So, are they advertising a sequel to “Space Cowboys”? The gee whiz aspect of that project has waned considerably, and we’re not getting any corresponding bang for our buck from the ISS. It’s time to reload the Manned Mars Mission funding, and focus NASA resources toward manned deep space exploration missions.
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Obviously operational quality is sliding. Getting a little “woke” there NASA? A full root cause analysis should have been done immediately after the incident, followed by corrective actions. "“Still being unraveled” status is code for we’re not saying and lack of transparency will doom any program. Rise and shine boys. QA is a discipline, not a department.
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Trying
Oops, so that’s what that button is for.
Sensors are better than a human in a space suit at sensing. What spacecraft far away from Earth are not good at is thinking. Rovers and now helicopters on Mars would be getting a lot more science done if there were a human nearby - not 15 light minutes away which makes active control impossible from Earth. Driving a rover would certainly be faster if there were a human in the loop. Also, if humans were nearby, you wouldn’t have to be quite so careful in the design of the rovers. Now if something breaks, the mission is finished. With a human nearby, they could fix it and send the rover back out. There are lots of reasons a combined strategy of humans and robotics would be a great benefit.
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Serious, apparently no interlock in the software to reduce/prevent thrusters firing when very close or docked.
I guess it depends which MSM you pay attention to. I see in the Washington Post, for example, “Russian thruster misfire led to a ‘tug of war’ at the International Space Station as crew sought to regain control”, by By
Dalvin Brown on July 30, 2021 at 4:08 p.m. EDT. (link, abbreviated in an attempt to evade the AvWeb moderation delay: technology/2021/07/30/boeing-starliner-launch-rescheduled/)
A more precise question would be, What is the MSM that you watch trying to hide? I heard about this the day after it happened.
Repair probes? For the money and resources that it takes to send a human along (and back), you can send a dozen probes for redundancy AND more coverage over an area.
Probes are expendable; sending people will require crazy amounts of money and testing and resources and weight and systems AND a trip back home. More can be discovered if we don’t send people.
So when they declared an emergency did the NASA controller ask them for the number of souls on board and fuel in pounds?
That is correct. The uncommanded thruster was firing constantly in a single direction, causing the rotation in one axis. Passing 45deg of rotation the rate was 1/2deg per second.
As I understand it, this was about the point that other thrusters were brought online to counter the rotation, so rate probably didn’t get much more, though they were unable to stop it entirely until the fuel was depleted from the ‘bad’ module.
So not any risk of tearing the station apart, but certainly a very serious event nonetheless.
Indeed. The correction to the story is wrong; the article was correct as originally written.
https://youtu.be/dDBt9rZhMb4
They’re probably not hiding this, but only mentioned it in a 30 second piece before getting back to politics.
At 1/2 degree per second, it took the station 12 minutes to do a complete roll. That’s fairly tame. It’s serious from a control perspective, as nothing should be firing uncommanded; but not serious as far as the lives of the crew or endangering the station.