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
Literally, just in case. The suits can pressurize and provide oxygen in an emergency… if they’re sealed. So during ascent into orbit the helmets stay on. Once the capsule is separated and in orbit and everything is okay, it’s more relaxed.
So… Spaceman fly really fast on really really big rocket spaceship. The helmet protects spaceman in case he fall down go boom, or if rocket like firecracker go bang! When rocket spaceship gets really high, rocket and spaceship say bye bye to each other and rocket go back down; make big splash in ocean. Spaceship stays, flies around in space and do cool science stuff. Space is vacuum… Not like Dyson vacuum. Vacuum also means no air to breath and no air pressure. When spaceman knows that spaceship won’t blow up go boom, and in space really high, then spaceman take helmet off… Unless he throw up. If spaceman throw up, he leave helmet on so other spaceman don’t throw up too.
The pod containing humans is pressurized, almost like a balloon, to keep a it full of air. As long as the astronauts are in this pod, they don’t need to wear their helmets.
The reason they wear them anyways is this pod can get damaged and leak, so the helmets act as a backup in case the pod fails.
Liftoff, docking, and some other activities are the highest risk of the pod getting damaged and leaking, so they wear their helmets during those activities.
Think of the ship as being a protective bubble. It is filled with air and lots of equipment to keep the astronauts alive. If anything damages the spaceship, there is a risk that the astronauts could be injured or worse.
Like most bubbles, they can be damaged quite easily. The most risky times are during take-off because it is being shaken around by the rocket engines, during docking because it is bumping into another spaceship and during landing because it is being violently shaken around again and it gets very hot.
At those times the astronauts put on a space suit. The space suit is each astronaut’s own personal protective bubble; a protective bubble within a protective bubble!
Once they have completed take- off, docking or landing they check to see if there was any damage to the space ship and if everything is OK, they can remove their suits.
I would imagine because it’s like taking off in an airplane x100, your ears pop due to a change in pressure. In a space ship, your body can’t handle the pressure change and the speed at which you are going. Even with a pressurized cabin, your body is still not designed to be in other atmospheres or other levels of high pressure and less oxygen such as a space ship.
On space Humans can’t survive their, ur Skin will Burn
While freezing to death, and with lack of Oxygen many bad and Gruesome things happens to ur body 🙂
Inside the capsule, they normally don’t need the helmet at all. They would have been OK even if they didn’t wear it. But if something goes wrong, the capsule could lose air, and then they would need it. Because they cannot put it on fast enough if that happens, they wear it just in case.
Just like you wear a seat belt on a plane during take off and landing and if there’s turbulence, but you can open it when at cruise altitude in calm air. Something could still happen (which is why it’s better to wear the seat belt all the time in a plane), but the risk is so much lower that it’s also OK to take it off.
They take off the helmet because its much harder to work with the helmet than without.
Pretty like how we flight on plane. We can take off the seat belt once the plane take off successfully: when it is safe.
The dangerous parts are the take off and landing. Other than that it is quite steady. They do not even have turbulence like we had in the lower atmosphere.
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