Word: micrometeoroid
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...they'll also try what NASA managers insist on calling the Incapacitated Crewmember Demonstration, something those sensitive souls in the Astronaut Office have also referred to as "the Dead-Guy Test." The trick is to see if one astronaut can drag another astronaut, either dead or severely incapacitated - from micrometeoroid, aneurysm, whatever the case may be - from one end of the shuttle payload bay to the other, then into the airlock. They've done it in the large pool where spacewalkers practice, but want to be sure it can be done in space without any extra tools...
Until the failure, it had seemed that the astronauts had triumphed over almost insurmountable difficulties. Finally docking with Skylab after five attempts, they had struggled for three hours in 125° temperatures to erect an umbrella-like sunshade over the area where Skylab had lost its micrometeoroid and thermal shielding. The makeshift solution worked. Within a few days, temperatures in the workshop dropped to the low 80s and the astronauts, who had been spending most of their time aboard the Apollo command module, could take up residence in Skylab...
Advanced as the process sounds, it is already at the point of becoming routine and outdatedly slow-good enough for such bread-and-butter missions as re laying messages, photographing the moon, measuring micrometeoroid impact, sending space vehicles past Venus and Mars, monitoring radiation and watching the earth's weather. For the first manned Gemini mission, scientists have bred a new generation of fuels designated "hypergolic"-powerful liquids that explode on contact with one another but require no delicate refrigeration for storage...
Electronic Collision. So frail that it can hold its shape only at weightless, airless altitudes, that wide wing is the working element of a satellite, built by Fairchild Hiller Corp., for detecting micrometeoroids. Pegasus' 208 rectangular panels are covered on both sides with thin sheets of copper and aluminum separated by plastic. The metal sheets are electrically charged, but normally no current flows between them. When a micrometeoroid penetrates the aluminum, it will punch a hole in the plastic and fill the hole with metal vapor that is a good conductor of electricity. Although the gas will dissipate quickly...
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