So they don't use a tether system. Sometimes being smart just doesn't help, common sense should have been used way to go NASA.

Like the military, the NASA budget is much too high given the current state of the economy. Time to put the space program on hold. The paybacks just are not worth the investment.

To not tehter something like this is stupid.

Did it also escape NASA that a TETHERED tool bag doesn't float off into space?

how do,s a bag of tools cost 100000.00 you can bet someone made money one them

why did the tool bag cost $100k??? why wasn't a $2 invention such as a bungy cord or rope attached to this very expensive tool bag?? WTF? precautions anyone?

Mechanics service is same whether for a s-ship or for a car. Hire a male mechanik.

How can anyone hold on to a oily tool on earth never mind in space. Come on people give it a rest.

QUE LOS PAGUE LA MENDIGA!!

Now she'll have to lose the shoes, too.

how the hell can a bag of tools be worth 100,000$?
I can buy electric screwdrivers for under 5$ in the right places...
don't see how plain mechanical tools need to be specifically designed and built for space, sure there's the temperature conditions, but not zero atmosphere...

It was the guys job to tether the tools, not the girls; so all you misogynist need to chill.

As far as I know NASA gets around 1 mil$ a year from the government. What's exactly gonna change if you block that?

Oh and, the economy is a fake system. Educate yourself.

Good luck using the space suit gloves in zero G with your tools. That would be very amusing.

And any power tools you have are air cooled... which there is none in space. enjoy burning your tools up long before you finish your job.

Because of this little blunder, IE8 has slipped into 2009. Sheesh!

In 2007 NASA was only allocated about 0.58% (Yes a little more than half of a percent) of the Federals 2.7 Trillion Dollar Budget, coming out on average in the average family household as $278.40 out of everyones pockets, and assuming there is a 25% tax bracket only 70 dollars.

"Less than a small cup of Starbucks coffee every week"

What would you possibly gain from cutting the NASA space project altogether? Don't fool yourself people, and they do an outstanding job with what they have, and are helping advance us in more ways than just Space exploration.

So there are three problems with power tools (which these were) in space: the vaccuum, the lack of heat transfer, and zero gravity. The first leads to lubrication and materials issues, while the second leads to overheating and other materials issues. The last leads to conservation of momentum problems.

Lubrication on earth is typically done using oils. In a vaccuum, oil boils and becomes sticky. A huge amount of research was done in the 60s to find a lubricant which could survive space temperature extremes and high vaccuum: the final result was a molybdenum-based grease, and graphite-lubricated tools where particulate lubrication was applicable. These things are expensive and require special redesigns of the tools.

As Ryker Abel commented, cooling uses air here on earth. There, you have only radiative cooling (no heat transfer to air which then moves away from the tool). That means the working components need to be electrically (peltier) cooled and this heat radiated away. Typically heat-pipes are used to transfer it to radiator fins. All this, remember, has to be packaged into a robust, holdable device.

Temperature extremes pose a different problem. Your standard vanadium-hardened steel screwdriver will shatter at -100 degrees (and space can be much colder than that). It will also distemper at high temperatures experienced when exposed to sunlight (no convection to cool it so you can hit >100 degrees C easily). Therefore you have special materials able to handle the extremes without going brittle, and power tools have to handle extremes of expansion and contraction associated with that.

Finally we have zero-gravity. With nothing to hold you down, when you turn on a drill and the bit rotates, newton's law says that you rotate in the opposite direction. This must be compensated for within the tool by having counter-rotating masses which function at different torque levels. These are not standard tools.

So all in all, you can't take your standard tool into space and expect it to work, and you can't design molybdenum-lubricated momemtum-compensating exotic material tools for $5 apiece.

...

Oh, and if you read the article the lost bag was inside another bag and it escaped while it was being removed - but before a tether could be attached. No doubt they'll change procedure to attach a tether while it is inside the holding bag.

Wow ozyman,
This is probably the best comment I have ever read from a user, ever. I learned so much. And honestly, I too, didn't even think of these three issues.
I mean I had an idea that thy have special tools, but why and whatfor I had no idea.

