"Since Apollo 13 many people have asked me, 'Did you have suicide pills on board?' We didn't, and I never heard of such a thing in the eleven years I spent as an astronaut and NASA executive," - Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission.
For this scene, from the movie "Contact", based off his book, I guess Carl Sagan got inspiration from the Soviet Voskhod 2 mission. Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov said he was given a suicide pill by the authorities, in the event that he might get stuck outside of the Voskhod spacecraft while attempting the very first "spacewalk" or EVA (extra-vehicular activity).
For NASA's options, Gerry Griffin, a former director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, corroborated Lovell's statement, bluntly adding that if an astronaut truly wished to end his or her life, space provides plenty of opportunities. Outer space is just as effective a suicide agent as a cyanide capsule, perhaps even more so. Exposure to its empty vacuum often results in a blissful loss of consciousness in a matter of seconds. Death by asphyxiation usually follows within two minutes. (from http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/10/astronauts-and-suicide-pills.html)
Uploaded on Oct 23, 2016 at 5:36 am
As for the 2013 link, it reads that although the Americans weren't issued suicide capsules, at least one Soviet had one (although he didn't say if it was issued by the space program vs him just carrying it with him of his own accord).
And how would that suicide pill work exactly? It's not like they could reach into their pocket and pop it in their mouth. That means it has to be in the suit and specifically in the helmet. Again, how would that work? Where's the pill located so that it is accessible in the helmet? Did they replace a tooth so they could just bite down really hard like other nonsense spy movies? So much of this doesn't track
> It's not like they could reach into their pocket and pop it in their mouth.
Why not? I think the failure youre defending against is "Retrorockets have failed but the capsule is still pressurized", so you could easily just take the pill and have a nicer death than suffocating.
I think he is referring to the soviet in the 2013 link. He was in his suit when he got pinned.
> Though no NASA astronaut has ever taken a suicide pill into space, the same cannot be said for their Russian cosmonaut colleagues. Alexey Leonov, the first man to conduct a spacewalk, took one with him on his historical 12-minute stroll on March 18th, 1965, just in case he was unable to return to the spacecraft and his colleague Pavel Belyayev was forced to leave him adrift in orbit. He almost needed it. When trying to reenter his spacecraft, Leonov's stiffened suit became stuck in the entryway. He was forced to depressurize his suit slightly in order to dislodge himself, slide inside the craft, and close the hatch.
https://vimeo.com/188517388
The description blurb reads:
As for the 2013 link, it reads that although the Americans weren't issued suicide capsules, at least one Soviet had one (although he didn't say if it was issued by the space program vs him just carrying it with him of his own accord).Why not? I think the failure youre defending against is "Retrorockets have failed but the capsule is still pressurized", so you could easily just take the pill and have a nicer death than suffocating.
> Though no NASA astronaut has ever taken a suicide pill into space, the same cannot be said for their Russian cosmonaut colleagues. Alexey Leonov, the first man to conduct a spacewalk, took one with him on his historical 12-minute stroll on March 18th, 1965, just in case he was unable to return to the spacecraft and his colleague Pavel Belyayev was forced to leave him adrift in orbit. He almost needed it. When trying to reenter his spacecraft, Leonov's stiffened suit became stuck in the entryway. He was forced to depressurize his suit slightly in order to dislodge himself, slide inside the craft, and close the hatch.