Trouble on the International Space Station

lewiz writes "The BBC News website has an article that explains the International Space Station has run into troubles due to one of four gyroscopes breaking down. They say while this is a serious problem it will not have any massive effect but it will have to be replaced quickly as the gyroscopes stabilise and control the flight."

Comments

Re:redundancy

[Budgreen]

I would hope they would be able to get by on at least 2 :) not a place you want a critical system to go down when a replacement is about half a year away!

They seem to be having quite a few "critical" problems (control computers going offline and onto backup) That in the news are reported as being so bad but no real big deal.. I would like to see what the designers of ISS modules and the astronauts/cosmonauts have to say off the record about these problems.

Lack of planning?

[Shriek]

I understand hardware will fail which is fine if wasn't due to negligence; what isn't fine though is the apparent lack of preparedness in handling the resolution of this situation.
First, why did such a critical device fail so soon on the space station? I only ask that because it just seems like the more expensive a device is for the space shuttle or the space station the more easily it will fail. Does the level of criticality coincide with the level of fragility?
Second, doesn't it bother anyone else that it may take up to a year to replace the one failed gyroscope? NASA has to make room on a future space shuttle mission in order to fly the replacement gyroscope up, fine I say, but I don't think that's the whole story as to why I will take so long to replace. NASA shouldn't be using the excuse that it would delay experiments or completion of the space station. The safety of the ISS crew is more important than getting some experiements completed.
I think the issue should be why is NASA classifying this problem as low priority? Maybe NASA has done its risk analysis on the problem which would be fine except that there seems to be no oversight of the decision process.

Re:Lack of planning?

[NateTech]

If there's one thing NASA knows how to do, it's to plan things. This post and the tons of others like it shows what sheep people will be when reading a /. article. It also shows a complete lack of understanding of their process, procedures, and the fact that numerous others have posted: There's multiple redundant gyro systems on board. This whole article is FUD.
Various books for reference to NASA's typical procedures exist. I enjoyed "Failure is Not An Option" by Gene Kranz (Flight Director), and "This New Ocean".
It's Monday, I'm grumpy and I'm not putting links in -- find 'em yourself and learn something.