Well, shoot:
NASA is postponing the Thursday, Jan. 8, spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The agency is monitoring a medical concern with a crew member that arose Wednesday afternoon aboard the orbital complex. Due to medical privacy, it is not appropriate for NASA to share more details about the crew member. The situation is stable. NASA will share additional details, including a new date for the upcoming spacewalk, later.
Of course, this is absolutely wise and right. EVAs are difficult enough as it is when you don't have any other confounding issues to address.
Just like orbital rendezvous, it took us all a while to get the hang of space walks. From the beginning, they were truly death-defying stunts.
Here's Alexei Leonov describing the very first one:
“I’m feeling perfect,” I reported as I pulled the breathing tubes connected to my life support system out of the airlock. With a small kick, as if pushing away from the side of a swimming pool, I stepped away from the rim of the airlock.
I was walking in space. The first man ever to do so.
Nothing will ever compare to the exhilaration I felt in that moment. No matter how much time has passed, I can still remember quite clearly my conflicting emotions.
I felt almost insignificant, like a tiny ant, compared to the immensity of the universe. At the same time I felt enormously powerful. High above the surface of the Earth, I felt the power of the human intellect that had placed me there. I felt like a representative of the human race. I was overwhelmed by these feelings.
When my four-year-old daughter, Vika, saw me take my first steps in space, I later learned, she hid her face in her hands and cried. “What is he doing? What is he doing?” she wailed. “Tell Daddy to get back inside. Please tell him to get back inside.”
My elderly father, too, was distressed. Not understanding that the purpose of my mission was to show that man could survive in open space, he remonstrated with journalists who had gathered at my parents’ home.
“Why is he acting like a juvenile delinquent?” he shouted in frustration. “Everyone else can complete their mission, properly, inside the spacecraft. What is he doing clambering about outside? Somebody must tell him to get back inside immediately. He must be punished for this.”
His anger soon gave way to pride when he heard a live broadcast of Brezhnev’s message of congratulations beamed up to me from the Kremlin via Mission Control.
“We, all members of the Politburo, are here sitting and watching what you are doing. We are proud of you,” Brezhnev said. “We wish you success. Take care. We await your safe arrival on Earth.”
Televised pictures of me pushing away from the airlock and floating free in space had been transmitted via Mission Control, with only a few minutes’ delay, into the homes of millions of my compatriots.
...
As I pulled myself back toward the airlock I heard Pasha talking to me once more. “It’s time to come back in.” I realized I had been floating free in space for over ten minutes. In that moment my mind flickered back for a second to my childhood, to my mother opening the window at home and calling to me as I played outside with my friends, “Lyosha, it’s time to come inside now.”
With some reluctance I acknowledged that it was time to reenter the spacecraft. Our orbit would soon take us away from the Sun into darkness. It was then I realized how deformed my stiff spacesuit had become, owing to the lack of atmospheric pressure, and that my feet had pulled away from my boots and my fingers from the gloves attached to my sleeves, making it impossible to re-enter the airlock feet first.
I had to find another way of getting back inside quickly and the only way I could see of doing this was by pulling myself into the airlock gradually, head first. Even to do this, I would carefully have to bleed off some of the high-pressure oxygen in my suit, via a valve in its lining. I knew this might expose me to the risk of oxygen starvation, but I had no choice. If I did not reenter the craft, within the next forty minutes my life support would anyway be spent.
The only solution was to reduce the pressure in my suit by opening the pressure valve and letting out a little oxygen at a time as I tried to inch inside the airlock. At first I thought of reporting what I planned to do to Mission Control, but I decided against it. I did not want to create nervousness on the ground. And anyway, I was the only one who could bring the situation under control.
But I could feel my temperature rising dangerously high, starting with a rush of heat from my feet traveling up my legs and arms, due to the immense physical exertion all this maneuvering involved. It was all taking far longer than it was supposed to. Even when I at last managed to pull myself entirely into the airlock I had to perform another almost impossible maneuver. I had to curl my body round in order to reach the hatch to close the airlock, so that Pasha could activate the mechanism to equalize pressure between it and the spacecraft.
