Oddities and Awesome abound!
I only have one link this week, and it’s a pretty amazing read about “The audacious rescue plan that might have saved the space shuttle Columbia. Could NASA have rescued the Columbia astronauts? Technically…perhaps. Practically…almost certainly not. For the details, read the article.
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The sad thing is that once upon a time — in the early days of the program, before it became obvious just how much work was necessary to turn one of these birds around and get them on the pad again — there was talk of keeping a second shuttle "on call" at all times to do just this sort of rescue operation if it became necessary. I remember seeing photos in early publicity materials of a sort of "escape pod" — a fabric sphere that an astronaut would sit in cross-legged wearing an oxygen mask, and then be zippered in — which another astronaut in a spacesuit would then tow between shuttles (the idea being that this would be a means for crew without suits to be rescued). It probably wouldn't have worked… but what a damn shame there wasn't something available…