# Astronaut saftey in freefall **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 28, 2010, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349 "2010-07-28T19:06:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![NOLA\_Cajun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ea666f/32.png) [@NOLA\_Cajun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NOLA_Cajun)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/41 "2010-07-29T21:59:18Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > > [@Chronos](#): > > > > Even if a parachute would work, it really wouldn’t make sense to equip astronauts with them. Much easier to just give them, you know, a tether. Or if you’re worried about a tether breaking, then give them _two_ tethers. > > You can’t fool me. It’s tethers all the way down. I thought it was turtles?? 😕 Tethers! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/42 "2010-07-29T22:21:45Z")
> [@Qwakkeddup](#): > > They can tell by his suits monitors that he is still alive, but unresponsive. > Is there a way to grab him and haul him back? You have to use the thrusters in the ship/station to chase him/her down. Its doable, but those things are not set up like your car where you just turn on the engine and drive the direction you want. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/43 "2010-07-29T23:22:20Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > You have to use the thrusters in the ship/station to chase him/her down. Its doable, but those things are not set up like your car where you just turn on the engine and drive the direction you want. And you just have to get close enough to use the arm, or set someone out with the maneuvering backpack. BTW in the Gemini program, the pilot had a pair of shears to cut away the umbilical if his space walking companion couldn’t get back in, and he had to leave without him. ---
**Author:** ![Ionizer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5daacb/32.png) [@Ionizer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ionizer)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/44 "2010-07-30T12:20:06Z")
Regarding straight-line travel in Space: thought I’d mention that most planetary travel (and Apollo-stuff to Moon, etc) use a thing called [Hohmann transfer orbit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit) where an energy-saving ‘orbit’ is set up so that it will intersect with another orbit of the ‘target’ at some future point in time with appropriate rate-of-travel once arriving (not needing huge fuel-burns to slow down, per se). Keeps a spacecraft from having to continuously thrust/accelerate while traveling through space(time) and also from needing to haul/launch more fuel) and instead depends on a vector that uses gravity and momentum to carry it to destination much more efficiently. Orbital mechanics is in almost everything ‘Space’ (unfortunately for those weak in math). ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/45 "2010-07-30T21:02:29Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Quoth **SCSimmons** : > > > [@](#): > > > > …or a parabolic orbit (colloquially known as ‘crashing’–have your parachute ready!). > > Parabolic orbits are not colloquially known as “crashing”. You can also crash with a hyperbolic or elliptical orbit, and you can be on a parabolic orbit without crashing. There’s no particular relationship there. You’re right (of course). I was thinking of ballistic trajectories … I was thinking that a parabolic orbit had the orbited body’s center of mass along an arm–but that obviously can’t be right, it wouldn’t be symmetrical. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/46 "2010-07-30T21:35:04Z")
> [@PlainJain](#): > > To revisit the toolbag issue; You have a toolbag with you and you find yourself drifting away from the shuttle or space station, say about 10 or 15 feet. You manage to get your back to the shuttle and push the bag away from you with force (using both hands), it would propel you back to the mothership. Yes or no? Generations ago Arthur C Clarke wrote a series of vignettes aboard the first space station – a real, toroidal _2001_-style station, not our crummy little ISS. Anyway, in one of them the narrator was returning from the shower when he slipped pushing off and wound up in the middle of a big passage without a lot of speed and nothing nearby to push off from again. Not willing to wait out the time, he took off his shorts and threw them an appropriate direction to gave him enough velocity to reach the nearest wall in about five minutes. Unfortunately the station Director and his wife came through the passage during the interval. In 1958 this would be a Big Deal. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/47 "2010-07-30T22:10:03Z")
The floating astronaut could unfurl his private [space sail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail), which is kinda parachutey. Couldn’t he? ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/48 "2010-07-30T23:59:55Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > Generations ago Arthur C Clarke wrote a series of vignettes aboard the first space station – a real, toroidal _2001_-style station, not our crummy little ISS. Anyway, in one of them the narrator was returning from the shower when he slipped pushing off and wound up in the middle of a big passage without a lot of speed and nothing nearby to push off from again. Not willing to wait out the time, he took off his shorts and threw them an appropriate direction to gave him enough velocity to reach the nearest wall in about five minutes. Unfortunately the station Director and his wife came through the passage during the interval. In 1958 this would be a Big Deal. Isn’t artificial gravity the whole point of a toroidal space station? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/49 "2010-07-31T00:02:09Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > Isn’t artificial gravity the whole point of a toroidal space station? I believe it is weaker the further you move towards the center. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/50 "2010-07-31T05:49:11Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > Isn’t artificial gravity the whole point of a toroidal space station? It was still under construction yet or something; I don’t remember but it definitely zero-gee. There was also another vignette, I think, about a newbie having a practical joke pulled on him. He was told the air quality could be checked by lighting a match. One was struck by the joker, held stationary, and it promptly went out, smothered by its own cloud of CO2 that had no reason to rise, hot or not. The point I was trying to make was that it wasn’t something like the ISS where you would be hard pressed to wind up in a situation where you can’t reach out and touch a wall regardless of where you are. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349/51 "2010-07-31T21:06:07Z")
For an interesting take on something like this, read Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “Maelstrom II”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/astronaut-saftey-in-freefall/548349.md?page=2)