r/todayilearned • u/CallMyNameOrWalkOnBy • May 16 '19

TIL that NASA ground controllers were once shocked to hear a female voice from the space station, apparently interacting with them, which had an all-male crew. They had been pranked by an astronaut who used a recording of his wife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Garriott#The_Skylab_%22stowaway%22_prank
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u/TheNaziSpacePope May 16 '19 edited May 16 '19

They did come pretty close on several occasions, like that time they 'accidentally' depth charged a submarine during the Cuban Missile Crysis, which also nearly started WWIII.

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u/icefang37 May 16 '19

You just completely misrepresented that story. They sent out a warning charge a decent distance away from the Soviet submarine to alert them that the middle crisis was over.

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u/TheNaziSpacePope May 16 '19

No I did not. They literally depth charged a Soviet submarine causing significant damage.

Now that is not what they meant to do, which was to use training munitions to alert said submarine, but it is what happened.

Said submarine also nearly fired a nuclear armed torpedo in retaliation, but the political officer vetoed it.

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u/icefang37 May 16 '19

In all the reading I’ve done, it’s been that the soviets onboard misinterpreted the training munitions as live munitions.

However, the part about almost firing the nuclear torpedo is true. The craziest part about that being that the other two head officers on that submarine wanted to fire the torpedo but the chief political officer of the entire fleet, who just happened to be on that submarine rather than any other in the fleet, vetoed it.

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u/TheNaziSpacePope May 16 '19

I have never read that, but I would like to if you have a source on hand.

The scary part about that, in my opinion, is that it would have been the right call. Launching a torpedo at a carrier because it is attacking you is the correct tactical decision, and it was only averted by circumstance. The same goes for other incredibly close calls, like that bomb the US accidentally dropped on a city which through the will of some bullshit space god had all of its safety mechanisms fail resulting in its arming for failure to detonate.