I made a couple of aborted attempts at this post, actually wrote quite a lot only to set it aside. The problem is that in every direction I start investigating related to this subject I quickly get overwhelmed with information and bog down. There’s enough here for a book, maybe more than one… not that I have any clue whether anyone would want to read it.
So, I’m just going to throw out the first post describing where I am right now, and where I intend to go with this in time. I’m planning on doing the same thing for “Guns in Space” at some point (no, they do not require external air/oxygen to shoot, a little common sense would reveal that, not even black powder from hundreds of years ago needs air to burn… but there are ton of other complications).
I’m going to number the posts on this subject because I (optimistically, perhaps) expect that there will be most posts on the subject as time goes by, more information comes to light, and more knives make it outside the atmosphere.
There is a lot of history of (and current events about) Knives in Space.
I was aware of the Randall #17 “Astro”, but there is now so much historical detail available that it should probably be a book of its own, not written by me but by someone with more relevant background. I was also aware of the Case (brand) “space knife” (machete) with a white handle that went up with the Apollo missions. I wasn’t aware, until very recently, of the jackknife that Alan Shepard took up, the shroud-cutter “switchblades”, the Randall #15 NASA knife with the white Border Patrol handle (what is it with white handles?), the Victorinox Master Craftsman Swiss Army Knife and subsequent Victorinox “Astronaut” knives, the original Leatherman “Survival Tool” and later Leatherman Waves on the International Space Station, or the current Emerson full-on tactical folder with a food-pouch-opening notch near the tip that I don’t think is fooling anyone.
The more I look the more there is. I think it’s safe to say that knives have always been a part of the NASA space programs, and I doubt if a manned craft ever went up without at least one. At least machetes are part of the Russian space program as well, and I strongly suspect others- they also go up with guns.
Now we even have what I think is the first depiction of an astronaut with a knife in a Hollywood movie: Mat Damon in The Martian uses one, or rather a multi-tool with a knife blade, probably a Leatherman, very possibly a Wave, early on in the film as a very deliberate set-up for one aspect of the final scenes that (Spoiler Alert!) differs considerably from the book. Or at least the version of the e-book that I own. Who knows how many variations are out there.
I don’t mind going into more detail about any or all of this, at least what I know and can find out about the subject, in fact I’d rather enjoy it, but my personal interest is even more about the future, and especially the key question of how useful and necessary knives are likely to be for those leaving the planet in the decades and generations to come… or not.
I’ve ranted already about how essential knives have been for humans, and still are. In the form of flints chipped to have an edge they might be our oldest tool (some contend that this title rightly belongs to an axe, but we’re just talking, in that early stage of a rock with an edge and no handle of any kind that would later evolve into both the knife and the hatchet/axe) certainly the oldest that we have any inkling of, and almost certainly the first meta-tool, a tool to make other tools, going back to long before we were fully human- at least two million years. It’s more than likely that knives have a great deal to do with what it means to be human, why we do not have and have not needed fangs or claws, huge and powerful jaws and the protruding snouts needed to accommodate them. We have evolved around dependence on our own technology, on our own fabricated tools, and are amazingly helpless, physically, without them.
The knife is the ultimate generalist tool, the one that has proven over millions of years to be the most useful in any unexpected situation, leading to it having been carried on our persons for almost all of the time that we’ve been entirely human, and still the one universal item in ALL survival kits.
But things change.
Now humans… or at least some of them, on a broad time-scale, are (finally) on the verge of opening new worlds. In one way of thinking about it humans are the means by which our biosphere seems ready to produce more biospheres.. and life will be very, very different for some time for those who leave the primary biosphere behind.
That raises a million questions, many of which we have no answers for, and some at least that we haven’t even anticipated, but what of our old stand-by primary tool in this future? Certainly, if and when we get to the point of living in “Earth-like” conditions elsewhere the old universal survival tool will become very necessary (hopefully we’ll still remember how- a real concern since so many in the First World have forgotten already), but what about the period before that time. What use will people living in completely artificial environments, pressurized habitats and vehicles and EVA suits have for knives? It’s not yet very clear.
Let me go ahead and concede right off that there are serious potential downsides to handling and using sharp, pointy things while you’re enclosed in what amounts to an air-filled balloon suit that your life depends on. However, this isn’t the first time people have had that conflict. One obvious case-in-point is emergency inflatable life rafts meant to keep people who have had to abandon their watercraft alive long enough to be rescued. Yes, there are some “survival” uses for a knife even in those circumstances, but that’s not the primary reason that they’re included. The raft is deployed, it inflates, it floats, it’s kept close to the sinking boat by line/rope, people get aboard, and often the next thing they know is that the boat that they just left is headed toward the bottom, in some cases with many tons of lead in the keel, and taking the rope they are tied to down with it. They may have seconds to respond. The cases are very similar, the need for an inflated structure that supports life conflicting with the real need for a sharp, edged tool. Despite the risks, we still include knives in life raft kits.
But in a life with few natural materials, is there still the need?
In thinking about that and looking for parallels on Earth one probable source of information that occurred to me early on are the places on Earth that parallel what we think life off of this planet (for some time) might be like in many other ways- the stations and camps in Antarctica.
No trees, little wood, nature provides nothing to burn in a fire even if you could start one… and usually no fresh liquid water, the only way to get water is to melt snow with the fire you don’t have because nature provides no fuel. Survival there is much more akin to the technical challenge one could expect it to be on Mars, much more of an exercise in mastering technology to stay alive, more than exploiting nature.
So, I started reading a lot and watching a lot of videos on Antarctica, and McMurdo Station (“Mac Town”) in particular. I haven’t found out a whole lot yet, frankly. I think part of the problem is that McMurdo especially seems to have a rigid caste system, with the summering/visiting scientists (“beakers”) rather lording it over a caste of support people who are supporting them, actually keeping them alive… not unlike management and software engineers in almost every office I’ve ever worked in. Since the “beakers” seem to do almost all the communicating and don’t guess that the support personnel have much to say, we only get their point of view, the ones that are being taken care of, not those capable of actually running the place and keeping them from dying like mayflies.
I did come across exactly one video about Antarctica so far that explicitly mentions the value of a knife, that’s this one (youtube.com) at 5:35.
Most recently my thoughts have shifted toward modern shipboard life as a possibly more accessible source of information about living in an artificial environment with very little in the way of natural resources, and I’ve started searching for clues as to the value of having a knife there. Of course sailors have had knives forever, shipboard life being a world of ropes, fabric and wood, but the question is less obvious now that shipboard life is a world of steel. I have it on good authority that many in the Merchant Marine carried and used knives constantly a few decades ago, but my fear is that Political Correctness may have eclipsed the need (as it has for so many of us, involuntarily). One need only take a look at the movie Captain Phillips to decide that apparently those in charge of mercantile shipping have decided that it’s better to let entire crews die at the hands of ragtag pirates off the coast of Somalia rather than allow them to defend themselves with so much as a BB gun. If, as it seems, life at sea has become a microcosm of life in the first world with regard to essential tools and weapons, there will be little left to learn from them and one can only hope that they are in the hands of a very merciful fate.
– Robert the Wombat