Imagine you’re on a spacewalk. All is proceeding according to plan, when suddenly the harness tethering you to your spacecraft detaches. As if caught in a scene from your worst nightmare, playing out in painfully slow-motion, you find yourself steadily but surely drifting away from your safe moorings towards the never-ending black expanse of the cosmos. Such a scenario is unlikely, although genuinely possible for anyone venturing into space. If faced with such a scenario, what would you do? Hold out for a rescue that’s probably not coming? Bite down on your cyanide capsule? Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, along with his fellow crew members Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, actually faced the prospect of being marooned in space in 1970, when an explosion in their oxygen tanks crippled Apollo 13's service module. Lovell explained that he has been asked numerous times if astronauts have suicide pills onboard. His response: “We didn’t, and I never heard of such a thing in the 11 years I spent as an astronaut and NASA executive.” Gerry Griffin, former Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston corroborated Lovell’s statement, adding that if an astronaut truly wanted to end his or her life, space provides plenty of opportunities. Outer space is just as effective a suicide agent as a cyanide capsule, perhaps even more so. Exposure to its empty vacuum often results in a blissful loss of consciousness in a matter of seconds. Death by asphyxiation usually follows within two minutes. Potassium cyanide suicide pills kill in twice the time, without the added bonus of unconsciousness.
