You’re right, I did misremember a little bit. It was actually a “all-female” space walk that was cancelled. Which included two women. It was cancelled because they only had one small spacesuit for the space walk. For all of two women.
Well, the walk did finally happen, so there were adequate suits, although one of the astronauts had trouble with the suit she was initially assigned.
You have to remember that of the 18 original suits, only 11 still exist, and something like as few as 4 might be on the station at a time. Also, the suits were originally intended to return to Earth often (shuttle days), but now are kept on the ISS longer and are maintained by the astronauts themselves. Given the losses of some suits, the limited nature of the maintenance, and the limit on how many are kept in orbit at a time, it isn’t scandalous that sometimes astronauts find themselves to be either too large or too small for the suits at hand.
Battle_Maiden@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You’re right, I did misremember a little bit. It was actually a “all-female” space walk that was cancelled. Which included two women. It was cancelled because they only had one small spacesuit for the space walk. For all of two women.
toast@retrolemmy.com 2 weeks ago
Well, the walk did finally happen, so there were adequate suits, although one of the astronauts had trouble with the suit she was initially assigned.
You have to remember that of the 18 original suits, only 11 still exist, and something like as few as 4 might be on the station at a time. Also, the suits were originally intended to return to Earth often (shuttle days), but now are kept on the ISS longer and are maintained by the astronauts themselves. Given the losses of some suits, the limited nature of the maintenance, and the limit on how many are kept in orbit at a time, it isn’t scandalous that sometimes astronauts find themselves to be either too large or too small for the suits at hand.