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."

Comments

I heard...

[Sir Haxalot]

New Scientist is reporting that concerns over deteriorating equipment on ISS
I heard a program was being put in place to get together new equipment, repair old equipment etc a while back, I wonder what happened to that?

Re:I heard...

[BillFarber]

poll:

1) Bush administration cut funding for my tax cut.
2) Congress people too stupid to care about space. 3) Russian components
4) Liberals that want to give poor people more benefits.
n) NASA shouldn't have given CmdrTaco the helm.

Poor Michael Foale...

[hpulley]

On the one hand it's great that Michael is doing something many of us only dream of but if the engineers' worries come true then he might be able to take part in disasters on the ISS just like he did on Mir. Says it didn't put him off long-term space travel though and still wants to go to Mars. Good for him!

How Safety works.

[mumblestheclown]

1. Something gets designed and deployed
2. For each time interval from initial design to infinity, some engineer is complaining that it's not safe enough and that a more expensive solution or complete redesign is necessary.
3. For each complaint, managers, who are not technically illiterate, but not as "into it" as the engineers, need to evaluate risk based on imperfect information.
4. Usually, system robustness and other factors dominate. the system is just fine. the engineer's complaints fade into obscurity, even though "deep down" the engineer knows he was right.
5. But, occasionally, something goes wrong. Instantly, the managers become know-nothing literature-major innumerate MBAs. The engineer who picked the "winning" flaw gains fame.
6. Therefore, claiming that something will go wrong with the ISS is a good way as any to win the lottery.
7. The problem MUST be that managers are unschooled in dynamic systems theory, right? Because they don't understand complexity, probability, and risk---right?
8. But wait, that's wrong! Today's managers ARE trained in those things - i mean, that is the very basis of being a technical manager today! what's the problem then?
9. could it be that the engineers are trained in engineering and don't know how to effectively communicate and QUANTIFY their risk assessments? nobody at /. will agree to this, but imho, that view is easily at least half right.

interesting but maybe over-reacting

[falcon5768]

Well the ISS is more than just 3 years old, its only been in space for 3 years but parts of it where designed and built as far back as the later Regan early Bush years (that Sr. not Dubua) I know cause the guy who designed the superstructure for the solar arrays (and inccidentally enough the building to construct that superstructure since it was test fitted on earth and thus needed a huge building to support it) graduated from our tech department in 1989 and almost imediately started working on the Hubble and then manage the 3 or 4th team to design the final ISS design based on some of the stuff they had built and tested for Alpha (the superstructor is actually newer than the moduals)

Anyway, the other thing you have to remeber is that in relation to the Russians with whom safety was a concern but not as much so as we cared about, the Mir was a deathtrap in our minds. I remeber after the remote probe incident all of the NASA officials talking about had it been us we would have crash burned the thing years ago. So in relation to the Mir ours might be in great shape, but after Columbia they dont want to take any chances.

Will the Chinese Space Station work better?

[randall_burns]

Personally, I suspect it will-and the ramifications to the US power structure will be tremendous. The US elites expend a lot of energy to maintain the image that the US is _the_ technological superpower. Problem is, the US government isn't run by men like Franklin and Jefferson any more(guys that got fame by being scientists/inventors)-the congress today is composed almost entirely of a bunch of lying weasels that spend much of their time begging for money from corporate oligarchs and planning their eventual "cash out".

So can China beat the US in space? At this point, I suspect it can. The US elites are so rapicous they can't provide technical incentives to maintain the present industries in the US without liquidating resources-let alone build new space industries.

Besides, folks like Bush/Clinton are both kept in office by a steady stream of credit from China and other far eastern countries. Sooner or later that will come to an end. The Chinese leaders strike me as much more cagey than the old Soviet elites-they won't make a really big splash until they think it is too late for the US elites to do anything about it.

A few more links

[aengblom]

I always find it interesting when Slashdot links to everyone, but the actual source. The Washington Post, which broke the story has an article as well as a followup on how the ISS crew reacted to the news. The reporter also gave an interview.

Please scrap the ISS

[Saeger]

In the place of the wasteful ISS (which needs to stay porky to keep the budget), we should build a new station that pushes more important boundaries than station maintenance, politics, inchworm robotarms, or microgravity research on snail sex in space.

