Posted on 02/07/2019 2:49:40 PM PST by ETL
McCandless was wearing a type of jetpack known as the Manned Maneuvering Unit, or MMU.
The MMU fit over a regular EMU spacesuit and included gas thrusters that allowed astronauts to venture much farther away from the space shuttle.
McCandless was able to venture 320 feet away from the space shuttle Challenger.
The MMU was used during three space shuttle missions in 1984, and astronauts used it to retrieve two faulty communications satellites.
Bruce McCandless II (June 8, 1937 – December 21, 2017) was a U.S. naval officer and aviator, electrical engineer, and NASA astronaut.
In 1984, during the first of his two Space Shuttle missions, he made the first untethered free flight by using the Manned Maneuvering Unit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_McCandless_II
Lucky for him it wasn’t an electric jetpack.
Yes as always James Bond was there first!!!!!
No kidding. Get past a few feet from the spacecraft, and you’re very much on your own. MMU fails, you’re in serious trouble. Maybe the shuttle could have maneuvered to pick up the “man overboard”?
One false move or malfunction and he’d still be up there.
I worked for Martin Marietta Denver Aerospace in the early ‘80s, and among other projects, I worked briefly on the MMU. Installed the gyros and worked on some of the electronics. Martin Marietta also had an MMU simulator at their Denver plant that consisted of a complete mock-up of the MMU attached to a giant arm that could maneuver it around in three dimensions inside a huge room. At the other end of the room, they had a mock-up of a satellite (I don’t remember now which one it was), that had been malfunctioning and for which a mission was planned to use the MMU to repair it. Astronauts involved in the mission used the simulator to train for that specific mission.
Wow, that’s some story.
Thanks for your service!
Big Brass Ones...
On This Day in Space: Feb. 7, 1984: 1st Untethered Spacewalk
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that’s nothing. The Gov. of Virginia moonwalked about the same time.
Never saw that photo before. Gives a great sense of really being out there. Alone. A lone human orbiting the Earth at 17,000 MPH.
It may be the only way to escape AOC.
On a different note, I also was privileged to work on the MX missile (“Peacekeeper”). I still have an MX Missile ice scraper somewhere; I should put it on EBay to see what it’s worth - it’s definitely a rare item. I remember someone I worked with had a printout pinned to their cubicle wall that showed a mushroom cloud and said, “MX - When you care enough to send the very best.” Always loved that. Hated it when I heard years later that the MX’s were being decommissioned, but they did their job. They each carried 10 warheads and were a key factor in convincing the Soviets that they could no longer compete with us in an arms race. The “Peacekeeper” name turned out to be very prophetic.
<tips hat>
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