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Space Station Crew Face Air-Scrubber Failures
madumas writes: "This article reports that the crew of the ISS (or alpha, or...) seem to have some problems with their air scrubber. They need replacement parts so fix the regenerator. It's interesting to see that they are a failure away from an emergency evacuation. For now, they are planning the shipping of the spare parts that should be done Dec. 26. Let's hope for them it doesn't fail."
Thing is, how many other countries have a major space program (host country going bankrupt notwithstanding) that have a lot of microgravity experience, and are politcally friendly?
The US and France (not that France has any kind of space program) are not at the best of terms, Germany is still re-building the eastern half, the UK... what are they up to, and Japan. Actually, I'm surprised that Japan isn't involved... well, maybe they are, but if so, the newspeople are ignoring it.
You can pretty much count out all of Africa, the Middle East, most of Asia, South America, and a fair chunk of Europe. No one really lives in Antarctica, so that really leaves the Aussies. Are they involved? If not, why not? (Probably because you couldn't convince an Aussie he'd need a spacesuit...)
Finally, I wouldn't be too surprised if some of the American bits start breaking too. If the past is any indication, the parts were either made by the lowest bidder, or by some pork-barrelled government contractor who can charge $300 for a screwdriver.
Just my 2 shekels.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Since your reindeer seem to defy all the laws of physics, do you think that you could take a few minutes from your busy schedule on Monday and send us up a couple of spare air scrubbers? We promise to leave you out some milk and cookies in return.
Yours truly,
The Crew of the International Space Station
(Send it now before the postage rates go up!)
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
One important lesson from Alpha, Mir, and even the US space shuttle is that when items break in space, they're hard to repair. The space shuttle is only expected to be in space for a few days (maximum of about 2 weeks, I belive). If something serious goes wrong, they can always abort the mission and land early. Likewise, Alpha and Mir underwent periodic resupply and in extreme cases could flee back to Earth.
Now consider a mission to Mars. This would have a duration of about 3 years. If you ran into problems two months out, if should take at least a month to return, and more likely 3 (depending of fuel capacity and burn rate). So, you simply fix the problem or you die. Now who here trusts their engineering for that project?
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
Naw, this isn't your father's NASA. Today those guys would have probably died while they were fscking around rebooting their NT boxes on the ground at mission control to verify that it wasn't an anomaly in their telemetry. I'm probably just dealing with the wrong people, but these are definitely NOT the types that could improvise anything. Even suggesting some non-COTS solution is like hitting them in the head with a clue stick. They just stare at you like you're speaking Martian.
First off, if you read the article you'll realize that the supply ship that will be docking on the 26th is a Russian Progress unit that has been up for about a month or so. It went up shortly after they took residence on the station. So when that unit went up they still had two spares for the fan unit.
Secondly even if the third fan were to go, and no one could launch in the 14 day time frame we still wouldn't be runing a risk of losing anyone. There is a Soyez capsule attacked to the station, the same one that they used to get to the station that they can evacuate in at any time.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
To quote the Russian Cosmonaut from "Armageddon":
Russian components, American Components. They're all made in Taiwan!
-----------------------
Imagine the shame of being the first to let one rip. "This is Commander Smith. He was first in his class at the Air Force Academy and was Top Gun, but he cleared the International Space Station with one SBD..."
"After a day and a half in the LM a warning light showed that the carbon dioxide had built up to a dangerous level. Mission Control devised a way to attach the CM canisters to the LM system by using plastic bags, cardboard, and tape- all materials carried on board."
Will they never learn?
How very true. Now, early on in their "quest for space" (i.e. the space race between the USSR and the USA, where the USSR was kicking our butts in terms of hours in space and orbits of the Earth), and even before that (unmanned shots, animals launched into space), the Russians had numerable problems. Foremost among them was a 'tendency' for their rockets to explode on the pad shortly afterwards. For a while, the attrition rate was upwards of 30%.
Now, as muecksteiner pointed out, the good old USA spent a bucket of money on the space pen, while the Russians went to pencils. The Russians are also known for incredibly good mathematicians and tech that you literally have to take a hammer to to destroy.
Given the amount of materials and components that are going into the ISS and the length of time that many of these components are rated to work for, I am not surprised that some things break down. I am surprised that it doesn't happen more often. Even considering the incredible advances in technology that we have made in the last 100 years (much less the last 10), we still have so little experience with microgravity. There is no way to predict how certain components will act in microgravity. We learn new things each day that there are people in the ISS.
Now, does the breakdown of the air scrubber mean we should all hide our heads in the sand like good little neo-Luddites? No. Does it mean that we should start finger-pointing and look for someone to blame? No. We should get the damn thing fixed and get on with life in general and get the rest of the ISS built.
Just my 2 shekels.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
So far, they went through two fans, and are on the third one for the only air purification system they have on-board. It appears, although the article doesn't specifically mention this, that the two failed fans can not be repaired. (although they say that one of the fans had a "bad electrical connector" which sounds like something emminently fixable.) The question of whether they could jury-rig an alternative fan is also not addressed.
By the way, according to the story, the replacement parts "will be ferried into orbit aboard Atlantis, scheduled for launch Jan. 18, or the next Progress supply ship, currently targeted for takeoff Feb. 10." This sounds like the next supply ship (December 26th) will not have these bits.
Well, even if the air supply system truly fails, they have 14 days, and we or the Russians can certainly launch in less time than that. The US doesn't lose astronauts as easily as the Russians, I expect we'd try to save them.
Thalia