.” This gave controllers on the ground the ability to lock out all of the capsule’s controls if Gagarin exhibited strange activity. This lock was a precaution because at the time of Gagarin’s launch in 1961 so little was known about human beings in space that some feared that weightlessness would lead to insanity. The only way the logical lock could be turned off was by having Gagarin read a sequence of numbers that were in an envelope hidden somewhere in the capsule.
Spare some change? Days before the launch of Apollo 17, a support crew astronaut was doing a systems check in the Lunar Module when a few coins fell out of his pocket. The coins were heard rattling off of the rocket and a few even settled on the top of the third stage of the Saturn booster directly under the Lander. A few days later, that same third stage propelled Apollo 17 to the moon. Since the booster was caught in lunar gravity during the burn, it too floated along to the moon, eventually crashing onto the surface. Logically, the coins too were caught in lunar gravity and, presumably, someday, tourists may find 20th century era coins on the moon and be very confused.
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