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ISS Oxygen Generator Fails
caino59 writes "It hasn't been too long since the food shortage on the International Space Station - now the main oxygen generator has failed. Apparently, the backup supply should allow them to make it to 60 days, which is past the next scheduled trip up. Hopefully, previous crews didn't hog all the O2."
I'm probably talking out of my ass, but didn't MIR have a much lower failure rate for critical equipment than ISS? What might the reasons be? Overly complex design of ISS equipment? Something else?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
This is a non-story. The problem was fixed. Here is a link to Spaceflight Now: SpaceFlightNow
This would not have been so bad if Dmitri didn't start thinking that the ISS was getting stuffy, and he opened both doors in the airlock to get some fresh air in there.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...had bad working conditions!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Why again did they give up MIR?
I was curious about the "Elektron Oxygen Generator" and found a brief description
here:
1. The Russian Elektron generator will make oxygen by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen (electrolysis).
2. Solid fuel oxygen generators or oxygen candles will be burned to make additional oxygen, if required.
3. The space shuttle or Progress supply ships will bring nitrogen from Earth, and store it in external tanks on the station.
4. In later phases of construction, external tanks will supply oxygen; these tanks can be refilled by the space shuttle. In the final stage, an additional electrolysis oxygen generator will be added to the station.
5. The pressure control assembly (a system of pumps and valves) will mix the nitrogen and oxygen in the right percentages, monitor the atmospheric pressure and depressurize the station when necessary to prevent overpressure or to extinguish a fire during an emergency.
Marques Johansson
Just send the high-school chick out on an EVA to plug in the spare oxygen tanks.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Not only that Drudge is linking to a story saying that they fixed the problem, as is a post in here.
No, wait, they have to talk to HGTV and get Mike Holmes up there to completely renovate it. Mike can fix anything.
No, wait, they need to get it on Trading Spaces. The ground crew and the ISS crew switch, and redecorate eachother's workplace. How cool would that be? I'd watch.
No, wait! Someone call the TV networks! Survivor ISS!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Lukhnod was a robotic explorer that was sent to the moon by Russia to to remote exploration. Apparently one of the design criteria was that it must operate successfully for 6 months. It ran for 11 years.
Why such performance ?
Well, at that time the gulag's were a possibility for the the engineers (and their families) so they were well motivated to do a good job.
Contrast this with the west. It's one thing to be motivated by pride and professionalism, but another when your life and that of your families are on the table.
If they spent any more time on experiments, they'd run up against the lack of worthwhile science left to be done by humans in low earth orbit.
"We've spent all our time bravely fighting to stay alive" make for more interesting NASA press releases than, "well, Jim found out he could make even bigger weightless solder balls if he holds the torch really still and blows on it gently to make it spin."
Just think of all the additional Voyagers / HSTs / SoHOs / Mars Rovers / WMAPs that could have been funded with the money we're paying to watch astronauts repair their tin can and lose bone mass (at a rate already adequately documented.)
OK, so the use of 'irony' in the above post is probably still a misuse (although I'm willing to admit we've lost that one along with latin plurals - especially on fora such as /.). However I checked your site and you're a little too precious regarding the meaning of the word. Specifically you disregard the (accepted) usuage of as in "irony of fate" (something that approaches what I imagine is meant by 'Morisettan irony').
Of "Morisettan," or "dramatic" irony, you write "... I have as yet been unable to find any examples of this misuse of the term irony in anything even remotely authoritarian (sic.) ... going back before the early 1970s." (You mean 'authoritative,' of course, not 'authoritarian.')
Is the mid C17th far back enough for you? Admit it, you've been brave enough to venture into this minefield without even having acess to the full OED, haven't you? Get thee to a library!
The examples provided for this usage date back to 1649!
The clincher, IMO, apropos any weight carried in literature, it the title of Thomas Hardy's 1894 work Life's Little Ironies .
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke