there. we talked about it last hour, very interesting here, the idea of using water displacement, basically pushing the water out so there s more air pockets so the kids can get out. it s an elon musk idea, right? it is. it looks like they re going to give this technology a try. effectively what they do, they put this canvas tunnel into the existing tunnel here and they full it with air. the idea is that the air would push the water out. there s compression, they have air locks and it could create a space where they could try to get the kids out or at the very least get supplies in. so it s one of the options that s being explored. there are not many other options here. they have been trying to drill to release more water to create a second overflow. millions of gallons of water have already been pumped out but the water levels are still quite high in the places where they need to have them lower. the idea is that if they can
and i had to evaporate all my tears before i could properly see. so it was a little bit disconcerting. but hopefully that won t happen to scott and chel today. i hope not either. what kind of precautions do they take before they embark on the spacewalk? more than you could believe, carol. they ve trained for years and years. they ve spent hundreds of hours under water at the johnson space center in houston training for it in a virtual reality lab with a helmet and gloves on, and then on board for the last few weeks, they ve been going over these procedures. we ve been preparing these spacewalks for about three months. so everybody s right at the top of their game. and if anything goes wrong, we have lots of different ways to rescue each other. kim is inside flying the great big robot arm so he could bring one of the guys back to the air lock if there was a hurry. we ve got doctors watching every heartbeat on those guys up there. we take this extremely seriously, but it s also so ma
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the operation? what are the variables right now? well, chris, first, merry christmas to you and your family and the family at new day. what they re doing right now is setting things up. they got out the air lock, both the astronauts are out there, making sure their tethers are good, getting in position to start their day s activities. the robot arm is being put in position and mike hopkins will get in there. they re start off the procedures. right now they re getting things set up at the very beginning. what makes it more difficult in space than if you were doing this in earth s atmosphere? why is this harder? well, it s a completely different environment. things float. you have to watch out that your tools don t float away. that s why tethers are important. you re dealing with a big suit. it s like working on your car, fix the plumbing in your bathroom or change the oil in your car, trying to do that with boxing gloves on.
turn it back into a gas so it goes off into space. just as an extra precaution, inside the air lock they re taking a few extra minutes to stay at vacuum to make sure the last bit of ammonia that might have gotten on their suits gets out into space and not into the space station. all right. so overall impact, keeping equipment cool, keeping the iss intact, and also its impact of this mission and continuing our space program for where it is at this point. just to kind of bring things back at the end of the year as we entered 2014 and saw so many cuts made and changes to these space walks and to the nasa program, why is this important? not just internationally and for relations but, you know, remind folks why we care about this so much. sure. well, the space station is planned to be operated through at least 2020. studies have shown it can be operated through 2028. why would we do that? because as we start planning missions beyond earth s orbit to go out farther, maybe to an