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."

Comments

Very Stressful...

[cnelzie]

...because we all know that it takes almost 5 months to move from one end of the station to the other, which means those Astronauts need to start moving towards the escape vehicle, about now.

It stated in the Article snippet that they have 5 months of oxygen. How is that stressful?

Re:Very Stressful...

[Pakaran2]

Yep. TFA doesn't make it clear that they can bail out via the Soyuz (sp?) anytime they need to. And that won't be necessary, because supplies are arriving easily in time. They're no more in an "emergency" than you would be if your car alternator blew on the way home from work (in fact, far less so, a slightly soft tire might be a better analogy).

When the supplies get there, they'll have to spend time replacing the machine, but that's about it.

Re:Very Stressful...

[Vellmont]

Oh, I dunno... Maybe the remote possibility of RUNNING OUT OF OXYGEN AND DYING?


Well Nervous Nelly, the article states there's at least two other backup oxygen supplies that have quite a long duration.

What if the mission to send replacement parts fails?

There's always a Soyuz capsule docked at the station so they can abandon the space station if necessary.

What if the escape vehicle doesn't work?

Unlikely. If it doesn't work, then I'd imagine there'd be some rush to launch another Soyuz or Shuttle. There's something very basic that you seem to be missing though. At some point you just have to accept the fact that space exploration is dangerous. Why do you have this attitude that it should be as safe as walking to the drugstore? How many people die just doing something like climbing Mt. Everest? Life is dangerous. If you don't like that, there's always the option of never venturing outside.

Re:Skylab?

[calibanDNS]

You're thinking of Mir. Skylab was operated by the US.

Re:It shows how fragile our space program(s) are.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Actually that's about the only point of the ISS that actually makes any sense. Actually running an oxygen generator for long periods to see if it actually works. That's actually necessary to test out for a Mars mission.

In practice, for the ISS, the recalcitrant oxygen generator is mainly just a nuisance, at worst, because it operates atleast part of the time, it still cuts down on the amount of oxygen that needs shipping up from the ground and leaves room in the supply vessels for other equipment.