Once Pasha was sure the hatch was closed and the pressure had equalized, he triggered the inner hatch open and I scrambled back into the spacecraft, drenched with sweat, my heart racing.
My serious problems when reentering the spacecraft were, thankfully, not televised. My family was spared the worry and anxiety they would have had to endure had they known how close I came to being stranded alone in space. They were also spared the trauma they would have suffered had they known the grave danger that Pasha and I faced in the hours that followed. For the difficulties I experienced reentering the spacecraft were just the start of a series of dire emergencies which almost cost us our lives.
From the moment our mission looked to be in jeopardy, transmissions from our spacecraft, which had been broadcast on both radio and television, were suddenly suspended without explanation. In their place Mozart’s Requiem was played again and again on state radio. The custom in the Soviet Union at that time was for such solemn music to be played after a senior political figure had died, but before an official announcement of their death was made.
Our first EVA by Ed White generally went more smoothly, although not because we learned anything from the Soviets' experience (we didn't really share useful information at that time):
While White was using the zip gun over the Pacific, Mission Control was unaware of how he was making out. After the voice circuit was restored, radio listeners had a chance to hear an American human satellite broadcast his views of the spectacle of Earth.
White told McDivitt and the world how beautiful it all was, of the Pictures he was taking, and how well he was feeling - no vertigo or disorientation whatever. And when McDivitt had to tell him it was time to come back inside, Mission Control and the whole world heard him sigh, "It's the saddest moment of my life."
While he was floating freely, White had paid no attention to the time; and, since they were on the internal spacecraft communications link, Flight Control could not break in on them. Finally, after 15 minutes 40 seconds, McDivitt broke off to ask the ground if they wanted anything. "Yes," Kraft chuckled, "Tell him to get back in."
After he passed this on to White, McDivitt heard boots thumping atop the spacecraft. White came back to the hatch as Gemini IV was passing over the Atlantic, dismounted the camera and removed electrical connections, and handed all these items to McDivitt along with the gun. McDivitt then helped White get settled, pulling on his legs and guiding his feet into the footwells.
White closed the hatch and reached for the handle to lock it. When it failed to catch, he knew it was going to be as hard to close as it had been to open. Pushing on the handle lifted White out of his seat, so McDivitt pulled on him to give him some leverage. Finally White felt a little torque in the handle and yelled for McDivitt to yank harder. The door was latched.
White sat back, physically exhausted, sweat streaming into his eyes and fogging his faceplate. McDivitt also felt tired, so they rested before extending a radio antenna to find a ground-based voice and tell Earth all was well. Carnarvon answered them. The crew of Gemini IV had almost circled the globe in an unpressurized spacecraft.
It was a big deal:
While the first NASA EVA—which came just three months after the world’s first spacewalk, performed by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov—was brief, with no major tasks accomplished aside from getting used to the sensation, it marked a change in the thinking for space work, historian Jennifer Levasseur told Space.com.
“There is a turning point between learning how to do things and actually starting to carry out some of the activities we know are going to be required to perform tasks in space,” said Levasseur, a museum specialist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Specifically, White’s spacewalk previewed challenges that the Gemini program would later have to overcome, Levasseur said. Fogging in White’s visor pointed to problems with the spacesuit overheating. His difficulties in maneuvering, combined with reports from other astronauts, eventually prompted NASA to install more handrails and anchor points on spacecraft.
...
But in some ways, Pearlman pointed out, White’s spacewalk made things look too easy. Later Gemini EVAs were designed with the assumption that astronauts could move without challenges, but as tasks were added, several spacewalkers had difficulty holding on to the spacecraft to do their work.
Baby steps. Anyway, I hope the ISS space walkers get outside for some fresh air soon enough when it is safe to do so...
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