I’ve been wondering about something I read somewhere on the net, but I have forgotten where I saw it. I thought maybe someone else had heard it, or could debunk it was an urban legend or maybe authenticate it.
According to the story, a Space Shuttle mission specialist had worked for several years to prepare an experiment to go into space. He was a scientist, and had to do the typical light training used for 1-shot non-command flight personnel.
Unfortunately, his experiment was damaged during launch, and despite extensive effort to repair the device, it could not be restored to working order.
Now here’s the amazing part. Apparently the mission specialist was so despondent over the failure of his experiment, and he had nothing whatsoever to do during the flight, he became severely depressed. And at one point during the mission, he was caught trying to open the main hatch! This would have opened the Shuttle to a vaccuum and killed everyone. Other astronauts fought with him and dragged him away from the hatch. The flight medical officer kept him under heavy sedation and in restraints for the rest of the flight.
The story claims that due to this incident, flight policies have been changed. All hatches to space are kept padlocked, except the main hatch is left unlocked during launch (it is also the escape hatch) and it is padlocked after they reach orbit. The only 2 copies of these keys to the hatches are kept in the posession of the 2 senior commanders on board.
Now this sounds totally plausible to me, and of course, urban legends tend to have a great deal of plausible details. So does anyone know if this is a true story or not?
That sounds plausible to you? Then I’d like to offer you a good price on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Don’t you think if something like that happened, it would have been in the news? Also, mission specialists don’t just have one job to do on the flight. If an experiment that was part of their job to run didn’t work, there’s still plenty to do to keep them occuppied.
ME’s are given psychological screenings, so I’m pretty sure they’d weed out someone who’d be likely to get depressed if something didn’t go their way.
I believe the doors on the space shuttle are not padlocked because, when the time comes that you need to exit, you don’t have time to find a key. They’re probably on explosive bolts.
Finally, keep this little rule in mind when thinking about urban legends–extraordinary statements require extraordinary proof.
Not necessarily. Remember, pretty much the only information we have about space flights is what NASA tells us. If they didn’t tell anybody about such an event, then the only way it could leak out is through unofficial sources. I’m not saying I believe the UL, but alot of people seem to have the belief that the news media is this omniscient entity that has unlimited access to secret information everywhere in the world.
The story as I recall reading it said that the discussion of this incident between the crew and ground control was done over a secure link, and the incident has been pretty well suppressed. ISTR that this was a European mission specialist, they didn’t want to embarass their ESA partners by publicising this incident.
On a related note, NASA just this week stopped posting on the web their daily crew reports from the new space station. It’s all on a need-to-know basis now.
On a further note, mission specialists often have only one primary task. Some experiments require constant monitoring. And as far as the air locks go, this apparently wasn’t the air lock that astronauts go through for EVA, I’m talking about the side hatch. Some hatches were presumably already secured. In any case, I don’t think NASA is going to publish tech specs for the hatches saying “here’s where we put the padlock to keep someone from trying to kill everyone by opening the hatch into a vaccuum.” I’m not sure the side hatch could even be opened in a vaccuum, but this guy was obviously not thinking straight (IF he even existed at all).
I work in the industry and haven’t heard anything like that, but of course that’s no guarantee. I haven’t been in the shuttles, but the trainers don’t have anything like padlocks. Anywhere.
Related to the specifics of the story, there are 3 classifications of astronaut. Pilot/commander types, mission specialists, and payload specialists. This sounds like he was supposed to be a payload specialist.
FYI how mission planning works - each mission is jam-packed with activities for all the crew members. Their time is closely scheduled for the entire time. They get a limited amount of personal time each day, coinciding with preparation for bed or getting up in the morning. And meal times. On long missions, they get half a day on Sunday, I think it is. Otherwise, they have a tight schedule. This can be anything from monitoring an experiment and collecting data, to exercising, to doing interviews for PR work. There are always more than one payload on a mission. First there are the primary payloads - these would be the big items in the payload bay, like launching a satellite, repairing Hubble, working in the Spacehab module. Then there are secondary payloads. These are crew cabin payloads that include heavy crew time involvement to swapping out videotapes and data recording devices on a set schedule.
I assume from the wording it is implying that this guy had his time all budgeted for the one payload, and when it failed he was left without anything to do. This would be very unlikely, as the mission would either still have a bunch of secondary payloads needing something, or else they would end the flight early and come home. No point staying up there if there’s nothing to do. I just can’t see the guy being up there for any length of time without getting assigned something.
I can accept that the astronaut might have a lot of identity (energy, commitment, long term dedication) to the project, and be upset that it failed. Especially if he was a payload specialist, and might not get the opportunity for a retry. However, the full extent of the story seems implausible to me.
A lot (if not most) of the radio traffic between the shuttle, space station and ground is monitored by radio amateurs, so if something like this had happened it probably would have gotten out. You can find info about monitoring Shuttle transmissions at:
Keep this little nugget of knowledge in the back of your brain whenever you’re tempted to give that kind of credence to a possible UL or Weekly World News story-
Chances are, if you have heard about something, someone in the media has heard about it too.
The news is not one organization or one group of people with a set viewpoint. If this were true, it is well known, at least well-known enough to make it to the junk email circulation lists. So some news media people, whether small time reporters or higher ups at the networks, would have heard about it too and reported on it.
This would make a killer news story, but this is the first we’ve heard of it? I don’t think so.
Keep this little nugget of knowledge in the back of your brain whenever you’re tempted to give that kind of credence to a possible UL or Weekly World News story-
Chances are, if you have heard about something, someone in the media has heard about it too.
The news is not one organization or one group of people with a set viewpoint. If this were true, it is well known, at least well-known enough to make it to the junk email circulation lists. So some news media people, whether small time reporters or higher ups at the networks, would have heard about it too and reported on it.
This would make a killer news story, but this is the first we’ve heard of it? I don’t think so.
One possible origin of this story may be the hatch-blowing scene in the intolerably crappy 1969 flick “Marooned”. So much money got spent on hiring the all-star cast that they couldn’t afford writers or a director, apparently.
IANAA (Astronaut) but, as a WAG, wouldn’t the doors on the shuttle be similar to doors of commercial aircraft that fly at high altitudes? These doors open inwards before sliding out expressly to avoid accidental opening, surely the pressure of the air inside the shuttle would make it next to impossible to open these doors by hand?
Think about it: This mission specialist (or payload specialist or whatever he was supposed to be) who was so devoted to this one experiment was apparently a trained scientist, a Ph.D. probably. Do you honestly think he’d never encountered a screwed-up experiment before? Have you ever heard of any (otherwise well-balanced) scientist who got so despondent over the failure of a single experiment that he immediately tried to commit suicide? This story involves a massive confusion over what suicidal depression is. In general, it means that the victim has genetic problems in his brain. People don’t try to commit suicide the first time they have a problem.