Another reason why I love the Internet:

At about 12:30 this afternoon Ryan mentioned that the International Space Station was in danger of being struck by some debris from the recent satellite collision, and that the astronauts inside had evacuated to a small spacecraft attached to the station. A quick Google News search turned up only a few short articles which noted that the potential impact was estimated to happen at 12:39pm.

Filled with morbid curiosity, I opened up NASA’s live feed from the space station, which was nothing but dead air at the time, and left it open in a background tab. A few minutes later I noticed some chatter in my headphones. Here’s what I heard:

ISS: “We understand we cleared, plese tell us how to progress back to the USOS”
Houston: “We’re all very happy that the TCA has passed with no impact, that’s great news. The steps you’ll need to perform is step 4.1 and 4.2 of the same procedure, 2.815.”
ISS: “Hey Kathy, you’ll never guess what, we don’t have the [manual] handy with us. Since you’ve trained us yourself, why don’t you tell us what those steps say and we’ll start to execute them until we can get inside.”

The important lesson here, of course, is that when you evacuate your spacecraft, you should remember to keep a copy of the instructions handy. Also, don’t forget your towel.