Something nefarious is going on at the Russian Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft docked at the International Space Station, circling 250 miles above Earth. There are six astronauts on board, and now it is revealed one of them may be mentally unstable and bent on murder/suicide!
The alarm was first raised last week, when mission controllers in Houston and Moscow noticed a fall in cabin pressure on the ISS.
Astronauts then discovered a small 2mm hole drilled in the body of the spacecraft that … wait for it… may have been deliberately made.
If the hole had not been found, the astronauts would have run out of air in 18 days. Thankfully, it was small enough to be fixed using special sealing tape.
At first, it was thought to be a manufacturing fault, structural fatigue, or impact from space debris or a tiny meteorite, .
But after an investigation led by Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, a more sinister cause emerged: deliberate sabotage, very possibly by a crew member.
First, the hole does not look accidental. ‘There were several attempts at drilling,’ Rogozin said this week, adding that the drill appeared to have been held by a ‘wavering hand’. It has since been confirmed that the ISS has a drill on board that is capable of making the hole.
So we have the weapon, the act and the opportunity. But what about motive? It seems inconceivable someone who’s made the grade as an astronaut — having passed batteries of psychological and physical tests — could think of wreaking such a heinous act of destruction.
However, a growing body of research is finding that even the most psychologically robust brains can crack up amid the rigours of space.
So one of the astronauts on board has a crippling case of SPACE MADNESS and is now hellbent on killing everyone on board and possibly taking down the whole damn space station in the process!
If it was caused deliberately, the perpetrator may have become desperate to leave the space station and so decided to inflict damage to force an emergency evacuation — but not in a way that would prevent a safe return to Earth.
Indeed, Maxim Surayev, a Russian MP and a former cosmonaut, has suggested exactly that scenario.
‘We are all human and anyone might want to go home, but this method is really low,’ said Surayev, who spent two tours on the ISS. ‘I wish to God this is a production defect, although that’s very sad, too. If a cosmonaut pulled this strange stunt, it’s really bad.’
(via Daily Mail; photos: Pixabay)