Spacewalk sounds scarier than it is, NASA says
yes, walking in space--where there is no ground--nothing scary about that. what can be scary about being surrounded by the cold vaccuum of space, where exposure to the environment would cause your body to depressurize and explode long before you die from the extreme cold or lack of air? where all that stands between you, the astronaut, and certain death, is a space suit--the finest technology the 1960s had to offer, an era so technologically advanced that they could not even do a fax machine right. and you're not actually "walking" either if you want to be technical about it. you're really just floating around attached by a tether, just a thin cord really. if the cord breaks, you'll either float off and die of asphyxiation or fall into the earth's atmosphere and burn up in re-entry. good thing you got that cord!
meanwhile, your only hope of survival is that you manage to leave space and return to earth in a space shuttle, one of the few remaining ships in an aging decrepit fleet. luckily, you have one of the three remaining shuttles in the fleet that still actually works. there used to be five shuttles, but the other two exploded in a couple of unrelated incidents, each time killing everyone on board.
oh, and did i mention that the reason you're doing your space walk this time is because it looks like there might be something wrong with your space shuttle? a couple of scientists noticed that the heat shields might have a problem. the problem they noticed kind of reminds us of what we think went wrong with the last shuttle that exploded. but we're not sure. to be honest with you, we're not 100% sure why that shuttle exploded. but we're pinning our money (and your life) on the heat shield theory because otherwise we'd never get permission to send people like you back into space. if course, if our theory is right, then that damaged heat shield on your shuttle might be a problem. but don't worry. we could be completely wrong about the heat shield theory. maybe a damaged heat shield isn't a problem after all. really we have no idea why those shuttles explode now and then. for all we know it could be a completely different problem and the damaged heat shield is the least of your worries.
and rest assured, a space walk is not nearly as scary as it sounds.
