Posted
3/12/2009 07:29:00 PM
by Douglas
In space, there's no such thing as a
near miss.Space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchkov and Sandra Magnus evacuated to the lab's Russian Soyuz spacecraft today because of a predicted close encounter with debris from a spent upper stage booster rocket. But the space junk streaked harmlessly past the station around 12:39 p.m. and the crew was cleared to re-enter the lab complex.
I don't know what would be worse: losing cabin pressure by a debris strike, or a 'hard landing' in a Soyuz with two of your closest friends. There isn't enough room in the Soyuz for two crewmembers to fart, much less three.