Well I heard about this story and didn't think much about it at the time. Mistakes are made and it just happened to be Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper's turn while working at NASA. See a tool bag worth $100,000 accidentally got away from her. Opps! Well her co-spacewalk partner Stephen Bowen at least takes some of the blame here, he was the one who packed the tool bags before leaving on the EVA. Just watch the clip to see how slow you can loose $100,000.
Now what caused me to think more about this was hearing that an Amateur Astronomer, Kevin Fetter of Brockville, Ontario has used his basic knowledge and skills to pin point and now track the tool bag as it moves around Earth. You can see the quick fly by in this clip with the bag streaking from the top right to bottom left.So what I don't understand is why these things cost so much, but why don't the take that shuttle and rescue the thing. Seems we would have the ability to fire off the engines a bit, get in front of the bag, rotate a bit and open those big bay doors and let it float back inside. Or can we afford to just drop $100,000 like that? Sure seems like it would be a nice little exercise on recovering something from space.
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