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The light sticks are intended as an aid in case of an emergency, and are colored orange to identify the astronaut crew, while technicians in the close-out crew carry green ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Crew_Escape_Suit

I can understand the astronauts needing light sticks; for example, to locate them after a parachute bail-out at night. But what would be an example of a situation where the closeout crew would need light sticks?

DrSheldon
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Cannot reference any pad procedures or documents but in other environments have met Cyalume/glow sticks as a reasonable shelf life light source that will not explode a flammable atmosphere, short out in water, burn or shock users, suddenly fail if dropped and even survive fire for short periods (at least as well as a human).

So while imperfect in many ways they are easy for a risk management process to approve for inclusion since they will not make an on pad situation worse if activated, and do not need a checklist or similar prepared.

As a guess would place the primary purpose as something that got hooked onto a sleeve or shoulder to make it easy for close out+crew to keep track of each other during evacuation off the pad, even if smokey or full of water.

GremlinWranger
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  • I tried finding references to "Phenyl oxalate" or other scientific names for it as well (as I'd assume they'd not refer to it as a "glow stick") to no avail. – Magic Octopus Urn Jul 09 '19 at 13:18
  • This answer has some good information, so I have upvoted it. However, I can't quite yet accept it, as the question asked for a scenario. If you edit the answer to add the power outage scenario and attribute that to RussellBorogove, then I will choose it as the accepted answer. Thanks. – DrSheldon Jul 13 '19 at 00:18