> 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.
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.