Knives in Space ... Really!

I remember in the 80's going to gun shows and seeing a big knife that was supposed to be an exact copy of a knife that was on the Apollo missions. It was a big bolo style knife, similar to the WWII South Pacific bolos. Pretty sure it was made by Randall, had a Randal style handle with finger grooves and guard. Handle slabs looked like white nylon. It was always in a display case with an engraved brass plaque telling what it was.
 
^^^^^^^^ If it's the Randall custom I'm thinking of it was the second knife into space, right after Shepard's Camillus folder. And it DID have a hollow compartment between the handles. Swear.
 
EChoil said:
^^^^^^^^ If it's the Randall custom I'm thinking of it was the second knife into space, right after Shepard's Camillus folder. And it DID have a hollow compartment between the handles. Swear.
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Yeah you can see the Randall in the article has the scale removed to show the hollow compartment.
 
bdmicarta said:
A few months ago I had a random idea about knife use by astronauts. I was thinking about use in spacesuits though. The spacesuit gloves make it hard to operate a folding knife, and the additional motions of opening and closing increase the risk of cutting a hole in the suit, so I was thinking a D/A OTF would be a good tool for them. It could be opened and closed without getting close to the cutting edge, and could be adapted for use with the big gloves on. What lead me to this thought was that an OTF would be a good work knife for someone that needs to use their work knife frequently.
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My guess would be that even the most lightly sprung/but still reliable spring action of an OTF could lead to problems if it were fired accidentally or too loosely held...it would kick out of hand and keep going creating huge hazards in many aspects. They probably play it safe.
 
because you can't really get hung up on something, I don't know that they would really need it. I do know they have made tools for different tasks, and since every task is planned step by step, there really is no case where they wouldn't already see the need. Its an idea, but from listening to Cmdr. Chris Hadfield talk, its much more likely that a problem will occur within the suit than without.
 
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