my first spacewalk
holding on to the outside of the
spaceship
with nothing
except the sound of my own breathing
in my one hand
is my entire link with my own history
everything that’s human
every story that’s going on down on the
surface of the world everybody I’ve ever
met
with the whole universe in the other
direction
then
I Let Go
that’s when you really appreciate the
significance of that Thin Blue Line
[Music]
it contains everything that’s important
to us
contains life
and then Houston called to get back to
work I grabbed back onto the handrail
but while I was working
suddenly
I had a searing pain in my left eye
like somebody had just stabbed me
my eye just snapped shut and it started
tearing up
but the trouble is
without gravity Tears Don’t Fall
the tear just gets bigger and bigger
got big enough that it became a little
Lake of water that went across the
bridge of my nose
into my other eye
so I called down to Houston
Houston I’m having a problem here I
can’t see I’m blinded in both eyes
what did he just say he’s blind
Houston looked at what all the symptoms
were
and said
maybe it’s the worst case problem
you may have contamination in your suit
and you’re gonna have to flush it out
[Music]
I reached up turned this little valve
popped it and suddenly could hear
as my precious supply of oxygen hissed
out into the empty vacuum of space so
astronauts actually train to recognize
their own symptoms of a lack of oxygen
of hypoxia
in my case
there’s a slight dizziness my vision
starts to get a little bit narrow the
colors become a little more brittle like
maybe a certain type of painter’s way of
using only the primary colors
sound changes a little for me it becomes
a little bit more staccato sort of a
Snappy sound to everything that’s going
on around me and as soon as I put all
those things together I realize
I’m running out of oxygen
serious problem here serious problems
what did he just say
I can’t see Purge your oxygen
precious oxygen
I wasn’t really sure how that was going
to turn out
but as the oxygen hissed through and out
my purge valve
the tears that were coming out of my eye
my tear ducts slowly started evaporating
my vision began to return bit by bit
and what had caused it was pretty simple
it was the anti-fog on my visor had been
picked up by floating water in my suit
and gotten into my eye
with confidence I could reach up and
close the valve and stop venting my
precious oxygen out to the rest of the
universe
thank you
[Music]
