[FPSPACE] More on Shuttle readiness

[DSFPortree at aol.com]

Anatoli:

> I believe both Young and Crippen were trained to conduct a 
> spacewalk on STS-1 to force cargo bay doors to close or similar.

I don't know how much contingency EVA training happens these days, but in the 
early days, when EVA wasn't a part of virtually every mission, two 
crewmembers would get about 10 hours of contigency training each. That was primarily 
justified by the need to close stuck payload bay doors. Of course, it turned out 
that the EMUs gave a lot of trouble early on - it's doubtful that Young and 
Crippen could have gone out to shut the doors even if they'd needed to. Not 
until STS-6 did we finally get an EVA, and testing door closure (without actually 
closing the doors) was a big part of that.

David

David S. F. Portree
Science writer & historian
dsfportree at aol.com
Flagstaff Arizona USA

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