Today I found reports about the first man to walk in space, and how he almost got stuck out there. OMG. It's like Gravity!

Alexei Leonov was one of the twenty Soviet Air Force Pilots chosen for the first cosmonaut group. His historic walk was supposed to have happened on the Vostok 11 mission but was canceled and later performed on the Voskhod 2 instead. Leonov had 18 months of training for this.

Once in orbit, Leonov strapped on an EVA (extra-vehicular activity) backpack to his spacesuit. He had 45 minutes of oxygen, allowing him to breathe and keep cool. Heat, moisture, and carbon dioxide would be vented into space through a relief valve.

Leonov spent a total of 12 minutes and 9 seconds out on his space walk. But when he needed to get back into the spacecraft before he ran out of air, things started to get awry.

He managed to maneuver himself back to the airlock only to realize that his suit had become stiff. This is due to the lack of atmospheric pressure and the suit had bloated with oxygen. His boots and gloves were already pulled away. It was going to be "Sandra Bullock hard" to get back into the ship.

There was only one way to do it: wriggle in head-first while bleeding off the oxygen in his suit.
Leonov thought about contacting mission control about his predicament and let them know about the risky thing he was about to do, but decided not to. He knew that he was the only one who could do anything about the situation and he didn’t want to worry the people on the ground.

As he released oxygen and exerted himself, his suit began to heat up, to a point where it could have been dangerous. He climbed into the airlock inch by inch.

And once he was in, he had to let more air out so he could curl his body around to close the hatch. When the hatch was seled, crew mate Belyayev was able to pressurize the airlock again and Leonov made it back inside the spacecraft after the heart-stopping few minutes of struggle.

What a terrifying story. Read the whole story here. It is worth your while.