MicroHorror

A metal bolt floated away during the space walk yesterday. This was an acceptable casualty. The work could be completed without that particular bolt, and the risk to retrieve the parts outweighed their value. The day before, a washer floated away. The enormity of space, even around the thin sliver where shuttles orbit, meant the bolt and washer would probably float in space for a few years before getting vaporized on reentry. But the bolt’s random momentum put it in a direct path with the washer. It floated perfectly through the washer’s hole, adapted a new joint momentum, and went off in a direction neither the bolt nor washer was traveling before. By growing coincidence, this bolt/washer would soon meet with an access panel that slipped from a cosmonaut’s gloved fingers 18 years before. It would thread through a bolt hole in a corner, and the combined momentum would put it in the path of a steel beam that escaped from Skylab. Piece by piece, an improbable machine is being built in the vacuum of space. It grows with each human visit above the atmosphere. Bare copper wires hang off the side of this assembled contraption, awaiting a battery or solar panel to drift its way, and spark this spaceborne machine to life.