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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."
A balky Russian oxygen generator broke down
I thought Balky was from Meepos?
riiiidiculus!
Sure NASA says the parts are coming, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Oh No He Didn't!
Oh Yes He Did!
Ha ha ha, but seriously, I hope they don't die.
Frylock: "We should have cloned twenties, Jackson wouldn't have given a fuck."
.. I guess they ran out of duct tape
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
It stated in the Article snippet that they have 5 months of oxygen. How is that stressful?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
with Mega-Maid.
Best Slashdot Co
... the last food supplies only contained chili beans. Poor guys.
Wanna bet that if their Vodka generator would brake they could fix it ?
Da. Just remove the brakes and it vill vork again.
You're thinking of Mir. Skylab was operated by the US.
Slightly off topic, but since as I understand from this post there's someone up there, I'm asking myself about the possible problems the crew might have with the latest very strong solar emission. Sort of a billionth Xray machine exposure?
-- "If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." - Einstein
First they ran out of supply line(2003), then they ran out of food(2004), and now they are running out of oxygen. What will the next thing be? Will they run out of orbit?
How many and what type of plants would it take to convert the carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts and convert it to enough oxygen for them to survive? Would they still need periodic deliveries of fresh oxygen or would the plants provide enough? Can they keep enough plants alive in space to do this?
One of my favorite old science fiction films is Silent Running, with Bruce Dern. The premise was a little implausible, but the idea that we could be completely self-sufficient in space using biodomes (minus Pauly Shore) is still pretty cool.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
... why can we not send up a replacement machine?
The good news: it's still under warranty
The bad news: the manufacturer won't send out a replacement until they've received the broken unit
The really bad news: Sergei threw the crate out after they unpacked it, so they've go nothing to ship it in
The really, really bad news: When they do finally find something to ship it in, they're just going to kick it out of an airlock with a note attached: "If found, please return to We Scrub Air, Inc. P.S., sorry for landing on your grandmother"
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
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.
`_
/ \
O O
|||/
|\/|
\__/
Hey there, partner! It looks like you're running out of oxygen!
What would you like to do?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Why don't they build a greenhouse up there?
Actually, a biosphere seems like the next logical step for the space station.
Make the greenhouse a disk:
You'd have to be careful about mixing in animals, though. It'd be tragic if the animal population got out of hand.
A greenhouse would serve to keep the astronauts from getting too loopy, too. "Gardening", even hydroponically, would probably be a welcome change from the other crap they have to do all day.
Speaking of crap, a garden might be a good way to recycle other human byproducts.
sigs, as if you care.
Here... I'll fill in the rest of the obligatory unfunny stupid jokes so that we can get on with our lives and have an intelligent discussion on the subject of the ISS:
Obligatory old Korean joke: Only old Koreans get stuck with no oxygen on ISS.
Obligatory underpants gnome joke:
1. Run out of oxygen.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Obligatory beowulf cluster joke: The oxygen generators: If only they'd had a beowulf cluster of these.
Obligatory MS joke: The oxygen generator must have been powered by Microsoft.
Obligatory Apple joke: The oxygen generator was useless because it only had one button.
Obligatory all-your-base joke: All your oxygen are belong to us! Someone sent us up the parts!
Obligatory Strong Bad joke: SUFFOCAT'D!!!
Obligatory everything else joke: The thought of Natalie Portman, petrified and naked, while they eat hot grits poured down each others' pants should help them to stave off suffocation, or at least be happy about it.
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.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"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.
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.