04 November 2007

An important public service announcement

This morning on NPR, I heard a news piece about this weekend's successful space walk outside the international space station to repair a solar panel. While I'm happy that the astronauts made the risky maneuver without incident, I was a bit alarmed to hear this "oh, by the way" tag at the end of the story:

A later inspection inside the station turned up a small tear on one of the spacewalkers' gloves, and a pair of needle-nose pliers was lost in space.

Mission controllers are tracking the pliers and said they don't believe the tool poses any collision risk for the station.

Hello?? A pair of needle-nose pliers is LOST IN SPACE? What exactly does this mean? OK, fellas, it's dandy that they won't dent the space station, but let's consider the other possibilities here. Shouldn't we be a bit more concerned about this?

Will the pliers be sucked into some perpetual planetary orbit, never to be seen again?

Or will they randomly plummet to earth?

And if they do plummet to earth, where will they fall?

And most importantly, will they fall with the pointy end down?

Just to be on the safe side, until the pliers are located, don your bike helmet and don't look up.

5 comments:

toners said...

LOLOL!! So glad you let us know about this....I'll keep my head looking down!

Maureen said...

I will know be on the lookout for plummetting pliers... thank you.

Lynn said...

lmao! I think I'm going to get my motorcyle helmet on just in case. Thanks for informing us!

Anonymous said...

LOL! How do you think up these things?....you're a hoot! Thanks for the chuckle.

EquineSpirit said...

LOL! Thanks for the warning...I'll keep my eye out for those pliers! :D