How to save space walkers? The physics way!

We’ve all seen science fiction, and let us all agree upon something that there is a part where the protagonist is faced with a life-threatening situation and makes it through. I don’t remember where I saw this, a space walker floats away into space after the cable that tethers him to the rest of his team gets cut loose. Unable to save himself, he intentionally depressurizes his suit. I’ve also read this on BBC Knowledge that NASA already has a space suit propulsion system, though I thought of that idea once only to realize it’d already been perfected. We’ve also seen Ryan Stone in the blockbuster, Gravity where she nudges herself towards the Chinese space station using a discarded fire extinguisher and I found that very smart of her. Today’s tech wouldn’t allow this to happen, since space suits would usually carry a gas canister for this purpose. If this was to fail, we’ll have to rely on primitive methods to get back to the ship.

One way I thought of is harnessing the negative force generated from every action, that’s Newton’s third law in play. If a space walker was to face a similar situation, the best thing to do would be to

ask a fellow space walker from his team to throw a heavy tool to him. The space walker can use this tool to move himself in the direction he wants by throwing or preferably pushing it in the direction opposite to it.

The reason why pushing is preferred over throwing is the fact that your throw is slightly offset from your center of mass i.e., when you throw from your right hand, you’ll likely end up with a spin in the clockwise direction. We don’t want an orbital party here. The best method would be to push firmly with both hands, while releasing the tool when your hands are fully stretched away from you. If this points him slightly off course, his colleague should quickly pass another tool slowly within his grasp so he could immediately make the correction by pushing the newly acquired tool in the direction opposite to where he intends to travel. You have absolutely negligible drag in low earth orbit and even a slight push of a piece of debris or a tool, in this case would give you a slight push.