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NASA Engineers Question ISS Safety
Atryn writes "New Scientist is reporting concerns over deteriorating equipment on ISS. ISS will celebrate another anniversary on Nov 2 marking its 3rd complete year. This story was also covered on CNN International and covered on Space.com."
The Washington Post reported Thursday, however, that two officials overseeing health and environmental conditions on the space station didn't sign off on the launch, instead signing a dissent that warned about ``the continued degradation'' of the environmental monitoring and health maintenance systems and exercise equipment vital to the astronauts' well being.
Shouldnt these people _have_ to agree that it's safe in order for it to keep operating? They, after all, are the "officials overseeing health and environmental conditions". Who has to say 'yes' or 'no' and have it mean something?
The next time something goes wrong no body wants to be the engineer who didn't warn management. Look far a lot more of these announcements of engineers predicting bad things, just in case.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
There is believed to be tension within NASA between safety experts who fear the ISS is becoming dangerously dilapidated and astronauts and managers who do not want to leave the outpost unmanned for fear it could become vulnerable to an accident that would make it spiral out of control.
Space travel is generally acknowledged to be risky. The astronauts are certainly aware of this. NASA should do all they can to repair the ISS, but it makes no sense to jettison a project that cost tens of billions of dollars (not to mention millions of man-hours) simply because the risk levels have increased.
Change in manufacturing practices around the world. Now, instead of builting things to last forever and a day (including a nuclear explosion), things are being built to look damn nice, but fail after a "reasonable" amount of time so that people will buy more stuff. There's no reason why this mentaility wouldn't effect the NASA contractors.
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*Any* complex machinery/construction/whatever is going to need maintenance over time. What I find irritating isn't so much that NASA thinks pieces need to be replaced, but the public's reaction to such news. "What?!? You want more of my money to *repair* the darn thing before it is done being built?"
Just because it is in space things doesn't mean things won't wear out. This isn't the Star Trek Universe.
Although, it should be interesting to see how the need for maintenance will affect the development of the spacestation. Sometimes it seems like it was projected based purely on a "best-case" scenario (ie, everything works right the first time and works right until all the work is done).
I'd like to see how this impacts projected missions to the ISS... if they don't step up the number (of missions), will this lead to an escalating decay in productivity (ie, every flight will be just to bring repair parts for what has been built already?).
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Pretty simple, I'd guess. Look up any information on MIG-25 development. Shortages of titanium led them to basically rivet the thing together out of steel plates; the air-to-air radar was powered by a bunch of massive vacuum tubes.
Remember the story of how the US spent $5 million to develop a space pen, which would work in vacuum, under water, in massive heat, etc? (The Fisher space pen, I have one, they're pretty nifty)
The tale goes, the Russians brought a pencil. Different design philosophies. I've been inside a reconstruction of MIR--the thing's pretty massive,
and you definitely get the feeling that some of the engineers had a blacksmithing background...
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage