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Scarier than Gravity: Real Life Close Calls in Space

2013-11-01 · Hank · watch on YouTube · Science & nature · curiosity idea

The day after Halloween, Hank, who saw the film Gravity, runs through real near-disasters in spaceflight (Gemini 8, Leonov's spacewalk, Soviet Soyuz landings, Apollo 12, Luca Parmitano's flooding helmet) as scarier than any ghost story.

What is said

00:00:00 — Day after Halloween; Hank saw Gravity with a child of the brothers of MinutePhysics and Derek of Veritasium; its physics errors are on SciShow; real space disasters instead

  • ★★ Hank, who dislikes scary things, recently saw the film Gravity with a child of the brothers of MinutePhysics and Derek of Veritasium and found it terrifying. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Hank says that after the film they discussed how Gravity violated the laws of physics a couple of times (a topic for SciShow), but it is still a very great movie. — 00:00:00 · SciShow
  • ★ In the description Hank says the Russians seem to have a knack for getting into terrible situations but somehow not dying. (playful) — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Neil Armstrong's spinning Gemini 8 (1966); Alexei Leonov's swollen spacesuit and wolf-surrounded landing (1965)

  • ★★★ In 1966 Neil Armstrong's Gemini 8 had a maneuvering thruster stuck on and spun at more than one rotation per second; the crew was seconds from passing out before he regained control. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ In 1965 Alexei Leonov became the first person to go out in a spacesuit, but the suit inflated so much he could not fit back into the capsule until he vented it. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Suffering from the bends, Leonov's crew re-entered late, landed far off course in a freezing forest surrounded by wolves, and waited in the capsule for rescue. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Soviet near misses: Boris Volynov's nose-first reentry and broken teeth, Soyuz 18A's aborted launch and near-cliff landing, Soyuz 23 in a frozen lake

  • ★★ On a reentry with lone cosmonaut Boris Volynov, the service module failed to detach and the capsule went in nose first, its hatch burning, before righting itself. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ Volynov's parachute and landing rockets failed, he landed hard enough to break his teeth, and walked several kilometers at minus 36 Fahrenheit to a peasant's house. — 00:01:27
  • ★ Hank says Soyuz 18A got that name because Russia only names successful missions, so the failed flight does not quite count. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ A separation failure turned Soyuz 18A's rocket toward the ground; Hank gives the crew's g-force as '021Gs', about three Gs from lethal, before the abort sequence fired. — 00:01:56
    • number check: 021Gs — doubtful
  • ★★ The Soyuz 18A capsule landed on a snowy mountainside and rolled toward a 400-foot cliff, stopping about 20 feet away when its parachute snagged on vegetation. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Soyuz 23 crashed through the surface of a frozen lake and its cosmonauts waited nine hours at the bottom before rescue. — 00:02:26

00:02:55 — Apollo 12 struck by lightning twice; fires and depressurizations; Luca Parmitano's spacesuit fills his helmet with water

  • ★★ Besides the well-known Apollo 13, Apollo 12 almost ended in disaster when it was struck by lightning twice during launch. — 00:02:55
  • ★ Hank says almost everything imaginable has gone wrong in space, including fires, depressurized spacecraft and spacesuits, and a man who poked a hole in his hand and survived. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ The most recent terrifying near miss: Luca Parmitano's spacesuit malfunctioned and filled his helmet with his drinking water in space. — 00:02:55

00:03:22 — Scarier than ghost stories; thanks for pumpkin entries, vote on favourites; sign-off; unrelated trailing clip

  • ★★ Hank says these real space disasters, not made up, are scarier than any ghost story told on Halloween. — 00:03:22 · Halloween
  • ★★ Hank thanks everyone who submitted nerdy pumpkins to the Nerdfighter pumpkin carving contest, whose prize is a book from his shelf inscribed by him. — 00:03:22 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ Hank asks viewers to look at all submitted pumpkins and vote; in a week the most-voted entries will be tallied and get the prizes. — 00:03:22

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