Posted 6/24/2004 09:11:00 PM by Douglas

Even more than landing an airplane, any EVA that you can walk away from is a successful one, but holy crap!

Two astronauts who stepped out of the international space station for an unusually risky spacewalk were quickly ordered back in Thursday when Mission Control spotted a pressure drop in one of the men's oxygen tanks.

NASA stressed that the spacemen were never in any danger. They were safely in the pressurized confines of the orbiting complex within minutes, and said they were feeling fine.

Within minutes? They made it back in, thankfully, but the plural use of the word "minute" in that sentence is pretty pointless, dontcha think? Four seconds may be too long if you're stuck in a vacuum, I'd say.

Fincke had just popped open the hatch and floated outside when the frightening words came from Russian Mission Control: "You need to return. Something is not right."

I don't know if the Russian Mission Control center records all of their conversations like Houston does, but I'm pretty sure this transmission would sound something like the Russian equivalent of "Holy Shit, RUN!"

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, I guess. But this is the space age in the 21st century. A Space Station that is under the control of two countries that don't like to talk to each other on the ground, much less at 200 nautical miles. And if the most complicated vehicle in the solar system is relying on rudimentary hand gestures from its maintenance crew, then we're in bigger trouble than we thought.