Space Station Suffers Power Glitch

TheSexican writes "As if the MRO's vision problems weren't enough, it seems that NASA has another problem on their hands as of late. " The problem itself has been solved; one of the solar power array went off line, and had to be repaired, but is back up and working.

Comments

What's that thing for?

[Dr. Spork]

Hey, are we acually doing anything in that space station, except fixing it?

Re:What's that thing for?

[__aaclcg7560]

They are trying to determine how people respond to someone toggling the light switch on-and-off in space. Hollywood wants the research to make scarier movies set in space.

Re:What's that thing for?

[Anonymous Coward]

We'd love to do more with it, but all our money's going to distant lands instead, because someone had something to prove to his daddy. Oh, yes, said someone also changed NASA's direction just to show the world that he could, and that's costing a lot, too.

Re:What's that thing for?

[beh]

Even continuing to fix it IS useful - if only to teach future space missions what kind of problems evolve over time. (i.e. for a lot of things you might be able to do a "quick and dirty" hack, if all you need it for is a day or two... For a space ship to be in space for months or even years, we do need to know more about the actual degradation of materials in the conditions out there...

But - even with the regular repairs, I would still think they're doing SOME research - even if that might not be quite is visible in the headlines as "read all about the latest power outage!"...

Re:What's that thing for?

[pimpimpim]

And 12 billion $ of that money, in actual paper bills weighing 360 tons was completely lost in the distant land you implied. Propably just burning these bills would give enough power to launch a sattelite.

P.s. The article linked to here is the first I found and seems pretty biased, please find a better source for yourself.

Re:What's that thing for?

[necro81]

Keep in mind that the station was designed for a crew complement of seven. Right now it has three. Keeping the station running is requiring most of the attention of those three. This is not a surprise. What has been a surprise has been how long the construction has taken, which has (in part) prevented the other four crew members, who would be doing the bulk of the science work, from going up. Other hangups that have held things up: redirected funding, the grounding of the shuttle fleet, and the not-yet-complete crew escape vehicle.

Re:What's that thing for?

[iso-cop]

Why yes, I am glad you asked. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/ index.html will get you to the weekly science overview and the current expedition science overview. You get all this while the place is still under construction. Just think when a crew of six is available with full laboratory environments in the next few years. By the way, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structur e/iss_manifest.html gives a summary run down on when to expect new capabilities to be in place.

Re:What's that thing for?

[CheshireCatCO]

I believe that staying in one place is a big mistake. In particular, we are a very prone species (esp as we do a lot of damage to our ecosystem). Ah, you're one of those people who thinks that terraforming another planet would be easier than fixing the environment here. I've always found that argument a bit odd, when you think about it. Anything we can do to Mars, we can really do to Earth, only it's easier here because even under the worst environmental damage I can imagine, this planet will be inherently more habitable.

History should have taught you that with England vs. China. Not really. The histories that I've read suggest that the comparison you're making is vastly oversimplified to the point of being almost blatantly wrong. (And England for crying out loud? England didn't foot the bill of most of the exploration, they vultured in. Which, by the way, is suggestive: Spain trashed its own economy thanks to it's endeavors in the New World.) The analogy to space exploration also breaks down: Europe was getting copious resources from the New World that it couldn't get elsewhere or could only get at higher prices. To date, no one has convinced me that there is anything economically viable about colonizing another world in this solar system. The very cost of bring materials back makes any resource more expensive than if it were produced/mined/grown here.

Maybe you needed to pay more attention in history class.

As to the Science, just the ability to live in space it worth it. And now the appeal to "it's cool!" A valid point, but a far cry from your initial claims of "we must go into space" and about the scientific value of ISS. If we want to spend $100 billion plus (over about 17 years, actually; the $100 billion doesn't include R&D) for the "Cool" factor, fine. But convince Congress and the taxpayers that the coolness is worth that much. If they are willing to foot the bill knowing what they're really getting, I'm thrilled. (Because it *is* cool.) But I hate seeing people sold fraudulent claims like ISS was pitched on.

As I pointed out, I think that the private enterprise will take over the exploration and move us to other worlds soon enough. Great! So why are you asking NASA to fund it instead? Private enterprise is less likely to be a pile of political pork like ISS has turned out, so I think letting them make the next move would be fantastic idea.

But let me point out that the some of the biggest arguments for the work that you do, and the work that I did, was for mankind to go to these places. I have yet to hear anyone argue that the word I do is in support of the manned spaceflight initiative in any way. People fund my research because they're interested in the answer. Apart from the Moon and Mars, I know of no claims that solar system exploration, let alone astrophysics in general, is about manned spaceflight.

Try getting a pure science project approved that creates jobs in exactly 1 place. It will never happen. That is why NASA is the political creature that it is. Sorry, that happens all the time. Not $3 billion projects to be sure, but there are many projects which create jobs in one district. (Hell, the lion's share of the money for robotic missions goes to JPL as it is.)

Don't touch that!

[Rob T Firefly]

It's the History Eraser Button, you fool!!!

isolated? not likely.

[gEvil (beta)]

They are still investigating what caused the glitch, but they believe it was an isolated event.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave."

It's not done yet

[bill_mcgonigle]

Hey, are we acually doing anything in that space station, except fixing it?

They're building it. Make as many analogies to building an office building as you like - they're all applicable. The trouble is while you can build a research facility on Earth in two years, it turns out with limited funding doing that 90 miles above the earth is somewhat harder. A 5x or 10x multiple doesn't seem all that bad if you look at it that way.

The biggest problem we're likely to encounter in this business of space exploration is impatience from folks who think that if you can get from London to Tokyo in a day, 3 months to Mars is just unreasonable.

Re:It's not done yet

[bill_mcgonigle]

Now that it is so common place people are use to watching Star Trek people in space and wonder why the hell the space station is so difficult.

Hey, it took them five tries to get the Babylon project working!

Seriously, though, you have a good point. Is it possible for a society to become so successful that its members lose the ability to do hard things?

I always figured Iraq would be a mess for seven years because that's how long it took to get things straightened out in Germany and Japan after WWII. But now the politicos are calling for a "Run Away!" strategy after four, and have been for two. I'm not a hawk, per se, but live isn't TiVo'ed.

Re:It's not done yet

[bill_mcgonigle]

It absolutely did not take seven years to get Japan and Germany to a stable, safe, violence-free and rebuildable if heavily damaged condition.

I'm not sure which events you're thinking of, but I'm thinking of the widespread starvation and the Warewolf insurgency in Germany in 1945 and 1946, the dismantling of German heavy industry which continued into the 50's, the Marshall Plan which ran through '51, and the reconstruction loans and military occupation which followed that through '55 - when Germany was finally stood up on its own and allowed to join NATO.

OK, so we were in there 11 years, not 7 (not counting our bases which are still there today).

In Japan we didn't really do as much to help them until we needed them in 1950 to fight the war in Korea, using Japan as a base of operations, and thereby stimulating the Japanese economy, bringing about the rise of Toyota, for instance.

Re:They went ahead and

[Hijacked Public]

I think that an Office Space Milton joke would have been a better fit.

I don't really see why anyone is surprised...

[Akardam]

... least of all NASA.

Why, even if we look at a best case supposition for the future, the mostly-utopian Star Trek, do you see Scotty, LaForge, or O'Brien cooling their heels all the time? Of course not. They're always replacing this or fixing that or realigning this or repolarizing that and heaven help us if they have to remodulate something. And if they have to do this all the time, it's a wonder NASA has as few problems as they do.

Just remember, a busy engineer is a happy engineer.