Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Russian Spacewalk

#1
Yazata Offline
It's live-streaming right now here

https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/12/11/russian-eva-45a/

Two Russians in space suits are investigating the outside side of that little hole in a Soyuz Capsule's service module found and plugged months ago. To reach it, they have to cut away a soft insulation layer on the outside. I always pictured the outer surface as hard metal, but it's actually soft fabric with insulation underneath. The metal surface is beneath that. The service module doesn't return to Earth so it doesn't have to have a surface that will survive reentry.

Their Russian has the same cadence and intonation as my Polish neighbors' speech had when they were speaking Polish to each other. Slavic, I guess. (And there's something sexy about Russian women speaking English with a Russian accent. So I enjoy the translator.)
Reply
#2
C C Offline
Sure beats what cosmonauts had to go through on that first discount, Soviet spacewalk mission decades ago.

Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space: [...] Leonov’s spacewalk very nearly ended in disaster. In the vacuum of outer space, his spacesuit began to balloon out of shape and its fabric began to stiffen dangerously. His hands slipped out of his gloves, his feet came out of his boots, and Leonov could no longer get through his spaceship’s airlock. Even worse, the craft was hurtling towards Earth’s shadow. In five minutes, the cosmonaut realised he would be plunged into total darkness.

So he began bleeding air from his suit from a valve in its inner lining. Very slowly his suit deflated, just as Leonov began to notice the first signs of decompression sickness. “I could feel pins and needles in my hands and legs,” he recalled. Leonov squeezed himself headfirst through the airlock and just managed to close its hatch behind him, his temperature by now soaring through the extreme exertion of his return to the spaceship. Leonov slumped back in his seat beside Belyayev. His woes were far from over, however. First, a charge was fired to blast the airlock – which was no longer needed – into space. The explosion caused Voskhod 2 to rotate, disorienting its two crewmen. At the same time, instruments showed oxygen levels in the capsule were now climbing at an alarming rate, threatening to trigger a blaze that would have burned both men alive. Several hours passed before Leonov and Belyayev could get the craft’s oxygen levels back to normal.

[...] The crewmen’s problems had still not reached an end. Their craft landed 2,000 kilometres downrange from its intended target and plunged into a dense Siberian forest. It took two days before a rescue mission reached the pair, who had to huddle in their tiny capsule in temperatures well below zero. “We spent two cold nights in the forest,” said Leonov. “We did not meet wolves or bears, but we knew that there were many of them around. It was spring time and the animals were very aggressive. Once again, we were lucky!”

~

(Dec 11, 2018 09:35 PM)Yazata Wrote: Their Russian has the same cadence and intonation as my Polish neighbors' speech had when they were speaking Polish to each other. Slavic, I guess. (And there's something sexy about Russian women speaking English with a Russian accent. So I enjoy the translator.)


Calls to mind the Iron Curtain days of Romania, when Irina Margareta Nistor did the reverse of translating slash dubbing banned movies from Hollywood and other Western countries. Even though she wouldn't have had an accent from the perspective of those Romanian household audiences watching the bootlegged VHS tapes, I vaguely recollect an interviewed male viewer or two in Chuck Norris vs Communism still mentioning her voice in a fond way.

The Romanian Woman Who Voiced Chuck Norris
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gv5b...is-0000184

~
Reply




Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)