Quick-don mask: Work can be fun

Uploaded on May 2, 2013

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Quick-don mask: Work can be fun

2013-05-03 - If a fire occurs on the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts wear quick-don masks to fight the emergency or evacuate. ISS Commander Chris Hadfield has fun at work, expelling oxygen from an expired quick-don mask tank. Spoiler alert: he sings! (Credits: Canadian Space Agency, NASA)

Chris Hadfield: Hi. Chris Hadfield here on the International Space Station. Fire is a bad thing on a space station. If we have a fire it makes smoke. Smoke fills this place up and we'd be in a terrible situation. So we have quick-don masks, special masks that you squeeze the lever on these, inflate, put over top of your head and the small bottle attached will give you in the order of 10 or 15 minutes worth of oxygen until you can safely fight the fire or evacuate to your Soyuz and close the hatch or get another mask ready, a longer term mask or respirator.

This is our quick reaction, right here. This bottle is getting old. In fact it's expired. What I'm going to do today is just drain this oxygen tank so we get the free oxygen in the Space Station before we put this in the cargo vehicle that returns to earth, a free way to get oxygen into the Space Station.

(Music)

(Sings) Don't you know that's the sound of the man working on a chain gang, don't you know that's the sound of the man working on a chain gang. Fun with gas masks.

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