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Weightless Work. The Russians announced that Leonov spent a total of 20 minutes in vacuum, took motion pictures, inspected the outside of the Voskhod II and did useful work. The TV sequences did not show all these actions, but work is not easy to do in weightless space. Even the simplest tools refuse to function when no weight can be brought to bear on them. If a weightless man tries to use a wrench, he is as likely to move himself as the bolt he is twisting.
Any work Leonov did was probably slight, and he may have inspected the ship by simply pushing off into space and swinging around a little. Even then, he must have been careful not to push too hard; though weightless, he still had inertia and if he got moving too fast he could have swung against the side of the ship with a dangerous thump.
Only Leonov could tell whether his somersaults in space that entertained the world's TV viewers were intended or accidental. Spinning in weightlessness is easy; more important is the fact that it is hard to avoid. All the cosmonaut had to do while floating beside the ship was to push against it carelessly and he would have been bound to spin, and keep on spinning, until some external force such as the kinking of his line made him stop.
Space Wardrobe. The Russians are surely developing even more elaborate space suits than the one used by Leonov, for if they intend to land men on the moon they will need a wide spectrum of space clothing to meet different needs. One type of suit will be for use in true weightless space outside an orbiting satellite or interplanetary spacecraft. Before its wearer can hope to do useful jobs, such as helping to assemble a space station, he must have the ability to move from place to place. This will call for tanks of an easily controlled propellant, such as hydrogen peroxide, and a cluster of small-thrust nozzles pointing in different directions. A total of twelve will be needed to give complete control, enabling a working cosmonaut to move in all directions and control his rotation in pitch, roll and yaw.
If a space-suited man ventures any considerable distance from his home ship, he will probably have a larger nozzle thrusting backward to propel him to the length of a long, thin tether. It might seem simple enough for his comrades to reel him in by the tether when his work is over, but nothing in space is as simple as it seems. A recent study by U.S. scientists warns that a reeled-in astronaut will be lost or killed unless elaborate precautions are taken.
As he floats at the end of a rope ahead of a spaceship, an astronaut may seem motionless in respect to the mother satellite, but since he is moving with it on a 90-min. orbit around the earth, he will actually be circling around it once every 90 min. If he is reeled in, a simple principle of elementary physics (the conservation of angular momentum) will cause him to circle faster and faster as his tether shortens. This is the same force that makes a skater spin faster when he moves his arms down against his sides.