argumate:

prudencepaccard:

1) lifeboats iiiin spaaaaace

2) why is the phrase “personal rescue ball” so funny

astronauts are stored in the balls

I remember as a kid watching a movie about a suborbital flight getting stuck in space

It was kind of a 80s continuation of both those 70s airliner disaster movies (like Airport, Airport ‘75, Airport '77 and The Concorde… Airport '79; that inspired not only Airplane! but Air Force One and Snakes on a Plane) and those 70s cruise disaster movies (like The Posideon Adventure, later Titanic)

Anyway at one point they tried to transfer passengers from the spaceplane to a shuttle using the coffins in the hold (commercial flights regularly contain remains in the hold, this is why planes keep separate tallies of “souls” and mere bodies aboard, in case of crash)

And that failed, and in another attempt they tried a flexible tunnel from plane to shuttle and I think that one failed so hard the shuttle exploded

And they hurried up and rush-launched another shuttle and honestly that’s the most 80s-optimism thing about it. When Columbia shed tiles on launch that doomed it, launching a rescue mission wasn’t an option cause they had months turnaround between launches by then