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ISS Oxygen Generator Fails for Good
billyj4 writes "A balky Russian oxygen generator broke down on the International Space Station, but its two-man crew has a reserve air supply that would last about five months, NASA officials said Friday.
The station's primary generator, which has been operating in an on-again, off-again fashion for months, stopped working last week and the station's crew has not been able to fix it.
Mission managers say the unit has failed for good. Consequently, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and U.S. astronaut John Phillips will be relying on reserves until replacement parts arrive at the station in late August."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090501/
Actually it is spelled Balki. I used to love that show as a kid but I saw a rerun of it a couple years ago and it wasn't quite as good as I remembered.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
Then they hop into their Soyuz Capsule return to Earth.
Again, where's the stress in having 5 months to get replacement parts and then still have time to get themselves into the escape capsule?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
If you want to see the Space Station, it is making nice evening shows in the US right now. Just go to Heavens Above through your city in and watch it pass over.
It is as bright as the brightest star out there (Jupiter, yea not a star but you get it)
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Elektron is a standard unit on Russian space stations, Mir and Salyuts (iirc) used them as well. They break all the time. Krikalev and the crew before his (Ciao and Sharipov) all have spent tons of time working on both the Elektrons onboard. One broke, they put in the other, it has broken again. It seems that they spend a lot of time stripping and repairing Elektron units.
Definitely time for a new, more robust O2 generator. Not enough time in the interim to build a new style of generator, but there is a mid-term opportunity for one.
The Russians will be sending either parts or a new unit with the next Progress supply craft.
josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
No, that one was "ISS Oxygen Generator Fails"; this one is "ISS Oxygen Generator Fails for good." The subtle difference is that all hope of fixing it that was present when the earlier article was posted has now disappeared, and that they have now abandoned the idea.
Two Oxygen Generators, and Oxygen generating candles as a backup. They have a 5 month supply of oxygen aboard the station.
Try reading the fucking summary.
Hey, I know this is /. but good grief! You really should RTFA.
Do you honestly think that a mechanical generator is the only way they have of breathing up there? In fact, there is 140 days' worth of O2 stored in a tank AND there are SFOG generators as well, which are also known as a "candle" - light it up and it generates oxygen.
And, even failing that, it's not like they'll die - there is always a Soyuz docked at the station to allow an emergency return.
Disregarding your BS about Kyoto (just how many rainforests do you think there are in the USA, anyway?), I'm pretty sure that the rainforests, which cover a tiny percentage of the earth's surface, are not a "primary" source of oxygen. In fact, I had always heard that algae produced far more oxygen than larger plants, although I can't find a link to back me up.
ISS orbits well within the region protected by the Earth's magnetic fields, so they won't have any problem. Geosynchronous satellites are going to be impacted pretty hard, but they're designed to withstand flares (although they may shut down temporarily).
The crew of a lunar or interplanetary mission would want to take shelter, though -- most mission designs include some sheltered space for that purpose. The shielding usually consists of a water tank that surrounds most of the shielded volume -- water is an excellent material for the sort of ionized particles thrown off by the sun in these events.
Incorrect, the primary oxygen producer is algae, not the rain forests. Getting rid of the rain forests would have some effect, no doubt, but not the doomsday scenario you are implying.
Oh dear lord.
From the Wikipedia:
On June 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". Disregarding the Senate Resolution, on November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Aware of the Senate's view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification.
The Clinton Administration released an economic analysis in July 1998, prepared by the Council of Economic Advisors, which concluded that with emissions trading among the Annex B/Annex I countries, and participation of key developing countries in the "Clean Development Mechanism" -- which grants the latter business-as-usual emissions rates through 2012 -- the costs of implementing the Kyoto Protocol could be reduced as much as 60% from many estimates. Other economic analyses, however, prepared by the Congressional Budget Office and the Department of Energy Energy Information Administration (EIA), and others, demonstrated a potentially large decline in GDP from implementing the Protocol.
The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the general idea, but because of the strain he believes the treaty would put on the economy; he emphasises the uncertainties he asserts are present in the climate change issue [10] (http://www.alternet.org/story/11054/). Furthermore, he is not happy with the details of the treaty. For example, he does not support the split between Annex I countries and others. Bush said of the treaty:
The world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. This is a challenge that requires a 100 percent effort; ours, and the rest of the world's. America's unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change. Our approach must be consistent with the long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
China emits 2,893 million metric tons of CO2 per year (2.3 tons per capita). This compares to 5,410 million from the USA (20.1 tons per capita), and 3,171 million from the EU (8.5 tons per capita). China, currently exempted from the requirements of the protocol, has since ratified the Kyoto Protocol and is expected to become an Annex I country within the next decade (at which time it would no longer be exempted). The US Natural Resources Defense Council, stated in June 2001 that: "By switching from coal to cleaner energy sources, initiating energy efficiency programs, and restructuring its economy, China has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent since 1997".
there are lots of people working on ALS (advanced life support), including me :-) here are a couple of places to look - NASA and the University of Guelph in Canada.
Ever wondered how oxygen generators work?
Waters rather heavy (or rather, dense), not to mention scarce. An alternative shielding that's been proposed is polyurethene; for the moon, it's probably more effective just to dig deeper. On Mars, you're probably SOL because the ground's full of frozen water (hopefully), and there's no significant planetary magnet shield, but maybe water would be a good choice in this case. Some research has gone into using magnetic shielding to emulate the Earth's field, which isn't that strong as magnetic fields go (although it's very, very big, a more important property for stopping charged particles from flying in and zapping all your nucleotides).
We're working on it on two fronts:
1. More experiementation to study the effects of low-g and zero-g on plants: Plant Research Unit
2. Miniature greenhouses for growing salad crops and recreation for the astronauts: Vegetable Production System
Disclaimer: Yes, I am affiliated with the above links.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Disaster a year away if ISS is abandoned
Numerous potentially fatal problems during construction
ISS Flying with 800 safety problems, some potentially fatal.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Hey kids! I've made it great distances on a car with a failed alternator-- in fact, for a brief period when I didn't have the time to get mine fixed I just charged the battery nightly.
Let's compute a quick power budget and figure out just how wrong you are!
Ignition: 30-45 watts (sorry, I don't have a good source for this now but I'm pretty sure it's correct).
Fuel pump: 80-100 watts.
Injectors: 6 watts * 6 cylinders (max)=36W
Computers: Not much. Less than 30W.
Daytime lights/etc: 100W.
Fudge factor for additional draw: 100W
TOTAL ~420W
So say you take a typical 45A-Hr battery, with a nominal 550 Watt-hours. 550W-hr / 360W = 1.5 hours. So to only make it 10 miles, you'd need to be driving about 7 MPH. I usually drive faster than that, but your mileage may vary. (And of course, these numbers are for a brand new battery, so an older battery will do somewhat worse).
One more way to do the math. Many cars ship with 70A alternator. Assuming the car always draws 70A (not possible, because then the battery would never get charged), then the battery will provide over its rated discharge voltage for 38 minutes.
There's a little patch up in Northwest Oregon around Astoria that gets 70 in. of precipitation a year. Part of the Olympic Penninsula in Washington gets 160 in. a year (try a winter there,) and a small swatch along the Tennesee/North Carolina border gets up to 90 in. annually. Southeastern Alaska gets hosed during the winter months, as the mossy vegetation attests, and the rainiest spot on Earth is Hawaii's Mt. Waialeale--440 inches annually. All of these environments qualify as rainforests, though all except the one in Hawaii are temperate.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"