At what point can an astronaut take off their helmet and why do they need to wear one for take off? (Asked by an actual 5 year old)
In: Physics
In the Space Shuttle (less so on the SpaceX rocket and its lovely minimalist design!) it wasn’t so much the risk of explosion (which the Shuttle had no real survival mode for anyway) but stuff flying off the dashboard and hitting crew members in the face.
I remember one Youtube video of a “shuttle launch to orbit from in the cabin” and one of the crew’s flightplans comes loose from its velcro housing when they’re at about 6g before main-engine cutoff, and it flies right to the back (bottom) of the upper deck. They joke about it, but a 1kg ring-bound flightplan in a hard plastic cover, at 6g, isn’t something you want slamming into your face when you can’t even put your arms up to shield yourself.
At least in the Space Shuttle days, it really was as “trivial” as that.
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