Lost tool bag forces changes to planned spacewalks

My Way News ^ | 11/19/08 | Mike Schneider

[Raster Man]

The briefcase-sized tool bag drifted away from astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper on Tuesday as she cleaned and lubed a gummed-up joint on a wing of solar panels on the space station.

[Raster Man]

These astronauts train for over a year for their specific mission, yet some of them prove to be incompetent. NASA is more concerned about how she showed "real character" in continuing her work after screwing up. But the mission is in jeopardy, because they may not have enough material to fix everything. She should be booted from the astronaut corps. I am sick of NASA wasting our money on political correctedness and incompetency. Another example is the astronauts on the Columbia disaster. Kalpana Chawla had screwed up a previous mission by launching a satellite into the wrong orbit (requiring an additional shuttle mission to rescue the satellite), yet NASA put her on the Columbia. And, during reentry (a critical phase), Laurel Clark was going around taking home video with her personal camcorder (a fact that NASA quickly hushed up). She even had the commander and pilot wave to the camera during the reentry.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

My guess is that once she returns home to Houston, she’s finished as an astronaut.

[Jmouse007]

And well she should be, her carelessness has cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.

[Jmouse007]

And well she should be, her carelessness has cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.

[Troll_House_Cookies]

Is it too hard to bring 2 bags of tools? Who is running NASA these days a 12 year old kid?

[SouthDixie]

I had suspected that 'tool bag' was more important then they play it up otherwise it wouldn't have made national news.

Lest we not forget the 'depends' incident with the 3some astronuts LOL You have to admit, going up into outer space has to make some people wacky.

[Yo-Yo]

The guy sweating out his job right now is the guy at NASA who designed the toolbag without a tether.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

The didn’t bring extras because of the weight, which actually is an important consideration when every ounce added or lost impacts a shuttle launch.

[DBrow]

So shuttle and toolbag are now in slightly different elliptical orbits.

If the shuttle does not maneuver, the orbits will intersect once per orbit.

What's the toolbag going to hit when it comes around again?

And since it's lost where shuttles orbit, it could hit some other mission.

At least it's big enough to track.

[NOBAMA in 08]

Why cant they maneuver to pick up the bag? Its not like it was fired into another orbit with a rocket! It drifted away for GODsake! From now on, when NASA is going to insist on having a woman astronaut do a Man’s job, at least be intelligent enough to name! the Toolbag a PURSE and put her coin purse and makeup-compact in IT! Then she will never let it go just because she got a littlle ukky grease on her tiny little nice and neat gloves! Heavens to Mergatroid!

[Truth29]

"My guess is that once she returns home to Houston, she?s finished as an astronaut."

I think the facts are somewhat in doubt, at least in the public reports. Other articles indicated that the grease gun malfunctioned in the tool case and she was trying to clean the other tools in the case when she lost control of the case. This was not a planned activity. She was obviously in error, but it may not have been as simple as described in this article.

[mmichaels1970]

I thought I was bad for always losing track of my tape-measure, or for losing three pencils for every job.

[Raster Man]

The space station exists to give the space shuttle some place to go. The space shuttle exists to supply the space station. The full-time job of all of the space station astronauts is just to keep the piece of junk from falling out of orbit. Where is all of the scientific research that supposedly was going to take place in space? NASA spends millions of dollars just to deliver a new toilet!

[flowerplough]

A hyphenated-name woman and a bag of tools should not be allowed in the same solar system at the same time, apparently.

[Broker]

Yup. Hyphenated femme gal got the job. Any wonder our goose is cooked?

[oldbill]

Who is running NASA these days a 12 year old kid?

What do you have against 12 year old kids?

[NOBAMA in 08]

Oh! I forgot! NASA must have the “PURSE” designed and labeled by HERMES, GUCCI, COACH or another fashion name to really make sure she holds onto it in orbit! Bet she never lost her “PURSE” on the New York Subway system and by GOD! its a HELL of alot harder holding onto a purse there than in the nothingness of space! NOT EVEN A MUGGER WITHIN 200 Vertical MILES! She is probably to dumb to wear Depends like the other Flake NASA finally dumped after she went totally bonkers...............:-0

[flaglady47]

“Yup. Hyphenated femme gal got the job. Any wonder our goose is cooked?”

I am a female and there are two ,main jobs I don’t want a woman doing. One is women in combat, the other is as a fireman (last thing I want to see is a woman coming up a hook and ladder to save me from a burning building). And now it appears, I’ll have to add a third job, Astronaut doing work outside of the spacecraft. Any job that requires major upper body strength is not a good match for a woman, as our body strength is in our hips, not our upper arms. More PC baloney that can kill.

[oldbill]

Manned space flight at NASA now serves two purposes:

1. It is a travel club for a handful of astronauts
2. It is a money fountain for a pile of contractors.

It does no exploration, provides no benefits to the people (we already got Tang and Teflon), and we can’t even get to the Space Station without help from Russian Soyuz capsules. It is the General Motors of government.

[NOBAMA in 08]

For reality in the total design of the purse, NASA should NOT forget to include one tampon..sorry for the oversight.. oh! and that forgotten thather would help as well...:-)