We should be focusing on a station that:

1. Is a self-contained system. (reduced dependence on Earth for supplies lost to inefficiency and leakage).
2. Rotates for artificial gravity. (don't have to return to the gravity well to restore wasted-away bodies).

IMHO.

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Re:Rotation for Artificial Gravity

[Saeger]

Yes, most people can only handle about 1 or 2 rpm before they start feeling nauseous, which means you need a radius of about 800 feet to simulate 1G. But we wouldn't necessarily need or want 1G when Mars or Moon-like gravity would work just as well. And at least initially we could prescreen for more tolerant astronauts and/or use motion sickness drugs.

Then comes the expense of building something so big, right? Not really. It doesn't have to be one giant solid structure; it can be two or more modules tethered together (redundantly).

Oh, and it's too bad that NASA currently throws away perfectly good space habitats on every Shuttle mission.

--

Still we are not leaving

[Ars-Fartsica]

Just because we are turning Earth into a garbage dump, that doesn't mean manned space travel is any more viable.

I am not saying it "shouldn't" be done, I am saying it cannot be done.

Point 1 - where to go? Mars? You would need massive external support to live there. Can't happen if by your arg Earth is gone. Anywhere worth going (Earth like planet) is so far away it is not worth considering given our understanding of physics.....leading to

Point 2 - don't believe in "warp speed" or some other fantasy that instantly lands you on a paradise in another galaxy instantly. The reality is that even at very high speeds we can conceive of producing, it would take so long to get anywhere useful that you would run out of food, go insane, or get irradiated.

Robotic life will be the only view of Earth aliens ever see. That wil have to be good enough for our legacy - our organic systems are completely unsuited physically and mentally for long term space exposure. If we want to destroy Earth then we are going to have to deal with having NOWHERE to live.

Re:Man will leave Earth one day by choice or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Mineral resources don't get destroyed either. If we have the wherewithall to make Plutonium we can recycle our soda pop cans. Should things get so tight that Earth is devoid of scrapyards and garbage dumps we can harvest ore from asteroids the way we do now -- with machines.

2) Even our current President knows that we won't rely on fossil fuels forever. You seem to be suggesting that we will never find an alternative despite contemporary efforts in that direction. Do you think that one day we will need interstellar oil-tankers to raid the nearest planet that has geologically fermented carbon-based life?

3) Colonizing space sure is easier than birth control. What's that you say? Telling people to stop having kids is wrong or unworkable? Would you rather let the Humans over-procreate and then ship the extra kids off to Mars?

4) Yeah, we better get to work on that problem today. And to think I was worried about our troups in Iraq...

NASA didn't have a choice

[igny]

Besides the prime crew (M. Foale, A.Yu. Kaleri, P. Duque) there was a backup crew (W. McArthur, V.I. Tokarev, A. Kuipers) of the Soyuz TMA-3 ship. If, for any reason, NASA backed out, but Russians (and probably ESA) did not share the same concerns, they would have sent Tokarev instead of Foale. For the first time ever, the ISS team would have been %100 Russians, thanks to whistle-blowers in NASA. Then the American Public asked NASA "Ahem, did you just spend some $30bln+, and then backed out, giving the way to Russians?" And then what? Will NASA just write off ISS, and let other nations use it? Or NASA will sabotage any such use, possibly by disassembling or destroying american parts of ISS or making them uninhabitable or otherwise offlimit to visitors? I know that is ridiculous, but so are any demands to abandon the project.

For your information. Russians can build Energias, which is a monstrous rocket booster capable to lift huge fully automated cargo vessels. In contrast to american shuttles, Buran, the russian shuttle, did not have to use engines for the lift off, all the heavylifting work was done by Energia. Buran's engines were used primarily for maneuvering on orbit and deorbiting. Its only flight has been fully automated. That would have been an ideal tool to bring pieces of ISS up there. In fact Russians proposed use of Energia/Buran for ISS construction, but NASA, of course rejected the plan. Russians did not have enough money, and NASA wanted to sponsor its own technologies, and use american labor. It cost a lot more, but helped Boeing, other NASA's contractors, and, probably, american economy in general. More was spent, but more was spent in US, not in Russia.

Of course, despite evident capabilities of Russians, they are not able to build or to use ISS without NASA, even with cooperation with Europeans and Japanese and Chinese. Not yet anyway.

Russian Space Corporation Energia