NASA: The One That Got Away
This video is remarkable from the perspective of watching someone literal lose something into the (essentially) infinite vacuum of space. It's a bit like dropping your watch off a boat deck and watching it swiftly disappear beneath the murky water, and you can only watch helplessly, without any possibility of ever recovering it. However, this case is worse both from the perspective of the impossibility of recovery and the transparency view of the bag's descent -- it will be in plain view until it is too distant or burns up in the atmosphere.
Additionally, I find it particularly remarkable in that such highly trained people as astronauts could make such a typically "stupid human" error while performing in space. Of course, every human on earth can empathize (have you ever left something on the hood of your car?), but its embarrassing for NASA and I imagine that other countries' space programs probably would have censored this footage.
As a final thought: why wasn't there a fail-safe in keeping the bags secured to each other and secured to the astronaut? It seems losing something like this would have been an obvious hazard that engineers would have anticipated.
Additionally, I find it particularly remarkable in that such highly trained people as astronauts could make such a typically "stupid human" error while performing in space. Of course, every human on earth can empathize (have you ever left something on the hood of your car?), but its embarrassing for NASA and I imagine that other countries' space programs probably would have censored this footage.
As a final thought: why wasn't there a fail-safe in keeping the bags secured to each other and secured to the astronaut? It seems losing something like this would have been an obvious hazard that engineers would have anticipated.


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