1 hour 29 minutes seems excessive to extract the astronauts; if any of them _did_ have a medical issue they'd be in for a long wait.
replyThe commentary said that the initial problems with the boats approaching Integrity was due to an unexpected swell. Unexpected, in the Pacific?
Edit: all of the Apollo missions, except 8, had their stabilization collars inflated in under 20 minutes. With Integrity today it took nearly an hour more.
I imagine if there was a medical emergency they'd worry less about capsule recovery and safe shutdown. IIRC because the sat phone wasn't working, they had to wait an extra 15 mins to power down the capsule (I guess so they could use its radios?). In an emergency I imagine they'd just leave it as-is
replyI also like how they waffled on about how winching them up to a helicopter was the fastest option, when they obviously could have shaved an hour off the recovery time by simply having them step out onto the waiting boats!
replyHaving worked for various government agencies for a while I've learned to recognise the signs of the "We're following the procedure whether it makes sense or not, dammit!" attitude you get with large bureaucracies.
I wondered about that. Winching someone who can barely walk and is wearing a spacesuit into a helicopter over choppy water is safer and quicker than parking them on a motor boat and sailing back to the mothership?
replyWhat was the real reason? Tradition? Lack of imagination? Photo opportunities?
The rest was great tho.
To play devil's advocate against my own argument: The nearest ship was about 5 km away, which is a decently long boat ride. In choppy waters with a small boat that could be less than ideal for someone who may be injured, weak from an extended stay in microgravity, etc. I assume the plan -- written months or years before the landing -- also had to factor in the possibility that the ships wouldn't have been so close. They did mention several times that the landing was unusually accurate, so it is entirely possible that their pre-planned helicopter ride would have made a lot more sense if they were, say, 20+ km away instead. You don't want dozens of people improvising the procedure in the middle of choppy waters with bad comms, so the best thing to do is to just follow the plan, even if it looks a bit absurd on camera.
reply100%. Easy to criticize this but you have to remember these are the people that planned and executed a successful moon mission. Pretty sure they know what they are doing and have thought about things in more that just a passing way.
replyIs 10 days enough to make walking difficult?
replyPeople get wobbly legs after spending a few days on a cruise ship at sea.
replyI would assume spending 10 days in zero G is orders of magnitude more chaotic for your motor skills.
So someone who can barely walk is supposed to safely jump from a space capsule to a boat in the middle of the ocean?
reply“Stepping” from one vessel to another in the middle of the ocean is not like getting on your buddy’s sailboat at the marina even if you have your sea legs. Astronauts don’t even have their earth legs when they splash down; when they return from ISS they can’t even walk right away, though Artemis was a shorter duration mission than that.
replyUh yes. Doing space missions is dangerous and unexpected things can happen.
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