• Register

This member has provided no bio about themself...

  • View media
  • View media
  • View media
  • View media
  • View media
  • View media
18.03.1965
embed
share
view previous next
Share Image
Share on Facebook Post Email a friend
Embed Image
Post comment Comments
HyperBorealis Author
HyperBorealis - - 899 comments

First spacewalk
As they had with the first satellite and first man in space, the Soviets again stunned the world on March 18, 1965 with the first spacewalk (and the first EVA) performed by Alexey Leonov from the Voskhod 2 spacecraft, for 12 minutes outside the spacecraft. Leonov had no means to control his motion other than pulling on his 50.7-foot (15.5 m) tether. After the flight, he claimed this was easy, but his space suit ballooned from its internal pressure against the vacuum of space, stiffening so much that he could not activate the shutter on his chest-mounted camera.

At the end of his space walk, the suit stiffening caused a more serious problem: Leonov had to re-enter the capsule through the inflatable cloth airlock, 3.96 feet (1.21 m) in diameter and 8.25 feet (2.51 m) long. After his spacewalk, he improperly entered the airlock head-first and got stuck sideways. He could not get back in without reducing the pressure in his suit, risking "the bends". This added another 12 minutes to his time in vacuum, and he was overheated by 1.8 °C (3.2 °F) from the exertion. It would be almost four years before the Soviets tried another EVA. They misrepresented to the press how difficult Leonov found it to work in weightlessness and concealed the problems encountered until after the end of the Cold War.

En.wikipedia.org

Reply Good karma+5 votes
3rdShockArmy
3rdShockArmy - - 235 comments

Leonov is not just an ultra-badass. He's also an ultra-smart ultra-badass. A less intelligent, but also a less testicled man would die in his stead.

Reply Good karma Bad karma+1 vote
Post a comment

Your comment will be anonymous unless you join the community. Or sign in with your social account: