Associated Press Discovers Old and Inaccurate “News” About NASA Medical Procedures

Duct-Tape, Tranquilizers Part Of NASA’s Plan For Mentally Unstable Astronauts In Space, AP

“It turns out NASA has a detailed set of written procedures for dealing with a suicidal or psychotic astronaut in space. The documents, obtained this week by The Associated Press, say the astronaut’s crewmates should bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him down with a bungee cord and inject him with tranquilizers if necessary.”

Editor’s note: Yawn, this is not news. Excerpts from these documents were online here at NASA Watch and SpaceRef 7 years ago. For example, here is a suicide prevention procedure and here is one for acute psychosis. Oh yes, there’s an on-orbit pregnancy test too. Ap’s Mike Schneider could have just Googled NASA emergency medical and he’d have found this a lot faster.

Editor’s 24 Feb Update: If you look here at the Smoking Gun you will note, by some unfathomable coincidence, that they grabbed precisely the same two emergency procedures I featured in this article (among many others that I have also linked to) and published them – without bothering to note their source.

“A gun would be out of the question; a bullet could pierce a spaceship and could kill everyone.”

Editor’s note: You might want to check a Soyuz manifest, Mike. They carry shotguns to fend of wolves at the landing site. Those same Soyuz spacecraft are docked with the ISS.

An esteemed space observer (who wishes to remain anonymous) notes: “The Russian ‘survival gun’ is a three-barrel (bullet, shotgun shell, flare) folding-stock weapon, carried in a survival kit between two of the seats in the Soyuz DM. I have been unable to locate any mention of it anywhere on the NASA ISS architecture websites, or on any official Russian space agency website, but it is pictured on Mark Shuttleworth’s www.africaninspace.com site on his ‘space tourist’ training and flight. Russian draft treaties on preventing weaponization of space contain clauses that grandfather any weapons intended for cosmonaut personal protection — presumably covering even stuff like the rapid-fire cannon on the manned Salyut-3 space station [you won’t find info on that space weapon on any official Russian websites, as far as I can tell, either]. Widespread reports that Apollo astronauts carried a survival gun are bogus.”