If we happen to get a hole in
our spacecraft on the journey,
which is a real risk, then we
have to get into our spacesuits
to protect our lives
from the depressurization.
When we go out to the rocket for launch day,
it is fully fuelled and ready to go.
We go up the elevator; we get strapped in.
But if there’s any sort of problem with the rocket
before we actually leave the pad,
we really only have two options.
The first option, if we’re early in the count,
is we will open this hatch and emergency egress,
and we’ll go down baskets and slide
wires to get away from the launch tower,
hopefully before there was any sort of explosion,
get into some somewhat armoured vehicles
and drive away from the launch pad.
If we’re within five minutes of launch,
we will have armed our abort system,
which is like an ejection seat
for this entire capsule.
And during that period,
if we have a problem
or when the rocket starts to fire
and begins the launch sequence,
we can actually eject off the top of
the rocket and then splash down
just off the coast of Florida
under parachutes in this capsule.
And then we would egress from there.
If we do land in an off-nominal location
and we need to get out of the capsule
by ourselves, how are we going to open this
big heavy hatch that keeps us safe
from the vacuum of space,
but we need to get out of it in
a hurry if we have a problem?
So, we practise doing that, in here.
And then over here, these orange bags
are all of our survival equipment.
So if we don’t land in the right place,
we may have to survive in the capsule
for a period of time.
We practise using all of the survival
equipment here, both in this building
and also in our big pool at
the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.
Of course we train for other emergencies.
So, one of the big ones is if we happen
to get a hole in our spacecraft
on the journey, if we happen to hit
a piece of space debris,
which is a real risk, then we
have to get into our spacesuits
to protect our lives
from the depressurization.
And maybe there’s a chance that
we’d be able to stop the leak.
But then if we can’t,
we just stay in our spacesuits
until we can get back to Earth.
Of course we plan for fires.
Obviously, we’ve got
things like a fire extinguisher.
So just like you would
manage fires on Earth,
we can manage fires in
space in a similar way.
Those are the big emergencies
that we need to plan for.