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?

[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.

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.