Walking a mile in a real NASA astronaut’s underwater shoes

My head looks tiny due to the fisheye effect of the curved visor. The view from inside is similarly distorted.

Terry Dunn

“You’re stone cold.”

The test conductor (TC) seemed to delight in telling me that I just committed a fatal spacewalking error (there are many to choose from). Her clever comments weren’t needed to teach me the importance of proper tethering. The life-saving handrail retreating from my outstretched glove was obvious enough. In space, my transgression could have sent me into an irreversible trajectory away from the International Space Station (ISS), rendering me just another piece of space junk adrift in low-Earth orbit.

This, however, was an exercise at NASA’s pool used for spacewalk training, the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston. I'd hear similar admonitions at least twice more during the day, as SCUBA divers hovered close by to keep my free-floating tendencies (and my future as a meteor) in check.