Another first from NASA

[packman]

Astronaut Bruce McCandless II floats untethered away from the safety of the space shuttle, with nothing but his Manned Maneuvering Unit keeping him alive. The first person in history to do so


And an appropriate video:

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/02/major-tom-ground-control

[dawg day]

1. Good lord, that's scary.

I've seen too many "Lost in Space" sort of shows to feel like this would be safe without 4 tethers and a few chains hooking to the ship.

Uh, where IS the ship??

[sboatcar]

3. Right? That takes some serious courage

I'd hope that there would be enough fuel in there to account for any screw ups on the way back to the shuttle, but still, knowing that if something went wrong you'd be dead in a few hours with no hope of rescue would be awful.

[soothsayer]

2. Seriously, my heart skipped a beat just looking at that

[Fla Dem]

4. He no doubt has a supreme level of "NO FEAR".

But I guess you would have to have that just to be blasted off in a space ship with1.2 million pounds of thrust propelling you into the universe.

[liberaltrucker]

6. Built by the lowest bidder

[RussellCattle]

5. If that was me, I would be thinking "Holy shit, is this cool".

[Mr.Bill]

7. Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

[Talitha]

8. That 'first' was done way back in 1984.

LINK to Wikipedia article

Bruce died in 2017.