Thanks for this informative comment.

That and how else do you pay for black ops?

(It was an informative post; as a transferring chem engineering student I knew the first part, but not the other two.)

Ozman did a good job on the technical reasons, but one of the things driving the cost up is that there is no place to buy tools for space. The specialized tools but be designed, built, tested, certified and maintained. In many cases, its not that much more costly to design, but if R&D costs Black & Decker $500k on there new drill they can split it across a million sales or 50 cents each unit. On the other hand, if a contractor designs a drill for NASA that costs $500k to design, test and certify, they may only sell 10 units and thus the development cost per unit is $50k. On top of this, tech support is a little better with NASA getting a direct line to the engineers that designed it if anything goes wrong or they have questions about its use.

That's a "hang your head in embarrassment" moment for that astronaut.

We have one more chunk of space garbage in the same orbit as the ISS.

RE: tethers,

You can't put a string on everything, eventually you get one big pile of spaghetti. You also add mass with each rope you attach to something. Space is complicated. No easy answers.

If you think it's important to tether a $100k bag of tools, we'd better tether the ISS to Earth as it's worth a couple o' millions! :P
Thanks, Ozyman!

Not smart, or totally sold out and profiling all of us are Democrats. Let's get another headline:

PREDATORY-PARASITIC SYMBIOSIS-EXPLOITING CHIMPS GET OVER, with a CHUMP-CHANGE HUNT, BY CHIMPY GUYS IN SUITS-ALERT (heard of Carter, Bush, Reagan, Nixon, Clinton, Obama?)

Suits and blondes, your bushmeat diet is despicable. This has resulted in a floating, $100K tool bag, reduced to a hurtling hazard of negative value, only for saving.

But worse was the way the Democrats let hundreds of offices, measures, and the lot float off, when five minutes into Debate III, Barack Obama opined how the deregulated power deals were 'ROBBING OUR WEALTH,' but he became faint, and let John McCain monkey-wrench the debate and the world's media agendas, by introducing D.L. Hughly-baiting white male plumber, SAMUEL J. WURZELBACHER, called 'JOE,' by the remarkably seditious Senator McCain.

By pouncing on Obama's fumble-rooski, where Obama introduced but failed to follow up WHY Samuel ended up owing a $1200 IRS lien, unpaid until AFTER the November 4, 2008 election, the Republicans AND Democrats let Al Franken's Senate seat nowhere, Janet Napolitano's Governorship in Arizona, and countless other seats in Congress and worthwhile offices revert to Republicans, while the entire world's media reverted to Republican agendas, a vast injury, abetted by gross negligence, at several misrepresentations and aggravated misconducts, by any several attorneys, representatives, and agents at fraud, including BARACK OBAMA and JOSEPH BIDEN.

Or, the despicably unrehabilitated yet empowered misrepresentatives in contempt all get the energy, ethics, and interest regulated, AGAIN, before one bit of public bailout shall issue. NOT!!

Meanwhile, in other news, Obama will nominate JOE LIEBERMAN, arch-Zionist, illegally interested, moon-shooting conspirator to obstuct justice, severally, as SECRETARY OF DHS, so I get it, there is the REAL Joe, the Plumber.

See how 'Obama' starts with an 'O?' See how tires roll on, but not for long, if they won't hold air?

Barack Obama has to save the world, in one quick hurry, if he wants to entertain for two years and then appoint illegal interests, from the Democratic and Republican conspiracy, to obstruct justice, which is illegally proximate, an aggravated threat to public safety, and a fatal seditious conspiracy, which will not admit deregulated energy deals are fatally inflationary, yet interst and reporting are deregulated, so no accounting or relief issue, for years and years.

The illegally proximate must therefore desist, or be served, with an order. GET IT, MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT AND PRIVATE SCHOOL CRIPS, GETTING UP IN D.C.?

I am on my meds so I have no idea what you are talking about. Can you please translate your comment into English?