Anita's Notebook

As Aleksei Leonov started the first spacewalk ever he was ecstatic to have such an honor but immediately realized there was a serious problem with his spacesuit. Without any air pressure outside to balance the air pressure inside of it his suit ballooned, becoming stiff and practically unmanageable.

He could barely move his arms or legs and had to abandon some of the activities that had been planned for the spacewalk, including using a camera that was attached to him. But there were more pressing problems at hand, like how was he going to maneuver himself back through the small airlock and through the doorway leading into the ship? Would his now oversized suit even fit through the airlock at all?

Of course him being irreparably stranded outside of the spacecraft was a possibility everyone had thought of before he even left the ground. There was a small pill in his helmet. It was a suicide pill that had been put there in case he somehow got disconnected from the ship or couldn’t make it back in, forcing his crewmate to close the door and leave him behind.

The spacewalk had only lasted ten minutes but Leonov was already suffering from heatstroke and decided to go back earlier than planned. Soaked in pools of sweat that sloshed around his stiff spacesuit he tried to force himself back through the airlock. It didn’t work.

He was jammed sideways, stuck and if he couldn’t figure out a way to overcome it he would remain there with the airlock forever floating in space after being ejected from the spacecraft before re-entry.

There was only one thing he could do now, vent pressure from his suit in an effort to be able move around enough to free himself. But since Soviet space suits used a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, lowering the pressure could cause nitrogen bubbles to develop in his bloodstream and make him black out or worse.

Cautiously he vented the suit little by little until he had enough leeway to start to fight his way out of the wedge. With a great effort he was finally able to get himself unstuck and into the tiny spacecraft before he passed out.

Back on Earth the spacewalk was proclaimed a complete success by the USSR and they never revealed the problems that Leonov overcame just to make it back alive. In fact much of the time the spacewalk was portrayed as a leisurely activity as relaxed as getting out of a car and filming some footage with a handheld camera, as you can see in this ridiculously inaccurate stamp which was issued the same year: