A. Adair B. A. :rebelverified:

Web developer.

Among my great accomplishments, I'm followed by Gail Simone.

Last Notes

2025-10-11 04:49:00 GMT

Alright, I've long been stuck on the idea that people on spacecraft won't be sucked (or more accurately, blown) out of an airlock nearly as dramatically as Hollywood would make us believe.
(For the curious, from the time the hatch opens? You'll probably die within 30 seconds, but with most airlocks that humans design, it might be a few weeks before your body makes its way out the hatch...)
Anyways, I think I might have a new topic to mull over when it comes to crewed spaceflight: Chains.
In the short term, a link in a chain in motion will continue to follow the path that previous links had traveled.
Links in a chain have very little friction between them, so where a rope will tend to stick out straight, chains will instead orient themselves along gravity gradients.
And, evidently the behavior of chains in null G are absolutely hell for people to predict. (This might be an interesting point in a story.) Our intuition when it comes to removing energy from a chain is to stretch it out... but elastic potential energy (even from a metal chain) will quickly prove that intuition wrong.
Whelp, the ISS has helped to do experiments with chains in null G, thanks to some random Youtuber (Poe's Law warning: I'm fully aware that Steve Mould is more widely known that the astronauts he talks about), the planning done by my favorite astronaut of this era, Samantha Cristoforetti who commanded the ISS for expedition 42, and the playfulness and curiosity of astronaut Don Pettit. And, well... here's the highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtZaP8VMv0c
I'm going to CC @npub19tt…6nnr , since he's a hoopy frood who knows where his towel is.